Remembrance Day For Lost Species

Join us to commemorate and reflect on the lost species on International Remembrance Day for Lost Species. 

We will gather at 2 pm in the Visitor Center to share our connections to places, bodies of water, and species we love; accept accountability; reflect on those lost; and affirm our commitment through action. We will also listen to the musical piece Requiem for the 20th Century, an elegiac work dedicated to lost species, composed by Atuy, a member of the Ainu community in Hokkaido, Japan. 

Afterward, we will go outside to the site of a new collaborative gathering space by Diane Wilson (writer) and Christine Baeumler (artist), dedicated to lost species while restoring native habitat.

Diane and Chris will facilitate the event. Please bring clothes for going outside and, if you wish, two small stones. We will also have some stones on hand. 

“November 30th is Remembrance Day For Lost Species. The day encourages you to dive deep into the stories of extinct and critically endangered species, cultures, ways of life, and ecological communities, whose loss is often rooted in violent and discriminatory governing practices. It is an opportunity for participants to commit in order to avoid further loss of cultural and biological diversity.” Learn More

Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, educator, and bog steward who has published five award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications. Wilson’s 2021 novel, The Seed Keeper, (Milkweed Editions) received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, was selected for the 2025-26 NEA Big Read, and is published in France. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson’s middle-grade biography: Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. She is a co-author of a picture book, Where We Come From, (Lerner Publishing), winner of the 2023 Carter G. Woodson award.

Her most recent essays—which explore seed advocacy, food sovereignty, social justice, and cultural recovery—have been featured in acclaimed anthologies, including: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (2021); We Are Meant to Rise (2021); and A Good Time for the Truth (2016) as well as in notable environmental publications, including Orion: Nature and Culture and Emergence.

Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.

Wilson is enrolled on the Sicangu Oyate (Rosebud) reservation in South Dakota, and is a Mdewakanton descendent. She lives near the St. Croix River in Minnesota, where she cares for an Indigenous seed garden, native perennials for pollinators, and a Tamarack bog.

Christine Baeumler

As an artist and educator, Christine Baeumler explores art as a catalyst to increase awareness about ecological issues and to facilitate stewardship. Baeumler ‘s art practice is collaborative and involves the transformation of urban sites by increasing biodiversity, providing habitat, and improving water quality. Examples of these projects include the Tamarack Rooftop Restoration, a green roof bog ecosystem at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which calls attention to fragile bog ecosystems. Pollinators at the Plains is the sustainable redesign of the Plains Art Museum’s outdoor campus and a youth internship program, Buzz Lab. For Northern Light.mn’s Climate Chaos, Climate Rising program, Baeumler is embarking on a year long citizen science project titled “Backyard Phenology: Tracking Nature’s Cycles in a Changing Climate” which features a mobile phenology lab where people can contribute observations about changes in seasonal patterns.

Baeumler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota (Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice). She has received support from the Bush Foundation, McKnight Artist Fellowship, MN State Arts Board, Public Art Saint Paul, Forecast Public Art and Art Place America. She has a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Indiana University.

This work is funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Center with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created by a vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.