Though colonial forces have attempted to obscure and even erase Indigenous presence from the Upper Mississippi River valley landscape, Heid Erdrich’s 2013 poemeo (poem-video) “Pre-Occupied” asserts the continuation of Indigenous interactions with the river, intervening in both the acts of colonial imagination and of settlement that disposed Indigenous people. Instead of conceiving of time as sequential and irreversible, Erdrich draws on an ideology in which multiple histories are relevant within a locale simultaneously. This temporal multiplicity underscores that the past can never be disconnected from the present and future. Specifically, Erdrich draws attention to the way colonial endeavors precede and inform the present social and environmental issues that Indigenous peoples face, including the ironic “occupations” movements, struggles for land claims, and restrictive stereotypes. 

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By inserting her art into the history of the Upper Mississippi River, Erdrich asserts the historic and continued Indigenous presence in the St. Anthony Falls area. By showing how temporalities can overlap and reemerge with alterations, Erdrich rethinks the future for Indigenous peoples in ways that push back against the assumptions of colonial forces such as Pike who envision Indigenous erasure. Rather than an end to Indigenous art along the Upper Mississippi River, Erdrich’s poemeo portrays a new surge of art that, while recalling Indigenous histories, uses digital media to advocate for Indigenous rights in the present and future.