When I think about how the Ojibwe have helped shape this great state, I tend to separate the ways we have influenced the land from the ways we have influenced its people.

Maybe I do this because the Ojibwe worldview could not conceive of influencing the land, or aki (earth). So any notion of who influences what must be turned upside down and inside out by asking: “In what ways has aki shaped us? In what ways has everything about this land and sky, this place called Minnesota—all things animate, inanimate, and spiritual—shaped the Ojibwe?”

How the Ojibwe have helped shape the state’s people—inc...