The Big Dipper
Sharon Day
The Big Dipper took place in August 2022 on the sacred traditional lands of the Dakota people (Minneapolis, MN)
"The idea for the Big Dipper stories and earth mound was a dream I had many years ago. As I met with other artists via the Dreaming the Land residency, it came back to me as something I could literally create on my own land. The original idea was to create it on the Fort Snelling Upper Bluff site as a tribute to the Dakota people who were interned there in 1862. I approached Art Owen of the Tita Wanka people of Prairie Island in 2000 and he approved for me to go ahead with the project. Unfortunately, the powers that be never agreed on a Re-use plan for the Upper Bluff area.
Still the idea stayed with me. And in the Dreaming the Land residency it came back as something I wanted to do. The Big Dipper is of utmost importance to Indigenous People and others. Many tribes have stories of how the heavens reflect what is on this earthly plane. For instance, the Milky Way constellation is a reflection of the Mississippi River. What is above is below. What is below is above. I decided to create the Big Dipper on my land by creating a mound with a berm made of earth and trees and dirt. Boulders become the stars and we installed solar lights to twinkle back up to the stars in the sky. The berm required many felled trees to be cut and hauled to the area to create the height we needed, and 5 tons of fill dirt and black dirt were added over the wood. We sourced the boulders from my land along with the trees. The fill dirt and black topsoil came from a local landscaping company. Many trips were made hauling the dirt. As usual, nothing I do, I do alone. Friends and volunteers helped to saw up the logs, arrange them in an order on the 60 feet of land, and then unload the dirt on top of that. We finished it off with perennial plants and mulch. I found a pallet with small bricks left by the former farm owners and used them to line the mound to keep the soil from washing down the side. Next year we will continue to plant cover crops over the mound. I have much admiration for our ancestors who build large mounds with none of the technology we used, chain saws, shovels, and of course the farm truck.
I invited friends who have indulged me to tell the stories we know of the Big Dipper and we slept one night under the stars. The Big Dipper mound is in the exact correlation to the night sky in August. We slept under the stars and dreamt and in the morning we shared our dreams, our thoughts, and songs with each other and with Dreaming the Land, cohort. Migwetch/Thank you to Paul, Ben, Razy, Nathan, Tracy, and of course, the Grasshopper, Nicole."
Witten by Sharon Day
We are grateful to Pangea World Theater, an organizational partner to the Dreaming the Land project supporting Sharon Day's The Big Dipper on the sacred traditional lands of the Dakota people.
We would also like to thank the following people for their support on this project:
Paul Eaves, Ben Weaver, Nathan Berglund, Razi Payne, Tracy Bradfield, Nicole Christian
Jenny Zander - videographer
Gisell Calderon - drone filmer
