The Northern Lights, photographed northeast of Faribault near Cannon City (with a treeline in the foreground) around 9 p.m. Tuesday, November 11. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo November 2025)
IT TOOK A LIFE TIME, but I finally saw the Northern Lights for the first time. Ever. And they were poetic, artistic, inspiring, incredible, wondrous, glorious…all the adjectives you can use to describe a dark night sky colored with streaks of green, red and pink.
Randy and I were sitting comfortably in the warmth of our southern Minnesota home Tuesday evening when our son texted that he could see the Northern Lights even in the city lights of Boston. A photo proved it. Then the daughter who lives 35 minutes to the north of us texted that they, too, could see the lights in Lakeville, south of the Twin Cities. Photos proved it.
We popped up, grabbed our coats and set out to see for ourselves. We didn’t have to drive far into the countryside before we noticed the first streaks of light. Turning onto a gravel road, we parked, stepped outside and turned our eyes heavenward. Then we eventually tried to figure out how to photograph the majestic scene above us on our smartphones, with only minimal success.
While I would have loved some spectacular images, what matters most is that I saw, with my own eyes, that which I’ve wanted to see my entire life. Others were doing the same. We counted about a dozen vehicles parked along rural roads, the occupants gazing skyward.
This imprinted upon me how something like the Northern Lights can bring people outdoors, appreciating this beautiful natural world that surrounds us and, which on this November evening, put on a spectacular light show.
TELL ME: Have you seen the Northern Lights? When and where? How would you describe them?
(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo September 2022)
IN THE PAST YEAR, my desire to learn more about Native American culture has heightened. My new interest followed a talk in September 2022 by then Rice County Historical Society Director Susan Garwood about “The Indigenous history of the land that is now Rice County, Minnesota.” This county, this community, in which I live was home first to Indigenous peoples, long before the first settlers, the fur traders, the Easterners who moved west.
This sculpture of Alexander Faribault and a Dakota trading partner stands in Faribault’s Heritage Park near the Straight River and site of Faribault’s trading post. Ivan Whillock created this art which sits atop the Bea Duncan Memorial Fountain. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)
I knew that, of course. But what I didn’t know was that the Wahpekute, one of the seven “Council Fires” of the Dakota Nation, used the current-day Wapacuta Park just up the hill from my house for honoring their dead.
This Faribault city park, where my kids once zipped down a towering slide, clamored onto a massive boulder, slid on plastics sleds, was where the Wahpekute many years ago placed their dead upon scaffolding prior to burial. That ground now seems sacred to me.
That it took 40 years of living here to learn this information suggests to me that either I wasn’t paying attention to local history or that my community has not done enough to honor the First Peoples of this land.
(Book cover sourced online.)
Whatever the reason, I have, on my own, decided to become more informed about Indigenous peoples. And for me, that starts with reading. I recently headed to the children’s section of my local library and checked out the book, The Forever Sky, written by Thomas Peacock (a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Anishinaabe Ojibwe) and illustrated by Annette S. Lee (mixed-race Lakota-Sioux of the Ojibwe and Lakota-Sioux communities).
These two Minnesotans, in their collaborative children’s picture book, reveal that “the sky and stars all have stories.” Oh, how I value stories. And the stories shared in this book, these sky stories, are of spirits and animals and the Path of Souls, aka The Milky Way, and…
I especially appreciate the book’s focus on the northern lights, explained as “the spirits of all of our relatives who have passed on.” The descriptive words and vivid images make me view the northern lights, which I have yet to see in my life-time, through the eyes of Indigenous peoples. The changing blues and greens are their loved ones dancing in the night sky. Dancing, dancing, dancing. How lovely that imagery in replacing loss with hope and happiness.
The Forever Sky has created an awareness of Native culture previously unknown to me. Just like that talk a year ago by a local historian aiming to educate. I have much to learn. And I am learning via books found not only in the adult section of the library, but also among the children’s picture books. That writers and illustrators are covering topics of cultural importance in kids’ books gives me hope for the future. My grandchildren, even though they will never see the vast, dark, star-filled sky I saw nightly as a child of the prairie, are growing up much more informed. They will understand cultures well beyond their own heritage. And that encourages me.
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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