Mary Annette Pember
ICT
MARQUETTE, Michigan — They stand at the shoreline of Lake Superior like grand monuments to competing ancient civilizations, profound statements about unresolved European colonialization and Indigenous history.
The giant ore dock, which stretches out into the waters, is a potent symbol of a region and city founded on extraction. Nearby, a new sculpture, the Seven Grandfather Teachings, is testament to the Anishinaabe peoples’ cultural and ancestral ties to the lands they have inhabited since time immemorial.
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The dock was built in 1931 and decommissioned in 1971, but it has long dominated the landscape and public story of the city named for French Jesuit priest and missionary Jacques Marquette, who was commissioned in the 1660s by France to explore and claim the region for the French Crown.
Today, a statue of Marquette dedicated in 1897 stands in the city’s Father Marquette Park.
But it wasn’t until the September 2024 unveiling of the Seven Grandfather Teachings that a public monument has marked the history of the Anishinaabe people who occupied an area they call Gichi-namebini Ziibing long before iron ore was discovered in the region in the 1840s.
The sculpture, which features a circle of seven large, locally quarried stones, was created by artist Jason Quigno, a citizen of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. The stones’ composition — kona dolomite and greenstone metamorphic — and the teachings they represent have ancient origins, according to Quigno, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“Those stones are among the oldest on earth and the seven Ojibwe teachings — love, respect, honesty, bravery, truth, humility and wisdom — are ancient instructions given to us thousands of years ago for leading a good life,” Quigno told ICT.
The sculpture was commissioned by the City of Marquette Public Art Commission as part of the city’s seven-mile long Cultural Trail, which is scheduled to be completed by 2026, according to Tiina Morin, arts and culture manager for Marquette.
“It really seemed to me that there was a need for public representation of the Anishinaabe people here,” Morin told ICT. “The art commission really wanted the first substantial piece of art in the project to be created by an Indigenous artist.”
Waterfront history
Marquette’s waterfront today welcomes cyclists, pedestrians, tourists and art enthusiasts.
The space at Spear Dock and Lower Harbor where the ore dock and Seven Grandfather Teachings are located features benches inviting people to sit and enjoy the lakeview and the quiet.
But it wasn’t always this way. The ore dock, with 200 pockets that each can hold 250 tons of ore, served as a means to transport the river of iron ore that flowed from mines in Northern Michigan via railroad cars to ships and on to the world’s steel industries.
The noise and pollution must have been overwhelming. At its peak, Marquette was one of the largest shipping ports for iron ore in the country, and the city’s development aligned with the discovery of iron ore deposits in the region in 1844. Immigrants from England, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Germany and other European countries flocked to the area to work in the mines.
As mining, industrial shipping and railroads declined in the latter part of the 20th century, however, the city’s waterfront deteriorated. According to the National Working Waterfront Network, the area was “characterized by inadequate public access, abandoned industrial land and infrastructure, brownfields and outdated facilities.”
The ore dock, once viewed by some as an eyesore, has evolved into a beloved symbol. Twice a year, in January and November, visitors and locals gather near the dock for “Orehenge,” when the dock perfectly frames the sunrise.
“I guess it’s kind of a monument to colonization, but I think it’s also a really cool-looking structure,” Quigno said.
Beginning in the 21st century, the city began to reimagine its waterfront, transforming it into a walkable, mixed-use area through grants from Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, the National Endowment for the Arts, matching funds from Marquette’s Public Art Fund, the Michigan Native Heritage Fund and others.
Black bear
Quigno is a big man, and a city video of him at work on the sculpture catches him deftly using heavy power tools to carve designs into the stones. It’s a reminder that his Ojibwe name is Niizh Makade Makwaa, or Two Black Bears.
Quigno spent hours walking around quarries in search of the stones for the sculpture.
“It’s one of my favorite things to do,” he said, laughing. “I love stone yards.”
There is something peaceful and eternal for Quigno about the material he uses. He has worked in stone since he was 14 years old, and he came to that love quite by accident. Quigno didn’t set out to be an artist, but when Native artists put on a workshop about stone carving in his community, his mother, Bonnie Ekdahl, insisted he attend.
“I didn’t want to go but she made me,” he recalls. “It just hooked me.”
Now, at age 50, he is a full-time stone carver.
“I wanted the sculpture site to be a place of peace and contemplation, so I put a lot of that intention in the work,” Quigno said. “My purpose is to put our stories into the stone, but it’s the stones themselves that bring out the designs.”
Quigno is currently working on the final element of the sculpture, called Ishode or fire that will stand in the middle of the circle of grandfather stones. It is expected to be finished in 2026.
“I’m going to do three flames representing the Three Fires Confederacy, an ancient alliance of Great Lakes tribes, the Potawatomi (Bodewadmi) Ottawa (Odawa) and Ojibwe,” he said.
“I’m a Native artist, you know. I know the stories and it’s important to have our works here because it’s never been that way,” Quigno told Upper Michigan Source in a 2024 television interview. “We’ve always been in the background, so it’s nice to have our stories and work in the forefront.”
There are 12 federally recognized tribes in Michigan, including five bands of Ojibwe located in the Upper Peninsula. According to Morin, there were about 10 Ojibwe or Anishinaabe villages that lined the nearby shoreline at European contact.
“There are multiple stories to be told about the city’s waterfront, “ Morin said in an interview with British blogger Josh MacIvor-Anderson. “Now, this whole new history of cleaning it up and making it usable for the community — the greening of it.”
“My hope with these interpretive sites is to give us a different way of looking at our shoreline, a different perspective,” she said, “creating spaces for our community to come together, to tell our history and connect past, present and the future.”
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