Waterways
It was the ultimate wrestling match, wilderness versus civilization, but let’s face it: civilization lies panting atop its partner on the mat, runs one hand down the sweaty cheek beneath and whispers, “Gotcha.” The rivers are numbered, the land is divided, and it’s the cities that run wild. The lines are blurred. But wilderness cannot be wilderness without the contrast of civilization, just as a river is no river without a shore, without a bed. The Mississippi rolls over in its bed as I roll over in mine, both of us sleepless, both of us re-defining our belief in home.
According to the tradition of the Dakota people, one of the first homes was in Minnesota. This was where the world began, at a body of water called Mni Owe Sni that later became known as Coldwater Springs. The world also began at the point where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet, and it also began in Mde Wakan (now Mille Lacs): stories vary and people disagree. Coldwater Springs is undisputed, however, as a place where Minnesota began life as an official U.S. state, recognized by the kind of people who enumerate and regiment bodies of land. The first European settlers lived at Camp Coldwater for three summers while they built Fort Snelling, a huge stone military fortification that stands at the convergence of the Minnesota and the Mississippi. Which is, as we have said, one of the places where the world began.
Two worlds, beginning: two trajectories of narration that are still, to this day, in competition. Black and white, man and woman, one must oust the other and reign with sword ready. Most people hear “Minnesota” and think “state in the United States of America on the continent of North America” and they go on like that, labeling chunks of land and water and placing them in relation to one another, creating their own violent hierarchies based on size and army and export and honorable mentions in pop songs. But there are some people who mouth “Minnesota” and feel “mni sota”—the clouded water, home to the first home, nestled in the cradle of the Pleiades and harbor to underwater gods. They say, Minnesota has stolen “mni sota,” and it is in this narrative that I believe. The collective gaze of memory is strong like sunlight and like sunlight it fades the brightly-colored tapestry at the same time it nourishes the gardens. I lean towards belief in the unsprouts and the weaving still intact.
But I believe in the “Minnesota,” too. Neither story is less true. The river runs through both of them, breathing life where it passes: life to the land without a name, life to the people of mni sota, life to the inhabitants of Minnesota. “The river” is our common measure as a people, truer than a mile because a mile does not change but people are always in flux: our cells replenish themselves new and the river collects as it goes, its water a different water from one bend to the next. We both flow towards.
