A small piece of Minneapolis is headed for a much bigger sky. A handmade Ojibwe cloth star map rooted in the Seven Grandfather Teachings, created by Minneapolis elder Dennis “Pebaamibines” Jones, is set to travel with NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon. The small textile charts the Corona Borealis constellation and serves as a teaching tool. It was presented in Minneapolis this week and is slated to join the mission's collection of keepsakes.
According to MPR News, Jones held the cloth map at a Minneapolis gathering and described it as a tool for teaching the Seven Grandfather Teachings. MPR News reports that the piece, which the story notes represents Corona Borealis, will fly aboard Artemis II with an astronaut as part of the mission's official and personal mementos.
How cultural items get to space
NASA allows crews to carry small keepsakes on missions via an Official Flight Kit (OFK) and individual Personal Preference Kits (PPKs). As outlined by NASA, Artemis II launched April 1 on a roughly 10-day lunar flyby carrying four crewmembers. The OFK manifest transcribed by collectSPACE lists a range of flags and small artifacts, including stickers representing Indigenous groups, underscoring that symbolic cultural items are part of the mission's payload.
What the Seven Grandfathers teach
The Seven Grandfather Teachings, commonly rendered as wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility and truth, are guiding principles in Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) tradition and are passed down by elders through stories and ceremony. Local education programs embed these values into language and culture classes, as described by the district's Anishinaabe education program. For community members, the cloth map ties sky knowledge to those values, turning a small textile into a portable lesson.
A local elder's reach
Dennis Jones, who uses the Ojibwe name Pebaamibines, has taught Ojibwe language and served as an elder-in-residence for regional programs for decades, according to the Seven Generations Education Institute. His work in language revitalization and cultural teaching connects classroom instruction with ceremony and storytelling across Minnesota and nearby Ontario. Community leaders say sending one of his teaching tools on Artemis II means those lessons will literally travel farther than before.
For Minneapolis audiences the gesture carries both spiritual and civic weight, as a piece of regionally rooted knowledge will travel beyond Earth alongside a major national mission. The Artemis II crew launched April 1 for a 10-day lunar flyby and is scheduled to return in mid-April, and those involved in preparing the map say the inclusion highlights how Indigenous voices and teachings are finding space, both symbolically and literally, in contemporary exploration.
