St. Olaf hosts ‘Why Treaties Matter’ exhibit
This fall St. Olaf College will host the exhibit Why Treaties Matter: Self Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations.
The traveling display includes 20 free-standing banners with evocative text, historical and contemporary photographs and maps, a touchscreen video experience featuring the stories of Dakota and Ojibwe people, and a virtual component online. The exhibit is set up in the Link of the Center for Art and Dance, and is available for visits daily between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. through November 24.
Why Treaties Matter was created in 2010 after Minnesota tribes unanimously approved a partnership between the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Minnesota Humanities Center, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Since then, the exhibit has been hosted by venues including the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board headquarters and Carleton College, and is on permanent display in the Minnesota State Capitol.
Belle Mae Williams ’26 (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin), a councilwoman of the St. Olaf Indigenous Peoples Organization, says hosting Why Treaties Matter at St. Olaf is an important step toward a deeper, more thoughtful understanding of the land acknowledgment statement that the college adopted in 2020. The statement includes a commitment to honest storytelling about the land St. Olaf was founded on — and this exhibit engages the St. Olaf community in part of that storytelling.
“Why Treaties Matter prompts the campus community to leave its comfort zone and take on the real impact of broken promises, colonization, and Western expansion,” says Williams, an interfaith fellow at the St. Olaf Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community who has been involved with planning the opening ceremony for the exhibit on campus.
“Why Treaties Matter prompts the campus community to leave its comfort zone and take on the real impact of broken promises, colonization, and Western expansion.”
— Belle Mae Williams ’26
Understanding this history is a crucial precursor to shaping the college’s future, says Vice President for Community and Belonging Eduardo Pazos.
“If we don’t have a clear understanding of the past, we will not be able to understand the present, and we will not get to the future that we’re trying to see,” he says. “Having a clear understanding of the treaties and the history of this place and the people who have stewarded this land for centuries and millennia before the college started is really important.”
Lutheran Center Director Deanna Thompson ’89 says this exhibit is one way for the college to start living out its land acknowledgment statement. As the college marks its 150th anniversary, it also creates a unique opportunity to tell a more complete story of its founding.
“We often start with the story of the founders of this institution, who were Lutheran pastors and Norwegian immigrants. That’s an important part of our story, but the full story is that this land was available because of a history of the U.S. government taking land away from Indigenous people. That is part of the story of the college, and part of telling honest stories about this place,” says Thompson.
The exhibit also emphasizes the ways that treaties are still impactful today.
“I hope the St. Olaf community comes to think critically about the impact of treaties on Indigenous people and its effects on the St. Olaf community,” Williams says. “This exhibit does not just highlight history, but is also interconnected to the present.”
“If we don’t have a clear understanding of the past, we will not be able to understand the present, and we will not get to the future that we’re trying to see.”
— Vice President for Community and Belonging Eduardo Pazos
To complement the exhibit, the St. Olaf Lutheran Center, Taylor Center for Equity and Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples Organization, Theater Department, and Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts have collaborated to develop additional programming.
“One of the things that we hear is that many people in their K-12 and college education have been educated very little or not at all about the history of Indigenous people in the United States,” says Thompson. “We really hope that this is an opportunity for members of the St. Olaf community to learn more through the exhibit. We’re also hoping that it will raise questions about what we should be doing institutionally in light of this history, and in light of our land acknowledgment that commits to honest storytelling and acts of healing. We hope that the exhibit and the events around it will prompt the questions, and then hopefully will be a step in helping us move forward to new, more expansive answers to these questions.”
- October 17: Why Treaties Matter Opening Reception from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in the Center for Art and Dance
- November 12: “Stories We Tell about This Place” Tour and Lunch Discussion hosted by the Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts
- November 14-16: Theater faculty member Sara Pillatzki-Warzeha (Dakota), in collaboration with students and the Taylor Center for Equity and Inclusion, will present a staged reading of the docudrama Reasonable Doubt alongside a panel conversation about healing and empathetic relationship building between Indigenous and settler people