Lower Phalen Creek Project is a Native-Led, East Side environmental conservation nonprofit. Founded in 1997 by community activists, our project area stretches from Lake Phalen to the Mississippi River and throughout the East Side River District. Our work is powered by a dedicated board, staff, and community of volunteers.

The landscape of Indian Mounds is a sacred place of burial. It is a cemetery built by ancestors of living people. The place has deep significance to the Upper Sioux Community, Lower Sioux Community, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prairie Island Indian Community, Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, and other descendants of those who are buried here. It is home to the only known remaining burial mounds within the Minneapolis-Saint Paul urban core.

North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS), founded by James Beard award winners The Sioux Chef, is dedicated to addressing the economic and health crises affecting Native communities by re-establishing Native foodways. We imagine a new North American food system that generates wealth and improves health in Native communities through food-related enterprises.

NĀTIFS has opened the Indigenous Food Lab in the Midtown Global Market on historic Lake Street in Minneapolis. Midtown Global Market is a vibrant economic and cultural center where community gathers. Home to over 45 businesses spanning over 22 cultures, the Market provides a global experience to its visitors with an extraordinary variety of tastes, arts and crafts as well as music and dance programs throughout the week. Over 1.5 million patrons visit Midtown Global Market each year.

Time for lunch or snacking at the market is built in to this trip.