Nibi Walk

Today I went on the Nibi walk.  Here we are at the Humanities Center in Saint Paul near Lake Phalen. The Humanities Center is a building that used to be a part of Gillette Children's Hospital. The architecture of the building is truly fabulous. We gathered there for last minute instructions, coffee, snacks and a question and answer session. We had each sewn little blue pouches to carry tobacco in. I did not bring any tobacco. A woman near me stopped at a stogie shop on Grand Ave. in Saint Paul to buy some tobacco. When the tobacconist heard it was for a ceremony he gave her a full bag of cured tobacco leaves.  I used some of her tobacco in my pouch. A puppet from Heart of the Beast puppet theater came along with us. The puppet represents water.

Here we are at beautiful Lake Phalen named after some guy who later went to jail for murder. Isn't it strange how people keep renaming things that already have names?  We have a ceremony here.  Sage is burned in a clam shell and we wave our hands over the sage smoke to draw the smoke over ourselves. Native prayers are recited and native songs are sung while flocks of geese land on the lake and gulls circle over head. Three trumpeter swans swim by.  As I offer my tobacco to Lake Phalen I put my hand in the water to find out the water is cold. Some water from the lake is put into a copper bucket. This water will be carried by women all the way to where Phalen Creek enters the Mississippi. A male will carry the staff with eagle feathers and the rest of the group, maybe 40 of us, will follow in silence. We can offer tobacco to any dead animals we see along the way. I offer tobacco to a dead warbler and an angleworm.

I thought the hard part of this Nibi walk would be keeping up for five miles but I was very wrong. The hard part was keeping my mouth shut for 3 hours.  No singing, no whistling, no talking, no humming for 3 hours? When we go under a bridge on Phalen Boulevard a classic car honks a horn that goes "Arroooooga!" I am startled and make a startled noise followed by a full minute of suppressed snickering. An artist has made 12 metal shapes depicting the outline of Lake Phalen. We are given 12 strips of yard and we are supposed to tie one yarn to each metal shape so they can fly in the wind.

The creek was not visible immediately right at Lake Phalen where it went into the sewer.  I tried to keep track of where in Saint Paul we were but it was hard. Here we are walking under Highway 94. I think of how this creek looked 200 years ago and it makes me sad.

I have seen Saint Paul from a totally different angle today and for that I am grateful.  I offer my last piece of tobacco to the Mississippi River. We have another ceremony.  More sage is burned. Songs are sung. I don't know the words but I hum along. All the yarn pieces we have left are tied to a tree there. When the ceremony is over we can talk again!  I am so glad to talk again. After that we board a coach bus and head back to the Humanities Center.  Here we are treated to a delicious lunch of vegetable bean soup and salad and bread and peach cobbler. We sit together at tables and everybody appears to be so kind and generous.  One lady approaches me. She heard me talking on the bus to another woman about where I grew up. She happens to work for the watershed district and she leads children through the swamp behind my childhood home. She asks for my contact number so she can learn more about how the land was used in the past. She thinks it will make her walks with the children more interesting.  I am glad to help her out.  We learn more about the efforts to bring Phalen Creek back up to the surface again. We learn more about native culture.We learn that water is the most powerful force of nature. These water walks were started because women felt they had to do something to protect the water from more pollution. We are asked to draw our favorite body of water.  I draw Round Lake which is not my favorite lake but I couldn't decide which one was my favorite. We are then asked to write down three things we will do to help protect the water.  I write down 1. talk about water, 2. vote and 3. explore.