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MPR News
A journal exploring the history and culture of Minnesota communities. Inform these stories: mprnews.org/nsj
Early fall is one of the best times to be a cook. The farmers markets are still full of summer crops like tomatoes, green beans, cucumber and sweet corn — and fall favorites like apples, sweet potatoes and squash are just arriving.
For chef LaChelle Cunningham, the harvest sparks her imagination. It’s where healthy and flavorful meals start.
Cunningham has been sharing her culinary creativity with the Twin Cities for more than twenty years, ever since friends and family started raving about the dishes she brought to potlucks inspired by the culinary traditions of Black Americans.
In 2012, she started her catering business, Chelles’ Kitchen. A few years later, she became founding executive chef at Breaking Bread Cafe in North Minneapolis, where she developed many of their signature dishes, including a version of her uncle’s sweet potato pie.
Now Cunningham is expanding her mission to teach and support other food entrepreneurs through her latest venture, Healthy Roots Institute.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Cunningham about improvising with the fall harvest and where food intersects with social justice.
Guest:
- LaChelle Cunningham is the founder of Chelles’ Kitchen catering and the Healthy Roots Institute, which offers education, culinary training and certification, business training and ongoing professional support for food entrepreneurs and businesses. She is also interim director of Frogtown Farm in St. Paul. Find all her classes and events here.
Minnesota has a vibrant agricultural heritage. But farming has often been inaccessible for non-traditional growers. The last USDA census found that less than 1 percent of Minnesota farmers were people of color.
That doesn’t line up with Minnesota’s population. According to the 2020 general census, a little more than 22 percent of Minnesotans are people of color.
So how do we fix the gap? How can Minnesota achieve more agricultural equity?
Those were the questions MPR News host Angela Davis took to the biggest celebration of agriculture in our state — the Minnesota State Fair. During a special North Star Journey Live conversation on Tuesday, she talked with a panel of experts about what's working to get emerging farmers in the field, and what barriers are still in their way.
Guests:
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KaZoua Berry, director of Big River Farms
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Marcus Carpenter, Route 1 Farms
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Patrice Bailey, assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and oversees the Emerging Farmers Working Group and the Emerging Farmer Office
North Star Journey Live (formerly known as In Focus) is a live event series and reoccurring topic on MPR News with Angela Davis centered around what Minnesota’s diverse communities need to thrive.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
In early 2022, Jim Denomie, the internationally acclaimed painter, was in the thick of planning a mid-career exhibition with the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Then, cancer struck. Denomie died two weeks after his diagnosis. He was 66.
That exhibition, “The Lyrical Artwork of Jim Denomie,” opened this summer, transformed into a posthumous survey of the latter half of the famous colorist’s career — a career that skewered mainstream histories and purveyors of injustice, from Fort Snelling to Standing Rock, while championing the joy and resilience of Native communities.
“It’s a very bittersweet exhibition,” says Nicole Soukup, an assistant curator of contemporary art at Mia. Soukup had been planning the show closely with Denomie since 2019, up until the Ojibwe artist’s death in 2022.
“He was so beloved, not only in Minneapolis and St. Paul and Minnesota, but across the country and across the world. Words fail when you talk about somebody with such kindness and generosity and such a clear vision as an artist, and my words have failed me quite a bit in creating this exhibition,” she adds.
Truth-teller
Soukup and Denomie’s community say that the exhibition is just the beginning of building a legacy. As is the Jim Denomie Memorial Scholarship, created to help rising Native artists who embody what Denomie valued: truth and community.
“I hope that he continues to inspire artists to do work that also speaks to what’s going on in the world — artists as truth-tellers,” says author Diane Wilson, Denomie’s wife of several decades. “That’s a lot of what Jim was doing — speaking truth, both historically and in the present, about what has happened to and within Native communities, and that I hope will continue. I hope that’s his legacy”
At the entry of the exhibition, a 2016 video interview with Denomie loops.
“My art reflects my identity and experience as a contemporary Native American male in the 21st century,” he says.
Soukup says it was important to include Denomie’s voice first. To allow Denomie to define himself, his art, in his own terms.
“And also it reflects some of the government campaigns that affected Native culture in Minnesota and around the country to how it ultimately affected me through the assimilation campaign and the Relocation Act,” Denomie continues in the video. “And all of these issues defined or shaped my identity, and it’s my identity that shapes my art."
Todd Bockley, of the Minneapolis gallery that represents Denomie, says the artist brought to light difficult histories that many would prefer to keep hidden.
“He was both humble and courageous to create and make public his interpretations of significant historical events of the past and present while also depicting his innermost thoughts and fantasies,” Bockley said.
Denomie’s art
Soukup walks the galleries, surrounded by Denomie’s paintings and totem-like sculptures. There are dreamy paintings of him and Wilson relaxing on a couch; of sensual landscapes with anthropomorphized animals on horseback; of spirituality and sexuality; as well as sculptures made from found objects — shells and plastic thingamabobs, feathers, buttons and bones.
In his most iconoclastic paintings, Denomie, like the 15th-century artist Hieronymus Bosch, packs characters into every inch, collapsing time by pulling them from history, pop culture and current events.
Several make repeat appearances: blue bunnies, a recurring motif that Denomie called “protectors,” the Dakota 38+2, American Indian Movement activists, “Wizard of Oz” characters, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, the Mona Lisa and figures representing Minneapolis police officers infamous for abusing two Native men with “rough rides” in the early 90s.
All of his paintings swirl with his signature palette: violet, indigo, fuschia, turquoise, lime green, mustard yellow. The vibrant colors disarm, inviting in tough stories like a rainbow Trojan horse. These are Denomie’s correctives to the historical record. Soukup and others have said Denomie paints the “ancestral present.”
“These are paintings that you laugh at, and you also want to cry, you don’t know which way you should react to it, but you’re probably going to react both ways,” Soukup said.
Take “Eminent Domain,” a 10-foot-wide canvas with a sort of pictographic map of the U.S.
“Flying high above the scene in the sky, we have an eagle carrying away a dachshund and right next to them, you see Evel Knievel jumping his bike across the church,” Soukup says. “But directly below that you see depictions of sexual abuse by boarding schools and the Catholic Church; you see a depiction of the Ghost Dance from Wounded Knee and the reality of Wounded Knee, both in the 19th century and in the 1970s.”
Across from it hangs “A Beautiful Hero, Woody Keeble.” Denomie has depicted, on horseback in a mountain range, the World War II and Korean War veteran Woodrow Wilson Keeble of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. Taking fire at him are anthropomorphized birds and dogs with machine guns, while blue rabbits dot the snow-covered slopes.
“The works in this room are centered around the theme of a beautiful hero and who determines a hero?” Soukup explains. “The question is who gets to write about history, who gets to learn about history, and what can we learn from questioning our sources about history? That is something that Jim did from the moment he started painting.”
A righteous anger
Denomie was an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band. Born in Hayward, Wis., he grew up in south Minneapolis. In many interviews and talks, he recalls how he knew he wanted to be an artist since he was a little kid, but he dropped out of high school when a counselor discouraged him from pursuing art.
For decades, he did drywall and fell into a life of what he called “partying and addiction.” He returned to art in the 1990s, as well as American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.
“I went back to drywall, but it became a vehicle that allowed me to paint what I wanted to paint and not necessarily what I needed to sell,” Denomie says in the video. “And so I was able to develop more challenging, more witty, political, social commentary, which is probably what I'm most known for today.”
He went on to paint with what Wilson calls a righteous anger, rooted in the government’s treatment of Native people. This included his own family — his grandparents were taken and placed in Native boarding schools.
When Jim was sick with cancer the first time, Wilson, their son, and some friends went to the pipeline protests at Standing Rock in South Dakota. Their son, she says, stayed for months, sending home stories to Denomie about the violent treatment of nonviolent activists. Denomie turned these stories into a series of paintings on Standing Rock, depicting ferocious dogs and fire hoses used on protesters in the dead of winter.
In his paintings, that righteous anger mixed with wit and whimsy to create what Denomie called a “metaphorical realism.” Put another way, his friend, the poet Heid E. Erdrich, wrote in the exhibition catalog that Denomie employed a “postmodern Anishinaabe mapping of events.”
But Denomie’s legacy isn’t only in his art, says Soukup.
“His legacy is going to be a lot of things, and things that we won't even know about, because we're only 16 months after his passing,” Soukup says. “But hand in hand with all of it is mentorship and care for community, friends, family. The amount of people who have stories, the amount of people who Jim gave undivided attention to, is profound.”
Another longtime friend, mentee and fellow Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson, agrees. She calls him her “art dad.” They first met when Carlson was an MFA student in the early 2000s and he visited her studio.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but he was like, ‘Keep doing it,’” says Carlson, who is now based in Grand Marais, Minn. “I feel like I need to do that for other artists now, kind of take the Jim Denomie mandate, and apply it to other artists that are just starting out, because I needed that.”
The two would go on to exhibit together at Mia in the 2007 “New Skins” show. And a few of Carlson’s paintings are currently on display at Mia, just around the corner from Denomie’s show.
Leaving a void
Denomie’s work held a particular place for Indigenous viewers.
“Jim was always saving the last laugh for Native people,” Carlson says. “We have these very hard histories, but he wasn't going to just replay the hard histories, he was going to reserve healing and joy for Native people in his work.”
Like Carlson, textile artist Maggie Thompson recalls always seeing Denomie show up at exhibition openings, whether the artist was just starting out or established.
“I think because of his position in the art world, it was just like really cool to see him show up regardless of who or where,” Thompson says.
Thompson is Ojibwe from the Fond du Lac Band and is based in Minneapolis. She was recently awarded the 2023 Jim Denomie Memorial Scholarship, an award that was created soon after his passing by the Denomie and Wilson Family, and the Minneapolis-based All My Relations Arts, the Native American Community Development Institute, and Bockley Gallery.
Thompson is the second to receive the $10,000 award, after the 2022 inaugural recipient, Duluth artist Jonathan Thunder. She says the award has given her a boost at a moment when she was struggling, both emotionally and financially.
“I was feeling a little lost and a little defeated,” Thompson said. “So I felt like receiving the award kind of gave me the motivation and gave me a reminder of why I do what I do.”
Like Denomie, Thompson has demonstrated great commitment to the community. She mentors and employs young artists, both Native and non-Native, and even toured the Denomie exhibition with them. Thompson also often offers her northeast Minneapolis studio for community events.
“I think art can be an important vehicle to keep that momentum and that engagement and give people another place to feel at home and welcome,” she says.
What’s left behind
Diane Wilson says his community was shocked at Denomie’s quick passing, which sparked the scholarship.
“There was just this outpouring of ‘What can we do? How can we help?’” Wilson says. “That’s why we set up that scholarship, because people needed to do something, so they poured their grief into donations.”
In the wooded hills of Shafer, Minn., Wilson walks the grounds of the home and studios she long shared with Denomie.
She points to a line of old carousel horses lying in tall grass.
“He had this idea that eventually he was going to do an installation because he had flying horses in a lot of his paintings,” Wilson says.
Behind them is a cut tree stump on a sawhorse.
“That was going to be a next sculpture,” Wilson says. “He got sick so suddenly, that it’s like he just left in the middle of a lot of projects.”
Denomie’s studio above their garage has remained much the same since his death, save for some paintings and drawings that were removed for the exhibition and archiving.
Every surface is covered with materials and inspirations, from photos of friends and globs of paint to figurines of the California Raisins and the masks he collected from around the world.
Wilson recalls coming up here from her writing studio next door. Music would be blasting — he always had his 60-CD player going while he worked, she says — and they would dance and joke around.
“I wish he was here, But now that some time has passed I'm thinking about, well, how can we continue his legacy?” Wilson says. “I’ve been thinking about his space. It’d be nice to have creative energy in here again.”
Wilson sits in their living room, beneath one of his paintings hanging over the fireplace. She says there will also be more exhibitions to follow — a group show at the University of Minnesota Nash Gallery in early 2024, and Wilson and others are planning another for his recent painting series of the Dakota 38+2 — some of his “best work,” she says.
In the meantime, Wilson wants to return to the Mia exhibition, which she finds “poignant” because “he got to choose what people would see.”
“What lingers really of his spirit in this plane is in his artwork. So when you see Jim's paintings, that's still where he resides,” Wilson says.
“The Lyrical Art of Jim Denomie” is on view through March 2024.
Over the span of his teaching career, Michael Houston has worked to build a sense of community with his students in the classroom. It’s been his teaching philosophy for nearly two decades.
Houston chairs the math department at Harding High School in St. Paul and has also spent a great deal of his career coaching the school’s football team.
Houston’s guidance and mentorship have struck a chord within the Harding community, so much so that he was a finalist for Minnesota Teacher of the Year in 2017. Although he didn’t win that year, he continued his passion for education and connecting with his students.
Fast forward six years and Houston was once again a finalist for the prestigious award, but this time he won. Houston is now Minnesota Teacher of the Year for 2023, an award handed out by Education Minnesota, an organization made up of 472 unions representing educators in the state.
Houston is the 59th educator and second African American male to receive the award. He hopes to use this moment to improve education across the state.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Houston about his impact, both inside and outside the classroom, and how he plans to use his platform to positively shape students and fellow teachers in Minnesota.
Guest:
- Michael Houston is a teacher and chairs the math department at Harding High School in St. Paul. He is a former football coach and about to start his 20th year of teaching. Houston was named Minnesota’s 2023 Teacher of the Year back in May.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Like many tech start-ups, Microtron wasn’t long-lived but its status as a giant in the Black business community is unassailable.
At its zenith, Microtron employed more than 100 employees and had a $1.5 million payroll. Most of the people who worked there were Black. And most lived in the north Minneapolis.
Matthew Ramadan was the executive director of the Northside Residents’ Redevelopment Council when Beck Horton’s Microton took over the old Control Data property on 12th Avenue in north Minneapolis.
“When I was managing, the state asked us to make sure that they were there,” said Ramadan. “That they were real positions and not ghost positions.”
Ramadan said they documented that more than 100 employees from the northside actually worked at the company.
“And what it translated into was a $250,000 tax write off that Microtron used to get for having those employees that lived in north Minneapolis.”
Microtron was ahead of its time for the Twin Cities in that it was a Black-owned manufacturing and tech company. It manufactured electrical components — chime modules — for Ford vehicles. These modules alerted drivers about their open doors.
Horton is held in high regard by any number of Black strivers in the Twin Cities of the 1980s and 1990s. Whether it was a kind word, good advice, a useful connection or a much-needed check, Horton was a quiet force on the business scene of that era.
“He was a visionary,” said Roxanne Givens, a contemporary of Horton’s and owner of Legacy Management, a Minneapolis-based development company.
“I really think the Black community motivated him,” she said. “I really think he wanted to impact change.”
Horton came to Minneapolis in 1963 after graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in electrical engineering. He spent three years with Honeywell, Inc. and the decade after as an executive at Ault Inc., a Brooklyn Park, Minn., company that manufactured power supplies and battery chargers.
In 1975, his success at Ault afforded him the $50,000 needed to start his own business, which he later merged with Juno Enterprises, a manufacturer of electromagnetic components in Coon Rapids, Minn. Juno had 90 employees and $7 million in annual sales by 1991.
Horton spread the word that he was looking to hire workers from north Minneapolis for Juno, but the commute to Coon Rapids proved to be an obstacle.
Lesson learned. He decided Microtron would be closer to the people who needed the jobs.
Ramadan says Beck was committed to building a strong Black community.
“Beck was an example of what a modern Black Wall Street person should look like because he wasn’t just using his business and extracting wealth from the community,” he said. “He was also reinvesting in the community.”
- Two firms want to bring high tech jobs to north Minneapolis
Alfred Babington-Johnson, founder of the north Minneapolis-based Stairstep Foundation agrees. Babington-Johnson’s vision for Stairstep was to involve well-off Black residents to invest in businesses that would provide economic returns for a struggling Black community.
His goal was to raise money in $15,000 increments from wealthy, Black Twin Citians. Horton stepped up immediately. His involvement got major financial players involved and he served in various capacities on the nonprofit’s board of directors.
“Our project was too small. We needed a larger place to play, so we enlisted General Mills. General Mills came forward with us, in some measure, because they saw Beck standing there.”
Horton passed away in 2010 at the age of 72. Microtron is no more.
Black entrepreneurs are fond of saying that they stand on the shoulders of giants. Horton’s giant legacy remains as an inspiration for those who seek to walk in his footsteps.
In the basement of the downtown Convention Center, wedged between Emmett Brown and a DeLorean from “Back to the Future,”and the life sized Appa from “The Last Airbender,” two locals offered a very different kind of tale.
“Hate Stings” is a graphic novel written by James Curry, and drawn by Tom Ngyuen, a renowned comics artist.
Preview pages show a shirtless, muscular Black man astride a white horse. He’s also depicted being whipped by a white overseer, who is screaming racial epithets.
The enslaved man is the hero of this graphic novel. He’s also one of Curry’s forefathers.
“An ancestor killed an overseer,” he explained. “A slave wanting water in Virginia, being denied it, and probably reaching a point of critical mass and killing the overseer in order to get that water. Then becoming an escaped slave.”
Curry is a producer and filmmaker, but also an amateur historian who has delved deeply into the history of his Minnesotan Black family which settled in Hastings in the 1800s.
Curry said his ancestor joined a Black regiment during the Civil War and eventually made his way to Minnesota. Relatives followed, and together they befriended the Wallaces, another Black family already settled in Hastings.
The families formed Brown’s Chapel AME, the only church in the area where Black people were able to worship. In 1907, the church was burned to the ground in an act of racist hate. The arsonist was never found.
“It's an uncomfortable history,” Curry acknowledges.
Telling the story to a younger audience
While this story has been documented in the past, including stories for MPR News’ special project series North Star Journey, Curry says it’s important to him that younger generations know about it too.
“And I thought, since there was a Marvel/DC artist in Hastings, that we could bring the script, to life to create a graphic novel.”
The fact that Nguyen was an artist of color also from Hastings was a draw for Curry.
As a fairy godmother from Snow White strolls behind their convention booth, Nguyen says the project is very different from the work he’s usually created in his career.
“I've already gotten a wide range of reactions to it,” he said. “Most people are really polite, and they like it. Unfortunately, I've gotten the other end of the spectrum too. Questioning why we're even doing this. And some of that reaction, of course, it's tied to the political climate.”
But Nguyen believes in the project, and said it allows him to stretch his creative muscles.
“The whole history of African Americans and slaves and the trials and tribulations that they had to go through has always been fascinating to me.”
He adds that the challenge of keeping things historically accurate adds another layer of inspiration.
“I am having to pay attention to Jamie's script, because it's such a rich history, and I feel like I'm in school studying again,” he said. “But I'm learning too, and it forces me to go online and Google all these historical references and books, so I can draw things a little more accurately to the time period that we're trying to tell the story.”
“It's just a nice change of pace from doing superheroes all the time,” he added.
The completed book is available at comic book stores around the Twin Cities. But Curry says this is only the beginning, and he thinks the project could eventually become a trilogy.
It was 2007. MySpace was the largest social media platform. Netscape’s Navigator was one of the most popular web browsers. And Adam Nyerere Bahner, a 25-year-old, biracial Minneapolis man captivated the growing audience of a new app called YouTube.
YouTube was just two years old. And “Chocolate Rain,” the name of Bahner’s musical composition about racism against Black Americans, was also a de facto beta test for the new app’s capabilities.
Bahner, who was studying at the University of Minnesota at the time, chose a stage name from a Google search — one with zero hits that was also easy to spell. The newly minted Tay Zonday was overwhelmed by sudden fame from the new platform.
“There wasn’t a playbook to use for what to do when your viral video leads to mainstream attention being covered by John Mayer and Tre Cool [drummer in Green Day] and appearing on Jimmy Kimmel and all of these other things that happened very quickly in succession,” said Bahner who responded to a series of written questions.
While Minnesota did gain a bit more musical fame because of “Chocolate Rain,” it’s not Bahner’s home and he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to be mentioned in the same breath as local legends like Prince.
“Chocolate Rain,” he says, was not inspired by “Purple Rain.”
“While I do have family in Minneapolis and I did visit as a child, I mainly lived there 2004 through 2008, then lived in Los Angeles for 12-and-a-half years and have since been in Seattle for more than two years.”
The music and lyrics of “Chocolate Rain” are what stood out the most to Jill Sondergaard. These days, Sondergaard is a part-time gospel vocalist and owner of JMS Consulting. She says the rhythm and lyrics appealed to her musical sensibilities.
“As the daughter of a drummer, I was just like, ‘Wow, this is so unique.’ All the time he would say ‘Chocolate Rain’ and the lyrics were following.”
Sondergaard said her first thought was, ‘Is this a parody?’ And then she listened more closely to the lyrics.
Chocolate rain / Raised your neighborhood insurance rates
Chocolate rain / Makes us happy ‘livin in a gate
Chocolate rain / Made me cross the street the other day
Chocolate rain / Made you turn your head the other way
“It’s so relevant and poignant and it just gets everything in there,” she said. “He’s really dipping into a lot of things in life and it’s related to systemic and institutional racism.”
Those kinds of reactions helped ‘Chocolate Rain’ rack up 136 million views; get ranked as the hottest video in the summer of 2007 and win the 2008 YouTube Award in its music category.
Bahner doesn’t take his success too seriously. And he says it’s OK and probably advisable that people turn off social media from time to time. He says YouTube used to be about novelty. Now, Bahner says, it’s about attracting a loyal audience that will watch as much as possible.
“And, that’s not necessarily healthy for society,” he said. “It locks us inside individual bias confirmation bubbles instead of connecting us through common reality.”
Bahner is now 41 and over the last several years has lent his rich baritone to voiceover acting and commercial narration. According to his ‘Tay Zonday’ IMDB site, Bahner has had roles in dozens of productions, including voicing the character Masked Fishy in “Baby Shark’s Big Show!” an animated kid’s show on Noggin.
Bahner has not lived in the Twin Cities for more than a decade. However, he has fond recollections of the 2000’s-era art scene in Minneapolis. Bahner said, for example, the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and the Fringe Festival helped foster a sense of community he hadn’t experienced in other places.
“There are ways in which the cultural space of independent art in the Twin Cities is supportive of the zany and the marginalized and maybe that had an impact on me,” he said. “I’m not sure I had an impact on it.”
"Chocolate Rain" Original Song by Tay Zonday
The idea for a monument to honor Felix Battles germinated about five years ago at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
“Felix Battles is somebody that we at the historical society we’ve been studying for about 30 years,” explained program director Markus Krueger. “But he never really got out of our archives. He’s got a fascinating story.”
The story is about a Black man born into slavery who fought in the Civil War and was among the first residents of a new town on the western Minnesota prairie.
As Krueger listened to the national debate in 2018 about removing Confederate Civil War statues in the south, he says he thought, “I know who deserves a statue. Felix Battles.”
Started with a stencil
With a limited budget in mind, it began as a simple idea.
“It started off with cutting out a piece of paper and spray painting a stencil onto a piece of wood,” said Krueger.
The idea was to perhaps paint the stencil on a wall.
Then a conversation with his neighbor, an engineer, raised the idea of cutting a silhouette from a thick sheet of steel.
Krueger recently watched as a water jet machine carved the monument at a metal fabrication shop in Fargo, N.D. Using high pressure water jet the size of a pencil lead infused with crushed garnet, the computer guided machine precisely cut the design into a large steel plate.
“It’s three-quarter-inch steel. I can’t do this in my garage. So this is pretty cool,” said Krueger.
There are no known photographs of Battles and researchers have not found any living descendants. Krueger intentionally used a photo of an unidentified Black Civil War soldier to guide his design.
“The idea of an unidentified soldier is just to represent everybody. So this particular statue is for Felix Battles, but it’s also for all 209,000 African American soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War,” he said.
A remarkable story
Felix Battles was born into slavery near Memphis, Tenn. Records track him to a plantation in Mississippi as a teenager.
Battles then escaped and made his way north to St. Paul, working on Mississippi River steamboats, said Krueger.
In 1864 he joined the army at Fort Snelling and fought for the Union.
“I think one of America’s great stories is at the start of the Civil War, we had millions of enslaved people. And then by the end of the war there were over 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors fighting in the United States Army,” said Krueger. “The stories of Black soldiers in the U.S. Army were intentionally written out of history. And so what we’re trying to do here is bring awareness to that.”
After the war, Battles became one of the earliest residents of Moorhead, arriving in 1873 with his wife Kate and several extended family members. A job with the newly constructed railroad likely led him to settle in Moorhead.
A newspaper at the time called him “the pioneer barber of the Red River Valley.” He lived in Moorhead until his death in 1907. He shares a simple marker with other family members in a Moorhead cemetery.
“He was a quiet guy, his obituary said, respected by all who knew him,” recalls Krueger. “All the old pioneers were going to go to his funeral, as well as the old soldiers of the community going to honor him at his funeral.”
Delson Saintal also watched the monument take shape. Saintal is one of several Black community members on a committee advising the historical society on this project. He owns several barber shops and runs a barber school in Fargo.
He’s 30 years old, the same age Felix Battles was when he arrived in Moorhead 150 years ago.
“Imagining what it was like around that time back in the early 1900s for him to be a Black barber in the Fargo-Moorhead area probably wasn’t quite easy,” said Saintal, who thinks a permanent statue honoring a Black community pioneer is about representation.
“And that really matters,” he said. “And if we have a Felix Battles monument in the Fargo-Moorhead area I think it just gives a chance for the younger generation to see that they are capable of doing stuff,” he said.
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Felix Battle More about the project
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Long overlooked Stories of Black history
Felix Battles was 5 feet, 8 inches tall according to his army enlistment papers. The monument will be life size because Krueger wants people to be able to look Battles in the eye as they contemplate the history he represents.
It will be located on a street corner where Battles once lived. The home is long gone and the site is now part of the Minnesota State University Moorhead campus.
The goal is to raise enough money for benches and a small interpretive display so the spot can be a community gathering point.
Krueger calls the statue an illustration to a biography, a marker that allows more people to learn the story of Felix Battles and a forgotten piece of history.
Minnesota is known as a healthy state. But we’re also a state with a vast gulf between the health of the majority of white residents and residents of color, especially Black, Latino and Indigenous Minnesotans.
Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Brooke Cunningham is on a mission to change that.
She was appointed to lead the Minnesota Department of Health in January, replacing Jan Malcolm. She is the first Black woman to hold the position.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Cunningham about her research into health disparities, leading the state agency after the intense years of the COVID-19 pandemic and her vision for improving the health of all Minnesotans.
Guests:
- Dr. Brooke Cunningham was appointed commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health in January. She was previously assistant commissioner overseeing the new Health Equity Bureau. She earned her medical degree and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and completed postdoctoral fellowships in general internal medicine and bioethics/health policy at Johns Hopkins University.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Between taking care of patients, filling out medical charts and teaching students, doctors and nurses at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis are taking the time to do their own education. For about three hours each month, staff from across the system sit together in small groups to discuss racism in the broader world and inside the walls of their own institution.
Using documentaries, podcasts and instructor-led conversations, staff from across the health care system spend time discussing, learning and, ideally, implementing the training in a clinical setting.
While diversity, equity and inclusion programs are common in health care, having this kind of intensive requirement is an atypical move. Hospital leaders, though, say it’s vital as they work to serve the entire city and eliminate disparities in care for people of color. While DEI efforts face pushback in other workplaces, Hennepin Healthcare is pushing ahead.
“If we live in fear of what may happen, then we’re already telling the groups that are constantly dealing with issues that the worry of someone who may be offended is more important than my personal safety, well-being and mental health,” Chief Equity Officer Nneka Sederstrom told a crowd during a presentation of the program in February.
“We decided that if someone is really uncomfortable doing this work: thank you for working at Hennepin Healthcare, you have the right to go work somewhere else. And that's as simple as it is.”
Since the program launched last year to system leadership, officials at Hennepin Healthcare say they have seen some people leave because the institution was no longer a good fit.
‘Our public hospital’
Health care systems often partner with community organizations, or bring in outside professional organizations to lead trainings, as well as focusing on hiring diverse staff members.
Hennepin Healthcare took a different tactic. Its program, Compass, was designed by leaders inside the institution to educate staff about the history of marginalized communities, racism in health care and microaggressions.
“This is an institution that serves Black communities, brown communities, communities that are lower income,” said Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley. “This is our public hospital where a lot of folks who are experiencing homelessness, who are checking all those boxes for marginalized communities are going to get basic health care, to get their immediate needs met, when they're in crisis.”
The first cohort of 1,700 employees began the training in January, the second is set to begin in July. Sederstrom said they estimate all employees will have completed the training by 2025.
The financial investment in the program is significant. It’s designed to be completed during work hours, and with every employee required to participate. Vice President of Health Equity Talee Vang, who developed Compass, didn’t put a specific dollar amount to the effort but estimated the cost could be in the millions by the time everyone has completed it.
Vang said the price of not doing it is much higher.
“If somebody says, ‘I don’t care about racism, I don’t care about the treatment of our trans population,’ for example. Should they be here taking care of those populations?” Vang asked. “Should they be here? Can they truly provide the best care for the populations that we serve? Probably not.”
Because of the hospital’s importance in the community — it’s a level one trauma center and the county hospital — and its role as a teaching institution, leaders felt it was important for the system to commit to diversity, equity and inclusion training, Vang said.
“We’re teaching the providers of tomorrow,” she said. “And because of that, we have this unique position to make a real change, and to make a really, really bold statement.”
The first steps included getting executive leadership on board and getting people to recognize and speak honestly about racism and discrimination inside health care institutions, including theirs.
Vang said before the Compass training began, there were some staff who did not believe that racism existed within the hospital system.
Observers say implicit bias may not be immediately visible to a practitioner. Sydney Johnson works as the African American cultural navigator at Hennepin Healthcare. In her role as a patient advocate, she said people sometimes call on her for help when they don’t feel heard or feel like they’re experiencing discrimination.
“Some patients are very not vocal about that at all, because there’s a fear, or there’s, like, a guard,” she said. “You have that mistrust that has been built by a lot of the harmful ways that people have been cared for in communities of color.”
‘We need the whole system to be better’
Bridging the gaps between people of color and the health professionals who treat them is crucial in Minnesota.
A February report from the Minnesota Department of Health said that state’s ongoing health disparities “mean that compared to whites, people of color and American Indians in Minnesota experience shorter life spans; higher rates of infant mortality; higher incidences of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases and conditions; and poorer general health.”
Research shows implicit and explicit bias and discrimination in clinical settings lead to worse health outcomes for people of color, like a lack of accurate diagnosis or being provided fewer options for pain management. A 2014 study found a link between implicit bias and cognitive stressors, like crowded emergency departments.
“I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been gaslit — even in my current capacity as commissioner — going to the doctor's office, talking about pain, talking about things that I’m experiencing, and not being taken seriously,” Conley said. “Hennepin Healthcare absolutely needsto do this,” she said of the equity effort. “Health care is an institution, just like our governments or institutions, and they are notorious for perpetuating institutionalized racism.”
Social determinants of health, including access, education and economic stability, can play a significant role in the health of patients and ultimately whether they’re able to follow through on a treatment plan or get treatment at all.
About a year ago, a patient came to see Dr. Rahel Nardos at the University of Minnesota.
Nardos, who’s not affiliated with Hennepin Healthcare, specializes in female pelvic medicine and is director of global women’s health at the U’s Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility.
She often sees patients with pelvic floor issues, typically related to childbirth. But some also come in with damage as a result of female genital mutilation, a ritualistic nonmedical cutting of genitalia common in some parts of the world but illegal on children in the U.S.
The patient has severe chronic pain as a result of the practice when she was young, and the numerous surgeries she’s had to resolve the issue.
“She actually goes to the emergency room regularly because of severe pain, and no one can find what’s wrong with her,” Nardos said. “Because all the imaging they do, which they keep doing, is normal.”
When Nardos saw her, she recognized that the patient is also experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress as a result of what happened. And after a number of false starts finding an interpreter the patient felt comfortable with, the two decided on a course of action: surgery followed by an integrated approach of mental health care and pelvic floor physical therapy.
Despite that, one year later, her patient is still unable to access much of the ongoing care that Dr. Nardos referred her to. She lives far from the Twin Cities and doesn’t have reliable transportation, so getting to regular appointments is difficult. Coupled with the language barrier and ongoing mental health issues, Nardos said “she just falls through the cracks.”
“The work that I did surgically didn’t actually succeed because she needed those kinds of follow up care in order for my work to be successful,” she said. “I’m still actually trying to figure out how to help her.”
These barriers to care, from navigating cultural and language differences, to the economic disparities around transportation and housing are just some of the challenges patients can encounter when they try to access health care.
“When we talk about health equity, it’s not a quick fix. We need the whole system to be better,” said Nardos, who views the Hennepin Healthcare Compass effort as a step in the right direction for the hospital and the health system.
“I think that general awareness of the story, [the] context, the bias and the racism, all those things, it’s important to discuss those things,” she said. “Ultimately, it comes to you, as a person, and your practice and how you want to show up in the real world.”
An obscure funk band founded by a group of Minneapolis teenagers in the early 1970s caused Minnesota’s music scene to catch lightning in a bottle not once, but twice.
Minnesota has served as home base for two globally recognized music powerhouses — Prince and his Paisley Park sound and the Flyte Tyme Studios’ groove of Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis.
The band Flyte Tyme was established in 1972. A pre-fame Prince was merely a player in it. The band’s name was based on the song “Flight Time” by jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd.
Flyte Tyme had a rotating cast for nearly a decade with acclaimed local artists who would go on to work as longtime collaborators and, at times, rivals.
That list included the likes of Jellybean Johnson, Cynthia Johnson and Alexander O’Neal who rotated in and out as members. But, the keyboardist and bassist, a young Harris and Lewis, respectively, remained constant.
By the time 1980 rolled around, the band was done and Prince had assumed the mantle of king of the local music scene.
“The Time” is a truncated version of “Flyte Tyme” and featured Harris and Lewis on keyboards and bass, respectively, and Morris Day on vocals.
“Prince once said that the only band he ever feared was The Time,” said Christopher Fuller, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Black Music Project, a group of artists and academics who promote the history of Black music as the story of America.
“And, he was referring to The Time of Morris Day and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and he kind of saw them as a threat. I think that’s part of the reason they got fired.”
Sources dispute whether it was Prince or Day who fired them, but Harris and Lewis were fired from the band because they were in Atlanta producing music for another act and missed a flight time.
The pair could have licked their wounds, founded a middling funk band and carried on. But, they decided to create a music studio in south Minneapolis and later in Edina with their earnings.
Make great music and keep it coming Gary Hines spent 10 years as a staff producer for Flyte Tyme and topped the charts with his Flyte Tyme-produced group, “Sounds of Blackness.”
When Hines first entered the nondescript building at 4330 Nicollet Avenue on Minneapolis’ southside, he knew Harris and Lewis had created something special.
“Walking in the door and it was like, ‘Oh, my God!’,” he said. “Seeing their Grammys and the photos of artists they had worked with and the range of those artists, you know, Michael, Janet, Lionel Richie … and the groups, New Edition.”
To Hines, it was like he was handed the keys to the kingdom.
Hines was one of about 10 staff producers, including local artists Jellybean Johnson, Stokely Williams and Jeff Taylor who comprised Flyte Tyme’s front line. Their mission was simple: make great music and keep it coming.
“The producers would basically live at Flyte Tyme — 12 to 14 hours or more, pretty much daily,” said Hines. “It was part of the joy and the intensity. There was a sign at the entryway that read, ‘The only thing that smokes in this building is the music!’”
One of the producers’ duties was to screen incoming submissions, which came in the mail, through couriers or were handed directly to the producers. There were demos from unknowns and from celebrities like Dolly Parton.
Every staff producer screened hundreds of CDs and cassettes each week.
“Jam and Lewis were looking for at least a song a week from us,” Hines said. “It might be two weeks and sometimes it might be a couple in a week.”
Besides screening demos for the next hit song, the producers were also writing, often for bands they fronted, Stokely Williams, for example, was lead singer for Mint Condition.
The band recorded their hit “Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)” at Flyte Tyme's Edina studio in 1991. In 1992 the song peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 3 on Billboard's Hot R&B chart.
Producers would also assist other projects in the pipeline. Whether it was through singing or playing, everyone was expected to contribute.
“You were writing constantly, improving and honing your craft, obviously for their perusal, review and approval,” he said. “They were like ‘Don’t not write. Write a bad song, but keep writing. Hone your craft.’”
In its heyday, Flyte Tyme churned out 100 Billboard Top 10 songs; 16 Number One Hot 100 hits and 26 R&B Number One hits. That includes Janet Jackson’s multi-platinum hit record “Control” which dropped in 1986.
The process clearly worked.
Imagine 1960s Detroit had spawned a trio of Berry Gordys, who then went on to create two Motowns. That was the late century Twin Cities music scene.
But, Christopher Fuller says the Motown comparison is not as accurate as another.
“Jimmy and Terry I think one would say they’re closer to the Philly International [production studio] of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff because basically those two werethe Philly Sound. And, like Jimmy and Terry, they were songwriters, too. Not just producers,” he said.
Fuller adds that unlike legendary Beatles producer George Martin, Jam and Lewis wrote or co-wrote many of the songs for the artists they worked with.
Music created at Flyte Tyme reached audiences around the world.
Hines remembers the chills he got touring with Sounds of Blackness when he first heard overseas audiences singing along to lyrics borne in Flyte Tyme studios.
“Many of whom were not English speaking, but they knew every lyric, not only the choruses, but the verses in the bridge … and were singing them in perfect English!”
Since Prince’s passing and Flyte Tyme’s move away from the Twin Cities, the founders of The Minneapolis Sound may have fallen quiet, but Fuller says their legacy is still with us in the new acts and their songs.
“We’re still seeing their effect today. The most popular music right now, globally, is K-Pop [Korean Pop Music],” Fuller said. “But, you know what K-Pop is? It’s reconstituted Black music – especially 90s R&B, which along with Teddy Riley and New Jack Swing was Flyte Tyme. Jimmy and Terry. Just about all of modern pop music owes a huge debt to them.”
If you played high school sports growing up, you know how being a student-athlete can change your life. It teaches you teamwork, responsibility, perseverance and so much more.
MPR News host Angela Davis talked earlier this year with longtime high school boys basketball coach Larry McKenzie. He was the first coach in Minnesota history to win four consecutive basketball state titles.
“The reason that I won was because I gave my kids unconditional love,” he told Davis.
McKenzie retired in 2022, but he is still mentoring. Now, instead of leading high school athletes, he is coaching other coaches.
Listen to the rebroadcast to hear MPR News host Angela Davis talk with McKenzie about what makes a great coach, teaching young people to lose with grace, why the team is more important than the individual and how he supported his students after George Floyd’s murder and through the pandemic.
Guest:
- Larry McKenzie is a longtime high school boys’ basketball coach. He retired in 2022 from coaching at Minneapolis North High School.
Here are five key moments from the conversation.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
You are now coaching other coaches. Why did you want to do that? Larry McKenzie: One of the things about being one of the elder coaches in the game is getting a lot of calls from young coaches. I’ve always understood the importance of having good mentors, and the importance of mentorship. When I was 14 years old, my grandmother gave me a book by Napoleon Hill, and it compared having knowledge and not sharing it to having an atomic bomb and never dropping it. For me, after 42 years and the various experiences that I've had and the success, I didn't want to keep that to myself, I wanted to share.
Right now, we probably have about 10 or 12 coaches that we’re talking to on a weekly basis, sharing information, being there to do some one-on-ones, visiting practices, and helping them become better coaches.
One of the things I tell them all the time is that it’s really critical that they get to know their kid and to spend at least thirty seconds to a minute with every single kid and ask: How is your day? What’s going on in school? What’s going on with you and your girlfriend? I think that that’s a critical part of one being successful because you got to know them beyond the court or the track or the football field.
What makes a great high school coach? Larry McKenzie: First of all, one of those quotes that I like to use is: “a coach can impact more lives in a year than most people can in a lifetime.” I think a great coach is a great teacher. It’s not about the Xs and Os — it’s an opportunity to change lives.
In my journey, it was like being an artist: I get a lump of clay that’s a 14-year-old boy that I get to mold for three or four years, and leave me as an 18-year-old young man. I think a good coach is someone that’s not so caught up in what the record is but understands that whatever sport they’re coaching is an opportunity to have a captured audience to change lives.
In my experience, probably 80 percent of the young men that I coached didn’t have a father in their houses. So my responsibility, first and foremost, was to teach them how to be a man, to help them understand what was ahead of them. So I knew all the time, they would be watching me, what I did and how I showed up. It’s important to lead by example, but it’s also important to teach that nobody’s perfect, we’re gonna all make mistakes. When kids get off track, it’s not throwing in the towel, but helping them work through those situations. Coaches, particularly at the high school level, want to help kids go to college, but the most important thing is to prepare them to become productive adults.
You were a coach at Minneapolis North in 2020 when police killed George Floyd. How did you talk to your students about that? Larry McKenzie: I’ll never forget that morning waking up and seeing that video. The first thing I did with my current players, my former players and my son was to apologize. I need to apologize because I’ve gotten so busy doing other things that I forgot about this fight. Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, all of those that had gone before George Floyd, this was not the first time.
I always try to think outside of the box, and we did something very unique. I called my friends and raised some money, were able to hire a dear friend of mine who was a mental health coach. He would come to practice and be available to our kids, so if they had something going on and needed somebody to talk to, we had a professional there to support them.
What concerns you about high school sports these days? Larry McKenzie: Something that really bothers me is how kids have so much to do with social status. When you go to a game, you don’t hear parents cheering for the team anymore, everything is about the individual kid. But it is a team sport, right? And you should be really cheering for all kids to be successful.
The other thing that concerns me is the passing of “name, image and likeness” at the high school level, which is the ability to pay kids to advertise. Now I got one kid sitting in my locker room, who’s got a contract for $5,000 — he’s representing the neighborhood barbecue store. And then you got another kid for $1,000. Does that kid making $5,000 expect to play more? Probably in his mind, and in his parents’ mind he does.
Right now, to my knowledge, I think there’s still only one or two high school kids that have taken advantage of it. But I just think long term is going to create an issue in a locker room.
How do you teach student-athletes how to lose? Larry McKenzie: You always find life lessons in the loss. Losing is learning. One of the things that I always try to do in losing is taking that opportunity and transfer it into a life experience. In life, everything doesn't go the way that you want it to go, you're gonna have some ups and downs, so you have to learn to stay in the moment, get up, dust yourself off and get going again.
One of the things that I particularly used to tell my young men is that there are situations where you will lose, but if you have kids, and you have a house payment and those kinds of things, you don’t have a whole lot of time to sit around and feel sorry for yourself. You got to keep it moving.
Your stories about coaches Listeners called into the show and shared their stories. Here are some of them.
Coach leads a new track team to victory I had a great coach in high school in St. Paul. This was in the ‘70s when there wasn’t a women’s track team. He was asked, as the football coach, to begin the women’s track team. So he would see different young women in school, come up to us and ask us, “Do you want to join the team? I already talked to your friend, she’s on the track team.”
He used that approach because none of us were really runners and that worked. He joined us together as a team because he believed in us. We didn’t have the confidence and we didn’t have the skills. The coach put it all together for us and worked with us like the football team. We became very close and won the conference championship the very first year that they had women.
— Anita from St. Paul
How a good coach impacts generations I’ve been in sports since I was 8 years old and I still remember what my coaches told me and, to this day, it’s still beneficial. I called in with two specific examples.
I have twin brothers younger than me, we all played baseball during the same period of time, and both our teams won a championship. Their coach drove them incessantly hard, and turns out later he was an alcoholic, but my brothers never loved sports again, until they were parents and gradually got back into it and started to love it again. And they lament how much they wish they would have played their high school years with me.
On the other hand, I had a great coach, I had great experiences. I learned how to make it fun. And my joy of sports carried down to my son, who also I think experienced wonderful coaching.
— Brent from Eden Prairie
Memories from North High School I just wanted to say that I’m a graduate of North High in ‘99. I’m 41 now and the structure that I still hold on to from being on a team with my coaches is just awesome. And I still hold that unity, the hot and cold, until today and I’m just blessed for being on North High’s team. Coach Larry, thank you for putting financial teaching out there because we definitely need to figure out how to tap in on the finance part. I experienced getting money and blowing it and not knowing what to do.
— Amal from Minneapolis
A well-remembered coach I’m a product of Minneapolis Central High School and I was there in the late 50s, early 60s when I graduated. I had a memorable coach, one of the best coaches in the city of Minneapolis, that I’ve ever known anyway. His name was Earl Bowman. He was one of my mentors, and I coached football in the park system for many years as a result of having experience with him. He was a taskmaster, but he also had real care for the kids and was one of the first Black coaches in Minneapolis.
— Louis from Minneapolis
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St. Paul’s Pilgrim Baptist Church has served as a sanctuary for Black people living in Minnesota for more than a century and a half.
The church first formed in 1863 when a group of formerly enslaved people, led by a man named Robert Thomas Hickman, began worshiping together. They built a raft and attempted to escape from Jefferson City, Mo., during the height of the Civil War.
The group migrated by boat and called themselves pilgrims.
They eventually made it to Fort Snelling through a steamship, known as the War Eagle, and the help of the Underground Railroad.
“When they got to Fort Snelling, apparently the military decided that they were going to split this group up into three separate groups and send them to different parts of the state,” said James Robinson, a longtime member of the church and an assistant professor in the ethnic and religious studies department at Metropolitan State University.
Robinson says the group that made it to St. Paul included Robert Thomas Hickman.
Hickman’s enslaver taught him to read and gave him permission to preach to other enslaved people. With his leadership, Pilgrim Baptist Church was built.
The church once stood on Sibley Street, but moved to St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood in 1928 and now stands on Central Avenue.
As the church celebrates 160 years of existence, Robinson says it’s important to look back on history to learn its lessons and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
“So history has an important role in giving every generation direction, not necessarily telling you where to go. But where you’ve been,” Robinson said.
Robinson says the Black church has been one of the few places throughout American history where African Americans have had autonomy and self-determining power as a group.
Over the years Pilgrim has been renovated — but worshippers today sit on the original pews, and portraits of former pastors are etched on stained glass windows where the light shines through.
Charles Gill has been senior pastor here for nearly 20 years. He says while the church has been a place of worship all those years, it was also a place pastors could amplify the voices of those who fought for equal rights.
“Along the way, Pilgrim has been a force of stabilization for this community, [a place] where its pastors were able to stand for right and stand on the behalf of those that are silent,” Gill said.
Part of that call to action included demanding that a bridge be built to allow people to walk to the church after construction of I-94 in the 1960s displaced thousands of people in the Rondo neighborhood.
Pilgrim Baptist Church members have also served the community in other ways as they have founded local chapters of the Urban League and the NAACP, and also founded the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.
Nate Galloway is a facilities manager at the church. He says former pastors, along with new ones, paved the way for generations to worship and succeed in peace.
“They’ve used their knowledge, they’ve used their skills to shepherd not only the people inside this building 24/7, but out in the community,” Galloway said.
As he looks back on 160 years, Galloway says lessons from the past should serve as a reminder of how one came to be, and how to create a better path moving forward.
He says the church’s history is something to build on and hopefully carry on for decades to come.
“With God, there is always hope,” says Althea Rupert, chair of the board of Christian Education at the church. Her great grandmother joined the church in 1866. And while many things have improved since the civil war, she says positive change has no finish line. Her faith keeps her believing good things are coming for the next 100 years.
“We know things are not perfect,” Rupert said. “There are challenges, but we know that with God, there’s always something better out there.”
Pilgrim Baptist Church will celebrate 160 years beginning Saturday, June 24 at the Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport hotel. Visit the church’s website for details.
As a first-generation college student in São Paulo, Brazil and later as an immigrant to the United States, architect Damaris Hollingsworth knows what it’s like to enter new spaces and wonder if you belong.
That’s why she focuses on making inclusive and welcoming spaces as an architect here in Minnesota. Hollingsworth is the founder and principal architect of the Twin Cities firm Design by Melo at a time when only a quarter of licensed architects in the U.S. are women and two percent identify as Black.
Projects of Design by Melo
In the last few years, Hollingsworth has won major recognition for her buildings and efforts to support diversity in the design field. She received the 2020 Young Architects Award from the national American Institute of Architects. Last year, the Minnesota Real Estate Journal named her 2022 architect of the year.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Hollingsworth about her journey to becoming an architect in Minnesota and about the inclusive perspective she brings to design as a woman and an immigrant.
Useful resources * Design by Melo website * National Organization of Minority Architects
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Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Leeanna Lor always dreamed of walking the stage at St. Paul’s RiverCentre as Miss Hmong Minnesota.
It’s the stage that has seen hundreds of young Hmong women in Minnesota compete for the pageant’s crown title. Since 1984, the Miss Hmong Minnesota pageant has embodied confidence, beauty and pride in the local Hmong culture.
As a child, Lor would watch the two-day competition every year during the Hmong New Year celebration, the biggest cultural event of the year for Hmong Minnesotans. She was always struck by the contestants’ elegant Hmong clothing and how the women commanded a room of thousands of people.
“I always wondered if I could ever be like that too,” said Lor, now 22. “It was kind of inspiring. They’re so beautiful, they have so much confidence to be on stage in front of so many people.”
‘Building sisterhood’ for young Hmong women Lor’s childhood dream came true when she was crowned Miss Hmong Minnesota 2023 during last November’s Hmong New Year celebration. She shares the court with two other contestants who came in second and third place.
“It’s building in sisterhood,” said Mee Vang, president of United Hmong Family, the local nonprofit that organizes the pageant. “The Hmong pageant has really transformed into an opportunity to showcase the Hmong culture, language and clothing for a lot of our younger generations because we lost our identity moving to the U.S.”
During the Vietnam War, Hmong military leaders in Laos worked with the CIA to share intelligence with the U.S. After the American forces withdrew from the war, thousands of Hmong people fled from Laos to escape persecution.
From 1975 to the early 2000s, Hmong immigrants mainly settled in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California. Minnesota is home to the largest urban population of Hmong Americans in the country, according to the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans.
For years, pageants have represented an opportunity for immigrant communities to preserve their culture in the U.S.
“Many ethnic pageants within the USA have developed as a response to the exclusion (first real and then more symbolic) of women of color and other ethnic communities,” wrote Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain in her 2007 study on cultural identities in beauty pageants. “The evolution of the Miss Vietnam USA, Miss Chinatown USA, Miss Ethiopia North America (first held in 2005), Miss India USA, Miss Latina USA (Fears 2005) and even white-ethnic pageants like the Irish Rose of Tralee pageant are seen as validation that ethnic women and their culture are beautiful.”
Unlike many pageant courts, Vang said the Hmong Minnesota pageant is unique because it recognizes all three title holders — the crown winner and the two runner-ups. The three in the court collaborate for a year-long term to organize Hmong community events and fundraisers until the next pageant.
“Everyone is expected to work together collaboratively,” said Vang. “They’re learning finances, fundraising and relationship building with current business owners.”
Many of the women go through months of training leading up to the competition, from practicing their Hmong to learning how to walk on stage. It’s an opportunity to develop and instill leadership and sisterhood in the next generation of young Hmong female leaders.
“I got a lot of growth,” said Lisa Vang, Miss Hmong Minnesota pageant coordinator and 2020 pageant runner-up. “There’s recruiting, strategic planning and a lot of administrative work. So you really get a feel of different departments that could really help you find what you like to do as an individual.”
How Lor is using her crown to do health advocacy in the Hmong community At first, Lor thought the pageant was meant to showcase the beauty of Hmong women and their cultural clothing. As she grew older, she realized the pageant had a deeper meaning.
“It’s brains,” said Lor, whose Hmong name is Leeanna Nstuaj Lauj. “It’s what you can bring back to the community and how you use that platform to help others.”
Her purpose as the pageant winner now is twofold: representing the Hmong community in Minnesota and increasing education among Hmong people on health topics like burn prevention. Her passion for health advocacy and career as a burn unit nurse stem from a near-death experience with appendicitis when she was 14.
“I went to the hospital and was sent back home,” said Lor. The doctors initially diagnosed her abdominal pain as menstrual cramps.
