Signs of the times

Standing under the Dunlap Island picnic shelter, celebrating the unveiling of the new riverfront cultural legacy signs along the St. Louis River in Cloquet, Jeff Savage shared the history of that particular area.

Where Community Memorial Hospital stands today, there once was an Indian village. Even before that, the area around what is known today as Dunlap Island was a very important stopping place on the portage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi watershed, said the Fond du Lac museum director.

"So this is very old trail. Before the Anishinaabe were here, or even before the Lakotah were here, other tribes have their origin stories in this area," he said, rattling off a list of several tribes. "We all traveled through this area over a vast amount of time."

Modern society would be wise to consider a historical perspective sometimes, before getting distracted by all the issues that stop people from creating a happy and healthy world, he noted.

More than 50 people - citizens and officials from both the city of Cloquet and the Fond du Lac reservation - came to the park Wednesday for a riverfront signage ribbon cutting ceremony. Many also took time for a walking tour of the seven signs that now stand at sites along the river around both Spafford and Dunlap Island parks.

The placement of the signs was the end of a process that began in 2022 with a phone call, Savage said.

The call came from Holly Hansen, city development director, who Savage called "relentless" and a perfectionist. She wanted to apply for a $50,000 grant from the Blandin Foundation, she told him, which had invited cities to come up with proposals "that might unite and unify rural parts of Minnesota."

Mission accomplished, Hansen said.

Hansen is very happy with the new signs. But, the signs are really a "byproduct" of something more important, she said after Wednesday's event.

"This project was really an opportunity to create something collaboratively with the tribe from the ground up," Hansen said, speaking of the many individuals and groups who worked together on the signs. "We got really authentic, talked through some difficult topics and celebrated some shared history. We created something together and built strong relationships between the city, the community and the reservation."

The signs - six bilingual (Ojibwe and English) plus a seventh on the millstone and Cloquet's mills - present more than historical facts. They also share how the water and land shaped the history of this area and continue to do so. The signs feature local residents, landscapes, historic photos and artwork by Giizh (aka Sarah Agaton Howes), Heart Berry business owner and artist.

"If we're going to honor the past, we need to protect the future," said Fond du Lac spiritual leader Ricky Defoe, who opened the joint ceremony along with drummers on the grandfather drum. "We know the importance of relationships. So we want to continue to nurture those relationships."

Defoe talked about sharing space and place, sharing time, happiness, even sorrows with each other. "It lightens the burdens," he said.

He also stressed how important it is to have First Nation language on the signs "in these public spaces and sharing that power together in community."

"We know the power of language," Defoe said.