Star Tribune: Louise Erdrich: Preserve this island's rare character
"Instead of giving it over to a high school playing field, think what this precious site can teach students today." World-renown Minnesota writer Louise Erdich writes in her commentary in the Star Tribune today:
The decision whether or not to build a football field on Nicollet Island is not a NIMBY issue, it is everyone's issue, for Nicollet Island is everyone's backyard. Although I do not live near, I walk the quiet streets and sit by the river when I need peace. Often, I take family along, and every time a person comes to visit, I bring them to see Nicollet Island because of its rare charm. To have a place in the center of Minneapolis where you can hear the wind blow and the river roll by is a treasure.
I was a football fan in high school when our North Dakota team won the state championship -- I was even a cheerleader. It was a lot of fun, but I can't say I learned vital lessons or even think about it anymore. What I do think about was the time my history teacher took us to the banks of the Sheyenne River. We dug petrified buffalo fossils, thousands of years old. I have mine to this day, on my writing desk. A piece of life caught in time.
What I am saying is this: If a school really, truly, wants to use this site to improve the character of its students, use it to think about and reconstruct our city's extraordinary history. Learn what Nicollet Island was, first to its Native inhabitants, the Dakota and the Ojibwe who settled and traded there, and then to the boom town of St. Anthony. Digging on Nicollet Island should require an archeological team, a permit, and many years of thought. But students could study it right now.
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Read the entire story on the Star Tribune website, here.