Pioneers monument may leave B.F. Nelson Park

The decades-long question about what to do with the Pioneers monument, the 25-ton granite sculpture which currently resides in B.F. Nelson Park, has gotten new consideration from a recent study by the Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI). 

The St. Anthony West Neighborhood Organization (STAWNO) hosted a presentation by local Dakota artist Angela Two Stars on Jan. 16 to hear a report on the project’s methodology and its recommendations. Two Stars, vice president of arts and culture and All My Relations arts director at the Institute, said their mission and vision is to create place-making opportunities. 

The study suggests that the monument be removed and destroyed, with its granite material possibly used for some other cultural statement. 

She began this study by selecting a number of artists for one-to-one meetings and, “some really deep discussions about the monument, the history and everything else in the process of getting their input on the subject.” She brought in Sierra Edwards Jackson, a Walker Art Center community engagement specialist to join the study, made possible by a grant from the Nicollet Island Heritage board.

In 1936, the monument, funded by the Pillsbury family and executed by sculptor Karl Daniels, was unveiled at Pioneer Square, across from the main Post Office. Owing to urban development, it was moved to Marshall and 5th Street Northeast in 1968, and was moved again in 2010 to the park. In 2020, the monument was vandalized with slogans and red paint.

Two Stars said her aim was to understand what monuments represent to the country, and be able to open up what she called “courageous conversations around monuments, who they’re for, who they’re displaying and what they’re conveying.” She wanted to start by studying pioneer monuments in general, “because for me, this city’s monument was the only one that I’ve known.” She found that part of the narratives coming from the research was how they erased the Native American presence, leaving pioneers to represent immigrant white families, which she called “basically, a racist view.” She added that no matter how much effort is spent to re-contextualize or reinterpret the original, it’s hard to overcome the harm that has been done.

 Two Stars described her thinking when she was selected to create a new work at the Walker’s sculpture garden, following the removal of a controversial sculpture called “Scaffold.” The piece was based on designs for gallows used in state-sponsored executions. In 1862, the state hanged 38 Dakota men in Mankato. The installation was not discussed in advance with the local Dakota community, and it sparked a protest and demands for it to be destroyed. After a meeting with Dakota tribal elders, the work was dismantled.  

Two Stars said she was happy to receive the commission, but worried that her work would be connected with “Scaffold.” She said that as a Dakota artist, she felt a responsibility to help heal a community that had been harmed by “that other piece.” She said she came to a reconciliation with the unintentional and undesired connection with that work, and decided, “to reclaim the narrative, and invite my family to come to do a ground-cleansing ceremony … prior to my work being installed. It’s been a healthy healing process for the Dakota community and for the Walker Art Center.” 

She said asking an artist to make a work in response to the Pioneers monument is asking them to fix a problem they didn’t create.

Two Stars noted, “Once you finish an artwork, it no longer belongs to you, especially if it’s public art. You have to listen to what the public is saying. So this is an opportunity to listen to the community.” 

She ended her presentation with recommendations to decommission the Pioneers monument, remove it from its present location, break up the monument and use its material in a landscape plan, create policies to evaluate and assess works “through a current lens that represents who we are today,” and re-establish the natural environment and landscape of the park. 

Ukrainian American Community Center Senior Advisor Paul Jablonsky asked if the neighborhood was losing an opportunity to educate people, “If it goes away, do we lose that historical content, that these are mistakes made and they should not be needed in the future?” 

Two Stars replied that the monument in its present location is not getting the context to do the education that’s needed, and anything that is added to it, “Would just be satellite to the original. It’s not really having the impact anyway that you would want a public monument to have with the people that it’s engaging.” 

Two Stars asked, “Is there ever an appropriate site for them to be viewed in the right context, or do they just get stored somewhere? At this point, it’s up to the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board.”