Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi
Report date
February 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The one of the most important activities during the course of this project that created success was relationship building. Over the course of two years, LPCP staff and board members have formed deep and powerful relationships with our partners in the City of Saint Paul, especially Parks and Recreation. These relationships within the City are especially important because our two focus projects for this grant were master planning for Swede Hollow Park and Pre-Design planning for Wakáŋ Tipi Center in Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. These large scale planning processes often leave out the very communities they intend to serve, especially on the East Side of Saint Paul, which is a majority low-income and BIPOC community. Through our deep engagement with BIPOC east-side residents through engagement consultants from focused communities, and also the four-federally recognized Dakota tribes in Minnesota, who have a huge stake in the project areas, we were able to obtain a result for both projects that has been beyond reproach and will ensure that these projects are successful the first time by engaging and taking direction from all relevant communities from the start.
Another critical aspect of our success in these projects was a shift in our organizations leadership that allowed the work to be lead from the communities we meant to serve. In 2017 LPCP determined through a strategic process to become Native American-led in an effort to be more authentic in their leadership at Wakáŋ Tipi and the in the east side community. That strategic goal was accomplished in 2019 with the onboarding of Maggie Lorenz (Dakota/Anishinaabe) as executive director and new board members, Thomas Draskovic (2017, Lakota), Patrice Kunesh (2019, Lakota), Dr. Kate Beane (2019, Dakota), and Franky Jackson (2019, Dakota). The organization has thrived over this period of time. LPCP’s visibility in the community has increased greatly with a total of 2,561 newsletter subscriptions, 293 households/organizations donated in 2020, and 893 program registrations made 2020; these totals represent more than a 20-fold increase from our 2017 numbers. LPCP has featured in local media with an appearance on TPT’s “Almanac” and news stories on MPR, Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, and The Circle News. More than 1,300 people follow LPCP on Facebook and another 700+ people follow its Instagram.
Finally, the deep learning our board and staff have undergone in the areas of social justice, anti-racism, and American Indian history and culture in Minnesota have been critical to our success in working and leading in BIPOC and low-income communities. It is impossible to serve in a community you don't understand at a deep level. These learnings have been achieved through focused board topic conversations, training sessions on Dakota values and leading from a Dakota Leadership model, Being a Good Ally (what does that mean?), intentional conversations around identity and community, and more. Our LPCP staff have been included in these trainings and conversations and staff members are incorporating Dakota Language into bi-weekly staff meetings to engage in critical learning about language and culture and be better equipped to lead work on Dakota homelands. LPCP staff work plans are created with all of our diverse community members in mind as we strive to be more intentional in our outreach and engagement with Black, POC, and other communities who face oppression based on their identities.
Key lessons learned
During our initial work with the Swede Hollow Park master planning process, we had hit a barrier in engaging the Latinx community. Our first set back occurred when we were unsuccessful in receiving any applications for our Latinx Community Engagement Consultant position for the project. Without someone on board who would be able to specifically focus on connecting our work into the Latinx community, we worked with our lead community engagement consultant, who was a Black woman, and we expanded her contract to include intentional outreach to the Latinx community. Though not for lack of effort, she was unable to obtain representative input from the Latinx community. Though she was able to work with and engage translators when she was able to connect with community members, it was a less successful effort without having a dedicated Latinx consultant from the focused community. The lesson we learned here was that before engagement is possible, relationships must be in place and built within that community. Many Latinx community members had never heard of Lower Phalen Creek Project, and our consultant was an outsider in their community. Relationships and trust must come first.
Similarly, in our pre-design and development for Wakáŋ Tipi Center, we got off to a slow start due to loose relationships with Dakota communities. LPCP started out this project with some stronger relationships, like those with Lower Sioux's Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community's Cultural Resource Office, and a handful of key Dakota academics and community members. After several months of outreach and key changes in leadership, specifically the onboarding of a Dakota executive director, relationships within the Dakota community began cementing, including those with Prairie Island Indian Community, Upper Sioux Indian Community, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, and many, many more metro area Dakota and American Indian community members. The initial concept for the Many Paths committee, a multi-ethnic group that would develop the pre-design concept for Wakáŋ Tipi Center ultimately shifted to a majority Dakota-led group as it was deemed more appropriate that Dakota people make up the majority of the committee determining the design and development for the Center at this Dakota sacred site.
Finally, the issues that arose during the grant period around housing and homelessness in the parks, especially pronounced by the encampment at the Wall of Forgotten Natives in Minneapolis, the increase in encampments during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the changes in policy around camping in parks during the aftermath of the uprisings in response to the murder of George Floyd. We recognized this glaring gap in our outreach and engagement efforts in our local parks as we had been focusing entirely on racially-based engagement while failing to adequately look at other park users bonded by other identities. We failed to engage those who use the park for shelter. This missed engagement focus was not lost on us and prompted us to begin conversations with our park and land management partners about how we can begin more intentional dialogue within our organizations about our role in the issues that impact unsheltered residents of our communities.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The piece that stuck out to me as most important was the foundation of inclusivity, in particular, the definition of Inclusive being, 'thoughtfully identifying those needed to create the intended change and, whenever possible, including those directly affected by the problem'. Our engagement process would not have been successful without thoughtfully identifying those needed to create the change (in this case, our partners at the City) and those directly affected by the problem (BIPOC, low-income residents of the east side and Dakota communities on whose homelands we reside).
Progress toward an innovation
LPCP has made significant progress in addressing how the City of Saint Paul engages community and implements their parks planning. Partners from within the City, outside of the Parks and Rec department, have shared with us that Parks and Rec is now miles ahead of other City departments in terms of understanding issues around American Indian lands and BIPOC community engagement. This was absolutely not the case when LPCP was awarded this funding and began this deep work with the City in 2018. In fact, Parks and Rec was one of our biggest obstacles in progress, even in March of 2019 when our new executive director was brought on board. The relationship and understanding of this issue throughout the entire parks and rec department at the City has fundamentally changed over the course of this project.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
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What's next?
We are still in development of our plans for Wakáŋ Tipi Center, now in schematic design and design development. We are continually and regularly checking in with our pre-design community committee to provide updates on progress and gain feedback on critical decision points. Our most recent meeting was held on February 19th and we focused on opportunities to express culture in the interior floors, ceilings, and wall finishes, along with conversations about the landscaping and Indigenous gardens.
For Swede Hollow Park we are now partnering with Saint Paul Parks and Rec and the Saint Paul Parks Conservancy to implement the first tangible element of the updated master plan, 11 wayside signs for the park that will share the cultural, residential, ecological and historical elements of the park as well as way finding signs. These signs should be installed by Summer of 2021. We will be partnering with CLUES, Friends of the Hollow, and potentially East Side Freedom Library to implement some community programming to unveil these new signs in the park.
For Swede Hollow Park we are now partnering with Saint Paul Parks and Rec and the Saint Paul Parks Conservancy to implement the first tangible element of the updated master plan, 11 wayside signs for the park that will share the cultural, residential, ecological and historical elements of the park as well as way finding signs. These signs should be installed by Summer of 2021. We will be partnering with CLUES, Friends of the Hollow, and potentially East Side Freedom Library to implement some community programming to unveil these new signs in the park.
If you could do it all over again...
Build in time at the beginning of the grant period to intentionally build relationships with your focused communities, or have that done prior to the grant period. Solid relationships are vitally important to the success of these kinds of projects.
One last thought
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