“A week later, I came back and they said if you didn’t come by, you wouldn’t have made it.”
Lor felt the language and cultural barriers almost risked her life. As a young Hmong woman, she didn’t feel heard. She wished someone did more to advocate for her and her mom in that hospital room.
“Just knowing I could’ve died made me think that I should do something to help others too,” said Lor. “What if other people are also experiencing this language barrier that they need to get the proper care?”
That’s why she loves her job as a nurse at St. Paul Regions Hospital’s burn unit. She is a fluent Hmong speaker serving a large Hmong population at one of the biggest hospitals in the Twin Cities and she gets to be the person she wished she had in the hospital room when she was 14.
When Lor isn’t working long hours at the hospital, she’s dedicating her time to her pageant court, emceeing community events and planning fundraisers. Part of that has included a winter clothing drive, a frostbite prevention campaign and organizing Hmong Day at the Minnesota State Fair this year.
“I’m really honored to represent the community and be that bridge between the youth and elders and within my field of nursing,” said Lor. “I think there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of people look up to me but I feel very honored to be here and speak about my journey.”
On a hot day in late May, Abdifatah Ali walks through a community health and wellness fair at Currie Park in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. As kids run in the fountains and play in the bounce house, Ali, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, is searching for someone who might be willing to leave the festivities and go across the street to fill out a survey about cancer.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Minnesota, and nationally. As with other aspects of health, there can be vast racial disparities in prevention and treatment. A Nov. 2022 report from the MN Community Measurement survey found that “[e]xcept for white patients, patients from all other race categories had significantly lower rates of colorectal cancer screening compared to the statewide rate.”
“There's disparities across the spectrum,” said Ivan Wu, an assistant professor at the U’s School of Public Health working on the project with Ali, who specializes in organizational psychology. “You can start from knowledge and awareness — sometimes perceptions of screening are different from what they actually should be. Folks may not even know how to get screened.”
On top of that, people may not have insurance, transportation or be able to get time off for medical appointments. And then there’s the actual interaction with the physician, where there may be cultural and language barriers. People may also lack accurate information.
Colon cancer, like some other cancers, can have a higher survival rate when caught early. Which is why testing regularly, especially if you’re high-risk, is crucial. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screenings for adults aged 45 to 75.
“One time I was having a conversation with an elderly Somali male about colonoscopy, and colon cancer. And, you know, there's a lot of stigma around getting [a] colonoscopy and health procedures done. Some people don't understand the extent of the procedure; if it's a full surgery, or if it's something that, you know, can be done while the individual is awake,” Ali said.
“So just having those talks and conversations, we've realized that there is a need for education and an opportunity to help our people understand.”
In an effort to address some of those disparities, Wu and Ali, along with their community partners, are embarking on a study to better understand what people in the East African community know about cancer, and develop better education to help prevent it.
An ongoing conversation The idea for the research came up organically. Wu and Ali have known each other for years, since they were students at Michigan State University. Both were peer mentors, assigned to the same session.
“I remember him asking certain questions, and I was asking certain questions, and we were like, ‘wow, we think alike. I need to know who this guy is.’” Wu said.
They bonded over their mutual interests. They were in the same department, and both from California.
“We just hit it off. And ever since then [we] talk about research, and we've collaborated over the years,” Ali said. So when they both ended up at the U of M, they continued their conversations.
The idea for this research came up over cups of tea.
“I was like: I'm personally not aware of any assessments or this type of research that's been done, when it comes to the East African Community,” Ali said. “Maybe there's an opportunity for us to look into some of these issues.”
Then there was a funding call at the Masonic Cancer Center. The two have $100,000 for a two-year study. Ali and Wu expect to have data collected and analyzed by early next year.
The aim of the project is to reduce cancer disparities by building knowledge in community health workers. They want to find the gaps, in terms of what services are being provided, and train trusted people in the community so they can provide the best interventions possible.
While Wu says that similar research exists for Latino communities, they don’t know if the same approach will work for the East African community. The preliminary survey has basic questions: Have you ever heard about cancer? How knowledgeable do you feel about preventing cancer? What are common signs and symptoms of cancer?
The researchers said it’s important to start from this baseline level.
“We can't come in with assumptions,” Ali said. “I think, oftentimes, we're coming from a place of knowledge as academics. And so when you have all that knowledge, you can maybe make some assumptions — some faulty assumptions — about where the community is.”
A community-centered approach Ali and Wu say it’s important to partner with community organizations from the beginning. The researchers are working with the Twin Cities nonprofit Metro Youth Diversion Center.
“We have a lot of community members that really are lacking the access to resources,” said Executive Director Rashad Ahmed. “So they're coming to us asking us for help. I know there's a language barrier, there's a cultural barrier. And that is where we fit in. We come in because we understand the languages and the cultures. And that makes it easy for them to trust us.”
Ahmed said if people don’t understand something, they won’t be able to trust it. “So we are here to provide that opportunity for community to connect with the providers, and then be the liaison between the health care system and the community.”
They also know the kinds of challenges that the community is facing. Whether that’s getting insurance, finding providers or learning more about cancer treatment and options.
“We are the ones that are connected to the community, we are the ones that see all the issues are coming up — all the complaints, all the situations that our people are facing,” he said. “So I think having [community organizations] at the table, and being part of the research project is very crucial. And I think that's the key to finding solutions to some of our pressing issues.”
Debbie Montgomery is a true trailblazer.
She grew up in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul. In 1963, when she was just 17 years old, she became the youngest person to serve on the national board of the NAACP, a national organization that works towards equity, political rights and social inclusion of Black people and people of color.
In the mid-1970s, Debbie became the first woman police officer in St. Paul. Later, she was the first Black woman elected to the St. Paul City Council.
Coming up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, MPR News host Angela Davis talks with Debbie Montgomery about her amazing life and career, and what she wants people today to learn from her story.
And we want to hear from you, too. Have you been the “first” in a workplace or organization? Or have you been a trailblazer in some other way? What about Debbie Montgomery’s story inspires you? You can call us at 651-227-6000 or 800-242-2828 during the 9 a.m. hour. on Thursday.
Guest:
- Debbie Montgomery is a community leader in St. Paul. She was the first woman police officer in St. Paul, and the first Black woman elected to the St. Paul City Council.
For Will Walker III, a Breck High School senior, the Rites of Passage program taught him lessons in time management and allowed him to learn more about his African American heritage.
“To be initiated it’s kind of a beautiful thing to realize you’re part of a legacy now,” said Walker, one of the program’s nine initiates.
Over the past 25 years, the program has grown a community of Black men who support each other in career, business and personal goals and often come back as mentors to the younger initiates.
“Being within that community, knowing that you're meeting what other men have faced and gone through the same process, it creates a brotherhood and is something that I hope lasts me for a lifetime,” said Walker.
Earlier this month, the program’s first class since COVID celebrated completing the program. During their six months, the young initiates build a relationship with their mentor, attend career-building workshops and present a business proposal at the end of the program.
The program is led by the Minneapolis Chapter of Jack and Jill of America. Since 1998, over 300 young Black men from high schools in the Twin Cities area have completed it.
“It's been rooted in African American tradition, with the African culture, the voyage to manhood that we really instill,” said Jennifer Harris, president of the Minneapolis Chapter of Jack and Jill.
Rites of Passage is a part of the nonprofit’s mission to invest in Black youth and nurture them into the next generation of leaders in America. Harris said it was started by two women who had a vision to start young African American men in high school in a process of philanthropic giving.
Some of the program’s mentors, like Scott Allen Morris, have remained involved for nearly a decade. He says the beauty of the program is that it’s about young Black men and the investment in their lives.
“How many opportunities do young Black men have in Minnesota to come together in a safe space?” said Morris. “They're all in a learning space. To be able to come together, be vulnerable and share, grow and be challenged. That's rare. It's rare for Minnesota, that's for sure.”
The program has raised over $200,000 in funds to local community nonprofits since 1998. This year, the nine initiates chose to donate their money to Sanneh Foundation, a St. Paul organization that provides free sports camps and academic programs to low-income youth.
- Boys of Hope Raising positive role models in Minnesota
Overlooking the Blue Earth River Woodland Hills Memorial Park Cemetery sits on a secluded hilltop with the city of Mankato spread below.
It's a quiet green space, but one Minnesota State University, Mankato associate professor Dr. Jill Cooley said it has a troubled history.
“Racial discrimination doesn’t make any logical sense in any case,” Cooley said. “But a cemetery makes less logical sense than anywhere else.
Cooley and her college students found Woodland Hills Memorial Park, formerly Grand View Memorial Park when founded in 1938, has a racial covenant prohibiting non-white people from being buried in specific plots within the cemetery. The covenant now has no legal standing following a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
This was a result of a four-year research project by MSU Mankato called “Mapping Mankato Project,” which was inspired by Mapping Prejudice in the Twin Cities. It explored how segregation contributed to how Mankato’s neighborhoods formed and how it impacted generational wealth for marginalized communities.
Enlisting the help of Mankato East High School students, together they read and analyzed deeds, documented covenants and mapped the affected properties. There were covenants found on properties in seven neighborhoods around Mankato.
Organizers hope to expand the research to surrounding communities such as North Mankato and St. Peter in Nicollet County in the future.
‘The system is rigged’ As part of the race, ethnicity and civil rights class, Mankato East High School teacher Tim Meegan connected with the Mapping Mankato Project and got his students involved.
Through the class, students worked directly with property deeds and helped with analyzing them for racial or restrictive covenants. Some were based on class, prohibiting apartments from being built in certain neighborhoods. Others targeted religious communities.
It was a first-hand look at how prevalent housing discrimination was even in Mankato, leading to how some neighborhoods were formed.
“The reason you see disparities is because of racism,” Meegan said. “Racism that goes back centuries, and is hard-baked into American society. The restrictive covenant is just one little piece that shows kids how the system is rigged, and has been rigged to benefit certain groups of people and to oppress other groups of people.”
For Mankato East High School senior Grace Engen, the project hit close to home — literally. She learned her house off of Glenwood Avenue had a racial covenant.
“And it was like, ‘This is real, and this is where I am right now. This is a part of my everyday life,’” Engen said. “You can kind of see it, actually. My whole street is all older white people who have owned these houses for a very long time and passed them down. It’s all our town and it opens up a view of why certain parts of Mankato are racialized.”
- In Ramsey County New map highlights home deeds with racist language
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- One lawn sign at a time Minneapolis effort aims to counter racist housing deeds
It also painted a complex picture of history, highlighting how racial segregation existed in the north and wasn’t limited to just the southern part of the country during the Jim Crow era. Senior Brinley Ketter, who is Black, said it was surreal to physically see the covenants with racial slurs and discriminatory language that targeted different groups.
“It was a way to shut down color in the community,” Ketter said. “A way of putting white power into the collective of the community, as a way of building their power instead of ours. And, that really just wasn’t right to me.”
Meegan believed it was important for stereotypes to be broken, and for his students to understand discrimination. He said housing is the number one way middle class families in the United States build wealth, and racism blocked many people of color for generations.
“I’m a third, fourth generation white American, and my parents were fortunate enough to be able to purchase a home, and my grandparents, and so that generational wealth. That’s a significant source of privilege for me,” he said. “But, if other people were locked out of those same opportunities, that explains why you see such disparities.”
‘We have to do the work’ The Blue Earth County Recorder’s Office houses the copies of real estate records, where researchers and students searched for racial covenants during the Mapping Mankato Project.
Michael Stalberger, property and environmental resources director, said that the county does not have the right to pull off the clauses from property deeds, and only the property owner can pursue discharging them.
“Even though for 70 years, the state of Minnesota said you cannot have these sorts of things on your property, the Supreme Court has said it for just as long, we still have to carry that forward because we don’t have the authority to take [the covenant] off,” he added.
The Mankato City Council voted unanimously on May 22 to condemn discriminatory covenants. Although symbolic, the city does plan to continue pursuing discharging covenants on municipal properties, educating the public about housing discrimination and helping property owners get connected to attorneys who are willing to assist with removing the clauses from their deeds.
City Manager Susan Arntz said that history can’t be changed, but the type of legacy future generations will inherit can.
“My objective is to make sure our words and our actions match,” Arntz said. “If we really think we want to be leading the way as a vibrant, diverse regional community, we have to do the work.”
Minnesota’s Brenda Cassellius grew up in public housing in Minneapolis and she considers that her greatest asset.
“I grew up in poverty but there was never a poverty of love,” she said, stressing that it’s possible to get out of poverty and chart your own path. “It instilled in me to give back.”
Cassellius has given back to communities by spending decades working in education.
She was the first African American woman in Minnesota history to serve as the commissioner of education, under Gov. Mark Dayton.
She was later the superintendent of Boston Public Schools, including throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and was a leader in bringing a climate plan that makes schools in the district more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.
Now Cassellius is back in Minnesota and she recently started her position as the executive director of Fresh Energy, a nonprofit aimed at transitioning our state to clean energy.
She also mentors women of color who are school district superintendents and leadersof large organizations.
Join the conversation at 9 a.m. on Thursday with MPR News host Angela Davis. Have you come from humble beginnings and now consider yourself to have defied a path of obstacles? Call us during the 9 a.m. hour of the show at 651-227-6000 or 800-242-2828.
Guests:
Brenda Cassellius is the new executive director of Fresh Energy, a non-profit aimed at transitioning Minnesota to clean energy. She formerly worked for three decades in public education, including as Minnesota’s education commissioner and as superintendent for Boston Public Schools.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
About 60 years ago, a young man who grew up poor on the Red Lake Reservation revolutionized snowmobile design. While working at Polaris, Andy Wells — then just 20 years old — came up with a design to move the engine from the back of the sled to the front.
“It just made sense,” he said
Polaris immortalized Wells’ achievement by naming the snowmobile after him — the Lil Andy.
He could have had a big career with the company. Polaris management encouraged Wells to go back to school and return when he was finished.
But Wells had other plans.
He left, first to become a teacher for a couple of decades, and then to start his own multimillion dollar business. Later Wells combined his two biggest passions — engineering and helping others — to create a free apprenticeship program for anyone who's Indigenous.
Making a difference Before joining Wells Academy in Bemidji, Red Laker Lisa Butcher lost her job. Today she's operating one of the most sophisticated precision machines in the world that is worth millions and making high-end components. She's been with the program about a year.
“I have a love for learning and whenever I can prove myself to do something better than what I even thought I could do I'm there, I'm doing it, this has just been the perfect job for me,” Butcher said. “I needed something to support my family and it did that.”
Beltrami County in northwest Minnesota is the second poorest county in the state. It’s county seat — Bemidji — sits between three reservations. Growing up on Red Lake, Wells said he had help when he was young.
“That's why I was able to go forward. Some of them didn't. And some of them had failed in the public systems. And they needed a second chance, I realized that I had the ability to maybe help at least a few of them,” he said.
Wells Technology focused on making tools. By 2008, it had outgrown its humble two-stall garage where it started, to include 32 employees and $54 million in revenue. But early on, Wells noticed a growing problem.
“We were getting a lot of applicants coming to our door, looking for work. And they really weren't qualified. They had dropped out of high school, and they didn't have any industrial skills,” Wells said. “A lot of them didn't even have transportation, they were riding with a friend or someone they knew. And it was a really difficult challenge.”
Wells called them “employment-challenged applicants” and felt the hiring process was unfair to them.
“In a competitive world, they had been turned down by other possible opportunities. And I kept feeling that maybe I could do something if I could see desire. And if I could see that they were trustworthy. Maybe I could do something about it,” Wells recalled. “And I began teaching them one by one.”
Word gets out Wells’ mission worked — really well. Initially the company was only able to train one or two people a year, and Wells says it was expensive. But word got out.
“Other corporations liked what we were doing. And they said they would be willing to actually give us a small grant,” he said. “It was something that we had to do. We were training only one or two a year and with the help from some of the other corporations we were able to double that.”
He used the money to create the nonprofit Wells Academy and soon began training up to five workers a year. He said it works for everyone, including the financial supporters. “They can help humanity plus get some future employees,” he said. “So, we're trying to be a model.”
Opening in Red Lake And then things went one step further: In November 2020, after years of dialogue with Red Lake Nation, Wells Academy opened an apprenticeship program on the reservation at the Oshkiimaajitahdah community center in Redby. Wells supplied the equipment needed to increase accessibility for those living on the reservation.
The center's executive director, Jerry Loud, said he admires Wells Technology because it doesn't give up on people regardless of their past.
"Where other employers won't even take a look at them. Andy will take them on and give them a second chance. And that's really our mission here at Oshkiimaajitahdah is getting people on a new path, a new journey, because we all made mistakes, right?" said Loud. “We've been fronting part of it; Andy’s been fronting part of it. But now we need partners to continue on and to grow this. So that's really what I would like to see.”
More than just a certificate Assistant executive director Eugene Standing Cloud said the program is about more than just a certificate.
“It's getting these individuals to understand that they can accomplish pretty much anything, getting them the confidence, getting them the organizational skills to show up every day, participate, ask questions, learn a new skill, a new career. And I think that's, that's really a huge goal,” Standing Cloud said.
In Redby, students learn how to manufacture fasteners commonly found on medical equipment. Robert Altaha, 23, said he heard about the program from his sister. Before that he was doing child care.
“I just decided to change my life. I got bored sitting at home doing nothing. Because sitting there with kids all day can get tiring and exhausting,” Altaha said. “I was sitting there with like, eight kids a day. And it would drive you crazy at times. But I had to figure something out, to do something new.”
So far three classes of three students per class have finished the program at Oshkiimaajitahdah. From there, students transfer to the Bemidji location for the final 12-month training. Wells Academy has graduated a total of 105 students since it opened.
After the program is complete Wells will either hire the graduates or help them find work at a different company — even if it’s a competitor. He said the metric for success is job placement.
“I think that it just keeps the whole thing more fair. So it doesn't look like we're doing this just for us. We're really not,” Wells said. “I do it because it was my time in life to give back."
‘Making life better for others’ One of the people Wells has helped is Leech Laker Logan Cloud. He’s the oldest of four boys. Cloud said his parents are in their 70s and are experiencing medical issues just as his brothers are transitioning into adulthood. Graduating from Wells Academy has given him the ability to support his family’s needs.
“That's something that really needs to be looked for in Native Country, is that understanding of a family dynamic, that we're not a 9-to-5 family, that whole dynamic is foreign to us,” Cloud said. “We're a unit, we’re a lodge, we're not a picket fence with all that other crazy stuff that you see on TV, our family is completely different.”
Wells says the Red Lake funding is geared toward Indigenous prospects, but the apprentice program at Wells Academy in Bemidji is open to all. And that's the model he's trying to encourage businesses across the U.S. to take up. He says it's an approach that can help fight poverty while strengthening community.
“My motivation every day is to get up and make life better for other people. I think it's a very satisfying thing. It's a joyful thing to see that you've done something that makes other people's life a little better,” Wells said. “It's different than pleasure. Pleasure is kind of a central thing. You can take a boat ride or an airplane ride or go see a movie or something like that. That's just temporary pleasure, but happiness and joy are found in the heart.”
Updated: 8:33 a.m. It’s a Sunday morning at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Pastor Elijah McDavid III is preaching to the congregation.
The rows are nearly full with several dozen churchgoers. Above the pulpit hangs three portraits of a Black Jesus and banners with each letter of the word — Rhythm — hang across the ceiling. They represent the traditions of its primarily African American congregation.
When McDavid speaks, all eyes are on him as members of the church hang onto every word. On this Sunday morning his sermon is based on the message “Let Your Life Speak.” He’s preaching from the book of James and says it can be a little direct.
“At some point it may sound like I’m judging you. But I’m not singling you out, I’m trying to help all of us out. I need these five chapters of wisdom just as much as anybody here,” McDavid said.
The congregation cheered.
At 30, McDavid may be young for a senior pastor, but he has deep roots in the Black church. Originally from Arlington, Va., his grandfather was a pastor and civil rights leader in South Carolina for over 50 years — who battled segregation and helped integrate schools. McDavid grew up hearing how his grandfather helped transform his community and it continues to inspire him to this day.
Gallery * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III speaks during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III speaks during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III speaks during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.
“It’s helping folks to imagine what a better world can look like. At the end of the day we are an imaginative people, we are a creative people and we’re always believing that God has something better than what we’re currently living in and experiencing,” McDavid said. “It’s being able to kind of paint that tapestry and visualize what this world can become.”
McDavid started out serving as assistant pastor at Alfred Street Baptist Church, one of the oldest Black churches in Alexandria, Virginia. A few years ago he got a call from an old family friend who thought he’d be a good fit to continue the work of the retiring pastor at Fellowship.
That’s when he moved to Minnesota to run a church on his own for the first time.
Fellowship is located in a section of Minneapolis which contains some of the highest concentrations of African Americans. These north side neighborhoods also contain some of the highest concentrations of poverty and economic underdevelopment compared to other parts of the city.
Black churches like Fellowship have long played a crucial role in advocating for the freedoms and rights of African Americans. And McDavid doesn't shy away from talking about issues that impact residents of the north side neighborhoods which surround the church. But he also says the church is taking action to help the community.
Gallery * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Chanda Smith Baker (right) comforts Indred Alexander (left) a candidate for Brooklyn Park City Council, as she speaks during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. The church used a portion of the service as a platform to let local electoral candidates speak. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Parishioners listen as senior pastor Elijah McDavid III speaks during a service. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Natalie Sims (center) sings along with fellow parishioners as FMBC Youth Choir performs. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison speaks during a service. The church used a portion of the service as a platform to let local electoral candidates speak. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Parishioners dance and sing along as FMBC Youth Choir performs during a service. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Volunteers manage a voting information booth after a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Youth members of the multimedia team monitor a live-streaming broadcast during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis.
“If the need is housing that’s affordable, if the need is dealing with food insecurity then we’re gonna work on meeting those needs,” McDavid said. “Some needs we can meet as a church but when there’s other issues that are beyond the scope of the church, that's when we work together with people like in an interfaith housing collaborative, to make sure that there's more money being set aside on the state government level to help build affordable housing for individuals.”
Fellowship also joined the fight to protect the community from COVID by becoming one of the first faith based vaccination sites.
And members of the community say they like McDavid’s style.
Church trustee Larry Suarez has been attending Fellowship for over 20 years. Suarez, who is in his 70s, says McDavid impressed him from the start.
“The first time I heard him I said, ‘that is the guy.’ He teaches, he preaches and he pastors. And his arms are open, which makes this church open,” Suarez said. “That is so important, because you want people to look at Fellowship and know that I can go and I'm welcome and I'll be treated well.”
Younger churchgoers are also impressed.
Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Members of the FMBC Youth Choir perform during a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis.
Mackenzie Jones has been going to Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church since she was six years old. Now in her mid 20s, she says continuing to come to Fellowship and stay connected with those who watched her grow up has maintained a sense of stability in her life.
She’s glad to see more young people join the church since McDavid started as pastor. And it’s something that makes Jones excited about coming to church each week.
“It's very easy to connect with him and he is clearly an intellect just through his sermons,” Jones said. “He keeps it very real, which is something that I like. I like someone who's direct.”
For McDavid, cultivating community is one of the most rewarding parts of leading a church.
“This world can be so traumatic, so violent six days a week, and one day a week you get a chance to come in here and find a place of refuge and peace. To be affirmed and loved by others in your community,” McDavid said. “Some who you know well, others who you don’t know. But we foster these deep meaningful relationships here and those carry generational bonds.”
Gallery * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III greets parishioners after a service Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III greets parishioners after a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis. * Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Senior pastor Elijah McDavid III greets parishioners after a service at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis.
McDavid’s style of relating to his community is just one of many reasons church goers come back week after week.
As Fellowship continues to grow, McDavid loves to see new congregation members walk though its doors. He hopes to continue creating a refuge for community members and to keep the longstanding Black tradition going for generations to come.
Josefa Gaona-Pacheco’s parents passed away when she was a child. She says Día de los Muertos has always been a special way to remember them.
“I'm so happy that it finally has been recognized. Now I feel like there is a link between my homes. I was born in Mexico but have been in Minnesota for so many years,” Gaona-Pacheco said. “When I heard that there would be an altar at the Capitol, I knew I had to be there.”
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Josefa Gaona-Pacheco was one of the few dozen visitors in attendance for the unveiling of the Día de los Muertos altar at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Tuesday.
Gaona-Pecheco of Eagan, Minn. was one of a few dozen visitors to the Minnesota State Capitol Tuesday for the unveiling of an altar or ofrenda, for Día de los Muertos — a celebration which marks the day when loved ones who’ve passed away come back to visit with the living.
Organizers say this display marks the first time the Capitol has hosted this recognition of the holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and parts of Latin America.
As a cultural family advocate, Gaona-Pacheco often creates altars of her own in the schools she works in, but says she always thought she needed to ask for permission. Seeing the Altar de Muertos at the Capitol gave her confidence in representing her cultural traditions at school.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Aaron Johnson-Ortiz holds up a framed photo of his brother, Gabriel Johnson-Ortiz, who passed away in 2015, during a press conference at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Tuesday.
Aaron Johnson-Ortiz is one of the organizers of the ofrenda and runs (Neo) Muralismos de Mexico — a Minnesota-based Mexican and Latinx community arts organization — with his sister Carmen Maya Johnson-Ortiz.
He said it’s important to raise awareness about the challenges Latinos face in Minnesota and in the United States. The ofrenda at the Capitol is a way for Johnson-Ortiz to honor the legacy of their brother Gabriel Dominic Johnson-Ortiz, who spent many years advocating for immigrant and worker rights in Minnesota.
“For me it’s important to be here along with MCLA and the artists to say that we’re here and still fighting. ‘Zapata Vive, la lucha sigue’ (They say Zapata lives, the struggle continues)," Johnson-Ortiz said, citing Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who fought for the poor. "For me that means that the dead keep living as long as we continue fighting."
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Offerings are left on an altar in observance of Día de los Muertos at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Tuesday. The holiday marks when the veil separating the living and the dead is the thinnest.
Isabell Beasley of Duluth also drove down to St. Paul to see the ofrenda. Originally from Houston, Texas, Beasley says the Altar de Muertos reminded her of her family and traditions practiced at home.
