A Nibi walk in honor of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ is one of the ways the People for Parks Fund helps Minneapolis see and celebrate our natural resources
How do you get a city to see, preserve, and protect the water that sustains us?
For Sharon Day, executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, the answer is to walk it, one silent mile at a time.
A nationally recognized Ojibwe leader, artist, and activist, Day is an enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, known for the many Nibi walks she’s led through Minnesota and across North America. Inspired by the late Josephine Mandamin, an Anishinaabe grandmother who walked the shorelines of all five Great Lakes to pray for waters she knew were increasingly imperiled, Day herself has led more than 25 Nibi walks over the last 15 years, including an epic journey from Gulfport, Mississippi all the way to Lake Superior.
On Earth Day this spring, she traveled a much more accessible path from Plymouth to Minneapolis as part of a People for Parks Fund project aimed at strengthening the city’s connection to Bassett Creek–Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ–one of the most stressed urban waterways in the state. The day started on the shores of Medicine Lake, where some 40 walkers took turns carrying a pail of water gathered in ceremony. Over the next several hours, they followed the 13-mile course of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ through Theodore Wirth Park and toward the Mississippi. In Bryn Mawr the creek went underground. Most of the water of the creek goes through a 1.7 mile tunnel through downtown, entering the Mississippi near the Stone Arch Bridge. The walkers followed the old tunnel through which there is still a little bit of water flow. The old tunnel more closely follows the original route of the creek, ending near the Plymouth Avenue Bridge.
The walkers continued along the creek’s historic route, where artist and community organizer Seitu Jones and interns from the Indigenous Peoples Task Force marked the transition with chalk stencils declaring “Mni wičóni ye!” — water is life in Dakota. The walk ended at James I. Rice Park, where the creek meets the Mississippi River. There, another 50 people were waiting to welcome the walkers with songs, stories, and a celebration of the communities that intersect along this often-overlooked waterway.
“In our spiritual ways, women are responsible to take care of the water,” Day explains. “Whenever there’s a gathering, women gather the water in a particular way, offer petitions, sing water songs, and make sure there’s always fresh, clean water available.”
The modern Nibi walk movement is a reflection of that ancient tradition, Day says, but it’s not a march, or a protest. “Drawing attention is not our main goal. Our main goal is to reconnect people with the water. The water has a spirit. It’s a living entity, and it’s not doing anything to pollute itself. We humans are the ones.”
The day-long walk was modest compared to the Nibi walk Day is now planning from New Orleans to Lake Itasca, but the story of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ still runs deep. “The name alone — Medicine Lake — would imply that it was of great significance to the Dakota people,” Day says. Wild rice once grew along the creek, she notes, along with many of the plants Dakota and Ojibwe people gathered as medicines.
Remembering that history is part of the walk. “Sometimes when I’m walking these rivers, I think about when was the last time Indigenous languages were heard on this river,” she says. “When was the last time the drum was heard — the heartbeat of the nation?”
Day also asks each walker to carry the water a mile at a time, in silence — no earbuds. “When you do that, you can hear the wind, you can hear the leaves rustling, you can hear the birds flying overhead,” she says. On a walk around Cedar Lake a few years ago, she caught a familiar scent where the grass had just been mowed and recognized sweetgrass, a traditional medicine. “Even in these urban areas, these medicines come back — but people don’t even realize they’re there.”
While Day has spent decades in environmental advocacy, including three years on Minnesota’s Clean Water Council, she believes helping people reconnect to the lakes, rivers, and watersheds we share is where change begins. “I spent my whole life protesting, and that hasn’t changed anything,” she says. “But what I can do is walk the rivers, offer our prayers, and bring as many people along with me as I can.”
Encouraging people from every community to see themselves through our parks is the mission of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation’s People for Parks Fund. Each year, grants of $1,000 to $10,000 help community members like Sharon Day make their big ideas for the parks a reality. To learn more, visit mplsparksfoundation.org.
Image Credits: Sharon Day & Indigenous Peoples Task Force, Haha Wakpadan Nibi Walk