Staff Writer- Evangelyn Hill

This weekend, Dakota people, Mankato residents, and students (including Gusties) will gather in Mankato for a three-day Powwow, or Wacipi, meaning “we all dance.” The Powwow is one of many examples of how Gustavus is engaging with their indigenous neighbors and community members. 

The Powwow is the most visible way Gustavus works with the native community. Gustavus students can attend the Powwow for free, and some even volunteer. 

The Wacipi is a deeply important community event for Native people and the Mankato community alike. Elizabeth Kubek, a Gustavus professor and a founding member of the President’s Council for Indigenous Relations, explained that the Powwow is a blending of revived Indigenous and American traditions.

Dancing and music are integral parts of a powwow, as are the elaborate regalia dancers wear. The powwow also commemorates Indigenous veterans (and victims) of the US army. The powwow is organized for the Native American community, but all community members are welcome to participate and learn. 

Kubek suggests that students attending should review the rules of behavior on the Mahkato Wacipi website to ensure they engage with the event respectfully. She also encourages students to simply enjoy the event. 

“There are parts of the ceremony where everyone is invited to join the dancers – you don’t need to know what you’re doing. So it’s a very open and communal event,” Kubek said. 

Attendees will get to explore vendors of traditional crafts and delicious food – including fry bread. 

The Wacipi holds a delicate balance: focusing on Native ceremony and dance, while also inviting the entire community to join; celebrating Indigenous culture, while also uplifting American Army veterans; acknowledging the wrongs of the past while also joyfully celebrating the future.

The powwow is a way to mourn and to celebrate, and invites the entire community to join in that process. Gustavus students and professors alike are involved with the Powwow, both attending and volunteering.

Ursula Lindqvist, a Gustavus Scandinavian Studies professor, is deeply involved in the educational portion of the Powwow. As an expert on local history, she will be at the Wacipi’s education tent, helping to tell Gustavus’s history as related to Native American history.

President Volin himself has previous experience in Indigenous relations and is helping to emphasize its importance at Gustavus, according to Kubek.

The Powwow isn’t the only way Gustavus is involved with the Indigenous community. The President’s Council for Indigenous Relations spearheads many of the indigenous relations efforts on campus. The Council works with Indigenous community members (including our own Elder-in-Residence Wilfred Keeble) to rethink the ways the school tells its Indigenous history. 

For example, Gustavus hosted a screening of a film last year about the Dakota 38+2 horse ride that takes place every year and ends in Mankato. 

Professor Ursula Lindqvist has been deeply involved with the PCIR for years and helped to set up last year’s film screening. She noted how powerful the film’s story of Native and non-native cooperation and reconciliation was. 

“[The film] includes interviews with a lot of Dakota youths who have never really had positive experiences interacting with non-native people… and are kind of astounded by some of the kindness and openness that they encounter along the way. It’s also important to acknowledge the historical and generational trauma that has prevented those kinds of connections in the past, and to really think about how we can try to heal moving forward,” explained Lindqvist.

Engagement, education, and listening to Native voices are ways to begin the process of healing from a painful past. One upcoming way to do that is to attend Nick Estes’s talk at the Nobel Conference this October. 

Estes is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Lower Brule Sioux tribe in South Dakota. He will be one of the keynote speakers on the first day of the conference. 

His talk, titled “At the Edge of Empire: The Mississippi River, Settler Colonialism, and the Oceti Sakowin,” will discuss the Mississippi River’s role in the colonization of Native lands in Minnesota, and how that history impacts events like the recent immigration crackdown in Minnesota. 

The many ways Gustavus students and faculty engage with the indigenous community are having a big impact on the college. The PCIR is still in “learning mode”:
“We began to… let elders and indigenous people tell the story, instead of imposing our framework on it. And that’s very very difficult because we’re academics,” Kubek explained. 

The PCIR’s work has been helping Kubek (and others) rethink their approach to knowledge. “I think what’s been wonderful – and humbling – about this experience is recognizing how much of our framework is colonial,” she said.

This work is not simply ideological. The next step is “asking what we can continue to do to bring opportunity and justice to indigenous peoples” Kubek said. This includes not only acknowledging that the land Gustavus occupies was stolen from the original indigenous inhabitants, but also attempting to “restore some of what has been lost.”

Gustavus’s involvement in the Mahkato Wacipi, the PCIR, the hosting of film screenings, and Native voices in the Nobel Conference are simply steps in an ongoing process of reconciliation. 

“You have to accept that you are continually going to make mistakes… I think what we’re learning is how to walk another way. One of the things I learned is the phrase “in a good way.” You’ll hear Dakota people say this, ” Kubek emphasized.

“Sometimes it means accepting that there are a lot of unhealed wounds, and even if you think you know the history, you probably don’t,” Kubek added.