Reflections on the Potawatomi Trail of Death pilgrimage
Published: February 18, 2026
This article originally appeared in the January 2026 Connector of Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. It is reposted with permission.
By Alaina Dobkowski, MDiv
“Our journey was immediately across the Prairie, which at this point is entirely divested of timber for sixteen miles. The emigrants suffered a good deal, but still appeared to be cheerful.” — Sept. 22, 1838; Military Journal of an Emigrating Party of Pottawatomie Indians
“We soon found ourselves on the Grand Prairie of Illinois, under a burning sun and without shade from one camp to another. They are as vast as the ocean, and the eye seeks in vain for a tree. Not a drop of water can be found there — it was a veritable torture for our poor sick, some of whom died each day from weakness and fatigue.” — Father Benjamin Marie Petit, letter to Bishop Simon Bruté
I grew up in western Michigan and currently live in Grand Rapids. Even though I’ve lived in Michigan for the majority of my life, history books taught me far more about the Trail of Tears (the forced removal of southeastern Indigenous nations) than about the Trail of Death: the 1838 forced removal of Potawatomi people from their ancestral homelands in southern Michigan and northern Indiana (just two hours south of where I live). This history, deeply connected to the land on which I live, has been largely erased from the collective memory of White culture.
Our connection to the story of the land we live on has been severed through intentional forgetting, selective retelling and the manipulation of large portions of the historical narrative. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “We can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-ation.’ In other words, our relationship with the land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?”
Who tells the story matters a great deal. The quotes above present two accounts of the same experience: an arduous journey across the Great Plains on the Trail of Death in 1838. Both were recorded by White men, yet they had vastly different roles and relationships to the Potawatomi. One, believed to be Jesse C. Douglass, was a military agent overseeing the forced removal of the Potawatomi. The other, Father Benjamin Marie Petit, was a priest who served among the Potawatomi people and whom they deeply loved, according to historical accounts and ongoing Potawatomi oral history.
It was not until I was a student at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and learned about the course “The Trail of Death: A Pilgrimage of Remembrance, Lament and Transformation” that I began to understand this history more fully. As students and participants, we traveled the route of the Trail of Death over 10 days, stopping each day to walk portions of it.
As we traveled the route of the Trail of Death, we read these two accounts side by side. The narratives differed dramatically depending on who was telling the story and for what purpose. The contrast was stark: the same day that described people as “appearing cheerful” by one writer was described as “veritable torture” by the other. While Douglass sought to document the fulfillment of his military duties and justify the removal, Father Petit strove to bear honest witness to the suffering he observed.
Throughout our pilgrimage, we entered into practices of lament and truth-telling about the violence of White settler colonialism. We learned from Potawatomi elders and remembered their ancestors. We connected histories of White supremacy and Christian nationalism to current sociopolitical realities, and we saw how narratives continue to be shaped today using similar strategies to justify violence against our neighbors, both locally and globally.
We explored how acts of remembrance and the spiritual practice of lament strengthen our resilience and deepen our commitment to resistance and transformation. This journey profoundly changed my understanding of lament and remembrance as critical spiritual practices as well as the way I practice ministry as a pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Anishinaabe land.
The pilgrimage will be offered again May 11–21, 2026, and I am grateful to be joining as Co-Instructor alongside the incredible team of Katerina Gea, MDiv, Core Adjunct Faculty; George Godfrey, PhD (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), President of the Potawatomi Trail of Death Association; and Rich Meyer, Trip Navigator. I invite those who are interested to join us!
— Alaina Dobkowski, MDiv, is a 2024 graduate of AMBS. She serves as Pastor of Grand Rapids Mennonite Fellowship — a congregation of Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA.
The Trail of Death pilgrimage is open to students and nonstudents. Participants may earn three credit hours of graduate study, take the course as auditors, or join the pilgrimage for no credit. Limit: 15 participants. Sign up by April 1.
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