Week Three | Rice, MN to Prairie Island Indian Community: the next 180 miles
1pm, Thursday, July 30, 2020
Rice, Crosby, St. Cloud, Monticello, Elk River, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Prescott, Prairie Island Indian Community
LANDSCAPE | Urban, Built Environment
The “north” side of town—at least in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge—represents the built environment, the urban landscape—a side of the river often overlooked. Instead of wildlife and scenic vistas, you’ll find industry here. And like the urban landscape itself, you’ll also find communities underrepresented and ignored along these parts of the river.
COMMUNITY | Spirit and Tradition
From the Tribal Nations culturally rooted to the land to the traditions of faith sparking pilgrimage.
VOICE | Hokan Miller
Life-long river worker with Upper River Services—from deckhand to pilot to barge dispatcher. Voice originally heard on the afternoon of July 29, 2019 at the Historic Airport Beacon in Indian Mounds Park, Saint Paul, MN.
VOICE | Keith Butler
Itasca-area “wagon master” and historian. Voice originally heard on the afternoon of July 9, 2019 at the Lake Itasca Region Pioneer Farmers Grounds and Sawmill Museum in Shelvin, MN.
Click here for original Week Three blog posts.
Three weeks of virtually journeying down (and up) the river again, and we are still experiencing a few technical hiccups! It seems it can’t be avoided when phones and computers are your only line of connection. I know that these virtual platforms are no substitute for the physical, in person interactions we had last year or could have again. And yet, I want to try to think beyond those barriers and imagine what we can do within these telecommunicated connections—what kind of discoveries can we make? What kind of ideas can we generate? …if our expectations are open?
I’m so grateful for everyone who joined us for the Zoom, including Lee and Peg Davies from Elk River, MN, and Dave Anderson from just up the road. Sarah Drake of Sauk Rapids, MN joined in with a smile, as did the cheerful voices of Rayanna Lennes and Amy Ransom of the Prairie Island Indian Community. And I can’t leave out Dallas Eggers of Prescot, WI who likely had a few stories to tell, but didn’t have a mic on his device! Oh the technological woes!
If you missed out, no worries, the recordings are posted below (along with a reperformance of “Hokan Miller”), and those from past weeks also in this thread.