on native ground
The discovery of Indigenous remains underneath the ground we walk on should not be shocking to anyone who decides to dig into it.
On March 9th, 2023 news broke that Indigenous remains were discovered at the construction site for our brand new highway in Duluth, called “The Twin Ports Interchange Project.” This is not the first time the city has disturbed burial sites during its “renewal” projects. In 2017, MnDot failed to consult with the Fond du Lac Band before beginning construction for the Highway 23 project and ended up disturbing yet another Indian burial site.
This (re)discovery (disturbance) is a perfect time to discuss settler colonialism in conversation with this resurgence of indigenous ways that have been lost in capitalist translation as “eco-friendly,” “all-natural,” “hand-crafted,” and “organic.”
I come back to Duluth maybe three or four times a year. I spend most of the year in Providence, Rhode Island, and on the campus of Brown University. Providence is rich with history (as is Duluth), and everywhere you go in the city you can find a little monument or stone acknowledging what happened on the land before us. Put simply, Providence reckons with its past. Providence does not wait until remains are found to begin to dive back into the city’s origins.
*To be clear, I am not diminishing the efforts of Indigenous leaders and advocates who are doing important work in Duluth. Rather, my frustrations are aimed toward those who:
put the lives of Native American people at the bottom of Duluth’s priority list
seek capitalist greed and in turn destroy/disturb the land, and appropriate Indigenous culture
make it so damn difficult to find information on Indigenous history in our area.
I think as we get farther away from tradition and more towards technology, we have to keep reminding ourselves who came before us. Is it not another form of colonization if we choose to put a billboard or a coffee shop where there should be a historical marker? What would it mean to have reminders everywhere in our city, so that we can’t go a day without reckoning with settler colonialism?
Each time I return, it becomes increasingly challenging to find commemorations or even acknowledgments of the original people who occupied this special place I call home. What we have right now is not nearly enough. While nothing can compensate for, or reverse the complete colonization of our city, there are specific actions we can take to increase visibility since settler colonization deemed Native Americans invisible.
When I wanted to find out more about the history of our city I had to really dig. I’m not talking about the mining/shipping/industrial history that is so readily available to us. I’m talking about the origins, the traditional ways, and the names of people who were here before allathat. This is another form of colonization. Duluth’s Indigenous history is hidden, but that doesn't mean that white Duluthians haven't profited off of Indigenous-inspired everything.
For example, this new “Craft District” in Lincoln Park (previously one of Duluth’s neglected areas) has new businesses that promote nature, handmade decor, and organic living, yet neglect to mention how the Ojibwe have been doing that for centuries (and they did it without a storefront with some weird name.)
This is what settler colonialism does. It arrives, it stays, and it wipes away…eventually profiting off of that erasure.
How powerful would it be to “give the stars their right name?” as Danez Smith puts it. The word Duluth recognizes some French guy who came here looking to make a buck. But, Onigamiinsing (“little portage”) and Misaabekong (“the place of giants”) incorporate the true and beautiful features of our city; they are the original names. There’s a difference (power in language).
All of this goes to say, those who know our city’s Indigenous history are never surprised when remains are found. In fact, for us, it serves as a reminder that more work needs to be done in order to protect and acknowledge the People who came first. This starts with a plan of attack on Settler colonialism and the Capitalist system that exploits Indigenous ways.
(For more reading on Duluth’s history, I highly recommend Linda Legarde Grover’s Gichigami Hearts.)
