The Dakota people have a creation myth that explains not just how they came to be, but how they view the universe and their place within it.

In the beginning, they were the star people, beings of light who walk the Spirit Road, which

we know today as the Milky Way.

One day they tumbled from the sky and crashed to the earth, joining with the soil.

The ground opened to receive them, and where they landed, a pair of bluffs rose

to frame two great rivers. Then the creator reached down between those bluffs and scooped up

fistfuls of mud, and from it he formed the first man and woman, the earliest ancestors of the

Dakota. It's a strange story that says something profound.

We are not separate from the land.

We are the land.

But this wasn't just any land.

The spot where the creator molded the first people was known as Bedugte,

which means the place where waters meet.

It's a real physical location

at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers

in what is now central Minnesota.

For the Dakota, it is the center of the world

and the earth's most sacred point.

But history hasn't been kind to many of the Dakota's holy places.

Bedugte became the site of a U.S. military fort,

then the foundation for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Today, millions pass

through without knowing they are treading on sacred ground. But places like this don't lose their

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