How You Can Help!
The Lower Phalen Creek Project is requesting bonding funds to develop and construct Wakan Tipi Center. The state legislature will soon consider our request for bonding money to build the Wakan Tipi Center. It is a critical time, and we have a strategy to garner majority legislative support. One important part of that strategy is your help in writing to our legislators and urging them to support the request. Your voices, as leaders in the community, will make an impact! Please also forward this to your connections in the community to ask them to write as well – the more people who write, the better.
Here are links to the House and Senate Capital Investment Committee members’ email addresses:
Please write to as many of the legislators as you can, but especially write to any legislators you may know personally or who represent your community. Also send copies of any communications to our local legislators who are sponsoring this request (House File 494 and Senate File 573) and thank them for their leadership and support of this request. They are: Representative Sheldon Johnson at rep.sheldon.johnson@house.mn and Senator Foung Hawj at sen.foung.hawj@senate.mn.
We encourage you to use the following ideas to help write a letter or email:
- Please support an appropriation of $3 million for a grant to the City of Saint Paul for Wakan Tipi Center at the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary.
- The Lower Phalen Creek Project will match funds from the State of Minnesota with an additional $3.7 million from non-state and primarily private sources.
- The Lower Phalen Creek Project and the City of Saint Paul have entered into a formal development agreement.
- It is our intention to build and operate Wakan Tipi Center with three primary objectives: 1. To honor, accurately interpret and educate the community about the rich and diverse cultural and natural history and features of the site and the Lower Phalen Creek corridor. 2. To honor the significance of Wakan Tipi Cave as a Dakota sacred site. 3. To create a gathering place and visitor facility for the community and visitors from far and wide.
- Funding for this project was given serious consideration in the last bonding bill, and we very nearly received it.
- This year is the 250th anniversary of the first visit to Wakan Tipi Cave, a Dakota Sacred Site, by a European explorer. It would be most appropriate to honor the cultural and historic significance of this site this year by approving funding for its ongoing protection and interpretation.
- This year is also the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service, which has been a strong advocate and partner in the protection of this site within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.
- If you have any questions, please contact Dan McGuiness at dan@dmcguiness.com or (651) 260-6260 or Melanie Kleiss, Executive Director at mkleiss@lowerphalencreek.org or (612) 581-8636.
- Sincerely, [your name] [your city/town] [your group affiliation, profession, and/or other info about you]