This thesis intends to bring to popular consciousness the historical and ongoing injustices committed against Indigenous peoples by sharing the knowledges and experiences of a number of Dakota people in Minnesota. Part landscape analysis, part ethnography, and by most substantially relying on narrative and lengthy excerpts from interviews, I challenge the dominant notion that Minnesota is a non-Native space. Rather, Mni Sota Makoce, the land where the waters reflect the sky, with a place called Bdote at its center, forms the traditional territory of the Dakota Oyate, the Dakota Nation. More specifically, this thesis tells a story about Dakota peoples\u27 struggle to maintain and assert their relationships to urban public spaces in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region as indisputably Dakota places
