For more than two decades, a Native-run nonprofit has worked to restore a former industrial site along the railroad tracks in east St Paul to once again reflect its importance as a sacred Dakota site, Waḳaƞ Ṭípi. Now, with the opening of the Waḳaƞ Ṭípi Center at the very site, the organization’s director says, it can “bring people home.”
The site, known as the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary before it was renamed ‘Waḳaƞ Ṭípi’ last year, had lain vacant after a century of industrial use. A new 7,500 square foot center at the site features an exhibit hall, classrooms, ceremony space, a community gathering area, a teaching kitchen, and teaching gardens. It will host events, educational programming, and offer a gathering space for prayers, ceremonies, and celebrations.
The project, which started construction in May 2024, had been in the planning stage for 11 years, after even longer years of study. It is a $13.5 million project with $6.5 million in funding from the Minnesota Legislature as well as municipal and private donations.
“This has always been a place of ceremony,” said Maggie Lorenz, executive director of Waḳaƞ Ṭípi Awaƞyaƞkapi, which earlier was known as the Lower Phalen Creek Project. It is the site of a cave that Dakota people long have considered sacred. “People have come here to grieve the loss of relatives and host ceremonies for that. We’ve had ceremonies here for people to receive their Dakota names, and we haven’t had a place like that, especially in St. Paul, for a long time, where we can do those kinds of things in a place that is ours.”
“What we’re able to do now with this place is bring people home,” Lorenz said.
“This is what we mean when we say we want land back,” Cole Redhorse Taylor, a Dakota artist and a member of the center’s steering committee recalled saying in the spring of 2023 at a gathering that unveiled its blueprint. “We don’t mean to take land from people and kick them out and whatnot. As Dakota people, as Indigenous people, we mean ‘land back’ as in, to stand up for the land, to speak for the land, to steward the land, and to protect the land as well.”
Sam Olbekson, founder and CEO of Full Circle Indigenous Planning + Design, which designed and built the center, said it was designed to capture the essence of the landscape.
The design incorporated input from community members of different backgrounds. “The idea was that the building connected you to the outside,” Olbekson said. “It wasn’t really about [it as] the destination, but it was the whole area and its relationship to the sacred cave, its relationships to the cliffs, its relationship to the trees, and to the restored prairie that was there. So as we designed the building, we drew the site and the building as one, and so the indoors and the outdoors really bled into each other.”
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Upon walking through the doors, people will be greeted by the 13 Dakota moons painted on a circular ceiling panel, at the center of which is an LED constellation that will change with the season. To the left of the center is a gallery that features Native plant medicines (also arranged with the season), an interactive digital presentation of the history of different Dakota sites in the state and a collection of photos put together by Redhorse Taylor that speak to the history of Waḳaƞ Ṭípi.
Further ahead is an installation of a ribbon skirt, cradle board, beadwork, quillwork, and more by five female Dakota artists. Finally, to the left, is a map of Minnesota with the Dakota and Ojibwe names from the book ‘Where the Waters Gather and the Rivers Meet’ by Paul C. Durand. The gallery leads out of the building and into the outdoor space which has a seating area and a garden. A gravelled path trails off into the nature sanctuary from the center.
Dakota and Lakota artist Thomasina Top Bear says she used to come down to the railroad site as a teenager to paint on the trains and “cause mischief.” Now, her mural sits at the front of the center, spray painted on a container. The mural, created with the participation of a group of Native youth, features the Prairie Rose plant, a cottonwood tree, the limestone and sandstone bluffs, milkweed, bumblebees, hummingbirds, and a river made out of braids representing connection.
“It was really cool, and it’s very full circle,” Top Bear said. “I grew up in foster care and in a native youth shelter in St. Paul, and so some of those same people also use that space and are doing things in the community to bring that space back. This means that there’s going to be a whole next generation of young people that use that site and feel connected towards it.”
Expanded parking, additional landscaping and a storage garage are planned after the construction of the 3rd St/Kellogg Boulevard Bridge Project is completed next year.
History of the site
In the early 2000s, the Lower Phalen Creek Project, an organization of community activists, partnered with the non-profit Trust for Public Land, and state and federal agencies to acquire the abandoned industrial site from the railroad and transferred it to the City of Saint Paul for public use.
