Project Summary

︎

This work serves as a case study for a broader dissertation on riparian infrastructure along the Mississippi River and the ethnographic relationships to these regulated landscapes. Within the Mississippi River Basin, contestation over water has transformed the ways humans and rivers interface with one another

— where once variability was accepted as part of riverine life, fixity and predetermination have become the new norm as water flows becomes regulated with locks, dams, levees, and reservoirs.

This project studies dams constructed at the headwaters of the Mississippi as a critical example of infrastructure implemented to regulate downstream water levels at the expense of the Ojibwe people, who occupy the land surrounding the headwaters. The work was guided by interviews with individuals from the Ojibwe Division of Resource Management and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, as well as tours of the dams and canoe trips of the lakes and rivers the dams regulate.

Additionally, archival research at the Minnesota Historical Society and the Itasca County Historical Society supplemented findings from the sites visits. The archival documents included survey maps from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plotting out strategies to dredge both Leech Lake River and the Mississippi River on Leech Lake Reservation.
Through these methods, the research considers the ways federal infrastructure has impacted Ojibwe use of water and lands, and inversely, how Ojibwe land and water management strategies might influence dam management in the future.

Focus Areas

The drawings, maps, and text shown here are the result of this site visit. They attempt to convey the experience of traveling through the Mississippi Headwaters while also tracking the impacts of dams on the lands and waters of the Ojibwe people.

This work focuses on three dams: Leech Lake Dam, Winnibigoshish Dam, and Pokegama Dam. The first two lie within the boundaries of Leech Lake Reservation, while the latter rests outside the reservation but within 1855 Treaty territory. Each dam is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and they were originally constructed to manage water flow downstream along the Mississippi to facilitate easier barge and ship traffic.

Through site visits and conversations, three themes regarding the dams and headwaters emerged: wild rice habitat, erosion, and dredging. These aspects of the landscape are ever-present along both Leech Lake River and the Mississippi River, and are expanded upon in other pages of this collection. Another topic that ties all dams together is their impact on pre-existing lakes, which now act as reservoirs.

Leech Lake, Winnibigoshish Lake, and Pokegama Lake (as well as many other lakes in the region) have expanded drastically as a result of the dams, flooding well over 100 square miles of land.

This transformation of the landscape has impacted wild rice habitat and flooded innumerable sacred and archaeological sites with evidence of Anishinaabe livelihood. Mappings of this expansion can be seen in the series of three maps on each lake.

Methods

Additionally, the history of dams and waterways in this region is intrinsically linked with forestry, and industry that has transformed the landscape and continues to threaten Ojibwe land use today. Here, I would like to disclose my own settler history within this region. My grandfather, Harold Zigmund, was an employee and eventually the president of Blandin Paper Mill, a processing plant that transformed trees into paper using power from a dam built on the Mississippi River. Given my family’s history in this place extracting resources and wealth from Ojibwe land, I fully acknowledge my complicity in the degradation of these lands, and hope this work can in a small way support the sovereignty of Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

The collection of works in “Dammed Landscapes” is also formatted as a mini-exhibition. Where the pages can be easily packed into a mailing box, and can then be unfolded and assembled in a variety of configurations. The hope is that the information shared here can be informative and, rather than living packed away on a shelf, can easily be brought out and shared.

In essence, this project aims to expanded dialogues centered on Native American perspectives, connecting communities through visual and written narratives of the Mississippi River’s headwaters.