Our Land & Community Mural
Table of Contents
Our Mural Story
In the Fall of 2024, the Writing Center community was inspired by the work of Indigenous scholar Dr. Andrea Riley-Mukavetz (Chippewa of Thames First Nation/Crane Clan) and the research she shared in a professional development seminar. and the research she shared in a professional development seminar, and we began collaborative conversations about a mural that would encourage engaged reflection on land, labor, language, and belonging in community. Through listening sessions and working groups, these conversations developed into action plans in the academic year of 2024-2025 when the center’s Community Engagement Committee took up this work in collaboration with campus and community partners.
In the 2025-2026 academic year, the Writing Center engaged Dustin Hunt, a Michigan-based multidisciplinary creative and Muralmatics Founder, to begin envisioning and designing a community-engaged, participatory mural. During the design process, Dustin facilitated discussions with groups of students and faculty from across campus and created a participatory “paint by numbers” process that invited MSU WC staff, students, and community partners to co-create the mural.
On October 30, 2025, the center hosted a community painting day and invited students, faculty, staff, campus partners, and community members to join in dedicated painting time in the center, and in spring of 2026, Dustin put the finishing touches on the mural.
We use this webpage as a place to host dynamic activities that invite community members to engage with the mural by considering our relationships with each other, Michigan land, and Indigenous stories.
Considering Michigan Land and Nature
What Michigan Flora and Fauna do you recognize?
The muskrat is a medium rodent that is semiaquatic and herbivorous. According to Bridge Michigan, muskrats create lodges from vegetation and burrow into riverbanks for shelter. In a recent study, researchers from Loyola University in Chicago collaborated with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and found that muskrats helped to reduce the presence of cattails, an invasive species to the Great Lakes wetlands.
Rosepink flowers have many names and are native to Michigan, and currently threatened.
The Sleeping Bear Dunes are made up of sand beaches and dunes that stand above 450 feet above Lake Michigan. The Dunes are over 12,000 years old, formed by glaciers depositing land. For more information about the Sleeping Bear Dunes, visit the National Park Service website.
The National Lakeshore is named after the Anishinabek Story of the Sleeping Bear. Two stories are commonly told about the Dune, which once resembled a sleeping bear. In both stories, the sleeping bear is a Mother Bear whose cubs drowned in the lake trying to get to her. The Mother Bear now looks out onto the lake at her cubs, who became two little islands.
According to All About Birds, the Great Blue Heron features blue-gray plumage and flies with its neck tucked in and long legs trailing behind. The heron stands still or wades in water as it looks for prey, moving slowly until they strike. Great Blue Heron’s can be seen all around Michigan, and many of our consultants have shared stories of seeing a great Blue Heron right on the Red Cedar River that flows behind Bessey Hall.
Pitcher’s Thistle is a threatened plant that was likely once fairly common across the Michigan Sand Dunes. Pitcher’s Thistles only flower once in their lifetime, and it can take up to 12 years for them to flower.
According to the Great Lakes Commission, the Great Lakes and their connecting channels make up the largest freshwater system on earth. They hold an estimated six quadrillion gallons of water–about one-fifth of the world’s freshwater supply, and nine-tenth of the United States’ freshwater supply.
About the Muskrat
The Muskrat is featured in many indigenous stories. Below, we feature two tellings Muskrat’s story, and narrated videos to go along with each retelling.
Skywoman Falling
Turtle Island, The Ojibway/Anishinabe Creation Story
Reflecting on Land
In the writing center, we consider the intricate connection between language, forced displacement, and colonialism. As Andrea Riley Mukavetz reminds us, we are called to “develop a rich, deep, and reciprocol relationship to the land you dwell on and the Indigenous people of that land — to carry those histories, cultures and teachings with you in your writing, research, and everyday practice.” We understand our commitment and ongoing responsibility of continuing to reflect on the land we are on and build community and connection with Indigenous communities, particularly the Anishinaabeg. Below we offer some activities to consider as you reflect on your own relationship with land and nature.
Native Land Digital and Whose Land are both digital mapping tools that allow you to interact with and learn more about the land you’re on and the Indigenous communities connected with it! We encourage you to use this mapping tool to learn about Michigan and all of the various places you come from!
Mapping Inequality offers a detailed map historicizing redlining in Lansing. Feel free to click through this interactive website.
- Who or what has been displaced for me to be here on this land?
- Whose labor has made it possible for me to be on this land?
- How have I benefited from others’ labor and the displacement of people, animals, and flora on this land?
- How can I honor the land as I benefit from a history of displacement?
- How can I honor the people who have been displaced?
- What indigenous organizations are around or near you that you can learn from
Land Acknowledgement
As we consider land in Michigan, we invite our community to consider the words of Dr. Suban Nur Cooley, “We cannot move forward without acknowledging the histories of those connected to the Transatlantic Slave Trade in this space. The relations we’re forming here today are built upon the violent history of relations that were occupied, moved, removed– and this colonial impact is interwoven into the fabric of this nation, this space, and this moment.”
Additionally, as the Michigan State University Department of American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) reminds us, Land Acknowledgements are a responsibility and a commitment, and “these Acknowledgements must be preceded by relationships with living Indigenous people, communities, and nations. This declaration must then be followed with ongoing commitments to these same communities” (https://aiis.msu.edu/land/).
Below, we share the provisional land acknowledgment offered by AIIS:
We collectively acknowledge that Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. We recognize, support, and advocate for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold Michigan State University more accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples
Read more at the AIIS Webpage