Women of the Mississippi: Mona Smith

By: Cory Mohn, Park Ranger, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area

Bdote: The confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers at what is now Fort Snelling State Park.

Mona Smith is a Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota who grew up in Redwing, Minnesota. She had some exposure to her cultural heritage growing up, but she felt a disconnect like what she learned from her relatives wasn’t enough. This is not an uncommon feeling among the Dakota as most of them were removed from their homeland after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. American settlers had made the Dakota invisible in their own homeland. After moving to Minneapolis, Mona learned the missing pieces of her heritage and realized that she had unknowingly moved closer to the heart of the Dakota homeland. She saw this as a sign that she had a purpose in being there and she would end up taking action to reveal the truth of what happened and start the process of making the Dakota people visible in their homeland again.

Mona started out as a college-level educator, but she discovered that she really enjoyed working with video and she saw an opportunity to use her talent to give a public voice to indigenous people. She became a media producer creating documentaries that covered topics such as health, gender identity, sexuality, and how spirituality and traditional values play a role in all of those topics. Her videos, including Her Giveaway (1988), That which is Between (1989), and Honored by the Moon (1990) have been viewed internationally and received multiple awards. In 1996 Mona would create Allies: media/art which is the media and art production division of Allies. This Dakota owned company would result in many partnerships and collaborations that would help share the voice of the Dakota people and their relationship with the Mississippi River.

A major shift in the direction of Mona’s work occurred when the Minnesota Historical Society offered her the use of a room to make an art installation. She created the Cloudy Waters: Dakota Reflections on the River installation that was opened to the public in 2005. This installation had a video projected into a pond with Dakota voices coming from a speaker above that described the Dakota relationships with the river, the trauma they experienced leading up to their exile from their homeland, and what they are doing now to heal. Nature video was projected onto the walls with nature sounds filling the room. There were two speakers that addressed the 1862 war with one giving voice to the Dakota hanged in Mankato and the other giving a brief chronology of the war. The audio from this exhibit would be installed in the Mill City courtyard in 2011 and the video projection was installed in the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2015. Mona found she preferred the nonlinear manner people used to explore the art installation, which is similar to traditional methods of Dakota teaching, making this one of her favorite media formats to work with.

Mona’s next art exhibit was City Indians in 2006. This exhibit featured a car trunk made to look like the back of a police car. The trunk’s purpose was to raise awareness of an incident where officers from the Minneapolis Police Department put two inebriated native men into their trunk to transport them to the police station. Video was projected into the trunk showing native people expressing how that incident affected them. This exhibit also had the first version of the Bdote Memory Map. In this instance, the map was a version of the area with American landmarks removed so only the rivers remained. Then there where some Dakota landmarks placed on the map such as Bdote, the confluence of the Ȟaȟáwakpá (Mississippi River) and the Mnísota Wakpá (Minnesota River). Post it notes were provided so people could add their own places and memories to the map. The role of this map was to show the Dakota homeland that is hidden by American development.

After City Indians, the Minnesota Humanities Center extended funding for the Bdote Memory Map and Mona created a website version of it, which can be found at bdotememorymap.org. This version also has a simplified map of the area, but you can click on the points to learn about each location, see images, and play videos and audio to hear about each location from Dakota speakers. This map was also used as the basis for the Bdote field trip which takes participants to these sites to learn about their significance to the Dakota, the history of what happened to the Dakota, and how they continue to be affected today. Mona encourages people to go out and visit these sites, because to really know and understand a place you must experience it.

In addition to her roles as an artist and an educator, Mona has also participated in a variety of organizations in the community. She is a member of the Mapping Spectral Traces Network, a “trans-disciplinary, international group of scholars, practitioners, community leaders, and artists who work with and in traumatized communities, contested lands and diverse environments.” She is also a member of the Saint Anthony Falls Heritage Board which provides interpretive resources in the Saint Anthony Falls area. Bringing members of both of these groups together, Mona smith founded the Healing Place Collaborative. This collaboration brings people together that would normally work independently from each other for the purpose of healing the river and the communities the were created by the river.

Most recently Mona has been involved with two important art projects. She was one of three artists selected to create art installations for Bde Maka Ska in 2019 after the lake’s name was restored. She created a multimedia website which can be found at bdemakaska.net. This website provides recordings of Dakota people explaining how the lake was an important location to the Dakota and how their culture is reflected in their relationship with the lake. It also explains the importance of restoring the lake’s name to Bde Maka Ska and features the other artists discussing their art installations. Mona also participated in the Hearts of our People exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019. She created the video projection that welcomed people into the exhibit. The purpose of the entire exhibit was to showcase the art of native women and show how, despite the fact that previous exhibits have focused on the art created by men, most native art is created by women.

Mona Smith has done several important things for the Dakota and everyone else who lives along the Mississippi. She has shone a light on our history to remind us that there is another side to what happened versus what American settlers chose to record. She has also reminded us that this is the Dakota homeland and participated in restoring some of their landmarks so that everyone can see, understand, and appreciate them for what they mean to the Dakota. She also participated in efforts to teach the importance of Dakota sites to those who teach our children because every Dakota youth should be able to learn about their cultural heritage and those who are not indigenous should know about the people whose homeland they have grown up in. And finally, by sharing native voices and stories with us, Mona has shared part of the Dakota culture with everyone. For those willing to listen and learn, this can teach us to be better stewards of the Mississippi River because their teachings tell us to view the river as a relative instead of a resource.

parkconnectionOctober 12, 2020