Native American birding, cultural teachings along the Mississippi
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Bird chirps resonate throughout the area of Wakaŋ Tipi, a site sacred to Dakota people. It's located along the Mississippi River in east St. Paul.
Lower Brule Sioux Tribe citizen Michael Tasunka Opi Kurtz is with Twin Cities-based Urban Bird Collective, an organization that supports birdwatchers of all different skill levels in their own neighborhoods.
He stops to point out a brown-headed cowbird — a small bird with glossy black feathers on its body and brown feathers covering its head. The bird makes a high-pitched chirping noise.
It’s not the only bird Kurtz points out while walking through Wakaŋ Tipi with fellow bird watchers from Urban Bird Collective. The group of four have binoculars and carry guidebooks to Minnesota’s birds.
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“There's a palm warbler over there, on the tree, right on the path. I think that's it tapping its tail,” Kurtz said as he raised his binoculars to his eyes.
Maggie Lorenz, citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, is the executive director of Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wakaŋ Tipi. The organization is partnering with Urban Bird Collective to host a bird walk for Native American community members on Sunday to celebrate American Indian Month.
“This is the time of the year that we're going to see a lot of really unique and diverse species of warblers and water birds, and other birds that are going to be migrating through, along the Mississippi flyway,” Lorenz said.
Kurtz says people can learn a lot from birds, and that the spring migration provides that opportunity. By sparking an initial interest in birds, the group says it can lead to caring for the environment for future generations.
From robins helping in seed dispersal to turkey vultures keeping environments clean, he says those lessons of mutual relationships are interwoven into Indigenous teachings.
“There's just so much that the birds do to take care of the environment, that we can learn to be better stewards of the land,” said Kurtz.
Fellow bird watcher and Seneca descendant Hope Flanagan says birds have been on the earth for a long time and that they are like elders who deserve attention and respect.
“Everything is interconnected. So, if the birds don't have a place — if they can't have their food, if they don't have clean water, clean air, clean food, neither do we,” Flanagan said.
When Flanagan was younger, she noticed that migration would begin around mid-March. Now, she says, due to changes in climate, those migrations continue to happen later in the season.
“In Ojibwe, you're recognizing that what you do now affects your relatives in the past and in the future. So, we've got to be thinking about those who are walking on the earth now, or who are about to walk on the earth, or those who walked on the earth before us,” she said.
White Earth Nation descendant Katy Kozhimannil says birds are also integrated into community within the Ojibwe culture, specifically their relation to Ojibwe clans. Clans are a traditional lineal system based around kinship and are often based on animals and their characteristics.
“People are known for qualities that are associated with some of the qualities of the bird community,” Kozhimannil said. “It's a way that people feel connection to those characteristics and aim to live up to the beauty that those creatures, those relatives, show us.”
Cultural teachings are a part of the birding experience for Native American attendees, like talking about bald eagles, a sacred symbol in many Native communities.
At the end of the bird walk, both Kurtz and Flanagan stop as they notice an eagle flying overhead in the distance.
“It's just the way Lakota — the Indigenous way that things come and show you messages for a reason,” Kurtz said.
The group hopes those cultural connections to birds will inspire people to think deeper about the world around them.
“We've been connected to birds as Indigenous people from time immemorial. We've always had that connection for tens and even hundreds, thousands of years,” Kurtz said.
Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
