These projects highlight planning, collaboration, and design considerations key to creating culturally respectful site designs and interpretation. Restoring and honoring culturally significant places helps connect culture to place and authentically reflect contemporary connections as well as history and traditions. Highlight the disruptors and challenges and the planning interventions that will be presented to overcome the challenges. These projects center Dakota and other Indigenous voices in the planning process.
Waḳaŋ Ṭípi Center is a cultural and environmental center that interprets the history and cultural significance of the sacred Waḳaŋ Ṭípi cave and surrounding site from a distinctly Dakota perspective. The Center is being developed through a Dakota-led, community-engaged planning process. The site connects people with the landscape as a Dakota sacred place and helps them understand it in the context of other places of historical and cultural significance for Dakota people in Saint Paul.
Oheyawahe is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This 112-acre site is protected by the City of Mendota Heights as an Open Space site. It is a place of cultural importance to the Dakota community and of significance in the history of Minnesota statehood.
Outdoor interpretive signage at Big Rivers Regional Trail overlook highlights the site’s natural and cultural resources, and Dakota people’s connection to this place and other places along the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. The interpretation encourages visitors to enjoy the recreational opportunities while being good stewards of trail resources. Dakota culture and language specialists provided interpretive content, Dakota language translation, and English and Dakota audio. A common theme between the sites are the inclusion of storytelling from a distinctly Daḳota perspective. These Twin Cities sites convey Daḳota culture, history, and ongoing presence and connection. They offer environmental education about the geology, ecology, and restoration of the land through an authentically Indigenous lens.
Learning Objectives:
Discover cultural perspectives on planning and designing landscapes.
Identify ways to foster learning and contemplation at public spaces that are also sacred sites.
Recognize the importance of these places to different people, including Dakota, non-Dakota, neighbors, historians, birders, artists, students, and teachers.
