Duluth, MN | Peace Making City | DuluthPeaceWalk.org

A Yoga North ISYI Project | DuluthPeaceWalk.org | DuluthPeaceWalk@gmail

Destination 6 PEACE BELL GARDEN

Destination 8 SISTER CITIES PARK

Now we retrace our steps past the Center for Non-Violence into Lake Place Park, and take a right. Just beyond another open plaza area a bell sits on a retaining wall. This is the Peace Bell Garden, a place to memorialize victims of gun violence, and promote action to end it. The Peace Bell Garden was a gift from the City of Duluth and dedicated by the Million Mom March, in 2002. The bell was donated by the Train Museum.

Just beyond The Arising statue, to the right, is the newest part of Gichi-Ode’ Akiing—the Sister Cities Park. It is designed to be a quiet, meditative space with benches for resting. Like the rest of the park, it looks over “the blue highway” (Lake Superior) to the rest of the world. It is a good place to contemplate your experience and imagine a new kind of world.There are other places we could send you that tell more of our peacemaking story.

Destination 7 |MTHE ARISING

In the center of the open space is, “The Arising” sculpture. Many people see this as the defining centerpiece for the personality of our city. The hands lifting the dove of peace were cast from a few of Duluth’s many peacemakers.

We would like to honor the work of Loaves and Fishes, Men as Peace-makers and Echoes of Peace Choir for their contributions in making Duluth a special peacemaking city.It is an invitation to others in our city, and we hope visitors, to look for ways to promote peace, and put our hands to the task.

This short walking tour gives you a flavor of a special dimension of Duluth. We hope it stirs your imagination.

GICHI-ODE ’AKIINGLAKE PLACE PARK

Maybe you go from here and say with us:It’s a crazy violent world out there, but not in my town.

We will work for world peace and raise symbols of another way.

And change the culture of violence one city at a time.

—Brooks Anderson, Peacemaker of Duluth for 50+ years

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Starting Place |MTHE LITTLE PORTAGE—ONIGAMIISING

Destination 2 |MSISTER CITIES SCULPTURE GARDENDestination 4 |MCENTER FOR NON-VIOLENCE

Destination 5 |MCLAYTON, JACKSON, MCGHIE MEMORIALDestination 3 |MGICHI-ODE’ AKIING

Destination 1 |MKOREAN AND VIETNAM MEMORIALS

We begin our Peace Walk at the place the Anishinaabe people named Onigamiising—the Little Portage. Take time here at the western most point of the Great Lakes to reflect on your relationship to the land upon which we walk and the abundant resources which support us. Our hope is that as we treat the Earth and Water with respect and dignity, we will also commit to the same ethical relationship with our fellow human beings.

Cross the boardwalk and take a half-right up the ramp to Gichi-Ode’ Akiing. When you arrive at the top, look to the right to the Sculpture Garden with sister city monuments. For more than thirty years Duluth has had a vital sister city program. Note especially that with Ohara Isumi-shi, Japan and Petrozavodsk, Russia we are linked with a people who were once con-sidered the enemy. Each pairing has a dramatic peacemaking story. There is no monument yet, but our fifth sister city is Rania in Iraqi Kurdistan, an area of current global tensions and war.

We will exit Gichi-Ode ’Akiing for the next two stops. The exit takes us to Superior Street. Take a left and walk to end of the block. The building on the left is the Center for Non-Violence. It is the home of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP). This program is known for its pioneering work in responding to domestic violence cases and designing a coordinated com-munity response to the problem.

Just beyond the sister city monuments is a slightly sunken gathering place. This area has recently been renamed “Gichi-Ode’ Akiing,” Anishinaabe for “A Grand Heart Place.”We are a city beginning to acknowledge the wrongs done to the original inhabitants. We seek to learn lessons from them on how to live in harmony with our natural environment. What better focal point for this relationship and the restoring of the language, history and visibility of the Anishinaabe and other Tribes at Onigamiinsing—the City of Duluth than this grand overlook of the world’s largest lake.

Take the boardwalk north-bound to the Korean and Vietnam memorials. As you browse the names of those who have given their lives ask the question:“What can we do so that no more memorials need to be built?”

Between the two war memorials is the anchor from the USS Duluth. This is a good moment to note that the USS Des Moines (a destroyer ship) is not in our harbor. In the late eighties, a proposal to make it a permanent monument was rejected by our peacemaking community with leadership from veterans.

Now cross Second Avenue East and walk across Superior Street. Continue up Second Avenue to First Street (one block). At the corner on the left is the Clayton, Jackson, McGhie Memorial. This is the site of a 1920 lynching of three young Black men. While this entire walk is designed to be meditative, this site demands it. It is a place to contemplate how

a city can face its past, learn from its mistakes, and draw inspiration from its martyrs. Many US cities have lynching trees or other sites of racial atrocities, but we are not aware of any other cities that have erected similar monu-ments to commemorate past mistakes. It has been a useful tool in trying to understand and correct long standing patterns of racism.

The message from those veterans was: “Don’t do anything that glorifies war.”

For more than thirty years they have offered trainings on how to design similar programs for other communities and cultures, many of them on the third floor of this building. Thousands have attended these trainings and the “Duluth Model” is known around the world.