New mural pays homage to St. Paul’s east side community, Dakota history
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A mural titled “The Procession of St. Paul” stretches over 500 feet in length across Mounds Boulevard in St. Paul’s east side community. It features vibrant imagery of animals marching south towards Wakaŋ Tipi, a 27-acre sacred site formerly known as Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary.
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa citizen and Dakota descendant Maggie Lorenz is the executive director of Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi, a Dakota-led nonprofit that oversees Wakaŋ Tipi and Wic̣aḣapi, a Dakota burial site situated on a bluff at Mounds Park overlooking Wakaŋ Tipi and the Mississippi River.
The organization first began work on the mural four years ago with support from the city of St. Paul and additional funding from Public Art St. Paul and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
Lorenz said the nonprofit wanted a piece that would welcome people to the sacred sites as they exit off Interstate 94 and onto Mounds Boulevard.
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“The idea was to create something that kind of indicated that this is a cultural place,” Lorenz said. “We also wanted to express that this is a place that's open for everybody — a place that is welcoming for everybody from different cultural backgrounds.”
Wakaŋ Tipi Awaŋyaŋkapi worked with artist Bobby Wilson and several local artists from the community to create the mural.
Wilson, a citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota in North Dakota, is also known for his role as a writer and producer for TV series like “Reservation Dogs,” “Rutherford Falls” and “Echo.”
He was raised in the east side of St. Paul and lived in the Twin Cities metro area for most of his life. He now lives in Arizona.
“The idea behind the procession is the people of this land, the first people and the next and the next, all walking on the same path towards my ancestral burial mounds up on Mounds Park,” he said.
Wilson represented the cultural diversity of the area through animals such as an elephant, a bison and a beaver. He says each animal has different cultural connections depending on the community.
“I wanted to expand the narrative a bit further, in that there are so many local communities that have been here now for a few generations — Hmong refugees, Black people, Somali,” Wilson said. “All of these people that we see, and I've gone to high school, middle school with [and] I grew up around — I wanted to see their faces represented on the wall.”
He added that he also wanted to expand the mural’s story through giving each figure a role that a community member may play in the neighborhood.
“We have like a Hmong elephant who works at Super America,” Wilson said. “A big giant buffalo in his Metro Transit uniform.”
Wilson says whether people are aware of the meaning behind the painting, but they’ll notice all the figures walking in the same direction.
“In spite of all of these characters being so different from each other, they all are here on this land,” Wilson said. “This is where we’re at, and we’re in it together.”
Chandra Colvin covers Native American communities in Minnesota for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
