For the past few months, Lower Phalen Creek Project has been working with professional artists from Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES) and an amazing crew of Dakota community members, youth, and artists on a dual set of murals that celebrate and honor the connections of both Dakota and Mexican communities to the area now known as Swede Hollow Park. Most people don’t know our history here, but first and foremost this place was a Dakota village site — a place where the lands and waters nurtured our communities. A place our ancestors canoed to and from to harvest our traditional medicines and foods like psiŋ (wild rice).

A yellow mural, with a green border and pink geometric Dakota butterfly designs framing it, is suspended between two red pine trees. A body of water snakes from the top right to the bottom left of the artwork, with the phrase *De Dakota Makoče (This is Dakota Land)* written alongside it. An eagle is depicted in flight above the water, and in the right portion of the artwork, an outstretched hand cups a corn plant, a cedar tree, roses, wild rice, elderberry, plums, sage, sweetgrass and other traditional plant medicines as if the plants themselves are growing out of the hand. (Artists for this piece include Miiskogihmiimwan Poupart Chapman, Madison Hand, Mishaila Bowman, Keeli Siyaka, Mesa Laroque, and Naveah Balderrama)

Dakota people lived in the area of this ravine until illegal treaties, genocidal conflicts, and policies of exile forced the people away from the land. This traumatic removal coincided with the U.S. policy of settler-colonialism and Europeans began to move to the area en masse. In the early nineteenth century, as the town once known as Pig’s Eye began to grow, this ravine became home to newer immigrants—individuals and families without connections and without the means to afford new housing across the city. Many immigrant groups—from Sweden, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe—settled in this ravine throughout the nineteenth century, lending this place the English name of Swede Hollow.

Another mural, also stretched between two red pines, depicts a natural landscape: blue sky, white clouds, green grass, and a body of water flowing horizontally across the canvas. Small tan houses and large green trees are staggered along the shoreline. On the right-hand side of the artwork, the body of water forks around a point of land. *Papel picado* (*perforated paper*) designs, cut into the shape of butterflies, run across the top of the artowrk in blue, green, orange, purple, and pink. (Artist for this piece: Marina Castillo)

This ravine remained a settlement through the mid-twentieth century. However, whereas many of the early immigrant populations eventually cycled upward from impoverished living conditions to more-established communities “up on the hill” (elsewhere throughout Saint Paul), the residents of Swede Hollow who lived in the area by the 1950s were almost exclusively Mexican immigrants and their families. While white communities had been able to live in this informal neighborhood and then move to other parts of the city, this Mexican American community was forcibly evicted and displaced in 1956, when the City of Saint Paul declared the neighborhood a hazard to public health. The trauma of yet another forced removal was one of many displacements enacted by—and still actively practiced by—municipalities across this country.

Fast forward to today, and we have a golden opportunity to encapsulate the beauty and joy found by Dakota and Mexican communities in this area. Despite the intense grief and repeated displacement suffered here, each of our communities has shown resilience — we are still here, and we do not forget the ways we have lived and loved on these lands. Below, we spoke with three of the artists involved in this work, to hear, in their own words, what this project has meant.

Meet our lead Artists

Who are you? What’s your background as an artist?

Miisko: Boozhoo nindinawwmaaganidog. Miiskogihmiiwan indizhinikaaz. Makwa indoodem. Waaswaaganig inoonjibaa. My name is Miisko, I’m twenty years old. I’m Dakota and Anishinaabe. I was born and raised here in Saint Paul. I moved over to Minneapolis because I started going to school there. I’m a multimedia artist — I do film, photography, I paint, I draw, I bead, I sew. I started doing more Native-inspired work — not even Native-inspired, though, because I’m Native — beadwork, sewing, and regalia-making, I started doing more of that about three years ago, but I’ve always been artistically inclined. I’ve always had an eye for things, always been good at drawing and things like that, but it wasn’t until more recently, like the last couple of years, that I started like producing stuff. And then throughout high school is when I got into video-making and photography — I’d do the morning announcements and stuff, and that was pretty fun. Lately I’ve just been getting more and more commissions and opportunities to create art and have my work out there as an Anishinaabe and Dakota person. Most of my work nowadays is inspired by my background and who I am, but I also like to draw stuff that I like to do.

Madison: Hello my friends and relatives, my name is Madison Hand. My Indian name is Falling Star Across the Sacred Altar Woman. I come from both the Oglala Lakota nation and the Prairie Island Indian Community. I don’t really do art a lot -- when I do, it’s usually just messing around, like for fun. I never have really actually sat down to just make art pieces. But my mom signed me up for this, and it’s been a great learning experience. I’ve been learning things from the other artists who have more experience. [Mishaila: and you are an artist, by the way, because you just brought me four ribbon skirts you made…]

Marina: My name is Marina Castillo. I’ve been doing art my whole life, since I was a kid, but I originally delved more into photography. In the last ten years, I’ve been creating art that I exhibit all across the Twin Cities.

