Honoring Dakota Project Online Community Conversation: Franky Jackson

We are honored to co-present this online conversation led by the Honoring Dakota Project with Dakota Historian Franky Jackson.

Franky is a Dakota historian who specializes in finding creative and effective methods to promote and preserve the various cultures and histories that make Minnesota and the upper Midwest unique. Over the course of his career he has worked closely with communities, organizations, and individuals to develop innovative plans and processes for cultural resource management. A former Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO), Franky understands how to build meaningful partnerships that make history matter. Franky has been very active in the Minnesota tribal preservation community, serving as a Native American Advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a member of the Indian Advisory Council for the Minnesota Historical Society, working with the Dakota Oyate International Repatriation Working Group, and serving as Project Manager for the Dakota NAGPRA Coalition.

Art of the Rural is grateful to collaborate with Honoring Dakota Project, Winona County Historical Society, Engage Winona, and The Cedar Tree Project in the Spillway initiative in Winona, Minnesota, a town located along the Mississippi River in Dakota homelands.

Through support for artists, culture bearers, artisans, and storytellers – alongside the local organizations that support them – Spillway works to create the conditions for engaged projects that honor diverse lived experience, deepen regional relationships, and build rural-urban networks of knowledge-sharing and exchange that will create opportunities for artists, culture bearers, and artisans to thrive and connect with new colleagues and audiences.

We are also grateful for the support of the Chicago Community Foundation.