Tekakwitha Conference honors God’s gifts of water, wisdom

By Joe Ruff

The Catholic Spirit

Celebrating Native American Catholics’ cultures and traditions along with a special Mass with Archbishop Bernard Hebda were the focus July 22 of the 84th annual Tekakwitha Conference in the Twin Cities.

Several hundred people traveled by bus from a hotel in Bloomington, where most of the national conference was held July 19-23, to the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul for a cultural day that included a morning water ceremony with prayers and hymns honoring God’s gift of the precious resource and its life-giving importance. The day wrapped up back at the hotel with a powwow that included drumming, chanting and dancing.

Maryanna Harstad of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and program director at Gichitwaa Kateri in Minneapolis guided the water ceremony with stories, prayers and hymns. She noted that the outdoor gathering at St. Thomas was only five miles away from the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, which in Dakota and Ojibwe spirituality is considered a place of creation and healing. Water used in the ceremony was drawn from Minnesota’s Lake Itasca, at the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

Dana Thompson, a descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota tribes, spoke in a nearby auditorium about her effort to re-establish Native foods to combat economic and health crises affecting Native communities.

Thompson explained the truth in the meaning of “Mother Earth.”

“We are of the earth. And the plants around us are here as teachers,” said Thompson, citing the health benefits of electrolytes found in birch syrup and protein-packed fiddlehead ferns. Thompson’s