We live in Mni Sóta Makoce, the land where the water reflects the clouds.

When you look at who we are as Dakota people and our creation stories, we come into being in places of water, places like Bdote.

The place where the Mississippi and the Minnesota rivers come together, Bdote, that's the place of our creation, where we came to be Dakota people.

- Where we are today, what's known to most people as Pike Island because there was a treaty signed here.

But this island was one of the many birthing islands all along the Mississippi River.

So these are the places that our midwives would come for thousands of years to birth our children.

Hi, Kati.

Second time I get to see you in person.

- I know, it's like a real treat.

- Hello.

I need one person to carry each one of these.

Do you want to carry one?

Is that good?

You can hear me good?

Okay.

Many, many times I've been here for 11 years to give these tours, and it is such a joy.

But today's specific focus is to connect with the birthing island.

What happened on that island when our women went there and waited to give birth?

You know, what kind of things did they do?

Well, when we talk about our homeland, we're talking about a vast expanse.

It's not just along the river.

It extended up into Manitoba and what became North and South Dakota, Nebraska, all of Minnesota, parts of Iowa.

So it was a big, big place.

When you look at who we are as Dakota people and our creation stories, you know, our stories are tied to the stars, to the universe, as we Chacpio yate.

We are people of the stars.

But then we come into being in places of water, places like Barote.

This confluence and where the rivers flow directly reflect the Milky Way into Wichahpi To Win, the blue star woman.

And she is that person that brings the spirits to and from the spirit world, Wanaghi Tachanku, the Milky Way.

Well, Bdote, it's situated at a place where there's two powerful river systems.

It's a really powerful place.

And you can't help but be attracted to it.

These rivers are important to lots of Native people because these were like the major paths of travel.

So lots of people that lived in this region traveled the Mni Sota Wakpa or the Haha Wakpa because they're major waterways for this whole part of the earth.

(Ramona speaks in Lakhóta) I wanna say welcome to the Bdote.

So this is the Bdote.

We call it that because this is the confluence of the Minnesota and the Mississippi rivers.

So this is the place for Dakota people.

This is our genesis.

This is where we emerge from place.

We didn't come from any other place.

We've been here over 12,000 years.

Some say 14,000 years.

So this island surrounded by water is exactly the same as our children when they're in our womb.

They're surrounded by water.

And so what a perfect way to bring them into this world in a place that's similar to the one that they're coming from.

In 1859, my great-great-grandmother came right here to this island.

She lived in Hushasha's village, which was near Faribault.

Her name was (speaks in Lakhóta).

It means the woman whose energy radiates in her path like the sun.

It's describing this beautiful energy.

But she would have made her way on these superhighways to this very birthing island to give birth to her third child.

She had a boy, and that boy was my dad's grandpa.

And then we have these beautiful plant relatives that help us and help us to know how to live in this place.

And looking at these islands, we know that the medicines that grow here are the medicines that heal women from birthing.

So these are the places that our midwives would come for thousands of years to birth our children.

We were one part of everything.

No better, no worse.

We were one with the animals, the plants, the water.

In our early lives here, before the coming of colonialism, so to speak, and a concept of separation and divide.

These early folks who came in and started the fur trade industry were people who were looking for a profit.

And they were looking to extract resources.

They were looking to exploit the land and the people.

And we see evidence of that today because that's where European settlers began to populate because they were important places for trade, for commerce, for good living conditions.

And so those treaties, the first was the 1805 treaty, and it was more of a friendship treaty, but it started the process of money exchanging for land.

But unfortunately, the way things that went down between Dakota people and the U.S.

government and the forming of the state, a lot of those treaties were not honored, and a lot of the agreements were not honored.

In 1862 is when the provisions didn't come, and Indians were starving, you know, and the government made all kinds of promises and never came through with them.

Which, of course, led to the U.S.-Dakota War, and that led to the exile of Dakota people from their homelands where they had been placed, where they had been created, where they had lived thousands of years.

And I think that's a trauma that Dakota people are still addressing.

So, this is Ruben's.

This is a cradle board.

This is something that all Native nations had.

They had a way to nurture their babies and to keep them safe.

So (speaks in Lakhóta) she gave birth here in 1859.

I like to think about what she must have thought with all the army here, because the army would have already been here.

And I imagine that she would have prepared herself.

She would have harvested some of those teas.

There would have been midwives here.

And she would have made an amulet.

She would have made some sort of amulet.

And so we create a pouch, and that pouch is two different shapes, either Keya.

Keya is the turtle, and it's a constellation right above us.

It's here day and night all the time, Keya.

And think about Keya.

Think about that turtle.

They wear their home on their back.

The mother is representative of that.

Or in the shape of a salamander.

You know, we call that Ahdeskadan.

There's also a constellation in that shape.

And that salamandr, right, it can move swiftly.

If the tail gets cut off, it heals quickly, grows right back.

So we'll make one of those, and we'll, in preparation for that time when the umbilical is cut, we sew it into there.

So now that child is not connected to mom anymore in that way, but now they're reconnected to the star world and to Wichahpi To Win.

And she is that person that brings the spirits to and from the spirit world.

So the river initially was our most sacred place in this area, was used against that by transporting the military and to build the fort.

Fort Snelling, a site of a lot of hardship for Dakota people, where my own direct ancestors were imprisoned and spent a really hard winter.

And then even some spent years after that being imprisoned there before being exiled out of Minnesota.

If you think about what it's like to be removed from a place, when you're not in that place, you tend to not hear the stories of that place.

You maybe forget the language of that place.

You are less familiar with the plant relatives that live in that place that you would have depended on when you lived there.

And so once there's any kind of land loss and removal of Native people from the land, it starts having these cascading effects.

When we were essentially corralled and not able to freely move, it did impact us in terms of our relationship with the waterways because we weren't able to travel as we once had.

And our ability to trade and the transference of knowledge itself was deeply ingrained in those river ways.

When our Dakota women were force-marched across the state, when they were kept in a concentration camp right here at Bdote, where four on average died a day it was so traumatic.

And we had to walk in their footsteps to remember and acknowledge those women and children because we're all grown, we all grow in this colonial society.

We are Dakota women, we are the future matriarchs, we have to create a ceremony.

And we walked through that and the idea was we're going to heal.

And we did that.

Today this collective, number one, empowering Black women and Indigenous women together.

And then when we come together it's just amazing.

You know we have to consider ourselves very blessed to be here because our ancestors survived these things.

All these things that happened to our people, obviously we're very grateful for that.

We're kind of obligated to then make sure that our stories are being told.

We still respect it by praying at those places, feeding those places.

There are places where traditional plants will come up along a highway, and you can see them as you're driving by.

It's like, well, how did those get there?

Whether the seeds were carried by birds or they blew in the wind, they managed to take root and grow.

I think it's being able to recognize that resilience.

Dakota worldview isn't just about Dakota people.

It's about the earth.

It's about the universe.

It's about the stars.

It's about finding those connections and doing better and being responsible for the well-being of this earth and of this world and of the future generations.

I would love to see other Minnesotans have a connection to Bdote, Minnesota that sustains them and that makes them act in ways to benefit the water.

And that's the process that will further bring back the life of the river and the place as it was and as it is and as it should be again in the future.

It is something that we already know how to do and we knew how to do it here.

And if we look around, we can see that there are plant nations here, our relatives who help us to learn that.

So our prayer today is to come together as Black, Indigenous people, reclaim our power as matriarchs, as women, as allies.

Remember, (speaks in Lakhóta), remember, because it's probably the most important thing we can do today.

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