At the time, the organizations’ leaders surveyed residents about possible uses for the land. Proposals ranged from condominium development to soccer fields and a dog park. But one survey respondent noted that the area was a sacred Dakota site and urged organizers to consult with tribal communities.
That comment reshaped the direction of the project. Organizers commissioned a cultural resources study, which found the site held deep significance for the Dakota Oyate as a place of gathering, trade and burial for ancestors. The site is home to 450 million-year-old limestone and sandstone bluffs, spring-fed wetlands and the sacred Wakąŋ Tipi cave where spirits are believed to dwell (Waḳaƞ Ṭípi means ‘the dwelling place of the sacred’). The insides of the cave featured petroglyphs documenting Dakota history, which were destroyed due to colonization and the expansion of the railroad.
Following consultations with tribal communities, the project shifted away from commercial or recreational development toward restoring the land to a more natural landscape that reflected its cultural and spiritual importance.
The site was initially named after former U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento, who supported the restoration project. But community leaders say the land already carried a Dakota name.
In 2022, the Lower Phalen Creek Project transitioned to Native leadership. In May 2025, the City of Saint Paul, in collaboration with four Minnesota Dakota Tribes: Upper Sioux Community, Lower Sioux Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, renamed the cultural landscape encompassing Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary and Indian Mounds Regional Park. It is now designated as Imniżaska (White Cliffs). Within this landscape, the two individual sites were renamed as Waḳaƞ Ṭípi and Wic̣aḣapi (Dakota cemetery).
Following consultations with tribal communities, the project shifted away from commercial or recreational development toward restoring the land to a more natural landscape that reflected its cultural and spiritual importance.
The site was initially named after former U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento, who supported the restoration project. But community leaders say the land already carried a Dakota name.
In 2022, the Lower Phalen Creek Project transitioned to Native leadership. In May 2025, the City of Saint Paul, in collaboration with four Minnesota Dakota Tribes: Upper Sioux Community, Lower Sioux Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, restored the name of the cultural landscape encompassing Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary and Indian Mounds Regional Park. It is now designated as Imniżaska (White Cliffs). Within this landscape, the two individual sites were renamed as Waḳaƞ Ṭípi and Wic̣aḣapi (Dakota cemetery).
Restoration
Waḳaƞ Ṭípi is an unexpected sanctuary between the railroad tracks, an industrial complex, and ongoing construction in the area. It is punctuated by listening posts throughout the trail with stories of the land, Dakota traditional practices, significance of Native plants, and more narrated in English and Dakota. There is also an option to simply “Listen to the Land”. Many species, plant and animal, have since returned to the site, including a recently-sighted beaver, which is considered a sign of a healthy ecosystem.
But this land looked nothing like this when restoration began.
The Waḳaƞ Ṭípi cave itself was blasted open during the construction of the railroad. The land was inundated by invasive species and polluted by chemicals due to years of industrial use.
Through the restoration work, Waḳaƞ Ṭípi Awaƞyaƞkapi was “able to implement Indigenous land management practices and bring our traditional ecological knowledge,” Lorenz said. “It’s really about our DNA connection to this land as Native people. These are our homelands, and we are connected physically and spiritually to these lands.” The connection is also a source of generations-long wisdom of how plants relate to each other and to the ecosystem in this climate and in this land, bringing a “holistic view” of restoration, Lorenz said.
This work included manual removal of those invasive species, holding land acknowledgement ceremonies, bringing back Native plants, pollinators, and birds to the site. The project also restored the bluff, repurposed limestone slabs from former railroad operations into a waterfall, stone bridge, stairway and ponds, and planted 7.5 acres of Native trees that help capture and store stormwater in three clear-water ponds and adjacent wetlands rather than letting it flow directly into the Mississippi River.
The organization also holds Dakota language classes as part of this revitalization process. “Our elders, they say… the land needs to hear the language. And so, Indigenous Dakota people were put here on this land, and our language was gifted to us here, and the land recognizes that language, and so that’s part of the restoration here as well, is revitalizing our language, revitalizing our life ways,” Lorenz said.
