Mike Swan stopped at the sight of off-road vehicle tracks, looked down, and slowly closed his eyes.
His hand clutching tobacco he would later sprinkle, Swan, an Anishinaabeg Native American from White Earth Reservation, began to pray for those who recently rode four-wheelers there.
“I’m asking for forgiveness for being at a sacred burial ground, and for forgiveness for those who rode over it,” he said standing before McKinistry Mounds, an ancient, unmarked Native American burial mound site about 10 miles west of International Falls.
Tracks and deep ruts marked the mound, which appeared as a grassy, wooded hill hidden beneath long grass, sitting on state property owned by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Buried in the mound are Native Americans who inhabited the area thousands of years ago.
Swan, director of natural resources and spiritual leader for White Earth, was among many people on a tour of the ancient mound-builders sites last week with the “International Conference of Understanding,” which showed that many people are fighting to preserve the mounds still standing along Rainy River.
About 85 percent of the burial mounds around the world have been destroyed.
“This is an illustration of how difficult it is to protect the mounds, even when they are in public ownership,” Dave Mather, National Register archaeologist for the Minnesota Historical Society, said to those on the tour before stepping foot on the property. “It’s a different thing than protecting a cemetery, but it’s a very, very important site.”
The tour of mound-builder sites along Rainy River in Minnesota and Ontario included local officials from International Falls, Ranier and Koochiching County; archaeologists from the U.S. Forest Service and Minnesota Historical Society, staff from the National Park Service, citizens and directors of the White Earth Reservation and Nett Lake Reservation; leaders of Rainy River First Nations in Ontario; Ontario government leaders; and staff from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Koochiching County Historical Museum, Fort Frances Historical Museum and Fort Frances Town Council.
Anishinaabeg people live on White Earth Reservation, about 180 miles south of the Falls. Anishinaabeg is the Ojibwe word meaning “people,” and those on the reservation and Ontario’s Rainy River First Nation are descendants of the people who built the mounds.
The conference aimed to begin efforts to educate and spread awareness about the significance of the mound-builder sites. The slogan for the conference was “Ancient cultures, One River, Two Countries, One goal.”
Taking a moment of silence to look at the tracks at McKinistry Mound, Audrey Swan, Mike Swan’s wife, began to ask questions.
“Is the community of International Falls aware of the mounds, and that they could be destroying historical evidence — history not only significant to Native Americans, but to everyone?” Swan asked. She added that the mounds around White Earth Reservation are barricaded, but not posted, so that people know it is sacred ground.
Then, with a sad tone in her voice, looking out at the tracks over the mound, she said, “Sometimes education doesn’t work; sometimes people just don’t care.”
Discussions took place on comparisons of the mounds across the river in Canada — which were built by the same people.
“In Canada, they’re more preserved by the indigenous people there and the providence,” Mike Swan said.
Audrey Swan added, “I was just in awe to know these mounds here are out in the open — that people can just go ride their ATVs over them and destroy something so beautiful, so historic.”
In an effort to start spreading awareness and ultimately preserve the historical evidence of the area’s ancestors, Ed Oerichbauer, executive director of the Koochiching Museums, coordinated the conference. It began with a night of discussions about the history of the area and the Native Americans who inhabited the land for the past 10,000 years.
“We want to begin stewardship to preserve (the mounds),” Oerichbauer said. “We brought everyone together that had some kind of interest to begin the dialogue of how to preserve them.”
The Grand Mound, a site about 17 miles west of International Falls, had a public visitor center, until it closed because of state budget problems in 2003. Now, the building is vacated and locked up, and the mound sites are not open to the public. The Grand Mound drew 13,000 visitors a year to the site since the visitor center opened in 1975.
Sherry George, curator for Fort Frances Museum, said, like many other attendees, she hopes the visitor center for the site reopens.
“A lot of people don’t know of its existence, and that’s a sad thing,” George said. “We need to educate our young, not only on the importance of it in history, but in the future, for the upcoming generation. We don’t want to lose this.”
The Grand Mound is the largest burial mound in the upper Midwest. That site is believed to be where many Anishinaabeg stayed from the end of winter until summer to be near the sturgeon in Rainy River.