“Since moving to Minnesota I haven’t seen or been exposed to much of my culture back home. It’s really nice to see that visibility and appreciation for a part of me and the greater community in Minnesota.” she said.
For Beasley, the small details make a big impact. Her favorites are the bottles of Jarritos soda displayed on the altar.
“You see Piña, you see Mandarindo — those are some of my favorite drinks that my family would have displayed on the altar and I resonate with that.” Beasley said.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Isabell Beasley drove from Duluth to view the altar at the Capitol. Originally from Texas, she said the small details were her favorite.
Artist Flor Soto loved seeing visitors like Beasley and Gaona-Pacheco come out to see the ofrenda and she hopes it will serve as a safe space for other members of the Latino community to come together.
“I am an artist of making altars for the dead. This is a great way of screaming that we are here at the Capitol. That we are Latinos at the Capitol. Let’s not forget we are here,” Soto said. “The altar of the dead is not something to be sad about. It is that we are here alive and that we are here honoring them.”
The altar at the Minnesota State Capitol will be available for public viewing until Nov. 12.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Artists unveiled an altar in observance of Día de los Muertos at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Tuesday.
It’s a Friday night at the Pillsbury United Communities’ Waite House in Minneapolis. Artist Monica Vega is standing over a small table showing other Latinos how to make traditional cempasuchil flowers out of paper.
While she walks through the steps, all eyes are on her hands as she molds the bright orange paper into a beautiful flower.
This year, for Día de los Muertos, there will be an “Altar de Muertos,” or ofrenda, at the Minnesota State Capitol for the first time. It will include the cempasuchil flowers Vega and community members are making, mixed in with real, locally grown flowers.
Día de los Muertos is when loved ones who have passed away come back to visit and celebrate with the living. Many Latinos create ofrendas in their homes or community centers that include food and drinks, photos of loved ones, papel picado — a decorative paper with intricate cutout designs — and incense.
It also includes the cempasuchil flowers — which are traditionally known as the flower of the dead — whose musky scent helps guide the souls back home.
Artists Monica Vega and Flor Soto are designing the ofrenda, which will represent the cultural traditions of Mexican and Latinx communities in Minnesota.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Lead artist Monica Vega gives instructions to volunteers while working Sunday on the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol.
Organizers hope it will create a space to remember those who lost their lives in recent years from COVID-19, police brutality and gun violence. They’ll also be remembering immigrants who lost their lives at the U.S.-Mexico border.
For Vega, creating ofrendas is a tradition close to her heart. When she was a young teenager, her father passed away and she created her first altar to keep his memory alive.
“The Day of the Dead celebration has been in my family since I can remember. My mom lost a baby and Dad, in a way to keep remembering that baby decided to do an altar at home every single year to remember that baby. When he passed away I really needed a way for myself to heal. It was really hard at that age, losing your dad,” Vega said. “We created the altars at home, but once I got married and had my kids I said, ‘You know what? I should continue my tradition so in that way I let my kids know about Grandpa.’”
Now, creating ofrendas has become Vega’s craft.
The altar at the State Capitol is just one of many she's designed at homes, community centers and cultural organizations across Minnesota. For Vega, it's important to her to research and learn more about the history so she can pass it onto the next generation of Latinos in Minnesota.
She said she recognizes that creating the first Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol is a big responsibility for her community.
- Tim Evans for MPR News
Lead artists Flor Soto (left) and Monica Vega pose for a portrait Sunday at the Minnesota State Capitol. Soto and Vega are tasked with creating the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the Capitol. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Offerings, including children’s shoes and toys, representing those who have perished while attempting to cross the southern U.S. border wait to be arranged on the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the Minnesota Capitol on Sunday. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Artist Monica Vega holds up a decoration reading “MN State Capitol 2022” while arranging the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Portraits of community members wait to be arranged on the Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol building. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Candles and Christian icons adorn the Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol building. * Tim Evans for MPR News
A photo of a deceased woman rests on the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol building. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Artist Flor Soto sets up a photo of a deceased community member on the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the Minnesota State Capitol.
First of its kind at any Minnesota government building The idea for the ofrenda came from Carmen Maya Johnson-Ortiz. She runs (Neo) Muralismos de Mexico, a Minnesota-based Mexican and Latinx community arts organization, with her brother Aaron Johnson-Ortiz.
Johnson-Ortiz remembers asking her brother if there had ever been an altar at the Capitol before. When they realized there had never been one at any Minnesota government organization, they knew it was time to organize one for their community.
“I'm Mexican-American, so I can go back and forth. But I know a lot of people that move here and they, you know, are not able to go back to their country, and they miss all the things that, you know, remind them of their family, of their town, of their tradition,” Johnson-Ortiz reflected. “I think it's important that we do them here, so that we can feel like we are part of this community and not just in a different land where our traditions don’t matter.”
Carmen Maya and Aaron Johnson-Ortiz pitched the idea to the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs. Katya Zepeda is the council’s Legislative and Policy Director of Education and coordinated the work from the artists and organizers with the Capitol.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Frida Solano Vega, daughter of lead artist Monica Vega, helps her mother set up the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol building.
Zepeda says she hopes having an ofrenda at the Capitol shows the value in tradition, brings healing to the pain members of the community have been experiencing, and creates a visible space for them to come together.
“We've had loss of jobs, we've had loss of lives, we’ve dealt with police brutality in our community as well, many lives lost at the border.” Zepeda said. “ All of that just starts to bottle up and to have a spot where you could just remember and feel like, okay, you're not alone.”
While the Altar de Muertos is not related to the upcoming election season, Zepeda says she hopes it serves as an important reminder for elected officials to recognize Minnesota’s Latino community.
"Our issues are still going to be there. So it's a reminder, I think, for our politicians, our legislation and our community to remember that we are here, a big part of Minnesota, of the history and that our issues need to be taken into consideration as we build Minnesota up,” Zepeda said.
‘You made it from your heart’ Back at the workshop, the pile of cempasuchil flowers grows as artist Monica Vega sits around a table with other Latinos.
As the night goes on, community members trade stories on family history, cultural traditions and community happenings. Seeing other Latinos make the cempasuchil flowers brings Vega joy. She hopes visitors will come out to see the Altar de Muertos, and she encourages other Latinos to explore the tradition in their own way.
“Sometimes we don't have enough money to buy everything. If you have one picture, if you have one glass of water, if you have any kind of bread — it doesn't really need to be Day of the Dead special bread — if you have only fruit. Whatever you have, that's the way you start it,” Vega said. “Just please don't think if you don't follow those rules, your family members won't come to visit you because that’s a lie. They will definitely come to visit you because you made it from your heart.”
The Altar de Muertos at the Minnesota State Capitol will be unveiled Tuesday, Nov. 1, available for public viewing until Nov. 12. Visitors are encouraged to bring photos of loved ones to honor.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Skeleton figurines line the top of the first-ever Altar de Muertos at the State Capitol building.
“There’s no spirit left in a Twinkie,” joked Linda Black Elk, an ethnobotanist and food sovereignty coordinator at United Tribes Technical College.
We often forget the relationship we have with food but many Natives, myself included, understand the statement “no spirit left.” Call it soul, nutrients or energy, there’s no spirit left in processed foods that restrict any natural interaction with pollinators and animals.
Nor is there spirit in foods genetically modified to look “perfect” instead of focusing on planting a healthier seed diversity.
Black Elk spoke at an Indigenous conference about First Medicines in September at Mystic Lake Casino. The focus was on several Native peoples finding ways to return to a traditional diet — Indigenous foods are our “First Medicines.”
My relationship with food is complicated. Though I am Cree, I grew up in small towns in Crow Wing County with a single white mother. My three sisters and I grew up low-income and sometimes on food stamps, so now I am a speed eater as a result. My favorite food is raspberries and I remember up until my early teens begging my mother to buy them, but they were too expensive and spoiled too quickly to make sense to buy for four kids.
I’ve had occasional experiences with Indigenous foods: I blueberry picked with my dad once as a kid, and my mom sometimes treated my siblings and me to fry bread when she could. She also has a green thumb, so I always lived in a house with plants around me.
My first relationship with First Medicines was aloe — I learned its healing properties helped my family with their sun allergy. Throughout the years I’ve learned more about our relationship with several plants and the land, and how we should thank the forest, the food, who are the First medicines. How we offer tobacco to plants as thanks, and never take the first plant we see because it could be the last of its kind.
When I heard of this three-day conference as a writer in a fellowship with MPR News, I sought the opportunity to visit with Natives and learn more about Indigenous ways of eating. At the conference, there were more than 100 Indigenous biologists, nutritionists, gardeners, non-profit organizers, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community workers and academics who shared how they approach expanding “First Medicines” in our landscape and our diets.
Fry bread and food sovereignty In the same way we value tribal sovereignty, many at the conference spoke of a similar concept of “food sovereignty,” which focuses on sustainable and local food availability and aims to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples to control how they distribute what they grow and harvest.
Food sovereignty protects the right to feed the community without the worry of affording it. It also protects fish and game practices, which may not sound important until you learn that there were laws that prohibited how Indigenous peoples could obtain food on reservations. They were forced to survive off of ration cards that provided beans, corn and foreign foods like flour, salt and sugar — which led to the creation of the reservation food fry bread.
I was relieved to learn this concept of returning to a traditional diet does not dismiss survival food, like the fry bread I grew up eating. Black Elk asks fellow Native people to avoid white sugar and flour, but with the understanding that there is a “sacredness in survival food.”
Still, Black Elk’s family hardly goes to the grocery store since the food and medicines they gather are originally grown in the Bismarck, North Dakota area, including dandelions, which she said are good for liver health and can alleviate anxiety. Black Elk said you can prepare tea from dandelion. It’s bitter, so if your palate doesn’t enjoy it, you can add honey to sweeten it.
“Our ancestors ate specific plants because they knew it helped the body,” not because Indigenous people found it delicious, she said. Non-Natives can also eat such foods as bitter greens; First Medicines provides nourishment and health benefits for anyone willing to transition towards a more traditional diet.
The conversation of guilty pleasures also came up, and Black Elk shared she can’t stop eating brownies, revealing her diet is not 100 percent traditional. The goal is growing food and knowing where your food is grown. One food that anyone can find to start their journey toward consuming traditional foods and medicines is a fruit we actually might find delicious: blueberries.
The lessons from blueberries According to Linda Black Elk, blueberries contain antioxidants and can help people recover from addiction. Another medicinal property, more commonly known as a “nutritious benefit,” is they help maintain blood sugar. Gathering from wild blueberry bushes is difficult, though. Blueberry bushes require a certain condition to grow well.
They thrive off of wildfires since they burn away pests and competing plant species, at the same time enriching the topsoil that wild blueberry root systems particularly enjoy. Underground, fires preserve a particular part of the stem’s energy called “rhizome” that helps the blueberries grow.
In the prairies, Dakota peoples originally burn-controlled the landscape in low flammable seasons for the bushes to grow. They understood that fire was the perfect medicine for wild blueberries.
Courtesy Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community
A Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community controlled burn.
U.S. fire officials made these controlled burns illegal when they implemented policies in the early 1900s to stop wildfires, viewing all fires as “bad.” Not everything dangerous is bad. Stopping all fires during that period damaged several ecosystems.
Ferin Davis Anderson, an ecologist/biologist working for Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, pointed out that the present-day Minnesota government requires special permits for controlled bushfires. SMSC burns when the state allows it in spring and fall, which is when vegetation is dormant, but would like to burn during the growing season, too, to add more diversity, Davis Anderson stated.
Spirit is tied to our food, where each plant and animal is our relative, and we are making several paths to return to a more Indigenous diet that stimulates and returns species to the Minnesota landscape. Fires are just one way that keeps the landscape healthy. Another approach on a smaller scale is growing plants in the home.
Finding ceremony in seeds While other conference panels begin with projectors and PowerPoints, Jeff Savage’s began with a bag of dirt. For his panel on “seed keeping,” he brought the bag to show how to grow sweet grass in portable containers.
Between the smell of the soil and the lingering scent of cedar and tobacco in the room, the air reminded me of ceremony. The few that I’ve been to always have that calming aroma and I always feel more welcomed when I am in a place that offers this scent. It’s a type of cleansing, a type of healing and a bit of a spirit returning to me.
Savage is Anishinaabe from Fond du Lac, and one of the first things he shares is that he’s a gardener. In Anishinaabe culture, there is a prophecy their ancestors followed which said to “move where the food grows on the water,” a reference to wild rice. Wild rice, though, isn’t the only plant he makes an effort to continue growing for future generations.
One of his approaches is spreading seeds in a bag of dirt, because a bag can stay anywhere in the home. Savage says, “Sweetgrass is hard to grow in the wild due to the seeds spreading first instead of growing leaves first like other plants,” so they need a lot of space to have a chance to compete with other plants to grow, hence a bag. He saves several types of non-invasive seeds in old prescription bottles for when they will have a home.
One plant, in a sense, has returned home. Davis Anderson said that while she was visiting Hocokata Ti, which is the SMSC's cultural center in Shakopee, she spotted a tipsinna. It's a rare turnip and, according to her, it was probably the first one harvested on SMSC lands in 100 years. A few of us were awed by her news, and some even said “tipsinna!” with excitement upon seeing the photo.
“When you bring a plant back, it brings along others,” said Davis Anderson. She’s not just talking about other plants that come along, or the zitkadan bird that returned to the area. She’s including the fact it brings along the original insect pollinators: Bees. Davis Anderson mentions how honey bees aren’t the ones who do most of the pollinating. It’s the native bees that were here before colonialism that do most of the pollination.
Who knows? I can imagine if more pollinators return, it’ll become more common to find tipsinna in the Minnesota landscape once more.
Respect in a raspberry Through the teachings of these Indigenous food leaders, I gained a closer relationship with food and quiet respect for what the land provides. A panelist handed me a black walnut, and instead of the slightly sweet taste of English walnuts sold in stores, this one carried a smokey perfume and stung the back of the throat almost like tasting scotch.
Terry Maresca, a professor in family medicine, explained that the black walnuts we sampled have half our daily value of magnesium and 195 percent daily value of manganese. Magnesium is believed to help regulate depression and physical pain, while manganese may promote healthy gut bacteria.
Like Black Elk said, enjoying every food we eat isn’t needed to appreciate what First medicines provide. We don’t have to eat them just when we are sick; we can eat treatment to prevent us from getting ill.
The main Indigenous form of preventive care or prescription is “almost always in the form of a soup,” Black Elk said. Ingredients like tipsinna (prairie turnip), hominy, nettles, yellow crookneck squash and mushrooms are just a few First medicines that make a robust nutritious soup.
courtesy Linda Black Elk
Soup prepared by Linda Black Elk, an ethnobotanist and food sovereignty coordinator at United Tribes Technical College.
Her words reminded me that the most cherished soup I have ever had was, in fact, completely Indigenous and traditional. It was at Menominee Nation in 2019, when I was at a week-long summer institute. We were planting corn for their community, and a seed keeper began preparing soup in a large outdoor cooking pot after the work was done. There were plenty of vegetables in it, but the star of the show was the Native corn we thanked and added to the soup.
All the food we ate there was respected and thanked before we ate. We thanked the food for growing and offering itself to us. There was wild rice and berries for dessert. With each meal there I felt lighter with a full stomach compared with store-bought meals that weighed down my stomach and spirit.
At the conference, we all ate together in a large banquet room in the casino. On the last day, dessert was a cup of berries topped with a small dollop of whipped cream. I started with the blueberries, then the blackberries mand saved the raspberries for last.
I didn’t expect this conference to impact my relationship with food, but I gained a greater appreciation for even simple foods that we sometimes forget are Indigenous and for their impact on us. Instead of scarfing my food, as usual, there was an effort as I savored this dessert, silently thanking the fruit for growing and offering itself as food.
Correction (Oct. 27, 2022): An earlier version of this essay misstated state restrictions on prescribed burns and the geographic context of a turnip.
A crowd of bystanders watched helplessly as a Minneapolis police officer took George Floyd's life in Minneapolis in 2020. One of those watching was just 9 years old, Judeah Reynolds. Now an 11-year-old sixth grader, Judeah has released a children's book called “A Walk to the Store.” It documents the effect Floyd's murder had on her and how she's continuing to move forward.
"I'm too little to walk alone to the store,” Judeah reads to a rapt audience of elementary school students in north Minneapolis Friday. “So I ask everybody in the house, "Will you walk me to the store?"
Her cousin Darnella Frazier agreed to walk Judeah, with her $3 for candy, to Cup Foods at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.
That's where Judeah watched as George Floyd lost consciousness and stopped moving under Derek Chauvin's knee. Her cousin recorded the video of Floyd's murder that went viral.
"We watch a man get killed,” Judeah reads. “We cannot stop it from happening. All we can do is tell what happened."
Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Judeah Reynolds reads from her book before an audience of young children at Legacy of Dr. Josie R. Johnson Montessori School.
Judeah was the youngest bystander at the scene. Her presence was noted repeatedly by judges and attorneys as four ex-cops stood trial in state and federal court in Floyd’s killing. All four former officers are currently serving federal prison sentences. Two of the former officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, are set to go on trial later this month in Hennepin County District Court on charges of aiding and abetting Floyd’s murder.
As told to Sheletta Brundidge and Lily Coyle, Judeah’s story was inspired by a book by Brundidge's daughter that Judeah read called “Cameron Goes to School'' in the Urban Ventures reading program.
Brundidge said Judeah’s book purposely doesn't dwell on the horrific details of Floyd's murder. There are no images of Derek Chauvin or of Floyd pinned to the ground.
"I didn't want to relive that trauma for Judeah,” said Brundidge, who has authored three other children’s books. “George Floyd died but the world moved. We moved in the right direction with racial equity and breaking down barriers and systemic things that have been in place for generations. We all moved. I didn't want her stuck in that spot."
Stephen Maturen for MPR News
A copy of the book “A Walk to the Store” sits on a table during an assembly at Legacy of Dr. Josie R. Johnson Montessori School on Friday in Minneapolis.
Instead, Judeah's story follows her path, from sadness to starting to understand the power she had as a witness of this event. That's why Brundidge felt it was important for the book to also include a list of ways that parents can help kids through trauma.
"As parents we're having to explain school shootings [at] football games, and why we've got to be careful or what we've got to look out for. These kids are going through a lot of trauma,” Brundidge said. “This little girl who people were wondering about, who was in the video, 'I wonder how she's doing? I think about her all the time.' Well, she's doing fine."
The drawings by Darcy Bell-Myers of Stillwater show Judeah and her family in bright colors. Judeah wears a blue shirt that says “Love.”
Judeah's book release was held at Legacy of Dr. Josie R. Johnson Montessori School in north Minneapolis. It's named for the pioneering Minnesota civil rights advocate, active since the 1950s, who helped pass anti-discrimination laws in the state.
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Johnson said it broke her heart when she heard Judeah witnessed Floyd's killing. But she was hopeful seeing Judeah read to a gym full of children.
“To see her today be able to say she saw and she’s still alive and awake as to what’s going on, and to feel safe and secure, is what our struggle as Black adults is all about,” Johnson said.
Judeah's father Ronnie Reynolds remembers some hard days after Floyd's killing. She couldn't sleep, she was crying all the time. The family moved to Chicago to get some distance. The book release was the first time they’d been back.
"Me and my family left Minneapolis because the tragedy was too much for my little daughter to bear. She didn’t want to go to school, she was scared of police and stuff,” Reynolds said. “And I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to just move away for a while.’"
Stephen Maturen for MPR News
A balloon honoring the 49th birthday of George Floyd is prepared for release.
But Reynolds has watched his daughter grow, get better and gain strength. When he read her book, he said it brought tears to his eyes to see how far she'd come.
Judeah's book was released on what would have been George Floyd's 49th birthday. After hearing the book, dozens of children tramped into the parking lot behind the school. They sang "happy birthday," shouted George Floyd’s name, and released a big red balloon. Brundidge told the kids it would float all the way to Floyd in heaven.
Judeah said most kids she went to school with don't understand all that happened to her. She wants to share her story with other kids to help make positive change.
“I’m too little to walk alone to the store,” Judeah’s story closes. “But I’m big enough and brave enough to make things better in a very big way.”
The book is published by Beaver’s Pond Press and is available at AWalkToTheStore.com.
Stephen Maturen for MPR News
Students watch as a balloon honoring the 49th birthday of George Floyd is released during an assembly to celebrate the book “A Walk to the Store” at Legacy of Dr. Josie R. Johnson Montessori School on Friday in Minneapolis.
Tucked away in a corner office at COPAL Minnesota, Francisco Segovia and Claudia Lainez talk with their guest about the show they’re about to record.
Segovia and Lainez co-host Radio Jornalera’s show Entre Mundos — Between Worlds. Their guest, Rita Robles, is returning to Mexico, and so they are pre-taping the following week’s show. Robles, who works for Alianza Americas in Mexico, will be discussing forced migration.
Radio Jornalera began airing in Minnesota in October 2020. But has its roots in Pasadena, Calif. It’s part of a network that spans the country as well as El Salvador and Guatemala.
And it began as a way to get information out to day laborers, so they could know their rights and know who to turn to for help when needed, Segovia said.
He said the network reached out to COPAL to see if they were interested in opening a station in Minnesota.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
The door to Radio Jornalera’s recording studio is seen in Minneapolis on Sept. 8.
Lainez said each station focuses on issues that are relevant to the area they’re in.
“I believe that many of the issues we deal with, not only on Entre Mundos, but on the other programs, are meant for the community to be informed about what is going on,” Lainez said.
She worked at Radio Jornalera in Pasadena before moving to Minnesota. Lainez said they would discuss policy issues that impact immigrants and their children — like DACA and TPS. And during the pandemic, being able to share information through Radio Jornalera was vital.
“And we saw at that time that Radio Jornalera was like a vehicle that allowed us to reach many people through an app or through the programs on Facebook,” Lainez said.
Entre Mundos is just one of seven programs aired on Radio Jornalera Minnesota Monday through Friday — including a daily program that airs from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Radio controller Mike Castillo prepares to record Radio Jornalera’s latest episode at COPAL’s offices in Minneapolis on Sept. 8.
Currently Radio Jornalera Minnesota and its various programs can be heard live by downloading the app. Segovia said in the future they hope to have a podcast where the different shows can be available.
The idea behind Entre Mundos is that many people, especially immigrants, live in dual worlds, Segovia said. It’s especially true of first-generation immigrants who often don’t feel they’re from here or their native country, he said.
"Our homes are those dual worlds and our children also live in those dual worlds. So those are identities that we have to live with every day. Sometimes we’ll say I'm from Minnesota, or I'm Salvadoran, or what am I? So we live in those worlds and we move between those worlds,” Segovia said.
This is why they do shows focused on topics such as transnational issues, he said. For example, the show with Robles focused on how factors like climate change force people to leave their homes. But the show’s topics also touch on issues closer to home.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Show guest Rita Robles (center) laughs with co-hosts Claudia Lainez (left) and Francisco Segovia during a taping in Minneapolis on Sept. 8.
They also make sure the issues and voices they cover reflect all the different ethnicities within the Latino community.
"So I think in this sense the diversity of voices we have on this radio reflects our community,” Segovia said. “We have Central American voices, Mexican voices, voices from various countries. It's the intention that people can hear themselves.”
Vicki Adame covers Minnesota’s Latino communities for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
As the Guthrie Theater celebrates its 60th anniversary, the landmark theater has chosen to open their season with Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone. The show is a romantic comedy about two Vietnamese refugees who fall in love at a resettlement camp in 1970s Arkansas.
Director Mina Morita said that during the rehearsal process input from the local Vietnamese community was an important part of the story telling.
“We [had] a lot of conversations both amongst the cast and creative team about how we were reaching out.” Morita said, “[We] had spoken to some elders as well, from the Vietnamese community, in preparation for rehearsal.”
The show also hired a cultural consultant to help with the nuances of presenting a story with a specific cultural lens.
While it is notable that the Guthrie is opening the season with an all-Asian cast that focuses on the Vietnamese American experience, “Vietgone” is not a new show, having premiered in 2015. Eric Sharp, one of the cast members, said that as more Asian plays show they can be successful, the more they are being produced.
“Now there is a critical mass of plays that have been found viable.” he said, “I hate that word, but it's true. There are plays like “Vietgone”... like “The Great Leap,” like “Cambodian Rock Band,” that not only Asian people know about now.”
While Asian voices have been part of the American theater as far back as the 1920s with the drama "The Submission of Rose Moy,” by Ling-Ai Li, Sharp has noticed wider recognition especially in the last decade. In fact, when Sharp graduated college nearly 20 years ago, he wasn’t sure what it looked like to have a career as an Asian American theater artist.
“My idea was that I was going to fit into this white American theater or this idea of what it means to be white on stage and that I would do that irrespective of my race.” Sharp said. “Well, you graduate, and then you find out very quickly that that's not the case.”
He found Theater Mu, which allowed him to explore what it means to be an Asian American artist, without compromising his ambitions.
“I always call it the happiest accident of my life” Sharp said.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Rick Shiomi poses for a photo at the Kling Public Media Center in St. Paul on Sept. 22.
Rick Shiomi, playwright and co-founder of Theater Mu, said he always wanted that to be the purpose of the organization, to act as both a theater that produces Asian work and give artists the opportunity to grow so they can work in other theaters.
“The thing I didn't want was for people in the larger community to be able to look at Theater Mu and say, ‘Okay, that's a little niche group,’” Shiomi said.
Much like Sharp, Shiomi did not think there was space for him to write theater from his Japanese Canadian view until he found the community of Asian theater makers in San Francisco in the 1970s.
“I actually wanted to become a writer for a long time, but really felt like, there was nothing that I could say, in an odd way,” Shiomi said, “because I had no understanding that there was an Asian Canadian, or an Asian American perspective.”
The Guthrie is not the only theater in town with a show featuring Asian artists and playwrights. Theater Mu’s 30th season opens Friday with the world premiere of “A Different Pond,” a stage adaptation of the children’s book of the same name. Meanwhile, Full Circle Theater premieres Shiomi’s new play “Fire in the New World” in October at Park Square Theatre.
Courtesy of Theater Mu. | Amy Rondeau
Benji Stoebner (left) and Hieu Bui (right) play father and son in "A Different Pond."
