Minneapolis Announces Plans to Return Land to Indigenous Stewardship by 2026
By Darren Thompson
Minneapolis—Minneapolis city officials and community leaders announced at a press conference on Monday that the city would transfer land to Indigenous stewardship. The announcement comes after a decade of organizing by local organizations and is amongst a movement of lands being returned to Indigenous stewardship.
“Owámniyomni is not only a place sacred to the Dakota, it is a place of shared importance to all who call this land home," Owámniyomni Okhódayapi President Shelley Buck said to CBS News in Minnesota on Monday. “Our vision for the land at Owámniyomni is to create a place of healing, beauty and belonging that is open to everyone — while reclaiming Dakota stewardship of this land, restoring native plantings and uplifting traditional practices in caring for our natural relatives.”
Five acres of federal land are being transferred from the state of Minnesota to Owamniyomni Okhódayapi, a Dakota-led nonprofit, as a result of legislation passed in 2020 that required the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to transfer the site to the city of Minneapolis. The city chose Friends of the Falls, now Owámniyomni Okhódayapi, as its designee, where it plans to transform the site to a community space that would honor the history of the land.
The organization says it plans to turn the site, which is near the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Damn in downtown Minneapolis, into a place of healing, restoration and connection that will welcome both Native and non-Native people. The land transfer is anticipated to happen next year, in 2026, with construction of a community space to be completed by 2028.
“Minneapolis was founded on St. Anthony Falls, but for over a thousand years before that it was Owámniyomni—a gathering place sacred to the Dakota people. I’m proud to announce that Owámniyomni will be transferred back to Dakota stewardship, who will return native wildlife and water flow to the site,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement on Monday. This isn’t Minneapolis’ first response to Indigenous communities either. In 2023, Minneapolis transferred land in south Minneapolis to the Red Lake Nation to build a treatment center and garden.
Owámniyomni closely means “turbulent waters” in the Dakota language and was the only major natural waterfall on the Mississippi River. It was called St. Anthony’s Falls in 1680 by Father Louis Hennepin, after St. Anthony of Padua, who also brought the attention of Niagara Falls to the world’s attention. The falls were soon exploited for its hydro power, and Minneapolis became the the flour milling capitol of the world.
The significance of Indigenous connection to the land has been largely silenced throughout the years, though. To many, the falls, like many other natural wonders, was a sacred place where both Dakota and Anishinaabe historically met to trade and both have names in their languages for the place. To the Dakota, it is heart to their origin story and has been visited as a place of ceremony since the beginning of time.
Long ago, the river was well over 1000 feet wide, and today it is a third of that size, due largely to the industrialization of the falls. “To Native people, these activities were a desecration, incompatible with a world view in which the River is a spirit and a mother, and in which all living natural things are our relatives,” Owámniyomni Okhódayapi says on its website.
Okhódaya closely means to “to be friends with, to be friendly, or to befriend,” and when combined with Owámniyomni implies “Friends of the Falls”. The organization was previously known as Friends of the Falls and formed to prevent further industrialization of the falls.
To halt the invasion of carp, commercial boats have not been permitted to travel the Upper Lock since 2015, and leaders have since been organizing to rematriate the location. The community engaged with local Indigenous communities to gain an understanding about the cultural and spiritual significance of the falls. Today, the organization is largely led by Indigenous people, including Dakota and Anishinaabe people on staff and on the board of director, with hopes to create a space where everyone is welcome while honoring the history of the space.
“I think any act of land back to our Indigenous community is always the right direction,” said Sean Sherman, founder and owner of the award-winning Owamni restaurant, in an interview with LRI Media.“Frey is right that OwamniYomni is a space of so much importance and my hopes would be to rename the space immediately and work on restoration and advance the education and history of the location for the public to understand better.”
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Darren Thompson is the Director of Media Relations for the Sacred Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He covers tribal sovereignty, social and environmental justice, as well as Indigenous art, music, and culture. He can be reached at darren@sacreddefense.org.