“It’s the largest earthwork in Minnesota, and the largest mound in the upper Midwest — and it’s really different in its setting,” Mather said. “Despite its large size, it’s down in the wet plain — pretty much unlike any other mound site.”
The mound stands more than 20-feet high and has a tail that extends longer than 200 feet.
The irony lies in that the mounds are large pieces of evidence, but preserving them is a challenge. Lee Johnson, archaeologist for Superior National Forest, who manages sites built by the people who built the mounds, toured the sites.
“The Grand Mound is one of the most prominent, conspicuous archaeological sites in Minnesota,” Johnson said, as he looked across Rainy River to see the Ontario mounds from afar. “A lot of archaeological sites, they don’t jump out at you like a mound does. Most of the time you look for small flakes, or pottery. With a mound, it’s just in your face.”
Across the river, protected mound sites are nestled at the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre, meaning “The Place of the Long Rapids.” The mounds are in the prairie oak savannah — the only prairie found in the province of Ontario. At the time these were built, no international border separated the two areas along the river. Today, those who study or visit the mounds are challenged by the border.
Willie Wilson, former chief of Rainy River First Nations in Ontario, said he encourages young people to tour the mound-builder sites.
“If we don’t show them, who will know? Who will appreciate and be proud of what we have?” Wilson asked the group.
Amanda Hunter, a tour guide for the Ontario museum said the area taught her who she is. As the group looked over to see a mound 24-feet high and 114 feet in diameter, Hunter explained what the place means to her.
“If it wasn’t for this place, I wouldn’t know where I came from and my roots,” Hunter said. “The mounds are said to be the womb of Mother Earth.”
Those buried in them are wrapped according to how far they will travel in the afterlife, she said. Most of the sites are from the Laurel Period, 900 to 2,200 years ago.
“We cannot determine how many remains are in there,” Hunter said. “Each migration season, they added another layer.”
Today’s relevance of the mound sites, and historical evidence in general, is crucial to understanding ourselves, Oerichbauer said.
“The conference was a start to talking about how these fit into the history of the area and what it means to the area,” he said. “We’ll be talking with individuals in the near future about a direction or how to proceed.”
Discussions about reopening the Grand Mound visitor center took place, and attendees are hopeful there is something that can be done to bring it back.
“If you take a book, for example, and tear out chapters 11 through 15, you’re not going to know what’s going on the book, are you?” Oerichbauer said. “That’s what’s happened here with the destruction of the mounds.”
Since the mounds are likely the largest evidence along Rainy River of the area’s ancestors, Oerichbauer said it serves everyone to protect the sites.
“The people who built them are no longer here — we owe it to our past to preserve them into our future,” he said. “There’s a very powerful cultural message in these mounds, and we can’t get the message out the way the sites are being handled now.”
That message is part of a larger story told about the historical uses of the river and land, Oerichbauer said.
“The mounds are part of that 10,000-year-old story that should be told, and that’s what we’re starting to do with this whole process,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to tell all of that story.”
Knowing the stories in history help people understand the collective culture of humanity as a whole, he said.
“You can’t understand who you are unless you know where you came from, and when I say ‘you’ I mean collectively, regardless of ethnicity — the larger picture of the cultures,” Oerichbauer said.
People have forgotten about the mounds, especially since the closure of the visitor center, he noted.
“We need to remind people they are here and that they should be recognized as part of a chapter in our history,” he said. “We called it a conference for a lack of a better term, but I think people walked away really enthused about what was here.”
Koochiching County Commissioner Kevin Adee attended the conference and said he learned things he wasn’t aware of, including how old the mounds are — about 2,300 years old.
“The information might have been out there — I just didn’t know,” Adee said. “I didn’t even know the area was inhabited by the tribes at this time.”
Adee said he is hopeful that the tour is a start to preserve the sites.
“I’m inspired by the fact that the people that showed up are key players,” adding that he’d like to see the Grand Mound visitor center reopened. “It’s definitely a tool for the area with the work they’ve done on Highway 11; I think that would only add to the number of visitors that we get.”
Even without the center reopened, Oerichbauer said it’s important to take the cultural message to remember the responsibility of being stewards of the sites.
“We’re all just caretakers of this — we won’t be around forever. We’re just passing through, like everyone else,” Oerichbauer said. “We hope that those who follow us take care of what we’ve developed. It’s the same thing.”
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