Park Square is currently showing “The Humans” through Oct. 9. The show usually casts white actors in the one act drama, but director Lily Tung Crystal decided to cast Asian actors to play the daughters in the piece and portray them as Korean adoptees.
“I felt like this community in Minnesota would understand that choice, because so many in our community are Korean or Chinese adoptees,” Crystal said. “I don’t think that choice would have happened if they didn’t hire an Asian American director.”
The flourishing of dramatic arts in the Twin Cities comes during a nationwide rise in hate-motivated crimes toward Asians and Asian Americans.
“We believe at Theater Mu that one reason for the rise in anti-Asian hate and violence is because of the lack of our stories in film, television and stage,” said Lily Tung Crystal, who also serves as Theater Mu’s artistic director. “When people don't see our stories, then it’s easy for them to see us as other, or un-American, or even subhuman.”
Even with all the current productions running with Asian representation, Crystal says that there is still work to be done to ensure the work is recognized properly.
“Maybe right now there is a lot of Asian plays, but that’s not to say for the rest of the season there’ll be this flurry of activity.” Crystal said. “It can still be considered by some institutions that that’s a sort of outside thing to do ... like ‘we might consider doing an Asian American play this season, but not next season.’”
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“Vietgone” at the Guthrie runs until Oct 16. Theater Mu and Stages Theatre Company’s “A Different Pond” runs until Oct. 23, and Full Circle Theater’s “Fire in the New World” opens Oct 19.
If you've ever learned a band instrument, or know someone who has, chances are you've heard the tune "Blues in the Closet" — a signature of the bebop era.
What you may not know is that its roots go back to north Minneapolis, where one of its creators grew up. And today — Friday, Sept. 30, 2022 — marks exactly 100 years since that jazz pioneer, Oscar Pettiford, was born.
Pettiford music 1
Pettiford got his start on the stages of the Twin Cities, helping create a "Minneapolis sound" long before Prince — a sound that forever changed American music. He played with a who's-who of jazz greats across the U.S. and in Europe, before his untimely death.
"He probably doesn't get the right amount of credit that he should," bassist Christian McBride, host of NPR's "Jazz Night in America" and a six-time Grammy winner, said of Pettiford.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Oscar Pettiford, on bass, played with his brother Ira, a trumpeter, at the University of Minnesota's Coffman Union in Minneapolis in 1941, in this photo from the Minnesota Historical Society collections.
"He was probably the most important bass player of that bebop generation in terms of creating new language for the bass, and playing what Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were playing, on the bass."
Pettiford was born in Oklahoma, the son of Native American and Black families. Oscar, his brother Ira, and their large, musical family soon moved to Minnesota.
"They were traveling musicians, who traveled with different artists, who picked up different skills, who jumped in different bands," said Jamela Pettiford, a singer from St. Paul who still carries the family name. She also teaches theater at Battle Creek Middle School. Oscar was her grandfather's cousin.
"Coming here to Minnesota, looking for a better life, of course hoping for less discrimination — and there was a music scene here. They very much were the Minneapolis sound at the time."
It was Oscar who rose above the rest. Bands passing through town heard his sound, forged in the ferment of a musicians' strike in the early 1940s that all but shut down the recording industry and had musicians making a living with relentless performing and creativity.
Pettiford music 2
Oscar Pettiford remembered the era with another jazz legend — radio host Leigh Kamman —in the early 1950s, captured in a recorded interview still held by the Leigh Kamman Legacy Project.
"I recall one night when you had a big session with Coleman Hawkins," Kamman says in the recording.
"Up in Duluth, Minnesota. Before then, it was Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington."
"And you wound up with the Duke, didn't you, as a member of his rhythm section?"
"Yeah, Duke Ellington, and also Coleman Hawkins."
Asked by Kamman to describe his musical talents, Pettiford said: "Well, basically I'm a bass player. For kicks I play cello, for thought I play piano, and for odd moments I beat on the drums.”
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
This undated promotional photo of Oscar Pettiford is datelined New York City, where he was a regular in the post-World War II jazz scene, often backing the likes of Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Earl Hines and Coleman Hawkins.
Pettiford left for New York City in the 1940s and became a regular at the legendary Minton's Playhouse, the Harlem incubator of the sound that succeeded the Big Band swing era. He played with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He went on to become a regular with Miles Davis and Milt Jackson.
Pettiford's style would come to sound familiar to any modern ear — featuring virtuoso turns of bass in a small group and propelling the rhythm section to the front of the sound.
Anthony Cox is a well-known Twin Cities bass player and student of the era.
"He had, let's call it that three-dimensional style, that really wasn't examined before," Cox said. "And what I mean by that is that the bass was really starting to outline the harmonies, providing propulsion and time."
But Oscar Pettiford never had the legacy of Miles Davis or even bassist Ron Carter. And there are a couple reasons for that.
First, Pettiford got sick and died literally at the height of his powers. He was only 37 when, by some accounts, he contracted something like polio and died in 1960.
But there's also where he died — in Copenhagen, Denmark. He'd moved to Europe, like many of the jazz greats, in the late 50s — to flee the pernicious racism that even music stars and pioneers couldn't escape.
Tim Nelson | MPR News
Jamela Pettiford says people still ask her family about her grandfather's cousin, legendary jazz bassist Oscar Pettiford, who moved to Minnesota as a child and became part of a legendary family music ensemble in Minneapolis before moving to New York and helping transform American music after World War II.
"You do start to realize when you don't feel welcome in your own home," said Jamela Pettiford.
Pictures of the era show traveling musicians sleeping in Ira Pettiford's living room in Minneapolis — likely because area hotels wouldn't give Black people a room.
"And it was difficult to perform for audiences where you had to go through the back or you had to sit by the kitchen. And for Blacks, at that time, in Europe, you were welcomed with open arms," Jamela Pettiford said.
And that's where Oscar Pettiford is today, buried in a grave in Denmark. There's even a street named after him in Copenhagen.
There's no such formal recognition in Minnesota. But his family, and fans of his enduring music, remember him still, today, a century after he was born.
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Durante siglos, la comida y la alimentación han ayudado a conectar vidas y culturas. Como parte del proyecto North Star Journey, MPR News se puso en contacto con la escritora gastronómica de las Ciudades Gemelas, Mecca Bos, para que compartiera algunas historias sobre platos culturales emblemáticos y sobre cómo los rituales de elaboración y consumo de alimentos pueden unir a las personas.
Mi amigo Jeremy Moran y yo nos unimos por los tamales.
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Jeremy Moran ayuda a Mecca Bos con una hoja de maíz rota durante una reunión para enrollar tamales el domingo 27 de marzo de 2022.
Katie Myre, quien nos conocía a los dos, reconoció nuestro amor compartido por los tamales. Nos presentó, y ¡pum!, ahora nos queremos. Hacemos tamales juntos, y eso nos hace más cercanos. Así es como funcionan los tamales.
Jeremy nació y creció en el Bronx, y llegó a Minnesota en 2015 para seguir una relación. Luego consiguió un gran trabajo. Luego se casó. Compraron una casa, así que este es su hogar ahora.
Pero sin un verdadero sabor de su otro hogar, tenía demasiada nostalgia para llamar realmente a Minnesota su hogar.
Así que llamó a su madre, y comenzó a preguntarle sobre su cocina. Y la cocina de su madre. Y a través del acto de hacer masa envuelta en hoja de maíz, empezó a sentirse mejor.
“Quiero continuar con esto no sólo por mí, sino por ella”, recuerda Jeremy de aquellas primeras llamadas telefónicas. “Tener esos momentos de cuando estaba aprendiendo a hacer tamales por primera vez y llamarla por FaceTime desde Minnesota y simplemente decir: 'Oye, ¿cómo se ve esto? Esta es mi masa!' Y con una conexión o calidad de video no muy buena, ella podía mirarlo y decir: 'Te olvidaste de la manteca, ¿no? Y yo decía: 'Sí, lo hice. Tienes razón. Voy a incorporar un poco ahora mismo' “.
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Mecca Bos mezcla su masa hasta conseguir la consistencia adecuada durante una reunión para enrollar tamales un domingo.
Jeremy hablaba mientras me unía a él, a Katie y a otro amigo — el chef Sean Sherman del restaurante indígena Owamni de Minneapolis — para preparar una tanda de tamales.
Es el plato mexicano más emblemático que existe: masa de maíz mezclada con manteca de cerdo y caldo, envuelta en carne, verduras o queso, y luego envuelta de nuevo en hoja de maíz o de plátano y cocida al vapor. Por lo general, se trata de un esfuerzo comunitario en el que la familia y los amigos se reúnen para hacer docenas y docenas a la vez.
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Chef Sean Sherman observa.
“Así es como se consigue todo el chisme”, dice Jeremy.
Y sí, mientras se enrollan los tamales, es el momento perfecto para reír, hablar, cotillear y estrechar lazos.
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Jeremy Moran y Katie Myhre comen tortillas de maíz fritas y queso Oaxaca con la salsa roja que queda después de enrollar todos los tamales.
“Realmente es mucho mejor con gente”, dijo Jeremy. “Así es. Tradicionalmente, es una cadena de montaje. Hay una jerarquía en el proceso de elaboración. Es decir, los chicos más jóvenes que no están mezclando la masa ni cocinando nada, les haces pelar las mazorcas y limpiarlas con agua, para que se puedan utilizar en los tamales.”
Preparar juntos alimentos como los tamales es como un lenguaje, que quizá ofrece una comunicación aún más intuitiva o visceral que la de hablar con el otro. Es una historia, un relato, una cultura. Es un linaje familiar que puede transmitirse incluso cuando las palabras u otras historias pueden fallar o perderse.
Nicole Neri para MPR News
Mecca Bos y Jeremy Moran añaden masa a sus hojas de maíz.
Para mí y para Jeremy, los tamales son una instantánea perfecta de este fenómeno.
“Se trata de conectarse como primera generación de mexicano-americanos”, dice Jeremy. “Se trata de conectar con la madre patria, de conectar con la cultura de mi madre, de conectar con lo que ella vivió, con lo que mi abuela vivió y así sucesivamente. Siempre se puede trabajar para conseguirlo. Es algo en lo que inviertes, y que te da beneficios, ¿sabes?”
Lo sé.
Nicole Neri para MPR News
Jeremy Moran vierte el caldo mientras Mecca Bos mezcla su masa hasta conseguir la consistencia adecuada.
Nicole Neri para MPR News
Pilas de tamales a la espera de ser trasladados a una olla humeante durante una reunión para enrollar tamales el domingo 27 de marzo de 2022.
Aunque podría ser más fácil reunirse en un bar y tomar una cerveza, el trabajo y el esfuerzo extra que se necesita para enrollar cien tamales es valioso en formas que van más allá de la experiencia de unión de llevar a cabo esta tarea juntos. Jeremy llama a los tamales “amor en una mazorca”.
Significa que, cuando terminamos la tarea, después de que todos los tamales se apilan dentro de la olla y se cuecen al vapor, se enfrían y se envuelven en papel de aluminio con destino al congelador, podemos pasarlos a amigos y familiares hasta que el congelador esté vacío.
Entonces es el momento de otra sesión. Esas personas pueden saborear realmente ese amor, y estarán deseando que llegue la siguiente tanda.
“Para mí, esto eran las vacaciones, los cumpleaños... era muy especial”, recuerda Jeremy de los tamales de su infancia. "Y luego, cuando me enteré de que “Oh, Dios mío, esto es mucho trabajo — entonces se convirtió en algo aún más especial para compartir con mis amigos y ser como, 'Hey, esto es lo que hice por ti'”.
Y lo que los tamales hacen por mí y por Jeremy — este ritual compartido — es ayudarnos a eliminar las fronteras imaginarias y las líneas de sangre, y hacer familia de nuestra amistad.
“Todavía recuerdo mi primer intento de hacerlo aquí. Lo hice con un amigo que tenía del trabajo. Y siendo una persona que se mudó a Minnesota, hacer amigos no siempre fue fácil. Pero poder decir: 'Oye, vamos a hacer esto juntos'. Llegamos a conocernos mejor”.
Los tamales no dan tiempo para que te autoimpongas límites.
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Javier García pone en marcha el tractor verde John Deere y lo hace avanzar lentamente hacia las hileras de cebollas y calabazas. Las cuchillas detrás del tractor remueven la tierra y arrancan las malas hierbas a su paso.
García es parte de un pequeño, pero creciente, grupo de agricultores de origen latino de Minnesota. Según el censo agrícola, Minnesota cuenta con unos 112.000 agricultores. De ellos, 650 se identifican como hispanos o latinos.
García llegó a Estados Unidos en 1993 procedente del estado mexicano de Michoacán. Como muchos de los que inmigran aquí, buscaba una vida mejor.
Mientras habla acerca de ser agricultor, el viento sopla contra los maltrechos restos de uno de los invernaderos que fue parcialmente destruido por un tornado que tocó tierra semanas antes.
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Javier García conduce su tractor en los campos de su finca Agua Gorda.
“Nunca imaginé que tendría tierras aquí. Pero me ha dado la motivación (para seguir adelante) porque, en México, no teníamos tierras donde cultivar”, dice García.
García posee ahora 54 acres en Long Prairie, Minn., lo que equivale a unos 54 campos de fútbol.
La cosecha de este año incluye hileras de cebollas, tomates roma y calabacines.
En el interior de uno de los invernaderos, García utiliza una azada para eliminar las malas hierbas entre las hileras de chiles habaneros y poblanos. Admite haber tenido planes diferentes para los cultivos de este año.
“El clima fue muy drástico este año. Tenía la esperanza de plantar secciones de una verdura. Pero no fue posible”, dice.
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Javier García con su esposa Marina Corona, en su finca Agua Gorda.
La sección más grande está dedicada a los melones de melaza. Tiene un contrato para vender los melones a las escuelas de Minneapolis y St. Las hileras de melón producirán 13 palés de 700 libras cada uno.
De los 54 acres, sólo se utilizan unos nueve.
Aunque es propietario de sus tierras y las cultiva, García sigue trabajando en la lechería — a tiempo completo en invierno y a tiempo parcial durante la temporada agrícola — para poder llegar a fin de mes.
Cuando llega el momento de la cosecha, sus hijos adultos y sus nietos colaboran. Pero admite que también recibe una ayuda no deseada.
“Los ciervos también nos ayudan a cosechar. No me gusta, pero qué le voy a hacer”, dice García.
Los ciervos aparecen y se dan un festín con los melones justo cuando maduran. García se queda fuera hasta las 11 de la noche o la medianoche vigilando la cosecha.
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Javier García puso etiquetas para identificar los cultivos que plantó en su finca Agua Gorda.
“Pero me sorprenden. Me voy y aparecen de madrugada, cuando estoy en casa durmiendo”, dice García entre risas.
En México, su experiencia con la agricultura se limitaba a la siembra de maíz. El cultivo de vegetales y otros tipos de cosechas era algo completamente nuevo cuando empezó hace diez años.
Después de trabajar varios años cosechando cultivos en el Valle Central de California, seguido de trabajos de jardinería en Los Ángeles, García se trasladó a Minnesota.
La idea de Agua Gorda, que lleva el nombre de su ciudad natal en México, surgió en 2011. Un grupo de diez personas se reunió para desarrollar planes para formar una cooperativa agrícola. Cada año, uno o dos hombres la abandonaban. Muchos se fueron porque se dieron cuenta de que implicaría mucho trabajo y compromiso, dijo García. Una década después, García es el único que ha visto fructificar ese sueño.
Los agricultores latinos como García no son habituales. Pero cada vez son más los que se unen a las filas.
Más allá de la carretera Un poco más arriba, en una parcela vecina, las hermanas Alicia López de Gutiérrez y Yesenia López Ybarra han comenzado su segundo año como agricultoras. Junto con sus maridos, trabajan dos acres de tierra. López de Gutiérrez admitió que convenció a su hermana y a su cuñado para que se unieran a ellos a la empresa agrícola.
López de Gutiérrez dice que comenzó a cultivar en una pequeña parcela en un jardín comunitario de Long Prairie. Y pasar de un jardín comunitario a trabajar dos acres puede ser un todo un reto.
Ella no es ajena a la agricultura. En México, su padre tenía cultivos y animales y ella y sus hermanos tenían que ayudar.
Por eso, cuando escuchó hablar de un programa ofrecido por la Corporación de Desarrollo Económico Latino, se puso en contacto con ellos.
Al principio, López de Gutiérrez dijo que estaba interesada en tener una granja orgánica certificada. Pero dado que apenas estaban empezando y que el proceso de certificación implica mucho trabajo, les aconsejaron que lo dejaran para más adelante.
“Pero como no teníamos mucha experiencia, nos aconsejaron que lo probáramos (la agricultura) y, si funcionaba, entonces podríamos seguir adelante con la certificación orgánica”, dice López de Gutiérrez.
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Las hermanas Yesenia López Ybarra (izq.) y Alicia López Gutiérrez (der.) están en su segundo año de cultivo. Su objetivo es obtener la certificación orgánica y hacer de la agricultura un trabajo a tiempo completo.
Todos trabajan Elizabeth Montesinos camina por las hileras de cultivos de la granja familiar Santa Rosa, situada en Arkansaw, Wisconsin. Habla con la experiencia de alguien que lleva toda la vida dedicándose a la agricultura. Montesinos cuenta cómo ciertas áreas del suelo en los más de 70 acres tienen un mayor contenido de humedad; habla de la complejidad de ser una granja orgánica certificada; y describe la técnica que están utilizando para que las plantas de tomate crezcan hacia arriba en lugar de extenderse y caer al suelo.
La gente cree erróneamente que lleva la granja ella sola.
“Me preguntan cómo una mujer hace esto sola. Les digo que no estoy sola”, dice Montesinos.
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El trabajo en la granja es un asunto de familia. Los copropietarios de la granja Santa Rosa, Elizabeth Montesinos, su marido Alejandro Tapia y el hermano de éste, Carlos Tapia, posan para un retrato con miembros de la familia en Arkansaw, Wisconsin, el 25 de junio.
La idea errónea surge porque ella asiste a las reuniones, toma las clases y hace todo el papeleo.
Santa Rosa es un emprendimiento familiar en el que participan su cuñado Carlos Tapia, su marido Alejandro Tapia y ella misma. Son un equipo, dice.
Al igual que García en Agua Gorda, también tienen otros trabajos. Pero el sueño es hacer de la granja la fuente principal de ingresos.
Sobrevivir solo con la agricultura es difícil, dice Carlos Tapia.
“El primer año intenté cultivar a tiempo completo, pero económicamente no funcionó. Así que tengo un trabajo a tiempo completo y hacemos esto (la agricultura) a tiempo parcial”, dice Tapia.
Añade Montesinos: “Una granja no te da lo suficiente para mantenerte ni para pagar las facturas”.
La familia compró la granja — situada a una hora y 20 minutos de Saint Paul — hace cuatro años. Fue también cuando Carlos y su familia se trasladaron de California a Minnesota.
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Carlos Tapia, copropietario de la granja Santa Rosa en Arkansaw, Wisconsin, habla de sus plantas de tomate el 25 de junio.
Elizabeth y Alejandro viven en Saint Paul con sus hijos. También es donde tienen su negocio de reparación y construcción de techos.
Pero cada fin de semana toda la familia se dirige a la granja.
El hecho de ser una granja familiar significa que todos trabajan, incluido Hunter, el labrador negro. Hunter siempre está cerca, dice Montesinos.
Animales salvajes — incluidos los osos — viven en la zona. Y el trabajo de Hunter es la seguridad.
Cuando están en los cuatriciclos, Hunter está con ellos, normalmente en la parte delantera.
“Cuando vemos que se detiene delante del cuatriciclo y empieza a ladrar, tenemos que parar porque está viendo un animal o algún otro tipo de peligro”, dice Montesinos.
La familia también tiene otro labrador de un año de edad, que todavía está aprendiendo. Hansel es una traviesa, dice Montesinos. En otras palabras, se mete en problemas.
Y como si fuera una señal, Hansel se acerca a los patos salvajes. Intenta investigar olfateándolos. Los patos muestran su molestia.
Los miembros más jóvenes de la familia, el hijo de Montesinos, Emiliano, y sus sobrinos Rafael y Carlos, todos preadolescentes, también ayudan.
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Emiliano Tapia (al frente) y Carlos Tapia conducen por la granja Santa Rosa en Arkansaw, Wisconsin, el 25 de junio.
“Ellos llegan en los cuatriciclos hasta donde estamos y nos preguntan si queremos agua o refresco”, dice Montesinos.
Como todos los agricultores, lidian con los elementos y también con los ciervos que viven en el bosque contiguo.
El primer año plantaron brócoli y coliflor cerca de los árboles. Ella cuenta que, al ser agricultores novatos, plantaron cultivos por todas partes sin pensarlo mucho.
“Ellos (los ciervos) se lo comieron todo. Los ciervos no se comen toda la planta, sino que caminan y se comen parte de ésta y se van a la siguiente”, dice Montesinos.
Como resultado, no pudieron vender la cosecha. Aprendió que a los ciervos no les gustan ciertos olores, ni ciertos cultivos.
Ahora utilizan diferentes cultivos para construir un fuerte natural. Colocan ajos y cebollas y el maíz que plantan para alimentarse en los bordes exteriores.
“Hay que camuflar las verduras”, dice.
Y aunque los ciervos siguen entrando, no hacen tanto daño.
Cuando se le pregunta si alguna vez imaginó que sería propietaria de una granja y que trabajaría la tierra, Montesinos se ríe.
“Es curioso. En Morelos estudié medicina. Y ahora mi papá y mis hermanos me dirán: 'estudiaste medicina y ahora trabajas en una granja, entre el lodo”, dice.
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Elizabeth Montesinos habla sobre la agricultura en un campo de ajos mientras en medio de la finca Santa Rosa en Arkansaw, Wisconsin, el 25 de junio.
A merced del clima De vuelta a Agua Gorda, García mira al futuro. Planea añadir ganado que pueda vender. Y plantar nogales. Y en algún momento, vender sus productos directamente al público en un mercado agrícola.
Como agricultor, García está a merced del clima. El año pasado, una helada tardía acabó con el 80% de las sandías y todos los pepinos.
Tras esa pérdida, su esposa, Marina Corona, le preguntó cuánto tiempo iba a aguantar. García tuvo una respuesta algo filosófica.
“Estoy contento con lo que queda y sigo avanzando”, dice García. “No te rindas, porque el que se rinde, pierde.”
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Javier García se sienta en un refugio improvisado en la granja de Agua Gorda para protegerse de la luz del sol.
Vicki Adame cubre las comunidades latinas de Minnesota para MPR News a través de Report for America, un programa de servicio nacional que coloca a los periodistas en las redacciones locales para que informen sobre temas y comunidades poco conocidos.
Growing up on the Prairie Island Indian Community reservation, Calais Lone Elk had a plan — a set of steps burned in her mind and logged with her school to help her find her family in the event of an explosion at the nearby nuclear power plant.
Tom Baker for MPR News
Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant is seen from Wakonade Drive in Prairie Island Indian Community in Welch, Minn., on Thursday.
“If you went to school and something happened out here, where do you meet your parents? Where do you reconnect with your family? Because you can't come back here,” she said. “Those are things that I don't think are normal.”
Lone Elk is 37 now, and still constantly reviewing her escape plan for an emergency at the nearby power plant.
It sits just 700 yards away from her community of 100 homes, its powerlines lining backyards and main thoroughfares.
For Lone Elk and others living in Prairie Island, concerns about the nuclear power plant’s safety are a source of low-grade daily stress. Despite official assurances, many people believe it’s bad for their health to be living so close.
“We all have a plan, whether we voice it or not. We all have an idea of what we have to do or what we need to do. And we all know that we have to go up-wind of that nuclear plant,” Lone Elk said.
Related Stories * 2019 Environmental nuclear worries force Prairie Island tribe to seek new lands * 2001 Prairie Island faces another battle over nuclear waste * 2003 A brief history of the Prairie Island plant
But it’s also a physical reminder of the environmental injustices endured by Native people for generations, said tribal council vice president Shelley Buck.
“Since this plant was created, our energy history here has been focused on the power plant and the nuclear waste that is stored right next door to us,” she said.
Tom Baker for MPR News
Shelley Buck, vice president of Prairie Island Indian Community in Welch, Minn., stands at a potential solar site for the community’s net-zero carbon project on June 30.
Today, the Prairie Island Community is seeking to disentangle itself from a power plant it never wanted. It’s created a $46 million plan to produce net zero carbon emissions within the next decade.
Buck said it’s an ambitious step toward being a sovereign nation that’s energy sovereign, too.
“To do a big project like net zero really helps us change that narrative into something positive showing how energy can be used as a positive force,” she said. “By offsetting or eliminating the carbon that we produce, it's a positive for everybody.”
‘Why not go big?’ Prairie Island members are descendants of the Mdewakanton Band of Eastern Dakota. They made their home in southern Minnesota, but lost that land in 1851 in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.
It wasn’t until 1934 that the land on the banks of the Mississippi just north of Red Wing became a federally recognized reservation.
The Prairie Island power plant was issued its first operating license in 1974, and it was renewed in 2011. Initially, tribal members say the plant was described to them as a steam power plant. It’s one of two nuclear power plants, the second in Monticello, that Xcel says are critical to its plans of producing carbon-free electricity by 2050, and is considered safe by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Tom Baker for MPR News
A sign outside Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant along Wakonade Drive gives directions for visitors at the plant, located within Prairie Island Indian Community in Welch, Minn., seen on June 30.
In the early 1990s, Xcel Energy asked the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency permission to store nuclear waste there — at least temporarily until a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain opened, a plan that has since stalled due to local opposition.
As a child, Mikhail Childs remembers his father protesting the prospect of storing nuclear waste so close to the reservation.
“Some of the earliest memories I have are of protestors standing in the road, blocking semi-trucks hauling nuclear waste,” he said. “The way [my dad] explained it to me was that all this land we reside on is sacred … We believe that in our creation story, the creation took place just miles down the river.”
Catharine Richert | MPR News
Mikhail Childs, Prairie Island Indian Community member, stands on tribal land near the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant in southeast Minnesota on July 20.
But here’s the twist, and it’s an important one: Through all these years of living with a nuclear power plant next door, Prairie Island hasn’t been powered by the energy generated there, said Buck. The community just recently started getting natural gas from Xcel.
