Past Event: Outing to the North Dakota Heritage Center’s exhibit, On the Edge of the Wind (2024)
"Based on interviews with 13 Native storytellers and knowledge keepers compiled over 10 years, this exhibition includes photographs, artifacts, and videos of elders sharing traditional stories."
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We'll meet in the entrance of the North Dakota Heritage Center at 10:30 am on March 9th, 2024. Calvin Grinnell will be speaking as he accompanies us through the exhibit. The event will last for about an hour, although folks are welcome to stay afterwards. The Heritage Center is open until 5 pm on Saturdays. Admission is free.
On the Edge of the Wind: Native Storytellers and the Land was created by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and the State Historical Society.
Calvin Grinnell is an award-winning historian who has worked for more than forty years in communications, tribal public relations, and cultural history preservation. He is a historian for the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, and has served on boards and committees including the State Historical Board of North Dakota, the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation, and the Bismarck Historic Preservation Commission, among others. Grinnell is a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
Visit the North Dakota Heritage Center’s website to learn more.
On the Edge of the Wind: Native Storytellers and the Land opened in the Governors Gallery on April 27, 2023.
Prairie Public called On the Edge of the Wind an "incredible exhibit" and interviewed several of the people involved for a feature they published in October 2023. You can watch Prairie Public's video on their YouTube channel.
Keith Bear is a Mandan/Hidatsa storyteller, musician, and flutemaker from New Town, ND. "May we walk away with a good feeling of this land, and a new understanding of our story," he says during the opening moments of the video produced by Prairie Public. "Storytelling has always been a part of our family," Bear explains. He speaks about carrying on traditions and passing his knowledge down to the next generations, including the buses of schoolchildren who have been excited to visit the exhibit. "It's humbling," Bear says. The morals in the stories are focused on "the good feeling that comes with sharing with others," Bear wrote after he visited the exhibit, rather than "accumulating wealth or things."
North Dakota State Folklorist Troyd Geist explains that the exhibit was created over a period of eleven years. The North Dakota Council on the Arts states that On the Edge of the Wind is "the largest exhibit produced by the NDCA in decades." The exhibit includes 118 aluminum prints of photographs shot by Geist as well as Swiss photographer Barbara Hauser.
"We are the land," says Debbie Gourneau, an Ojibway storyteller from Belcourt, ND. "Our ancestors, all the way back to Creator, they're here."
The North Dakota Council on the Arts foregrounds the connection between the land and spirituality: "For many Native Americans, the earth and everything in it are linked and possess a supernatural presence, but some places or elements of nature like specific buttes, streams, and rocks are considered especially powerful." One of the highest priorities of conservation must be protecting natural sites, including lands and waters, that have spiritual or religious significance to Indigenous people.
David Newell, the Exhibits Manager for the North Dakota Heritage Center, worked on the exhibit with Troyd Geist for three years. Newell is "thrilled" by the number of people attending the exhibit and notes that on "the very first day it was open" the gallery was visited by over 250 school-age children.
Newell remarks that his favorite story is "The Star in the Cottonwood Tree," which is told by Mary Louise Defender Wilson, a Dakotah/Hidatsa storyteller from Porcupine, ND. The star loved the sounds he heard near a village while he was visiting the Earth. The star wanted to stay, but at first the other stars wouldn't let him; they wanted him to come back into the sky. Eventually, the star found a suitable place where he could stay on Earth: the inside of a cottonwood tree near the village.
Defender Wilson recorded "The Star in the Cottonwood Tree" as an audio story on her 2001 album, My Relatives Say, which received the Native American Music Award for Best Spoken Word Recording. Thanks to the North Dakota Council on the Arts and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, you can read a transcription of "The Star in the Cottonwood Tree."
Alex DeCoteau, an Ojibwe elder and enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, wrote in his review of the exhibit that it "exemplifies the coming of the Seven Fires Prophecy where non-indigenous learn from indigenous to go forth in a loving way to heal mother earth and humanity for future generations."
On the Edge of the Wind features a number of storyteller videos which can be viewed directly in the gallery space. Alternatively, you can watch the storyteller videos in the Great Plains Theater or online on your desktop, tablet, iPhone or other mobile device. The YouTube videos can be accessed directly on the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum's website under the heading Extend the Experience.
Mary Louise Defender Wilson (Wagmuhawin–Gourd Woman): The Woman Who Turned Herself to Stone
Keith Bear (O’Mashi! Ryu Ta–Bright Light That Waves in the North Sky): Through This Earth, Strength is Given
Debbie Gourneau (Mekinock IIkwey–Turtle Woman): The Meaning of Serenity
Alex DeCoteau (Migizi Gwiiwizens–Bald Eagle Boy): Listen to the Sacred Animals
Courtney Yellow Fat (Cetan Wakiyan Hoksila–Thunderhawk Boy): White Buffalo Calf Maiden
Anna Littleghost (Wambli Isnana Win–Eagle Alone Woman) and Lenore White Lightning (Natan Winyan–Charging Woman): Healing Waters and Wondrous Things
Dakota Wind Goodhouse (Ozuye Nunpa-Two Wars): Wiílowaŋ
Dakota Wind Goodhouse (Ozuye Nunpa-Two Wars): The Curly Alphabet
Dakota Wind Goodhouse (Ozuye Nunpa-Two Wars): Killdeer Mountain