Environment | Page 16

Map of Victory Memorial Parkway

1921 map showing the location of Victory Memorial Parkway relative to the North Loop of Minneapolis. The dashed lines indicate streetcars lines that many of the over 30,000 dedication ceremony attendees could have used to get to what was then the edge of development in Minneapolis. Also shown are the location of the ceremony’s grandstand and speaker’s stand at the northwest corner of the parkway at the site of the memorial flagpole base.

Glenwood-Camden Parkway (now Victory Memorial Parkway), June, 23, 1920

1920 photograph showing the construction of what is now Victory Memorial Parkway, looking south from Thirty Sixth Avenue North. While the image shows a steam shovel being operated in the distance, most of the grading work is being completed using teams of horses and spoil (excess dirt) is being removed by horse and wagon. At the time, the surrounding landscape was undeveloped.

1920 Minneapolis Park Board plans for the north end of Victory Memorial Drive

Cover sheet of 1920 Minneapolis Park Board plans for the north end of Victory Memorial Drive, designed by Theodore Wirth (superintendent of parks) and Alfred C. Godward (engineer).

Lake Harriet bandshell in winter

View of the Lake Harriet bandshell in winter, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron; used with permission.

Lake Harriet and pavilion

Lake Harriet and pavilion, Minneapolis, ca. 1940.

Lake Harriet pavilion

Lake Harriet pavilion, Minneapolis, ca. 1915. Photo by Charles P. Gibson.

View of Lake Harriet from the pavilion

View of Lake Harriet from the pavilion, Minneapolis, ca. 1905.

Wild rice harvest on Mud Lake

Citizens of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe harvest rice on Mud Lake, located on the Leech River, seventeen miles downstream of Leech Lake Dam, on September 3, 2015. USACE photo by George Stringham. Public domain.

Wild Rice and the Ojibwe

Wild rice is a food of great historical, spiritual, and cultural importance for Ojibwe people. After colonization disrupted their traditional food system, however, they could no longer depend on stores of wild rice for food all year round. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, this traditional staple was appropriated by white entrepreneurs and marketed as a gourmet commodity. Native and non-Native people alike began to harvest rice to sell it for cash, threatening the health of the natural stands of the crop. This lucrative market paved the way for domestication of the plant, and farmers began cultivating it in paddies in the late 1960s. In the twenty-first century, many Ojibwe and other Native people are fighting to sustain the hand-harvested wild rice tradition and to protect wild rice beds.

Boy treading wild rice

An Ojibwe boy treading wild rice, ca. 1938.

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