It’s a logistical detail that she said prevented the tribal community from being eligible for the Renewable Development Fund, a pot of state money financed by Xcel customers for renewable energy projects for Xcel service areas, she said.
Then in 2020, a legislative change allowed Prairie Island to tap $46 million from the fund for the project.
While the tribe had toyed with doing wind power and other renewable projects in the past, a large amount of funding created the opportunity to do more.
“Why not go big?” said Buck.
One goal, different solutions And by big, Buck is referring to a plan that aims to eliminate 20 million pounds of carbon annually through a raft of renewable energy and efficiency upgrades. Prairie Island’s Treasure Island Resort and Casino is the largest energy user on the reservation.
The plan involves multiple ways of achieving that goal, said Andrea Thompson, who has been hired by the tribe as the project’s energy program manager.
“Any community that sets a net zero goal gets to decide the pathway to get there. And for many different reasons, some communities choose to purchase carbon credits or find a financial path to achieve net zero while the actual carbon reduction isn't necessarily happening on site,” said Thompson.
“What Prairie Island is doing is different,” she said.
Tom Baker for MPR News
Andrea Thompson, energy program manager for Prairie Island Indian Community’s net-zero carbon project, stands at one of the project’s potential solar sites in Welch, Minn., on June 30.
Their plan involves constructing a 10-to-15 acre solar array that aims to reduce carbon emissions by more than 550,000 pounds annually, phasing out natural gas in favor of geothermal energy and electrification, and promoting zero-emission and energy efficiency residential upgrades.
“One of the reasons why this project is so exciting is because [the tribal council] is not just saying, ‘Let's go gangbusters on solar, and we're gonna call it a day,’” said Shoshana Pena, director of program services for NV5, an technical engineering company hired to work on the project.
It’s unlike other municipal or tribal projects she’s seeing in the industry because “They're not trying to just do whatever is just meeting the minimum requirements. They're looking at all of these different solutions,” she said.
Tom Baker for MPR News
Treasure Island Resort & Casino, owned and operated by Prairie Island Indian Community in Welch, Minn.
Net zero in a few years The project is also on a fast-track, said Thompson.
“A lot of communities, when they set net zero goals, they often give themselves 10, 20, 30 years to achieve net zero. And Prairie Island is under a totally different timeline, we're trying to do net zero in a few years, a handful of years,” she said.
That ambitious timeline has been setback by COVID-related supply-chain and labor issues, Thompson said. Last year, the tribe asked the Legislature for an extension on phase two of the project, which involves finding the right contractors to build out the plan — a phase that’s expected to wrap up early 2023.
Details of the plan continue to be in flux — for instance, where the solar array will be located, and the design of the geothermal wells.
Meanwhile, tribal leaders continue to make their case for the plan to residents. By and large, it’s been met with support from members, but some are skeptical of how it will be implemented.
That includes Selena Childs. She’s concerned that the plan focuses too much on technologies that won’t stand the test of time. She has questions, for instance, about how long the solar array will last before it needs to be replaced.
Catharine Richert | MPR News
Selena Childs, a member of the Prairie Island Indian Community, stands on tribal land near the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant in southeast Minnesota on July 20.
“Instead we could start building houses that are green, that are economically effective,” said Childs. “We can build our house out of local resources that are still going to be more efficient than these trailer houses that we see put up here … And yet, they want to fill up our fields with solar panels.”
And, Childs points out, the plan doesn’t change the fact that the community is next door to a nuclear power plant and the nuclear waste stored there.
“We don't get our power from the nuclear panel down here. We get it from somewhere else,” she said.
Tribal member Nicky Buck said that may be true. But to her, it’s about reclaiming the narrative of her community and of their land.
“We want to turn it into a more positive, resilient story, that we, the people, are in control of our lives,” she said.
Catharine Richert | MPR News
Nicky Buck, a member of the Prairie Island Indian Community, stands on tribal land near the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant in southeast Minnesota on July 20.
Melissa Walls grew up in International Falls, Minn., the daughter of an Ojibwe — or Anishinaabe mom — and a Swedish-American dad. But for the most part, she was raised as part of her mom's large extended family, which descends from Ojibwe bands on both sides of the Canadian border.
Many of them worked at the Indian Center in town, where she remembers playing with other Native kids as a child. "So I knew very well that I was Anishinaabe, Ojibwe, growing up," Walls said.
In graduate school, she studied American Indian mental health and bonded with other Native American students. Now she's a professor and researcher for Johns Hopkins University, based in Duluth, where she's immersed herself in Ojibwe culture.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Melissa Walls is a professor and researcher for Johns Hopkins University, and she's immersed herself in Ojibwe culture. But Walls said she never knew much about her dad's side of the family.
"I was a jingle dancer as a little girl and now I dance again,” she said. I “go to ceremony,” and “get to work with amazing elders across the region."
But through all this time, she never knew much about her dad's side of the family. Then, one day about five years ago, her dad's sister found an ad in the paper for a Swedish TV show called “Allt for Sverige.”
“And she sent me in the snail mail, a little clip of this little ad and she said, ‘they're casting for a reality show in Sweden, you should apply and learn something about this side of the family.’"
Walls knew she was joking. But she applied anyway. She recorded a brief video before running out the door to drive her son to a hockey game. To her shock, she was accepted.
"And all of a sudden, I'm being flown to Sweden to be on a reality show to find out about my Swedish family. It was bizarre.”
The show aired at the end of 2019. The experience, Walls said, changed her life.
"I got to meet a Swedish family member. I got to learn about where my family came from. I got to visit and touch the house that my ancestors lived in in the 1700s,” Walls said. “It was deeply, deeply emotional."
A growing number of Native Americans Walls, 41, is one of about four million people who identified as Native American and white in the last census, nearly triple the number from 2010.
In all, nearly 10 million people identified as Native American, an 87 percent jump from 2010. Of those people, about six million are multi-racial.
Some of that dramatic growth is due to changes in how the Census Bureau collected and coded data, said Carolyn Liebler, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who studies Native American and mixed race identity.
But she said it also reflects a willingness of more people to embrace their Native ancestry, after years of government policies that tried to erase it.
"Generations later, they're still Native people, but they're feeling less of that pain. It's more generational pain and not personal pain. And so people are willing to come back to it. It's more socially accepted now to be Native, to be a person of color," she said.
For Melissa Walls, she never had an issue accepting that she's Anishinaabe. But she struggled to understand how that core part of her identity could co-exist with her Swedish side. She hoped the reality TV show would help her reconcile something she wasn't even sure was reconcilable.
"Which is, embodying both the colonized and the colonizer, walking through the world with light skin, but feeling like I'm an Anishinaabe person. How could I be both? Can I be both? What does that mean? Why did my ancestors leave? Did they come here and do harm?"
Walls doesn't have the answers to all those questions, she admits. She's still evolving. But she feels more at peace about who she is.
"I think before the trip to Sweden. I don't know if I would use the word shame,” she said. “But I would use the word 'not proud' of being anything other than Anishinaabe. It was almost like a stain. Because of all of the harm that has happened because of colonization. How could I embrace that? How could I be okay with that?"
There's still tension there, she said. But she's also discovered surprising parallels between her Anishinaabe and Swedish sides. Like how connected her Swedish ancestors were to the land and water and seasons, and how they lived communally, similar to her Ojibwe family.
Earlier this summer, Walls had a chance to return to Sweden, with her new husband, a Swedish man who she met while working on the TV show.
They met more of her extended family, who presented her with a traditional midsummer folk dress. Right away she was startled with how similar it felt to putting on pow wow regalia.
"Then something that gave me the shivers happened," she recalled. When they were dressing her, they told her to tuck her handkerchief behind a heart shape on the folk dress that covered her chest.
"And I said, ‘Well, why?’ And they said, ‘Well, we always lead with the heart.’ And those words 'lead with the heart,' you will hear Anishinaabe people saying that. I thought, ‘What is happening here?’"
Tears came into her eyes. She was stunned, she remembers thinking. “They’re saying the exact same words that I'm learning in Minnesota from Anishinaabe people! These are deep teachings.”
‘Finnishinaabe’ Other Native people in northern Minnesota who have reconnected with their Scandinavian roots have discovered similar parallels. Finnish people revere the sauna, for example, while Ojibwe people have the sweat lodge.
They’re both spiritual, in different ways, said Arne Vainio, a well-known physician on the Fond du Lac reservation, who takes an hours-long sauna every Saturday morning.
"It is a time to reflect on life and life changes,” he said. “I always feel like I'm with my father when I'm in there. And with my grandfather."
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Arne Vainio grew up north of the Iron Range, the son of a Finnish father and an Ojibwe mother who owned a bar in the tiny town of Sturgeon.
Vainio, 63, grew up north of the Iron Range, the son of a Finnish father and an Ojibwe mother who owned a bar in the tiny town of Sturgeon.
Over the years, he said, he's saved the lives of several people who hated him for the color of his skin. Before going to medical school he worked as a paramedic on the Range, where he recalls responding to a man having a heart attack.
"And as soon as he got in the ambulance with me, he said ‘No F-ing Indian is going to touch me.’ And then I started an IV on him, and I talked with him, and by the time we got to the hospital, which was maybe half an hour, he wouldn't let go of my hand and he wanted me to come into the ER with him."
Vainio’s father died by suicide when he was only four. When his Finnish grandparents died, “there was no more Finnish anchor, and I became mostly Ojibwe,” he said. That sense deepened when he attended college at the University of Minnesota Duluth and connected with an Anishinaabe group.
The reawakening of Vainio’s Finnish side began in 2008 at a FinnFest celebration in Duluth, where he and others spoke about what it meant to be a "Finndian," or "Finnishinaabe."
There are about 1,200 Minnesotans who identify as both Native American and Finnish, according to census data analyzed by the APM Research Lab as part of its project Roots Beyond Race.
Additionally, there are about 1,800 who identify as both Swedish and Native, and more than 5,000 who identify as Norwegian and Native.
Dan Kraker | MPR News
Lyz Jaakola stands inside a recording studio at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet, Minn., on July 22.
Lyz Jaakola also spoke at FinnFest. She's a musician and teacher at Fond du Lac Tribal Community College.
Both her dad’s Finnish family and her mom’s Ojibwe family played important roles in her childhood growing up on the Fond du Lac Reservation. Both families lived nearby; her dad’s family had homesteaded on the reservation.
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Still, she said sometimes she felt like she wasn't accepted by white or Native people.
"There's some challenges in being a mixed person,” she said. "You know, feeling like an outsider, and feeling like, you know, an ‘other,’ wherever I was. And I know that that's not only true for myself. I've talked with other folks who have had similar experiences.”
Jaakola, 53, channeled some of those emotions into a song she wrote called “Red & White Blues,” which she included on an album titled “Finndian Summer.”
But as she got older, she began to see her background as a source of strength. She said it's taught her to look for commonalities among people, and also to celebrate differences.
"I think people who are aware of their multicultural background, it's almost natural to do that,” she said. “I think that that's, I don't want to say like a product of being a mixed person, but it is a strength."
She believes that perspective helped get her elected to the Cloquet City Council two years ago.
"They trusted that I was going to be thinking about, you know, not only one part of my family circle when I was being asked to make decisions. So that's pretty humbling.”
Jaakola said she's learned to embrace the totality of who she is, in a way that builds on the strengths of both cultures.
For Arne Vainio, it's what's inside of you that's important.
"And I have inside of me Ojibwe, and Finnish culture,” he said. “And I wouldn't have it any other way."
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Arne Vainio stands for a portrait Tuesday, July 26, in downtown Duluth.
Part 2 - Once-ignored Indigenous knowledge of nature now shaping science
by
If you come into contact with people working in and around natural resources in Minnesota you may hear the term TEK. It’s a popular buzzword, which, confusingly, has little to do with technology.
It’s the acronym for Traditional Ecological Knowledge, an umbrella term for information about the natural world collected by countless generations of Indigenous people.
Through observation and life experience, they gained knowledge — what plants were good to make teas to soothe a sore throat, what bark to harvest to bring down a fever, how certain species adapted to changes in climate and how fire can revitalize the forest floor to produce an abundance of berries.
That knowledge was shared, often orally through stories or songs. Once dismissed as unscientific, there’s now increasing interest in incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the policies and practices of Minnesotans working with forestry and wildlife.
Mathew Holding Eagle III | MPR News
A group of red pines in Camp 8 about a month after a prescribed burn.
Michael Dockry is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. He is also involved in American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota where he teaches TEK concepts.
Through a traditional ecological knowledge perspective, “we are connected with everything,” Dockry said.
“That’s something that transcends science itself,” he said. “That’s why the spirituality, that’s why cultural practices and songs come into play with how tribal people are managing resources and thinking about them. We are all related.”
TEK differs from what some call scientific or academic ecological knowledge, which often views humans as separate from nature.
"It's really about that relationship between people and the place where they live, and the beings that are there with them,” said Rob Croll, who coordinates the climate change program at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.
GLIFWC represents 11 Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan with treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather on lands ceded to the federal government. Scientists recently collected information through interviews with tribal elders and harvesters to assess how vulnerable certain species are to climate change.
Croll emphasized that collective Indigenous knowledge about natural resources isn’t ancient history.
"It's happening now, it's happening today,” he said. “It's happening as people are out in the field on the lake, practicing the same activities that their ancestors did for hundreds and thousands of years."
Over time, that knowledge has been handed down, usually orally through stories and songs.
Michael Waasegiizhig Price is GLIFWC's traditional ecological knowledge specialist. Growing up, he knew little about his Anishinaabe culture. But when visiting family members in Canada, he listened as they told stories.
Mathew Holding Eagle III | MPR News
A reminder of the prescribed burn remains standing amidst the backdrop of new growth.
"Some of these stories talked about ecological concepts, like burning off a forest to chase away the bad spirits and bring back the good spirits,” Price said. “From a scientific term, that would be called forest regeneration. You’re talking about the same thing from two very different worldviews."
When European settlers negotiated or often imposed treaties on tribes, that Western ideology, along with Manifest Destiny and the belief system that people were ordained by God to reign over nature — that everything on Earth was put here for their consumption — became implemented in policies.
In turn, this threatened Indigenous people’s way of life. However, at least on paper, it guaranteed them the right to hunt, fish and gather in ceded territories.
Under TEK, the treaties have broader implications, said Seth Moore, a biologist for the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
“If those foods are not available, if those foods are toxic, if our air is toxic, if our water is toxic, the United States federal government has not honored those treaties and there has been an abrogation of those treaty rights,” Moore said.
Using fire as a tool In the Cloquet Forest, just south of Duluth, underneath a canopy of towering white and red pines, nature’s melody is a chorus of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
It’s a point where science and spirituality overlap.
In many Indigenous communities, people have long made careful use of burns to promote forest health. But the Western view saw fire as inherently bad. On the Fond du Lac Reservation of Lake Superior Chippewa, this resulted in a curbing of burns.
In 1904, urged by lumber companies, the land comprising the forest — three percent of the reservation — was given to the University of Minnesota by the government so that it could study methods to replenish areas after deforestation.
Dockry said nowadays, tribes are reclaiming TEK they were prohibited from using in the past, including fire.
“We’re starting again to see tribes leading natural resource management forward with fire use in the region,” Dockry said.
Mathew Holding Eagle III | MPR News
A burned log inside Camp 8 after a prescribed burn in the Cloquet Forest.
In May, the first prescribed burn of at least an acre since 2000 was conducted in the Cloquet Forest.
To make it happen, at the request of the Fond du Lac Reservation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BIA and the U of M agreed to a memorandum of understanding. It defined the working relationship between the three entities and paid tribal fire professionals to help conduct the burn.
“We can learn a lot from tribes,” Dockry said. “Tribes have done a lot of work around fire.”
Dockry says fires can be a real threat in Minnesota. However, prescribed burns help by removing forest waste which can lead to larger fires. It also encourages biodiversity by not allowing any one species of plant or tree to dominate an ecosystem — making it more sustainable.
During a recent workshop at the Cloquet Forestry Center, fire expert Damon Panek, an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of White Earth Ojibwe, spoke from the field in Arizona while assisting another tribe with their fire efforts.
Panek helped lead the prescribed Cloquet Forest burn. He said using fires is about much more than reshaping the landscape, it is also about reclamation of something greater.
"Our identity depends on it,” Panek said. “Our language, our culture, our ways of seeing the world is based on an ecosystem that is fire adapted and we don’t have that right now. So what does that mean for us?"
Panek said if prescribed burns continue, they will help unshroud Indigenous identity. He predicts there will be families camping out on the reservation, on the ceded territory, foraging for berries and sharing songs, stories and life practices — as he put it, rediscovering inlets to old outlets.
‘We want to see bigger trees’ One place where traditional ecological knowledge about natural resources is being put to use is the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe reservation in north-central Minnesota.
The reservation encompasses nearly half of the Chippewa National Forest. The red and white pine stands on and around the reservation were heavily logged starting in the 1800s.
Long before those timber barons began cutting the trees for profits, BJ Gotchie's ancestors made their home here.
Kirsti Marohn | MPR News
New plants, including wild strawberries, are visible on the forest floor in a portion of the Leech Lake forest where a prescribed burn was recently conducted.
"A lot of tribal members — myself included — we want to see bigger trees,” said Gotchie, interagency fire restoration coordinator for the Leech Lake Band. “We don't care so much about having big trees to harvest for timber revenues.”
Now, along with Keith Karnes, the band’s forestry director, Gotchie is working to restore it closer to the forest his ancestors knew — by selectively cutting and using prescribed burns to give the remaining trees more space to grow."
We want some of these big legacy trees, these great big old monoliths. They used to be here before the timber barons came through,” Karnes said. “There'll be some young forest that comes up, too. It's all about having a mix."
The forest has responded. With less underbrush, the trees are able to grow taller and form more of a canopy.
"Look at the difference in the trees,” Karnes said. “They just look happy.”
Kirsti Marohn | MPR News
Forestry director Keith Karnes inspects a pine tree in an area of the Leech Lake reservation near Cass Lake where recent thinning and prescribed burns have helped clear underbrush and given the remaining trees more room to grow.
The forest is also getting more diverse, with other native trees and shrubs such as wild blueberries, roses and juneberries, able to thrive.
For Karnes, who's not a tribal member, embracing this old way of thinking is a transformation that's taken years.
When he first started working for the Leech Lake Band 16 years ago, he brought a traditional forestry mindset, all about the economics — how to harvest the most timber for the most revenue, an attitude that earned him the nickname the “Timber Beast.”
Karnes recalled a conversation with a tribal employee on his first day.
"I told her, ‘A happy tree is a horizontal tree,’ which is what my forest products professor told me in college,” he said. “I got this absolute evil look."
But after a decade or so, Karnes said his perspective changed, as he began listening to what tribal elders wanted.
"The idea of timber revenues to the tribal government — it doesn't matter,” he said. “Here I was, just constantly focusing on economics. And that wasn't a vantage point for the tribe."
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Now, Karnes said, he uses a more holistic approach, focusing on the sustainable ecology of the forest.
That includes thinning trees earlier and aggressively to allow the remaining ones to develop bigger crowns, letting some trees fall over to create habitat for wildlife, allowing more biodiversity and encouraging tree species that are hardy to climate change and invasive insects.
In other words, Karnes said, thinking long term — not just about maximizing profits.
"It's grounded in not just Western science,” he said. “It's adaptive silviculture. It's climate change science. But it's also traditional ecological knowledge. Everything has a purpose."
Some federal agencies also are beginning to incorporate more Indigenous ecological knowledge into their policies and practices.
In 2016, then-Leech Lake tribal chairwoman Carri Jones sent a letter to the U.S. Forest Service, voicing the band's concerns that the overharvesting of timber had led to forests dominated by pine and aspen that lacked diversity of plants and wildlife.
In 2019, the tribe and the Forest Service signed a memorandum of understanding for shared stewardship of the Chippewa National Forest that reflects the band’s goals.
For his part, Gotchie envisions a thriving forest that produces local foods and medicines, much like it did for his ancestors.
"It's not going to be just in my lifetime. Not even in my kids’ lifetime,” he said. “My grandkids. That’s what we want for future generations.”
Do you remember a teacher who really made a difference in your life as a child? A teacher who really saw you and encouraged you?
Minnesota schools have a persistent opportunity gap, with Native American children, Black children and other children of color less likely to graduate high school than their white peers.
Research has shown that having teachers and school staff of color can help students of color succeed. But nationally only seven percent of teachers are Black, and only two percent are Black men.
American Public Media special correspondent Lee Hawkins spoke about identity, curriculum, recruitment and more with four Black men who are educators.
Guests:
- Michael Walker, the Director of Black student achievement for Minneapolis Public Schools
- Michael Thomas, superintendent of Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools
- Eric Robinson, a retired teacher
- Derek Francis, Executive Director of Equity and School Climate for Minneapolis Public Schools. He previously managed the district’s counseling services.
The following is a partial transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and brevity. Listen to the full conversation using the audio player above.
Lee Hawkins: Thank you all for being here. I'm really excited about the opportunity to bring you brothers together into this discussion. So thank you. Only two percent of the nation's teachers are Black males. That's a tough number to swallow. But here's something that's mind blowing for you all to digest: across the state of Minnesota, there are only 1.45 percent Black teachers, male or female. So that's even less than the percentage of Black male teachers across the nation. Only 1.45 percent Black teachers in a state where Black people make up seven percent of the population. What does this mean for Black children for Minnesota, particularly boys? And what will their educational experience be like as a result?
Michael Walker: Well, we already know that representation matters if we got to make sure that we have people that look like them in front of the classrooms, right? And when we think about how that impacts the growth and development of young people, is that when we see folks that look like us, it gives us the ability to see that we have that possibility to be an educator as well.
The school system is not designed for them to feel valued, to feel welcomed. The cultural aspects of our schools are a little different than what our Black students are experiencing. So it's not designed for them. And so we have to really think about how do we address that piece? The other components of why the experience is different: what about our curriculum? Like how is the curriculum set up? We have a Eurocentric curriculum, again, that is not centering the experiences of our Black people. And so how do we change? That is some of the things that we have to address.
Hawkins: Michael Thomas, what does this mean for the kids who are in these classrooms? Without people who look like them?
Michael Thomas: Yeah, I take it right back to the psychology of one's health and in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When a young person doesn't have a sense of belonging, they're going to struggle no matter what that gap might be. In this case, a lot of our young Black students, specifically young Black boys to your question, they don't see themselves in the curriculum, they don't see themselves in terms of adult authority in the school systems. And so it becomes very psychologically isolating, and with no outlet or sense of support.
That's where you begin to see a young, immature mind trying to make decisions for themselves that are well beyond their comprehension. So that's where we might see some kids falling off. Because they don't have the ability to make some of the best decisions without, you know, the struggles that they're going through, and not being able to have somebody that they can trust to go to, to help kind of process and support them through some of the challenges.
I would just center there first, and you can fast forward 30 years as adults. Many of us sitting in this room, were oftentimes maybe the only one — only teacher, only administrator in a system — where we also had that level of isolation and had to navigate very carefully our own existence to kind of stay alive in that system. So, I think that's where I would say first, how do we address Is that social — psychological need of our kids.
Hawkins: Derek [Francis],you're counseling kids. When kids come into your office and you're doing the counseling, do you ever get the feeling “wow, this person could really use some diversity in terms of the people who are educating them?”
Derek Francis: Oh, man, that is, I think the thing that comes to mind, especially when you're thinking about career development, especially for our youth, the exposure to seeing someone who looks like you. So many times when students, they have just the what they see on TV, so I show up as a Black person in the school, and then I start to teach lesson around. “Well, guess what, let me show you pictures of people who look like you. And they're doctors, they're lawyers, they're educators.” And it opens the mind. I think that's so neat, because it's really exposing them to their hope and future. I start to share students, “you have so many different career opportunities. Here's some schools where You see students that look like you.” And that makes a difference.
If you have a counselor that hasn't been around or seen Black people or Black students do some of these successful things, you might limit them from your own views. So at some point for someone to say, “Oh, I see you, I've seen people who have looked like you do some of these things. And that's going to be you.”
Hawkins: It's so interesting that you say that because people of all races have stories of being counseled out of going into certain careers by their counselor because their counselor didn't believe in them. I particularly remember a story of a woman who is very, very prominent in the science field, a Black woman that I went to school with who talking about being counseled away from STEM… and right now, she's one of the top people at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. So many people have these “Hi, how you like me now?” stories, and it's sad because you shouldn't have to hear those stories. You should be able to say, “I have the support from my village from the beginning.”
Before we get too deep into this, it's really important that we frame the problem that we're addressing right now: Boys collectively, of course of all races, are not performing academically, and socially, as strong as girls. We know that. In the case of Black boys, they're not an exception. And as the effort to close the racial opportunity gap continues, it's important to look at how our educational system can do a better job with Black boys. And if we're going to discuss the issue, we need to be transparent and candid. From what you see right now, from what you see statistically and in the classroom, are Black boys underperforming? Eric, you want to take that?
Eric Robinson: Right now students are looking at this as a Eurocentric type of system. And, you know, maybe when you're younger, elementary age, there's a little bit of hope. But then as they get more toward high school or middle school, then that starts to dwindle as far as improving their reading or math goals. So that follows them. I mean, working with high school students in a charter school and knowing that they can't get anything… any higher than a fourth-grade reading level. It comes back to having that presence of a Black teacher in the classroom. To, you know, just say that you can do this, you have value you're worthy of careers that you think you don't think you're capable of doing.
Hawkins: I wanted to shift this over to you, Michael [Walker], because … you're the director of Black student achievement for Minneapolis Public Schools, are Black boys underperforming?
Walker: I know you start off by saying there’s an opportunity gap. And what I tend to believe and the kind of research that I've done, it's really a belief gap, right? It's about what do our adults believe about our Black males? Do we believe that they are able to accomplish success? Do we believe that they're able to achieve whatever goal there is that they're trying to achieve? If we don't have that belief as adults, then we're going to treat them or have expectations that are lower, right? Because I don't believe that you can be a doctor, I don't believe that you can be a lawyer. I don’t believe that you can be a scientist, right? And so it really starts with the adults. And so that's kind of the focus of our work.
