Land Statement and Resources
Land Statement
Macalester College occupies land in Mni Sota Makoce located less than five miles away from Bdote—the sacred creation site of the Dakota people. Despite the persistent and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism and forcible exile, this very land we are on is cultivated, cared for, and honored since time immemorial by the Dakota, Anishinaabe, and Ho-Chunk peoples.
Macalester engages in ongoing work toward repair and partnership with Dakota people, land, and water, as well as to support Native and Indigenous members of our campus community. We participate in these ongoing efforts by uplifting the work and care of our campus and community members, including the Macalester Native and Indigenous Initiative, and by thinking critically about how we take responsibility for and educate about the land we are on.
We must examine our relationship to the land to understand that recognition of Native and Indigenous land, water, and peoples is not just an acknowledgement of the past. You can take action by visiting Macalester’s Institutional Equity website as well as the virtual Bdote Memory Map to guide us in learning about next steps in this work. These actions are necessary for our current and future legacies.
Native and Indigenous initiatives at Macalester
Mellon MNI Grant
With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the Mellon Macalester Native and Indigenous (MNI) initiative is dedicated to engagement with and scholarship around Indigenous people, culture, and history, including a Global Indigenous Studies concentration, post-doctoral scholars, an annual residency program for Indigenous experts, an Indigenous Voices series featuring speakers, artists, and activists, a Building and Caring for Community seminar, and a Three Sisters Garden.
Native and Indigenous Faculty and Staff Affinity Group
The Native and Indigenous Staff and Faculty Collective is a community space for connection, support, and collaboration.
Native and Indigenous Heritage Month programs
Macalester actively works to engage with and advance scholarship around Native and Indigenous communities, histories and narratives, ways of knowing and being, and current social justice movements. During this month, we center Native and Indigenous stories and cultures, celebrate community, build awareness, and engage with Native-owned businesses, artistic endeavors, and scholarship.
Proud Indigenous Peoples for Education Student Organization (PIPE)
Since its founding in the 1970s, PIPE has served as a space for building and strengthening the Indigenous student community at Macalester. PIPE serves three main goals: to exist as an unapologetically Indigenous space working to support and serve Indigenous students, to connect and engage with the broader Indigenous community in the Twin Cities, and to provide a platform for learning, education and discussion around issues that affect Indigenous communities.
- Contact: [email protected]
- Staff Advisors: Mads Clark and Cait Bergeon
Admissions and Financial Aid
The Admissions Office partners with College Horizons to actively facilitate pathways to Macalester for Native high school students, including a summer workshop. Macalester meets 100 percent of the full demonstrated need of every student we admit, and all first-year applicants are considered for merit-based scholarships.
Visit the Admissions website for more information about Indigenous Communities at Macalester.
Racial Justice Project Fund
Through the generosity of contributions to the Macalester Fund’s Racial Equity Support designation, the college offers funding for programs, projects, and events that advance racial justice at Macalester. All students, faculty, and staff are eligible to submit proposals. Proposals are reviewed by a committee of staff, faculty, and students. Proposals are submitted the semester prior to the event or program date. Please visit the website for proposal parameters and deadlines.
Indigenous Land Campus Mural
Macalester is partnering with Minneapolis artist Natchez Beaulieu, Waabigwanikwe (Flower Woman), an Anishinaabekwe from the White Earth Nation, and co-designer Hapistinna Graci Horne, who was born and raised in Mnisota whose Dakota and Lakota bands are Sisseton Wahpeton, Hunkpapa, and Wahpekute, to create an acrylic mural covering the columns in the Link between the library and Old Main. This is part of our ongoing work to think critically about how we care for—and educate about—the Dakota land we are on.
Native and Indigenous Senior Advisory Committee to the President
Established by President Suzanne M. Rivera in 2023, the Native and Indigenous Senior Advisory Committee provides counsel and guidance regarding Macalester initiatives. The Committee is composed of Native and Indigenous community leaders from across Minnesota, and meets with the President and Macalester leadership regularly.
Learning Resources
To learn about Dakota land and communities in Minneapolis and St. Paul:
- Dr. Katrina Phillips (History), “Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds”: Examining Minnesota’s Indigenous History,” The Metropole
- The Land, Water, and Language of the Dakota, Minnesota’s First People, Created by Teresa Peterson and Walter LaBatte, Jr., Minnesota Historical Society
- The Bdote Memory Map is a virtual map that connects Dakota knowledge and places that may be familiar by other names to visitors of the area. The Memory Map introduces “traditional and sometimes sacred places erased in public community memory” in order to “recognize this region as Dakota homeland.”
- The Minnesota Historical Society’s Native American Initiatives Department serves as a bridge between community needs and MNHS resources, engaging with Native communities and nations throughout the state, and ensuring Native voices, stories, and concerns are addressed in MNHS work.
- The Minnesota Humanities Center offers opportunities to learn from Dakota community members about the sacred sites in St. Paul in the Learning From Place: Bdote immersive experience.
- In 2020, Abigail R. Thomsen wrote her senior honors project, Beyond 106: Descendant-Centered Collaboration to Interpret Dakota Archaeological Sites at Macalester’s Katharine Ordway Natural History Study Area (KONHSA), about the “absence of frameworks for collaborative interpreting of Indigenous archaeological sites,” and engaged in a “descendent-centered collaboration with representatives from the Dakota communities to create two interpretive signs for Macalester’s Katharine Ordway Natural History Study Area (KONHSA).”
To learn about Dakota and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) nations in Minnesota:
- U.S.-Dakota War, Minnesota Historical Society
- Why Treaties Matter, Minnesota Humanities Center
- Dakota and Ojibwe Treaties, Minnesota Indian Affairs Council
Community Organizations
- Native Governance Center
- Minneapolis American Indian Center
- Minnesota Indian Affairs Council
- Native American Development Institute
- Division of Indian Work
- Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi
- Owámniyomni Okhódayapi
- Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center
- Native American Community Clinic
- Land Recovery and Land Back Organizations
- Dakota Language and Culture Resources