“Can design be an expression of a nation’s sovereignty? Can it aid communities in the pursuit of justice? The revitalization of a Minnesota historic site known as Fort Snelling, a site associated with both the origins of the Dakota people and their exile, became a test of these questions.

Constructed in 1824 following a treaty with the Dakota, Fort Snelling is today operated by the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) as a state historic site. In 2014, the historical society began the process of reimagining the visitor experience and with its design team developed a community-based process for broadening the historical narratives that are told at Fort Snelling. For Dakota tribes, the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers is known as Bdote Mnisota and is the place at which their people first emerged on Earth. Located at the confluence, Fort Snelling is the site of a former concentration camp that housed Dakota prisoners from 1862 to 1863. It is a place both of spiritual significance and of deep traumas—traumas that until recently were not memorialized on-site…”

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