And then some of the work that we do, it’s really how do we change the beliefs of the educators so that they can see value in our Black students, specifically our Black males. And so I don't believe in an achievement gap. I don't believe that the young people are Black males are underperforming. I believe that the system has been designed and created and the belief of them in that system has created the outcomes that we see.
Hawkins: In talking about improving outcomes, it's important to introduce some data that I think is just mind-blowing. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University studied about 100,000 Black students who entered third grade at North Carolina public schools between 2001 and 2005. About 13 percent of the students ended up dropping out of high school, while about half graduated, but with no plans to pursue college, OK? However, low-income Black students who were assigned to at least one Black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade, were not only less likely to drop out of school, but 18 percent more likely to express interest in college when they graduated. And persistently low-income Black boys who had at least one Black teacher, in third, fourth or fifth grade, were 29 percent more likely to say that they were considering college.
And I spoke to Nicholas Papageorge, who was the lead researcher on this study at Johns Hopkins. And he told me that the big difference is that Black teachers tend to have higher expectations for Black students. Michael, when we were in the green room you were talking about when you were working in Osseo. “I'm Dr. Thomas, I believe in you. And you're going to come in here, and you're going to perform up to your potential.” Tell me about that experience.
Thomas: I'll say, it stems back to when I was in sixth grade. I actually had a sixth-grade teacher who called me the n-word, and said I wasn't going to amount to anything. Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure I was a handful, and maybe wasn't always making the best choices. But to have an adult teacher who had power and influence over me, kind of cut me down at that level. I'm 50 years old, I've never forgotten what that felt like, right. So fast forward to myself being an educator, I knew very well, I was never going to let a young Black kid — basically a mini-me — experience what I experienced.
I had a lot of positive Black men in my life, who countered that. And that was part of my job when I was a principal. Yes, I'm here to serve all kids. And that was a non-negotiable. I also knew I had to bring a point of emphasis for my kids of color. And that was very clear based upon my data. And if you were Black, and you live in a certain zip code and you're coming to my school, I can predict outcomes, unfortunately.
So for me, it was to have a tough conversation, I remember I got criticized for pulling a lot of the Black students together and essentially letting them know, “You're not on track to graduate. And if you continue on this path, you're not going to find success in life.” And there was a lot of backlash to “why would you break confidentiality?” and, you know, having families know each other's business. I'm like, this is a small community. If we don't talk about this and put truth out there, I need the families to come and join me in helping these young men and young girls find a better path in life. And so we were successful in my junior high, closing that achievement gap by almost 45 percent in a period of three years. Because the intentionality was data driven. I could see it, no one can deny it, the numbers are here.
But going back to what Dr. Walker was just saying, it was about a mindset shift. Kids don't come to our schools. They're not dumb, right? These kids are looking to become successful, whatever that means for them. And it's our jobs as adults to be that bridge to that. But if I don't believe as an adult, if I don't believe that this young kid can ever achieve something, you know, subconsciously, it's going to come out in my practice. I'm not gonna call on Eric, you know, call on everybody else in the classroom. I'm not gonna call on Eric. I'm gonna be, you know, writing discipline referrals for young Mr. Francis. if he was my kid. That comes out. Because you can't necessarily change beliefs. Although there's a belief gap. I totally believe that. But I can manage the behaviors that are manifestations of what you believe. And that's what my job was as a principal, as an administrator, to look at the adult behaviors that were derived from their belief sets of what kids are going to do well, and who's not going to do well. And then those were the tough conversations that allowed us to really kind of peel that onion back and get to the core of what we needed to get to.
Hawkins: I'll tell you, it must be hard. Years later, when you're seeing that Black kid that was in your class and he's on TV now or he's, he's the superintendent of schools. Are you reading about kids? You taught and then in the school system and you didn't believe in them. It's an educational journey for a lot of educators in this country.
There's one critical thing growing up in Minnesota taught me. And that's that it's not always about malice or racial animus. A lot of times it's about people not having experience with Black people. You haven't been around Black people in your life. And that means you're bringing a lot of this bias and prejudice into the classroom, to the point that you're still you're nervous around the kid. Am I right about it? … [Cross talk in agreement.]
Francis: The thing is too, the way it comes out, even the way… you hear it in the language… it's always in opposition. So the students who are doing well, “that's such a good kid, they're great family, they're their siblings were smart.” Or if it's a student who is a Black student, “they're in the hall again.” The way it's around, not giving the same amount of grace when an assignment is missing, or a student might be a minute late walking in the room. It's a different tone.
The students I know, see it too. They’ll notice with Black students, the staff is more short with or doesn't call on as much. And I think also too, as a Black staff at a school, I've had times where I can tell staff will kind of dance around saying certain things to me, because they know I'll pick up on what they're really trying to say about that student or their family. And so I do think it's a lack of exposure. You can just tell. Maybe their friendship group might not be as diverse. I think, as educators, being aware of that. Because if you're going to work for Black students, and say that you're working in that neighborhood, or working in an inner city, you have to be cautious and aware of the experiences and have that humility to say, “hey, I don't know what that's like." Let me listen and glean some knowledge from my Black colleagues that are here.” I think that's so important to have that kind of humility.
Robinson: I think that bias… has a lot to do with it, because the white teachers they would have in mind, well, this is how they would behave. I remember when I started early in education, there was just one teacher, and I was working with the Black students to Black boys. And it was always every day, the same two or three would like a revolving door, you know, instead of this person, this male person giving grace or, you know, understanding, “Well, why are these students doing this?” or, you know, trying to work with that student.
But the teachers would have this in mind that they all behave the same way. And, you know, what I've noticed — just to switch gears here — what I've noticed, as far as administrators, right? Principals, you like the assistant principal, was working always with behavior, you know, and that was the role of Black male working in behavior, well, they can take care of these students because they know how to handle them.
But it goes beyond that, you know. Literally it goes beyond that, because if there were Black male teachers in the classroom, then those things wouldn't occur. There wouldn't be suspensions, and, you know, with over-suspending students, students of color males. And I know… about this individual that actually, he graduated this June, and he was in my ethnic studies class a couple of quarters ago. And he never passed. Never, never, in fact, he would disrespect me by calling me Eric by my first name. And toward the middle of the summer. He came in, he owed certain assignments and everything. The teachers were working with them, and they had compassion on him and they knew he had to get graduated. And he graduated, he got everything done. And when he was seeing me, he would call me Mr. Eric, you know, because he was succeeding.
You know, years ago, certain behaviors would come out and everything. And teachers would overlook that day. They gave him time they gave him a rope, you know, just “Hey, you can do this.” And he did it, you know, But in some schools, right, some classrooms, they're not given that chance, if a student is gifted, maybe their behavior is helter-skelter. However, there's something beneath that. Teachers don't always see that. They don't, they look at the behavior first, instead of getting to know their student.
Hawkins: You mentioned, people expecting the same behavior from all of the Black students. And it reminded me of my cousin who went to my high school, North St. Paul, Senior High School, who actually receipt was called to the office, about a matter that pertained to another Black student, where they actually thought he was the black student that they were talking to. And, you know, I've experienced this in corporate America, where I've been called the name of another Black reporter. Whereas you know, and so, that's how deep the issue is. This whole idea of people not knowing how to deal with black people, sometimes not even knowing the difference between Black label.
Thomas: Well, and also, you know, to your question earlier — and Eric, you as well just brought up — they bring one of the four of us in to handle these Black kids. Right? And again, we're all passionate Black men who care deeply about our communities and cared deeply about, you know, Black kids, no doubt. But we're more than that. Right? And we, even as professional men have with degrees, we get relegated, and trapped, right? Just like Hollywood, right? You can act this part.
I'll never forget my very first year as a principal. That was the narrative, you know, and one of the staff came up to me and said, “Hey, just want to let you know, staff are all really happy that you're coming here. And finally, me on the handle a lot of the behaviors is behavior issues of, you know, these students of color.” And I thought to myself, wow… and my very first staff meeting, you know, August workshop week comes up. And one of the statements I said to my staff — which was all white minus one person — was, “just because you're white, doesn't mean you're not right.” And don't think that's going to exonerate you from accountability for all kids in the school. Right?
It gets to that fear piece, Lee, that you were speaking to, like, they don't want to say something, because either they're afraid of being called racist, or whatever it might be, or they just don't know. But at the end of the day, your expectations that you have for some kids need to apply to all kids. And you can't lead from a place of fear. And you can't expect me as a Black person to own your issue. Right? So that was my push to really get my staff to embrace that this is about you, not so much about the student.
Hawkins: Dr. Michael Thomas, we had a conversation and I asked you to send me a copy of your dissertation. The reason I asked for him is because it studies African American male school leaders in predominantly white school systems, and how they negotiate their racial identity without committing cultural sacrifice. And I want to read this sentence that you wrote, you said, and I quote:
“It is said that being a school administrator is a very lonely and challenging position to have, one must continually negotiate who they authentically are, in an effort to remain in the position,” you wrote.
It was 1996, when you wrote this, now that you're a superintendent, and you're actually living this, do you think that you were way ahead of things? I mean, because it seems like that's what we're talking about now is that as educators trying to influence the Black male achievement equation, you're going through your own sort of identity issues with people projecting things on you?
Thomas: That's a deep question, Lee. And yeah, there, you know, when I was the only in a system, it was a real lonely place. On top of that, when you're in higher levels of leadership, there aren't a lot of people you can go to and talk to, because you might feel as though you can't do the job. And you don't ask those kinds of questions, right? And I've had colleagues, they go, “oh, here goes Michael, he's on that Black stuff again.” Right? I mean, colleagues! And I'm sitting here thinking, “if you're saying this to me as an adult, what are you doing with kids when you close your classroom door?” Right?
At the same time, because my deep commitment to ensuring that young Black students didn't experience what I went through, and I could still continue to blaze a trail for them to have a much better-beaten path to go down. I could only say and do so much before the system then would squeeze me out. Right? And so, oftentimes, I felt caught. Because my heart is committed to doing the right thing, and I know me, I know exactly who I am and what I'm about. And thus the name of my title of my dissertation, which is a play off of Sidney Poitier movie, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Right? How how much of my authentic Blackness can I be, before my plate is pulled from the table? Right. And it's a real delicate dance. And this is a negotiation, beyond education that people of color in this country do every single day.
Hawkins: What I hear you talking about is that identity continues to be an issue, the expectations, what people project on you certain stereotypes, certain expectations, and that this is something that you must carry with you everywhere, as you navigate through the professional world. So if we are experiencing this as grown, Black men, let's talk about identity, and the challenge of identity that Black boys are facing every day. And how did they work through that or not?
Francis: Oh, man, there's so much when you talk about identity, I think about it. The first part is, how it shows up as the academic system. So when you're looking at the schoolwork, how often are you seeing yourself mirrored in that work, seeing people that look like you that you're learning about. This past month, Juneteenth, how many students sit and hear about Juneteenth or learn about the history of it. And so just imagine the liberation that comes with being a Black person hearing someone teach you about the true freedom that people who look like you had to fight for and how delayed it was.
But also, I think, especially in Minnesota, our schools have this unspoken toxic culture of attacking students who are marginalized, and it shows up in schools through social media, it shows up in things that are said to students about their identity. So many students talk about how schools don't do anything to speak up when they're attacked as a Black student. Would that bother you? I'm here to learn, I'm here to get an education. I'm hearing these things on an ongoing basis, or I'm seeing other people being called these negative things, either on social media, or in real life. And I have to absorb that day in and day out. And then if I don't have someone at school protecting me to understand what that feels like, that's hard.
So I think that's one of the ways we really need to step up as educators to say, hey, we're gonna call out when we hear at sporting events, people making monkey sounds to the Black athletes, that should not be happening in schools, students posting on social media, calling other kids downward, we got wouldn't, because how would I feel safe going to school if I know that there are seeing that happen? And no one's speaking up?
Hawkins: There's that problem of the external pressure that Black kids are feeling. But there's also the internalization of some of these stereotypes. And I know Dr. Roland Fryer, at Yale talked about a while back, the acting white phenomenon. Where there was actually a social penalty put on kids, the higher their grades, the less socially acceptable they were. And now we're starting to see that sort of shift, which is nice to see that there's that Black male achievement or Black student achievement is not as stigmatized as it once was, but working as the director of Black student achievement in Minneapolis. What do you see along the lines of identity that these kids are dealing with, that our kids are dealing with every day?
Walker: I think it goes back to kind of what Derek mentioned earlier about the curriculum, right? So when we're looking at the curriculum that we have in our schools, we are sharing identity, right? But we're sharing a Eurocentric identity. So in those classrooms, students our white students are getting taught about how they have discovered this, how they have created and invented this, all these great things that they have done, right? Which, okay, fine. Where's that for the other groups in our school system, right? How are we not uplifting those narratives and those stories?
So in our program in Minneapolis public schools, we have a class called BLACK — it stands for Building Lives, Acquiring Cultural Knowledge — where it is designed to teach some Afro-centric curriculum and to show them the benefits that they have created and what they have done for this society in this country, but also goes back to before we came to this country where things were better and things were invented on the continent of Africa. So they understand the foundation of that. So it's not just what happened here on the states, right?
And that is important, right? Because when we think about schooling, and I'll just experience from myself, I learned about being enslaved. That was the foundation of what they told me about myself, right? So if that's the foundation that you are sharing with these young people, well, we are intentionally creating a thought and an idea in these kids minds of who they can be and where they came from. So we have to undo that and show that there is a much better place. Yeah, enslavement was a portion of our history, but it's not all of our history, right?
Hawkins: If you're going to teach enslavement, then teach enslaver, right? and what the role of Thomas Jefferson was, right with his biracial children, some who are buried right here in Madison, Wisconsin. Let's go to that cemetery. Let's bring the classroom to the cemetery to see the kids that Thomas Jefferson had with Sally Hemings. It's important to teach all of that, but the complexity and the nuance of it all.
Eric, you taught ethnic studies, right?
Robinson: Yeah.. and if I could piggyback on you, doctor, the same thing, you know identity. When students first come into that classroom, I say, “Well, what is your story? Know your story.” However, it may be in your, in your family, but it still goes back to slavery. You know, none of us have color, or Indigenous Natives, have not had a certain history, you know, through the colonists. So, I know the boy talks about a double consciousness. Right. And we experienced that as adults, as a Black man. But the students they need to know who they are, and where they've come from, and where they're heading.
Hawkins: I mean, you taught ethnic studies, at a time in which there is a national backlash against teaching of ethnic studies, right? People calling it critical race theory — which it isn't. It's American history. So tell me about ethnic studies in teaching it and, and the effect that that has on not only students of color, but students in general of all races.
Robinson: I think the point where I come from, when I'm teaching that class, I want to co taught that class is not just African Americans, but Indigenous Natives, Asian Americans, you know our whole global society has been affected by colonialists. And not just England, but Portuguese and Spaniards. So this is an area that our kids, our Black kids, our students, they come from communities where, you know, they're not exposed to it in education. I've learned some of this while I was teaching, you know, research, because I hadn't had this in elementary, middle, even in undergraduate, master's. I had none of this and I had to learn it on my own, so I can teach it. So if this can happen to me, can you imagine what our students are dealing with? You know, they're not exposed to it.
Hawkins: I want to shift the conversation. Let's talk a little bit about the school to prison pipeline. Growing up, there were two places in Minnesota that you had to avoid if you were a young Black boy, it was Totem Town and Red Wing. Those were juvenile detention centers that people went to, and many came back and they were never the same. In fact, I can remember the precise days that some people were literally placed by a teacher on the school to prison pipeline. It was: You got in a fight. You had marijuana. You had a knife. You'll never amount to anything, get out of my class right now. You're out of here.
And that's just enough to ruin a kid's life. And you're sending them into a community, unfortunately, where they do feel accepted. And that begins the school to prison pipeline. I know people who are still in prison right now that I went to school with. Is that something that you see and how do you make the schools more sensitive to the trauma that leads kids to make the mistakes that lead them into juvenile detention?
Walker: Yeah. And you talked about the ones that are like front and center that we see all the time. Right? Right. So whatever, those are the ones that we see, but there's other school to prison pipeline that may be invisible to, to the outside world.
Hawkins: Like what?
Walker: Like, directing our kids into special education programs and labeling them as EBD. Because now you get on this transition, and now you’re in a “level four” setting. And now you’re in an enclosed school… that’s another, maybe less direct way that we may not see on the outside. So do those things happen? Yes, of course, they happen.
What we have to start to do is really, again, center, what are we talking about? Are we really looking at behavior from a Eurocentric lens? Right? We talked about student not being able to fill the full range of emotions, our Black students with the social and emotional learning? Well, if I get angry, my anger may show up differently. That doesn't mean that I am a threat. That doesn't mean that I should be sent down to the SRO office or whatever, I'm just upset right now. And give me time to go through my emotions and go through that. But I don't get an opportunity to do that. And so now I am put into this category that I am violent, that I am a threat. And now, anything that I do, gets heightened. So, what we're talking about here is confirmation bias. Right? So now we have educators who are looking to confirm their bias that they already have about these Black students by when they make one act.
Thomas: And they’ll push the button until the trigger pops. Now that student is… like Dr. Walker just said. And in the thing is, it's those both macro and micro… acts that are committed particularly on young kids of color, and a lot of the prevention work that Michael has done with the BLACK program. I remember years ago, when I was doing project COFI, in St. Paul Public Schools, same thing. It was doing a lot of co-teaching with my colleagues, giving them an additional lens to look through that they just weren't… They didn't get trained in their teacher prep programs, right? Or they weren't comfortable. They weren't, you know, fill in the blank, as we've just talked about earlier. But we've all seen our colleagues, particularly our white colleagues who, who may have that light turn on for themselves, like, “Oh, I see that now.”
So I don't want to, you know, be in this doomsday conversation, right? That nothing is going well. There's a lot of improvement, no doubt. But there are — I'll speak for myself, I know these brothers, and probably validate too, but we've all seen opportunities where, where teachers get it, and they lean into that space. And they take that and now, they are part of that conversation of helping this young kid. But that goes back to us just not being the ones relegated to that space. It's way bigger than the four of us. We can do a lot. But you know, we don't have “S”s on our chests or wear red capes to work.
Hawkins: We're gonna wrap up in a minute. But I just have two more questions. Why aren't there more Black men teaching in the classroom? And what can be done to recruit and retain more?
Robinson: Yeah, this thing about recruitment. I went through a program through St. Thomas. And I already had my BA in another area. But I was recruited by an individual who saw something in me and said, “Well, yeah, you know, you'd be a great teacher.” Two men: first Dr. Terrell, and this man that was a recruiter. I think our universities — we have quite a few within the Twin Cities — need to send out those recruiters to our schools. Because, like we mentioned earlier, your gift is gifted students in the classrooms, Black boys and girls in the classrooms already. Those that might be in high schools, junior seniors, and recruiters from these universities or these, you know, these schools, these colleges, need to go into these high schools and have some type of programs, with incentives, to get these young men or women out, and say “Hey, this is for the community. You can do this.”
It might be me, but it has to be somebody from these colleges that knows what's going on in the schools and collaborate with these schools and have them go in and recruit. Or communities, whatever community access, organizations, nonprofits that are out there, as well. I mean, you have, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but that's what needs to be done.
Francis: As I'm hearing this, because I'm from Minnesota. Minneapolis, Twin Cities area born and raised. I went to Champlin Park High School, Anoka-Hennepin area. And I had one Black teacher my entire K-12 career. And then, when I was in high school, I had a white teacher who saw me working with elementary kids through the child care occupation course. And she started saying, “Whoa! You're talented, you're good.” And I share this because it was something that I carried with me.
When I went to get my licensure to be a school counselor, I originally wanted to be a news anchor. And I started volunteering after I didn't get a gig as a news anchor. And then my teacher, I saw her again, she was like “You know have you ever think about going into counseling.” And then when I got to the University of Minnesota, I met a professor there that would speak into me, it was like you're talented. And mind you, I was the only black man in my course in high school and in my program for school counseling. And so the importance of that belief, that encouragement. And so that's something I carry with me.
And I say this also to white listeners out there, don't think you can't do the work. Don't think for a second that it's only… it because there's not enough Black people in education for us to wait for just us to do it. So white educators, we need you. We're in this all together. And so speak into... have that belief in your heart about Black boys. See the potential and the skills, we see it speak into it, because who knows where that seed will land. And so I think it's so important. That's what we really need to do. And I do that. That's why I want to be a school counselor, because I know the power of not just having that belief, but it's speaking that word for people.
Hawkins: Dr. Walker, I know one thing that you said that was powerful — of the many things you've said — was: If we're not creating an environment where Black men or Black boys feel comfortable in the educational setting, what makes them want to come back?
Walker: I say it all the time. We're probably the only profession that has students for 13 years to recruit. So if our Black boys are getting a horrible experience going through the school system, why would they choose to come back and work in it? So the first thing we have to do is give them a better experience. Meaning: Do we value them while they're in the school system? Do we see that they're great and their genius, is what Derek is speaking about. If we can do that, then we may have more of them interested in this profession.
The second thing is what Derek said is, who is being directly speaking that into students? Hey, you know what, Michael Thomas, as a second grader, you would be a really good teacher one day you ever thought about that profession?
Hawkins: Is that what happened [to you] Mike?
Walker: It didn't happen with me. But I'll tell you, it happened with my daughter. So my daughter, who's going to be a senior at Hampton University next year, is an elementary education major. And it was that intentionality from my mother-in-law. She was a first grade teacher. And long ago when my daughter was a little girl said, “you'd be a great teacher, you know?” and she's never forgotten that and so she will be graduating and anybody looking to hire a dynamic teacher?
laughter
Hawkins: In the Green Room, you said, “Are you sure you want to do that?"
Walker: I did! You know, I had to have that conversation. I mean, given what's going on in education these days, I mean, it can be a scary space. But my daughter, she's committed to kids, you know, and she's been working at that youth program and champion, you know, she graduate from Champlain Park High School as well. Derek was her counselor and, you know, again, I mean, I credit you know, people like Mr. Francis, who really helped, you know, stay in touch with her to keep her inspired to be great.
- Me and Mr. Bridgeman How a teacher transformed a student's life
Listen to the full conversation with the audio player above.
Sounds of Blackness is more than a band, it's a cultural institution. That, says the group's longtime director Gary Hines, was the mission given to them by a mentor at Macalester College in St. Paul, where the group was founded more than 50 years ago.
American Public Media special correspondent Lee Hawkins recently spoke with Hines about the early days of Sounds of Blackness and its role in the larger Black consciousness movement.
Hines talked about how Sounds of Blackness has stuck to its mission, which has at times put it at odds with music industry leaders. A native of Yonkers, N.Y., Hines also describes what it was like for him to move to Minneapolis in the mid-60s and he spoke about his relationships with some of the other pioneers of the “Minneapolis Sound.”
The following are transcriptions of selected segments from the interview, edited for clarity. Click the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Gary Hines reflects on attending the same school as Prince and musical talent in schools Hines: I was blessed to go to the same junior high and senior high — not at the same time — but as Prince did, Jam and Lewis. All of us are products of the Minneapolis Public School System. Nothing private. Nothing suburban, but even at the time, brother Lee — and a shout out to my beloved, mighty Minneapolis Central High School. At the time that inner city urban school — you know, they love to put those labels on us — we had jazz band, stage band, orchestra, marching band, pep band and everybody took music. I mean, it wasn't a question of if you're going to take music, it was which one. And some of us in several.
So now that that's gone, we go into some of the schools, and the very two things are children need the most: physical education, and the musical stimulation are often the first things to be cut. That evidence is itself in the deterioration of musicianship.
Hawkins: From people who I've spoken with, who went to school with Prince, they talked about how he was a band nerd. That he was a person who would like a band rat, who would hang out in that area and just pick up different instruments and take a little bit of time to figure out how to play.
Hines: I'm a personal witness to the fact brother Lee that that is not a fairy tale. That is a definitely true story. And I'll tell you how I know. When I was a senior at at Minneapolis Central, and Central High School and Bryant Junior High School, which is now Sabathani Community Center.There was a lot of interaction between the junior high and the high school, both athletically, scholastically and musically. And I remember my senior year, I started hearing rumors about this dude down at Bryan Junior High that was a beast on every instrument. And you know, one guess who that was? Okay.
So yeah, that's an absolute true story. And brother Jimmy Hamilton — rest his soul, a great pianist, and he accompanied my mom many times. They work together — actually was Prince’s music teacher at Minneapolis Central. I’m going to say this, I love my north side and Prince love the north side. But a lot of times he's mislabeled. He spent a lot of time over north, he loved the north side, he loved Minneapolis. But Prince was a south-sider. Prince lived over south. Prince went to Bryan Junior High School and then went to Minneapolis… in fact the other thing, and I’ll stop… for those that don’t know … because I remember the routine on Saturday Night Live and a lot of people thought it was a gag. But no, he was an all-city basketball player despite his height.
On leading Macalester College’s Sound of Blackness Hines: It was this 50-voice choir called the Macalester College Black Voices, of course, under the direction of my dear friend and brother Russell Knighton. Long story short, in 1971, Russ was you know, preparing to graduate and asked me on as director. And I was honored to do that, because, you know, they were excellent back then. To end the answer, brother Lee. The reason we changed the name from Macalester College, Black Voices to Sounds of Blackness. The vision God gave me was to follow the mold of Duke Ellington.
Now I say that — and it surprises a lot of people frequently — because we're often mislabeled as a gospel group. But we mean Sounds of Blackness, every sound of Blackness: jazz, blues, reggae, rock and roll — yes, rock and roll is Black music — hip hop, R&B. And so a lot of people don't know that Duke… we hear his name, and we think of jazz as we should. But Duke wrote and recorded spirituals, blues, gospel anthems, African music, every sound of Blackness, so we can't take credit for that template.
Hawkins: I think of the group is more of a Black consciousness.
Hines: Yes, absolutely.
Hawkins: Then a gospel group that you're really proficient with all of it. But I think that when I think back to that, I got to think that the consciousness movement and all of the energy all of these Black students converging on Macalester in an instant, right? What was that like?
