This land sits on the stolen, unceded Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, the ancestral name for what now is called North America. More specifically, Rootsprings is located on land first stewarded by the Dakota, Ojibwe, and Anishinaabe.
With full awareness that a land acknowledgment does not begin to address the complexities of our relationship to the Indigenous stewards of this land, we offer this acknowledgment as a starting place to decolonize the connections between our communities. As a Black and Queer-led organization facilitating access for BIPOC and LGBTQ folx to connect with nature; we work to move in right relationship to the land and in alignment with Indigenous communities.
For years many BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists and activists named the urgent need for healing spaces that “look like us, talk like us, and act like us.” After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, when Minneapolis became the epicenter of the global uprising against systemic racism, this need reached a crisis point. BIPOC frontline workers were running on fumes, taking little to no time to retreat, rest, and rejuvenate while bearing the brunt of the harm resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and long-standing systemic injustices. From this, three lesbian BIPOC couples deeply steeped in Minnesota’s artist and organizing communities came together to form Rootsprings Cooperative and raise funds to purchase the land outright.
In 2020, The Fields at Rootsprings was established to provide land-based programs for the healing, development and community well-building of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists, activists, healers and communities in Minnesota and beyond.