Why were you interested in this project? Why was this project important to you?

Marina: When I heard that there had been a Mexican community down at Phalen Creek, it was something I was not aware of. I think that anything that brings awareness of my community, my Mexican community, is almost like the We Are Still Here movement, you know, because oftentimes people think there aren’t Mexicans in Minnesota, but we’ve been here for a long time. It’s really important for me to share part of my culture, even if it’s through art, so I want to take advantage of any opportunity I can to share that.

Miisko: I was born here in Saint Paul, so I’ve been to Phalen Creek and I’ve been around the East Side, and learning about that history and about what this project means, I just felt like I appreciate that you all thought of me to work on this. As a Dakota person, as an Anishinaabe person, as someone who grew up here, it’s really cool to be able to see my art installed in a public space, where we should be represented, where we should be seen.

Madison: I didn’t really know anything about it, or what I was getting myself into, but once I learned that the project was about the Mexican immigrants who were living down in Swede Hollow Park and the Dakota people who lived there, and that the project was tying those two stories together, I thought it was really cool and empowering to be a part of it and to be able to showcase something in that area.

This project is important to me because, for myself, I feel like we aren’t heard or even seen as Dakota people — or just Indian people as a whole. And now, within the past few years, I feel like we’re starting to get more recognition and being shown more, and I think that’s really cool. To be able to put something somewhere — a place where on of our villages was located — and to be able to say “This is Dakota land” and to just know that we’re still here is really cool and inspiring.

What was the process and vision behind your mural?

Miisko: So, given the themes we wanted to include in this project, I took my own personal views on those, incorporating water, incorporating medicines, I wanted to show through the artwork that as Indigenous people we are stewards of the land. As Native people, we lived with the land. We didn’t own it, we didn’t view it as something to own, like an object. I wanted to show a hand, and plant medicines growing out of the hand, because it’s not like we’re owning those medicines — it’s that we’re helping them grow as much as they’re helping us thrive as a people.

Marina: The process for me, always, is that it will come to me over time. Just thinking, what really happened for me is when we walked down to the creek, I felt the energy there — I could visualize the people living there in their small houses. And I went away thinking about the creek, that my focus would be the water, and that the community lived near and around the water. So I got my vision after seeing the creek in person.

What did you get out of this experience?

Madison: A mural. [Laughter] A lot! I got a lot of teachings about painting. I got to meet new people, connect with them, laugh with them… Not only was it nice to be a part of it, but being around the team was really fun. Marina was also teaching us about different brush strokes, and all the different ways to mix colors, and that was really cool.

Marina: Well, new friends. [Laughter] I love meeting new people, and to create something for a public space — especially at a park — is something very new to me, so it’s very exciting to see it come to fruition.

Miisko: I gained some valuable experience as a young artist. I’ve never worked on a project that’s so large, visually, and it was really cool to work amongst other artists and create a theme, create a message through our work.

What do you want visitors to Swede Hollow Park to learn from this project?

Miisko: I just hope that the project sparks interest in why we wrote the words we wrote. I want visitors to ask questions, like “What is this plant? Why did they draw that? What does this message mean?” And I want them to go and do their own research on this stuff, because as a Native person, as someone who does speak about my experience, it sometimes gets overwhelming to always be talking, always be that token Indian, you know. In classes I was always the only Native person, sharing things that weren’t in the text, or sharing my experiences. I just hope that this sparks interest in people to want to learn more and hopefully do their own research. But at the same time, it’s there to be visually pleasing, to be educational.

Marina: I want people to talk, and ask questions about the different parts, the different aspects of the art that’s there now, and just have conversation. I think it’s so important to have that awareness, that coming together — that’s what I want to see!

Madison: I want them to feel good. Because we spent a lot of time on this artwork, and the way that it’s represented, I think, is really cool. And Miisko’s vision, that we are stewards of the land, even though we don’t own the land, and how the hand [in the mural] is holding the medicines, and helping them, is just so cool. I just want people to feel good but also know where they’re at. I want them to recognize the fact that they’re here [on Dakota land] , because I think that that’s forgotten a lot. And even though we’re in a new time, I think that these things need to be recognized.

Finally, what was your favorite part of this project?

Marina: I love seeing the finished project — to see it and feel it, it makes it real! And doing a Google search on what the park used to look like, it just made sense. Seeing it come to fruition is really special to me.

Madison: Eating pupusas!

Miisko: Should I be honest? [Laughter] It was the pupusas! That was our brain food. And also, food is something that brings us together. Most events that we do, eating is something that we share — it breaks the ice, it makes us feel comfortable with each other. The second part of that was getting to meet all these people, getting to work amongst other artists, learn from other artists… that was really cool and really fun.

*This work is funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Center with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.