The Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota peoples, carry an origin story that teaches the sacred nature of water. This relationship is embedded in our language, our understanding of the world, and our cosmology. The elders teach us that water is every being’s first medicine.

Diane Wilson , a Dakota writer, has published a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and appeared in the 2012 One Minneapolis, One Read program, and Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life. She was a 2013 Bush Fellow and 2018 AARP/Pollen Fifty Over Fifty honoree. Diane’s latest novel, The Seed Keeper, won the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story.

Posted in: History, People, Places, Prose