Patches of sunlight cut through overcast skies and sweep across Minnesota Point in slow, searching beams. It’s windy and cold, but those periodic rays of light bring a welcoming warmth as Jonnelle Walker enters an old-growth forest of red and white pine.

“My great-grandfather was born and raised on Wisconsin Point,” Walker said. ”So I grew up with stories of these sand banks — how we used them and stewarded them — but these stories aren’t currently reflected in the landscape.”

A Fond du Lac Ojibwe descendant and assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), Walker researches and teaches about the Indigenous history of Duluth. “Historically, Indigenous people, including Anishinaabe people, cared for these sandbank’s forests. When people lived here, these forests were maintained so you could see through the forest,” she said. That maintenance relied on fire — Ishkode in Ojibwe — to clear accumulated underbrush and tree debris, restoring the ecosystem so native species like red pine and blueberries could regenerate, while also improving hunting conditions and reducing wildfire risk. Those burns stopped when Anishinaabe people were displaced from the point, leading to a dense buildup of dead and downed trees. As a direct result, in the past 120 years, only one red pine has successfully regenerated in the interior canopy of the forest, and blueberries have become more sparse.

This summer, a collaborative effort between multiple groups will bring Ishkode back to Minnesota Point on 17 acres of the forest, followed by another 24 acres next year. The project is called Azhe-Manidoo Mino-Ishkodeng Zhagawaamikong-Neyaashi: Returning the Spirit of Good Fire to Minnesota Point. It includes the sovereign Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the City of Duluth, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota Point 50, the Park Point Community Club, Good Sky Guidance, Dovetail Partners, Ethical Embers, the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Bringing back fire is part of a much larger story of this place.” Walker said.

Walker teaches about the role of fire in historical and contemporary understandings of place in her undergraduate classes on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and American Indian history, and her graduate classes that focus on Indigenous worldviews, ecosystems, and tribal stewardship. The Department of American Indian Studies offers the unique opportunity for students to learn about tribal stewardship initiatives in their Masters of Tribal Resources and Environmental Stewardship Program (MTRES). 

“In our MTRES program, we teach about how every facet of the environment is connected, and how tribal nations are leading the way in critical stewardship initiatives as a result of their advanced scientific understanding of the environment informed by millennia of caretaking. We teach about the importance of cultural burns not just here, but across Turtle Island.” Walker is not involved in the Ishkode project, but sees it as a critical opportunity for students to learn from local examples of stewardship. Through her teaching, she hopes to offer students the “opportunity to think about their futures in a different way … and the world that we are living in and leaving for future generations.”

"This project wouldn't be possible without the Fond du Lac tribal members who carried stories of the role of Ishkode in caretaking our homelands, or the work of researchers like Evan Larson, Nisogaabokwe Melonee Montano, Emily Lockling, Ashla Ojibway, Mocha Reynolds, and Valerie Ross Zhaawendaagozikwe who studied fire scars on old downed pines throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin Point to weave a story of centuries of stewardship. Their teachings and findings are actively combating Indigenous erasure in the history of the Twin Ports through these projects that we all stand to benefit from for centuries to come, and it has been incredibly meaningful to teach about their work in my classes here at UMD,” Walker said.

Making her way through the old-growth canopy of pine, Walker stops periodically to inspect plant life: A resilient raspberry plant sprouting through a bed of pine needles, a patch of fire-resistant bearberry, a red and white pine with intertwined trunks growing in tandem. All of these observations bring back memories of stories she was told when she was young, and that she hopes will be reflected more clearly after the burn.

“This is just one way to have the Native history of this area present in the landscape again,” she said. “I hope that it doesn’t stop here, that there’s not just fire, but other ways that Indigenous peoples and Indigenous stewardship methods start being more central to that way that we think about this place.”