THIS PROJECT
This project began with questions: what is the Old Indian Trail, why Cadillac to Traverse City, and where did the white markers come from? To answer these questions is to consider the history of Anishinaabe trail systems, travel, seasonal customs, food, trade, and relationships to water and land; Anishinaabe language and ways of storytelling shape the story.
Kchi Wiikwedong Anishinaabek who live in the Grand Traverse region today are the keepers of their history and traditions. This project invites their ways of telling their history and presents them through signage, film, sound, art, and full bilingual translation of text wherever possible.
For decades, one of the only vestiges of Anishinaabe history acknowledged in Traverse City has been the ‘Old Indian Trail, Cadillac to Traverse City,’ which is marked by white concrete trail markers.
The Old Indian Trail is one part of this story of Anishinaabe people and land around the ‘Big Bay’, the Kchi Wiikwedong. The markers were installed in the 1960s and 1980s, and are the inspiration for this current project.
Digitally, this project collects histories of Kchi Wiikwedong Anishinaabek that have resulted from contact with non-Anishinaabek. This is done as much to show what these records reveal (and why) as to show what they cannot.