The Projects
Sense of Place
A community’s ‘sense of place’ is deepened when the stories of indigenous people are heard. This simple premise - the starting point for multi-media work that makes up The Ded Unkunpi Projects - is resonating among institutions in Minnesota, and inter-nationally.
Since the Minnesota Historical Society hosted Cloudy Waters: Dakota Reflections on the River in 2005, components of that installation have been used by educators in history, environmental studies, geography and other fields. And a more recent installation, City Indians (2007), is strengthening projects from St. Paul to the United Kingdom.
The primary Cloudy Waters audio has been used in teacher training by the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Humanities Center and Hamline University's Center for Global Environmental Education.
A "memory map" from City Indians - showing sites that are significant to Dakota people and inviting new stories, new memories - is being expanded for the web. An award from the Minnesota Humanities Center is making possible the pilot adaptation.
Throughout the world, indigenous knowledge about local relationships among people and their environment are being recognized as a key to healthy communities. In June, artists and curators from New Zealand, South Africa and Minnesota presented their work at a gathering sponsored by Space and Place, an inter-disciplinary research collaborative at the U of MN. The subject was the use of art to present collective memory at "wounded places," a cutting-edge concept in the museum world. Through Space and Place, Mona Smith presented The Ded Unkunpi Projects to visitors from Land2, a visual arts/scholar group from the United Kingdom for the Summer Studio.
These presentations have opened exciting possibilities for international collaboration, and a possible remounting of Cloudy Waters in a St. Paul park in an outdoor format.
Indigenous knowledge is, in large part, local knowledge. Models created by The Ded Unkunpi Projects to collect and express indigenous knowledge are proving to be of value in wide ranging contexts around the globe
Masters of All They Survey - Treaty Signers
Martin Case, through The Ded Unkunpi Projects, is researching a previously untapped source of information about US-Native relations: the biographies of non-Native people who signed the "Indian treaties."
The treaties - nearly 400 documents signed over the course of a century - were the instruments by which the US was physically created. As a group, they rank with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in their fundamental importance to how the US became the country it is. But though the signatures on those two documents are iconic in American history - think of "John Hancock" -- nobody has ever examined the treaty signers as a group, until now.
The results of preliminary research are astonishing. Tight networks of kinship and business ties connect hundreds of the 2,500 non-Native signers. Their biographies, their relationships to one another, and the story of how they benefited directly from treaties will be the subject of new media created through The Ded Unkunpi Projects.
Treaty by treaty, region by region, family by family, we're examining how a handful of people changed history. It’s a story that - when told in websites, writing and other media - will change the way Americans think about their country and its past.
Projects’ Work Cited
From “Artistic and Activist Memory-Work: Approaching Place-based Practice”,
by Karen Till, PhD, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, Memory Studies 1(1) (2008): pages forthcoming
The complete article will be available for download online at
Sage Publications after January in the new journal “Memory Studies.”
“….Not only can scholars learn from such “memorials” for the ways they question existing institutional structures of memory, they can also begin to consider the ways these projects explore the creative potential of time and space, memory and forgetting. ….In quite distinct ways, American Dakota multi-media artist and educator Mona Smith (2007) questions Western practices of memory by acknowledging the presence of Dakota peoples in public space. Through temporary multi-media installations, such as “Cloudy Waters” and “City Indians,” and in educational projects, including memory maps, community events, and semi-permanent sound environments, visitors encounter multi-sensual historical narratives, Dakota stories, environmental memories, and landscape experiences. As Smith explains, “Dakota remember through land, experience (including ceremony), and story. Dakota people know that everything passes away, so buildings and signage and memorials are not the traditional ways to honor, to mourn, to remember.”
Smith’s work calls attention to interior and exterior movements of memory through landscape, story and ritual. As I describe below, this is another reason why memory studies scholars should pay attention to artistic and activist practice: these projects explore the understudied relationships between embodied and shared memory.”
Associates/
Present and Future Collaborators
Minnesota Humanities Center
Telling River Stories of the Mississippi River Design Initiative of the University of Minnesota
Space and Place Research Collaborative
University of Minnesota
Land2, United Kingdom national network of artist / lecturers
Dakota Origins
Minnesota History Center
About the Ded Unkunpi Projects
The Ded Unkunpi Projects are productions that use contemporary media to share knowledge from indigenous people, with a focus on Dakota identity. These projects are undertaken on a nonprofit basis through a fiscal agency agreement with Intermedia Arts, Inc., and are funded by contributions from Allies: media/art, individuals, foundations and corporations. Ded Unkunpi is a Dakota phrase meaning "We are here." The Ded Unkunpi Projects seek to overcome the invisibility of Dakota people in their own homeland (Minnesota) and to deepen Minnesotans' understanding about where they live. While the focus of these projects is specific and local, their impact is much broader. As models for the expression of indigenous culture, as points of contact for people among all cultures, and as sources of knowledge that benefit all people, The Ded Unkunpi Projects have struck a chord with individuals and institutions throughout the U.S. and beyond. Current projects include multimedia installations (Cloudy Waters, City Indians) and the use of
their components by educators; participation in educational, artistic and academic collaborations that focus on a "sense of place;" and Language of the Earth, a planned installation to infuse public spaces with indigenous languages.
Allies: media/art donates space to the Ded Unkunpi projects on this site.
