We left early Thursday morning for the Red Lake reservation, where we met up with Darwin Sumner for a hike to The Narrows, a remote shoreline where the two parts of the lake join. It is the most sacred site on Red Lake—a wild place often used for fasts and ceremonies.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different plan. After contending with deep mud for an hour, we decided our vehicles couldn’t make it the remaining four miles to the trailhead. We turned around disappointed, though we did manage to spot a fisher—a weasel-like animal—crossing the road. We ended up spending a couple of hours eating and walking along the pebbly shore of the lake.
After lunch, we visited the Red Lake Tribal Council offices and met with Chairman Floyd Jourdain. He described the electoral form of government that operates on the reservation today along with the relationship the tribe has with the federal government.
We then piled into the vans and drove to the other end of the reservation—the Point in Ponemah, where we observed fisherman at work. We were joined by Greg Kingbird, a medicine man and spiritual leader. We gathered around him and heard stories of his boyhood and his reflections on the way life on Red Lake has changed in his lifetime. On the way home, we spotted both a black bear and a pair of eagles.
This morning, we drove to Leech Lake Tribal College, where Elaine Fleming gave us a presentation about environmental abuses in Indian territories both in the US and Canada. She then took us to the location of an environmental disaster on the Leech Lake reservation, the St. Regis Superfund site where chemicals from a wood treatment facility contaminated the ground, wells, lakes, and aquifer. As a child she remembers walking across this site and drinking, bathing, and playing in water contaminated with known toxins and carcinogens. Her brother, along with many others in her community, has since died of cancer. The tour ended on a more hopeful note, with a stop at the community garden Elaine started.
This afternoon gave us a much needed reprieve from the tragedy we witnessed this morning. We joined Garnet “Rocky” Mountain, a professor of Ojibwe arts and crafts, at his beautiful home that overlooks the Mississippi River. He walked us through the process of making black ash baskets—from stripping logs, to peeling paper thin bands of bark, to weaving the baskets. We all sat down to a campfire and s’mores after completing our baskets and watched a breathtaking sunset.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different plan. After contending with deep mud for an hour, we decided our vehicles couldn’t make it the remaining four miles to the trailhead. We turned around disappointed, though we did manage to spot a fisher—a weasel-like animal—crossing the road. We ended up spending a couple of hours eating and walking along the pebbly shore of the lake.
After lunch, we visited the Red Lake Tribal Council offices and met with Chairman Floyd Jourdain. He described the electoral form of government that operates on the reservation today along with the relationship the tribe has with the federal government.
We then piled into the vans and drove to the other end of the reservation—the Point in Ponemah, where we observed fisherman at work. We were joined by Greg Kingbird, a medicine man and spiritual leader. We gathered around him and heard stories of his boyhood and his reflections on the way life on Red Lake has changed in his lifetime. On the way home, we spotted both a black bear and a pair of eagles.
This morning, we drove to Leech Lake Tribal College, where Elaine Fleming gave us a presentation about environmental abuses in Indian territories both in the US and Canada. She then took us to the location of an environmental disaster on the Leech Lake reservation, the St. Regis Superfund site where chemicals from a wood treatment facility contaminated the ground, wells, lakes, and aquifer. As a child she remembers walking across this site and drinking, bathing, and playing in water contaminated with known toxins and carcinogens. Her brother, along with many others in her community, has since died of cancer. The tour ended on a more hopeful note, with a stop at the community garden Elaine started.
This afternoon gave us a much needed reprieve from the tragedy we witnessed this morning. We joined Garnet “Rocky” Mountain, a professor of Ojibwe arts and crafts, at his beautiful home that overlooks the Mississippi River. He walked us through the process of making black ash baskets—from stripping logs, to peeling paper thin bands of bark, to weaving the baskets. We all sat down to a campfire and s’mores after completing our baskets and watched a breathtaking sunset.
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