LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Sister Cities Park felt like the right place to pay tribute to the Karelian Red Exodus because Duluth’s sister-city-connection to Petrozavodsk is inextricably tied to this very history from the 1930s. As I seek to bring this suppressed story from my bloodline to the surface, I must also acknowledge all suppressed stories of this region, this city, this place. If my body holds ancestral memory, this land remembers, too.

I acknowledge the Anishinaabe people who live and have always lived in reciprocity with this land going back to time immemorial. With gratitude for their wisdom, their reverent diligence in keeping ancestral knowledge alive, and the enduring generosity of their spirit across generations, I reject the erasure of their experience within the story-telling of this place and humbly yearn to make space for their voices.