Thanksgiving Full Moon Walk at Sacred Coldwater Springs
Monday. November 27, 2023
Gather at the park entrance, 7pm
Park on the Hwy 55 access road
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the year after the 6-week Dakota-U.S. War. In 1862 Dakota treaty food was locked away by White storekeepers. The people were starving, the game was gone. The Civil War was raging.
War and food as a weapon continue to be part of our world. But at Dakota gatherings a potluck feast is always part of the program. Hint, hint: our deer relatives at Coldwater love a good apple. White-tailed deer rutting season peaks the last two weeks of November.
Good News from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): In Brackeen v. Haaland the U.S. Supreme Court rejected constitutional challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act. This law seeks to keep Native families together and to ensure that Native children are raised by tribal members.
Friends of Coldwater are grateful that the spring still flows although down from 144,000 gallons per day before the Highway 55 reroute in the 1990s to about 66,000 gpd. Water is what climate change is all about: floods, droughts, warming oceans and devastating storms.
Coldwater is an acknowledged Dakota sacred site. Friends of Coldwater seek to honor our 11,000-year-old landscape ancestor and the people whose dust we stand upon. So we return and return to remember the spirits that feed this Indigenous sacred site.
Full moon walks have been celebrated at Coldwater Springs each month since 2000. Traditional group howl when the moon peeks out.
Sunset 4:35 pm (1-hour and 21-minutes earlier than last full moon now that we’ve “fallen back” to Central Standard Time)
Moonrise 4:32 pm (1-hour and 33-minutes earlier than last month)
9-hours, 9-minutes of daylight
Moment of the full moon: 3:16 am
Snowflakes take 75-minutes traveling at 1.5 mph to fall to Earth from 10,000-feet.
DIRECTIONS: Coldwater Springs is between Minnehaha Park & Fort Snelling, in Minneapolis, just North of the Hwy 55/62 interchange. From Hwy 55/Hiawatha, turn East (toward the Mississippi) at 54th Street, take an immediate right, & drive all the way down the frontage road where you can park at the pay meters.
Gather at the cul-de-sac, which is the Coldwater Park entrance.
Free. All welcome.
#FullMoonWalk #FullMoon #ColdwaterSprings #MinneapolisNature