Hines: It was amazing. It really was, because we created and nurtured, we supported each other. And got good support from the college as well. There was a Black House, which you may remember that was the center of our activity there. Black House, you know, like one of the other campus I was like, you know, French house or that kind of they did from culture and language houses. So we had Black House and that was our fortress of solitude. Gotta think so. We studied there professor Mahmoud El Kati. We were blessed to have him on campus. And he also mentored us and told Sound of Blackness from day one to be more than just a band, but to be a cultural institution to pass on to generations. And by the grace of God, we've been blessed to do that, because a number of our members now … are actually offspring of original members.
So we had professor Mahmoud and many others … many others that mentored us. And it was really a great time. Struggles, of course, you know, to keep the program going and all of that, but a great experience.
On the combination of music and social activism Hawkins: This was at a time when Marvin Gaye was on the radio with “mercy, mercy me” and “What’s going on...”
Hines: Yes
Hawkins: And Dr. King had been assassinated.
Hines: Yes.
Hawkins: And the Vietnam War. We're most of the students in this group activist, not just through music, but also outside of that?
Hines: I love your questions. And the answer is absolutely yes. And, let me tie that in two things about that, brother Lee. One: social consciousness and activity as students and particularly as Black students was such the norm, that it was never a question of if you are part of the movement, the only question might be, “which part of the movement or how many parts of the movement were you in? Because like you say, there was, you know, the Black Power movement, and civil rights, human rights, the women's movement, Vietnam, the ecology, all of that was there. And so we were all part of it.
And the other reason I'm so glad you asked that question is, and I'm gonna fast forward to the murder of George Floyd. When Sounds of Blackness came out with “Sick and Tired: the words of Fannie Lou Hamer” … and Black radio was looking for us at that time because I was told by a lot program directors across the country, they wanted Sound of Blackness to come out with another optimistic, a happy song. That's just not how God led us. There was too much righteous indignation and anger that needed to be expressed. That's why we came out with “Sick and Tired” and for them, those radio stations and I get it they thought it was an aberration for Sounds of Blackness to do protest and social justice music. But we let them know “no, no, that's our roots and foundation week began in conscious music. And so it was just a continuation of that for us.”
Hawkins: That's really powerful because I can remember having a conversation with you online where you talked about the song “Reparation.” And there was some initial work a long protracted kind of resistance towards that from Black radio.
Hines: Yeah.
Hawkins: And radio stations were intimidated by the concept and not wanting to upset white owners.
Hines: Right, right.
Hawkins: Let's just put it out there. I remember that's what you said. And it really was profound to me. And here's why. When you look at the things that radio stations do play that are not considered controversial, right? The n-word, the denigration of our women, right?
Hines: Women, Yes.
Hawkins: In all kinds of things like that, that are not considered to be fighting words, that a discussion about reparations would be fighting words.
Hines: The irony is just staggering.
Hawkins: Of course, this is a business, this is your life’s work. And this is the kind of music you want to do. What does that mean for you as a musician?
Hines: What it means for us Brother Lee, Sounds of Blackness is to continue again, with the admonition of brother Mahmoud El Kati. To be an institute, a cultural institution, musical speaking voice of and for a Black America. And we bring Black music to all people, but unapologetically from our frame of reference.
And so I tell new and younger artists all the time, to not only to yourself be true but to be clear about who you are and what you're about. Because the industry will invariably try to change that if you let them. And that's just never the case with talented Black because we are who we are and again, proudly and unapologetically.
Click the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Feeling trepidation and hope, Peggy Mandel dropped a letter in the mail to a woman she’d never met but who held the key to a secret piece of her past.
Adopted and raised in a loving middle-class Jewish family, Mandel didn’t know her own origin story. As a kid, she could remember people asking, “Are you sure you're Jewish? You're too tall to be Jewish.”
She wasn’t sure either but needed to find out.
After decades of searching, she’d come across a name — someone who might be a blood relative, someone who would lead her to a wrenching history of Native people in Minnesota she wasn’t supposed to find.
Mandel had been so scared she couldn’t write the letter. Her husband Joel wrote it. For weeks, there was silence. Then came a voicemail that changed lives across two families and three generations.
“I am pleasantly surprised. I'm shocked,” said the voice. “And I would like to connect with you.”
‘You don’t want to learn those words’ Anita Fineday, Mandel’s half-sister, was the voice on the message that day in 2015. Fineday, who was working in Seattle at the time, didn’t know she had a half-sister until that point, but she did know the family story. It was a difficult one, spanning generations of trauma from loss of Indigenous culture and identity.
Dan Gunderson | MPR News 2021
Family members examine an old photo in a collection at the Stearns History Museum on June 4, 2021. A trove of family items were recently discovered in the museum collection.
Peggy and Anita’s mother grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota but did not embrace the culture or language.
“My mom didn't tell people she was Native American or Indian, because she was ashamed,” said Fineday.
The sisters were both born in Louisville, Ky., where their mother worked as a nurse. Fineday recalled her mother saying she wanted to keep her “as far away from the reservation as possible.”
Fineday believes the shame is a result of government boarding schools, designed to achieve that very outcome. She recalled sitting with her grandmother as a young girl and repeating an Ojibwe word.
“And she said, ‘Oh no, my girl, you don't want to learn those words,’” said Fineday. “And she showed me her hands where she had scars on her knuckles. She said, ‘That's where the nuns hit me, when I spoke Ojibwe … speaking Ojibwe will only get you in trouble.’”
- Truth and healing Federal government begins to address Indian boarding school policies
- 'I've never told anyone' Stories of life in Indian boarding schools
Boarding schools were only one method the federal government used to break apart Native American families and communities. In the mid-1900s, a program known as the Indian Adoption Project effectively removed thousands of Native children from their families and placed them with white families.
Fineday learned that family members at White Earth tried to adopt Peggy when she was a baby, but her mother rejected the offer. She did not want her children to grow up on the Minnesota reservation, and she was pressured by the stigma of being unmarried and pregnant.
Ironically, Fineday has spent much of her career as an attorney and a tribal judge, advocating for displaced Native American children.
“That was my life's work,” said the 67-year-old Fineday. “To make sure that Native children were not separated from their tribe, and that they knew where they came from, that they knew who their family was.”
‘We can’t tell you where she lives’ Mandel, who moved to the Twin Cities at age 11, started looking for her birth mother in the 1990s. However Kentucky adoption records were closed and no information was available.
About eight years ago she sought help from a staff member at the Children’s Home Society, a St. Paul adoption agency.
In early 2014, an agency staff member called. “She said, ‘We found her. She is alive and well. But we can't tell you where she lives. And she doesn't want anybody to know. She doesn't want to meet you,’” recalled Mandel.
Courtesy Peggy Mandel
Peggy Mandel (left) with Illene, the sister she grew up with in her adoptive family, and her sister Anita Fineday who she found after a decades-long search.
Mandel hired a private investigator, who quickly found her birth mother living in Brainerd in central Minnesota. Mandel tried several times to contact her, but there was no response.
“I just wanted to say thank you to this person who could have made a very different choice on all levels,” Mandel said. “And I was really grateful.”
Further investigation soon found her half-sister Anita. They met for the first time in the summer of 2015. Anita confronted her mother about the long-held family secret. At the time she was angry that no one told her she had a sister. Anita characterized her relationship with her mother through much of her life as “distant.”
“I said, ‘Mom, guess who contacted me,’ and she immediately spilled the beans,” Fineday said.
“She didn't really want to talk about it.”
Eventually a meeting was arranged between Anita, Peggy and their mother.
“I had an elevator speech ready,” said Mandel. But when she stood in front of her birth mother, her composure collapsed.
“I sobbed from a place I don't think I've ever sobbed from before,” she recalled. “Like a floodgate opened. And through tears I just said, ‘Thank you for an incredible life. Thank you for what you gave me.’”
- A Reckoning Religious order apologizes for role in boarding school era
- More stories from this project North Star Journey
After the initial meeting, Peggy spent many hours listening to stories of family history told by her birth mother. Her adoptive mother and birth mother eventually met.
Eleanore Robertson, their mother, is 93 years old now and suffers from dementia, so MPR News chose not to interview her.
‘Where do I belong?’ That reunion marked the end of a search for identity, but the beginning of a journey to understand what it means, not only for Peggy Mandel, but for her daughters Margo and Aleeza, teenagers when they learned about their Ojibwe ancestors.
“At first it's such a huge shock, in a good way, but also in an overwhelming way. It's a new family, a new culture. What does this mean? How do I go about this respectfully?” said Aleeza. “Where do I belong? And who's going to accept me?”
Aleeza and Margo are each at a different place on the path to embracing and understanding their Ojibwe identity.
“She (Aleeza) has dark curly hair and darker skin and I'm blonde and taller,'' said Margo. “It's been a little hard for me to be able to kind of connect at a deeper level, because I don't really look like everybody else.”
Margo was never questioned about her heritage.
Aleeza had a somewhat different experience.
“People would look at me, and say, ‘What are you?’ They’d really say those words,” she recalled. “I would get Latina or Hispanic or Middle Eastern, and I was always like, why are people asking me that?”
Margo is studying Indigenous culture, and contemplating the parallels between her Jewish and Native history.
Dan Gunderson | MPR News 2021
Family members gathered at the Stearns History Museum on June 4th, 2021 to see family artifacts discovered in the museum collection.
- U probes its history with Native people Troubling stories surface
“White settlers, and colonizers did everything in their power to essentially exterminate this culture.” she said. “I think it's very interesting how there are similarities with that to Jewish culture as well. Both faced forms of extermination.”
Aleeza has taken a more experiential approach. She’s participated in traditional ceremonies, and is learning about culture and spirituality from Ojibwe elders.
And the trauma embedded in her history empowers her.
“That hard history was honestly enraging, and a huge motivational piece for me to continue to learn is the fact that we weren't supposed to be here,” she said. “So I transcend that anger into motivation to continue to learn because I know it's something that they wouldn't have wanted me to know.”
At times, she’s found acceptance brings its own struggles.
“I was given my first eagle feather by a member of our community, and that was really overwhelming for me, because I didn't feel qualified,” she said. “Because that's a very sacred thing. And it's a very big thing to have and to honor.”
Among the people she turned to for guidance was her aunt Anita.
Dan Gunderson | MPR News
This bag was made by Anita Fineday's great-grandmother Charlotte Broker. Fineday hopes to have family artifacts discovered at the Stearns History Museum in St. Cloud returned to the family or the White Earth Nation archives.
For her part, Fineday has let go of the anger she felt towards her mother for keeping a sibling secret for 50 years.
“I’m just focusing on building a relationship, not only do I have a sister, I have a brother-in-law, and I have two fabulous nieces,” she said.
Peggy Mandel is still trying to make sense of her new identity, learning as much as she can while being respectful of what she doesn’t know.
She wants her adoption story to give hope to others.
“It's astounding to me how open the heart can be when you're willing and ready, and even scared. And I was scared. But I went ahead and did it anyway,” she said.
Peggy and Anita attended an annual powwow at the Minneapolis American Indian Center held for adopted Native Americans.
“At the very end of this beautiful ceremony, we all hugged each other. We didn't know each other from Adam,” said Peggy. “But what it felt like is, hey, guess what, we all matter. It doesn't matter where we came from.”
Margaret Poethig provided an audio recording used in this story.
En español
Javier Garcia starts the green John Deere tractor and slowly moves it forward toward the rows of onions and squash. The blades behind the tractor dig into the soil, uprooting weeds and turning the earth as it goes.
Garcia is one of a small but growing number of Latino farmers in Minnesota. According to the agricultural census, Minnesota is home to about 112,000 farmers. Of those, 650 identify as Hispanic or Latino.
Garcia arrived to the U.S. in 1993 from his home in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Like many who immigrate here, he was looking for a better life.
As he talks about being a farmer, the wind blows against the battered remains of one of the greenhouses. It was partially demolished by a tornado that touched down weeks earlier.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Javier Garcia drives his tractor drives through the fields at their farm Agua Gorda.
“I never imagined I would own land here. But it’s given me the motivation (to keep going) because in Mexico we didn’t have land where we could grow crops,” Garcia says.
Garcia now owns 54 acres in Long Prairie, Minn., That’s the equivalent of roughly 54 football fields.
This year’s crop includes rows of onion, Roma tomatoes and zucchini.
Inside one of the greenhouses, Garcia uses a hoe to clear weeds between the rows of habanero and poblano peppers. He admits having had different plans for the crops this year.
“The weather was very drastic this year. I had hoped to plant sections of one vegetable. But it wasn’t possible,” he says.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Javier Garcia with his wife Marina Corona, at their farm Agua Gorda.
The largest section is dedicated to honeydew melons. He has a contract to sell the melons to schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The rows of honeydews will yield 13 pallets weighing 700 pounds each.
Of the 54 acres, only about nine are being used.
Although he owns and farms his land, Garcia still works at the dairy — full-time in the winter and part-time during the farming season — in order to make ends meet.
When it’s time to harvest, his adult children and grandchildren all pitch in. But he admitted, he also gets some unwanted help.
“The deer also help us harvest. I don’t like it, but what can I do,” Garcia says.
The deer show up and feast on the melons just as they ripen. Garcia will stay out until 11 p.m. or midnight guarding the crop.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Javier Garcia put labels to identify the crops they planted at their farm Agua Gorda.
“But they surprise me. I leave and they show up at dawn when I’m home sleeping,” Garcia says with a laugh.
In Mexico, his experience with agriculture was limited to raising corn. Growing vegetables and other types of crops was something completely new when he began 10 years ago.
After working several years harvesting crops in California’s Central Valley followed by landscaping work in Los Angeles, Garcia moved to Minnesota.
The idea for Agua Gorda, named after his hometown in Mexico, was planted in 2011. A group of 10 met to develop plans to form a farming cooperative. Every year, one or two men would drop out. Many left because they realized it would involve a lot of work and commitment, Garcia said. A decade later, Garcia is the only one who saw that dream bear fruit.
Latino farmers like Garcia are not common. But more and more are joining the ranks.
Up the road Just up the road on a neighboring plot of land, sisters Alicia Lopez de Gutierrez and Yesenia Lopez Ybarra have begun their second year as farmers. Along with their husbands, they work two acres of land. Lopez de Gutierrez admitted that she convinced her sister and brother-in-law to join them in the farming venture.
Lopez de Gutierrez says she began farming on a small plot in a community garden in Long Prairie. And going from a community garden to working two acres can be challenging.
She is no stranger to farming. In Mexico, her father had crops and animals and she and her siblings had to help out.
So, when she heard of a program offered by the Latino Economic Development Corporation, she reached out.
Initially, Lopez de Gutierrez said she was interested in having a certified organic farm. But given they were barely starting out and the certification process involves a lot of work, they were advised to hold off.
“But because we didn’t have much experience, we were advised to give it (farming) a try and if it worked, then we could move forward with the organic certification,” Lopez de Gutierrez says.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Sisters Yesenia Lopez Ybarra (L) and Alicia Lopez Gutierrez(R) are in their second year of farming. Their goal is to become certified organic and making farming a fulltime job.
Everyone works Elizabeth Montesinos walks along the rows of crops at the family’s Santa Rosa Farm located in Arkansaw, Wis. She talks with the expertise of someone who has been farming her entire life. Montesinos talks about how certain areas of soil on the more than 70 acres have a higher humidity content; the complexity of being a certified organic farm; and the technique they are using so that tomato plants grow up instead of sprawling out and falling to the ground.
People mistakenly believe she runs the farm by herself.
“They ask me how a woman does this alone. I tell them I’m not alone,” Montesinos says.
Caroline Yang for MPR news
Working on the farm is a family affair. Co-owners of Santa Rosa Farm Elizabeth Montesinos, her husband Alejandro Tapia, and his brother Carlos Tapia pose for a portrait with family members in Arkansaw, Wis. on June 25.
The misconception arises because she attends meetings, takes the classes and does all the paperwork.
Santa Rosa is a family farm owned by her brother-in-law Carlos Tapia; her husband Alejandro Tapia and herself. They’re a team, she says.
Like Garcia at Agua Gorda, they also have other jobs. But the dream is to make the farm a main source of income.
Surviving on farming alone is difficult, Carlos Tapia says.
“The first year, I tried farming full-time, but financially it didn’t work out. So, I have a full-time job and we do this (farming) part-time,” Tapia says .
Adds Montesinos, “A farm doesn’t provide enough for you to support yourself or to pay your bills.”
The family bought the farm — located about an hour and 20 minutes from St. Paul, four years ago. That was also when Carlos and his family moved from California to Minnesota.
Caroline Yang for MPR news
Carlos Tapia, co-owner of Santa Rosa Farm in Arkansaw, Wis. talks about his tomato plants on June 25.
Elizabeth and Alejandro live in St. Paul with their children. It’s also where they have their roofing business.
But every weekend the entire family heads to the farm.
Being a family farm means everyone works — including Hunter, the black, blockhead lab. Hunter is always nearby, Montesinos says.
Wild animals — including bears — live in the area. And Hunter’s job is security.
When they are on the ATVs, Hunter is with them, usually out front.
“When we see him stop in front of the ATV and begin barking, we have to stop because he is seeing an animal or some other sort or danger,” Montesinos says.
The family also has a one-year-old chocolate lab, who is still learning the ropes. Hansel is una traviesa, Montesinos says. In other words, she gets into trouble.
And as if on cue, Hansel goes over to the wild ducks. She attempts to check them out by sniffing them. The ducks angrily show their displeasure.
The youngest family members, Montesinos’ son Emiliano and her nephews Rafael and Carlos, all pre-teens, also help out.
Caroline Yang for MPR news
Emiliano Tapia (front) and Carlos Tapia drive through Santa Rosa Farm in Arkansaw, WI, on June 25.
“They come out on the ATVs to where we are and ask if we want water or soda,” Montesinos says.
Like all farmers they deal with the elements and also with the deer who live in the adjoining forest.
The first year they planted broccoli and cauliflower near the trees. She says being new farmers they planted crops everywhere without giving it much thought.
“They (the deer) ate all of it. Deer won’t eat the entire plant, they walk and eat part of this one and go to the next one,” Montesinos says.
As a result, they couldn’t sell the crop. She learned that deer don’t like certain smells and certain crops.
They now use different crops to build a natural fort. They put garlic and onions and the corn planted for feed along the outer edges.
“You have to camouflage your vegetables,” she says.
And while the deer still get in, they don’t do as much damage.
When asked if she ever imagined she’d be an owner of a farm and working the land, Montesinos laughs.
“You know, it’s funny. In Morelos, I studied medicine. And now my dad and siblings will say, ‘you studied medicine and now you work on a farm, in the mud,’” she says.
Caroline Yang for MPR news
Elizabeth Montesinos talks about farming while standing in a field of garlic at Santa Rosa Farm in Arkansaw, Wis. on June 25.
At the mercy of the weather Back at Agua Gorda, Garcia looks to the future. He plans to add livestock that he can sell. And plant nut trees. And at some point, sell his produce directly to the public at a farmer’s market.
As a farmer, Garcia is at the mercy of the weather. Last year a late freeze wiped out 80 percent of the watermelons and all of the cucumbers.
After that loss, his wife, Marina Corona, asked him when enough was enough. Garcia had a somewhat philosophical answer.
“I’m content with what’s left, and I keep moving forward,” Garcia says. “Don’t give up, because those who give up, lose.”
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Javier Garcia sits in a makeshift shelter on Agua Gorda's farm to protect him from sunlight.
Vicki Adame covers Minnesota’s Latino communities for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
Updated: July 15, 7:40 a.m. | Posted: July 14, 5 a.m. When 64-year-old Minneapolis resident Elton Wright-Trusclair was growing up Black in Louisiana during 1960s-era Jim Crow segregation, his elders told him very little about his family’s history.
But through serving as an altar boy in a town where churches kept the races separated in services and even in cemeteries, Wright-Trusclair says he had a hunch that terrible things had been done to his family. He sensed that those crimes against his family and humanity could have been committed by the very Catholic institutions that relegated Black people to a lower status in his small town.
“My grandparents raised me, but they didn't talk about that part,” he said. “They didn't talk about that. Some things, a lot of old people didn't talk about because that's how they were raised. That's how they did us, manipulated us down there. And a lot of old people didn't talk about stuff like that.”
In 2017, top clergy and officials from the Society of Jesus and Georgetown University revealed some of the painful secrets that Wright-Trusclair now believes his grandparents were too traumatized to share.
In a public ceremony, the Jesuits and Georgetown apologized for selling 272 enslaved Black people to three Louisiana plantations in 1838, in a $115,000 transaction that kept then-struggling Georgetown from having to close its doors. Several generations of Wright-Trusclair’s family were enslaved by the Jesuits, including his grandparents’ grandparents.
“It is our very enslavement of another, culminating in the tragic sale of 272 women, men and children that remains with us to this day, trapping us in an historic truth for which we implore mercy and justice, hope and healing,” Father Timothy Kesicki, then the leader of the Society of Jesus for Canada and the U.S., told descendants at the ceremony.
But Wright-Trusclair is one of many descendants who say the Jesuits’ apology and the atonement gestures that followed were not enough. Some are frustrated that the Jesuit order chose to focus mainly on the 1838 sale, instead of detailing deeper history that is not widely known: The Maryland Jesuits entered the slavery business in around 1700, and the revenues from their five plantations funded the founding of Georgetown in 1789, as well as dozens of other Jesuit universities and high schools.
Further, the Jesuits enslaved more than one thousand people over more than a century and a half, not just 272 people. And in modern times, records show that the church has generated tens of millions of dollars from the sale of properties and plantation lands that were once cultivated by the enslaved ancestors of people like Wright-Trusclair.
According to the Georgetown Slavery Archive, by 1700, Jesuit priests had purchased enslaved people and established tobacco plantations on more than 12,000 acres along the Potomac River in southern Maryland. Over the next 164 years, the Jesuits enslaved about 1,100 people, according to Sharon Leon, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University.
The riches and success of the institutions that the Jesuits capitalized and built using slavery as a business model have sparked a debate that is showing how difficult and costly the path to atonement will be for many American institutions. Georgetown belongs to a consortium of fifty schools including Harvard, Brown, and the University of Virginia, which have pledged to study and confront the role that enslavement played in their histories and the impact that legacy has today. So far, the Jesuits’ journey on the road to atonement has been rocky.
Wealth built on the backs of enslaved people The fact that the enslavement of four generations of Wright-Trusclair’s family helped fund the creation of droves of institutions that are now worth billions of dollars has led him and others to call for direct cash payouts. He believes that the trauma and long-term effects of Jesuit and Georgetown slavery still impacts his family today, including by blocking their ability to pass wealth down through the generations.
“I would like to see some kind of reparations,” Wright-Trusclair said, “It is unfair.”
According to the Georgetown archive, in its first 25 to 30 years, Georgetown College was financed directly by Jesuit plantations. That includes from 1793 to 1796, when the college was granted the rights to receive all profits from all five Jesuit plantations for a period of three years.
It also includes 1813, when the entire management and income of the St. Inigoes Manor plantation was placed under the direct control of the President of Georgetown College. And in 1816, Georgetown College was granted financial support to be paid from the St. Thomas Manor slave plantation in Charles County, MD, and Newtown Manor slave plantation in St. Mary’s County, MD.
The labor of the ancestors of Wright-Trusclair and others on Jesuit plantations also helped capitalize dozens of other Catholic colleges and high schools, including Loyola University in Baltimore and the College of the Holy Cross. Officials at Loyola only became aware of the school’s financial connection to slavery last summer. In December, the school launched a presidential task force to investigate its slavery ties.
The fact that this foundational history was not detailed in the 2017 apology to descendants and may still not have been shared with Jesuit institutions that benefited from slavery has intensified calls for transparency, more information and direct cash compensation from some descendants.
After the public apology, the members of a group representing descendants pushed without success for Georgetown and the Maryland Jesuits to meet with them to discuss reparations. Frustrated, they eventually sent a letter to the top Jesuit leader in Rome — going over the heads of the local Maryland order — complaining that “for more than a year we have literally been ignored.” They asked Rome to intervene.
They demanded a full accounting of the wealth their ancestors generated for the Jesuits and issued a rough number for what they believe they are owed in direct payouts: $1 billion. The Maryland Jesuits rejected that proposal.
Today, some descendants say it is unfair to discount the role that their ancestors played as revenue producers, stressing that Georgetown and dozens of other institutions would not exist if it hadn’t been for their families. This, they say, is the financial justification and basis for their $1 billion request.
But not all descendants agree on the best path forward. By 2018, the descendants split into different camps — each calling for different types of reparations. Some wanted the money to go directly to the descendants, while others wanted the money to be dispersed more generally, to charity and educational foundations benefiting Black Americans as a whole.
The Jesuits entered negotiations with a small group of descendants and the two sides emerged in March 2021 with a deal that did not include direct cash payments. Under that deal, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the U.S. formed a new organization with those descendants, called The Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation.
The Jesuits pledged $100 million toward a $1 billion goal, funds that will be used in part to support initiatives such as educational scholarships for descendants, anti-racist programs and charitable organizations. The foundation set a goal to become the “moral and intellectual leader in the pursuit of truth, racial healing and transformation in America.”
But many descendants have rebuffed the Jesuit’s foundation and now accuse both the Jesuits and the university of shortchanging them. More than two hundred have signed a petition alleging that they have been cut out of “secret negotiations.” Some believe that the Jesuits used descendants as pawns in the 2017 apology, benefiting from publicity without detailing the full extent of their involvement in slavery or compensating the affected families directly.
The Jesuits did not respond to MPR News requests for comment.
Wright-Trusclair is among the descendants who don’t agree with the scholarship fund proposal.
“Everybody, ain't going to college,” he said.
A Georgetown University spokesperson said the school’s own atonement efforts and research it has done into the ties between the university and slaveholding is “neither the start nor the end of our work.”
Still, the university believes it has been transparent in saying that the 1838 sale was not the full extent of its involvement in slavery. Additional information has been provided, including in a 2016 report on slavery, in a pamphlet distributed on campus in the 2015-16 academic year and in material it has made public in its archives, the spokesperson said.
Ben Hovland | MPR News
Elton Wright-Trusclair holds a photo of his grandparents Lawrence and Ceal Trusclair. Ceal’s grandparents, née Hawkins, were among those enslaved by the Jesuits.
Slavery as a business model Richard Cellini, a Georgetown alumnus and Italian-American entrepreneur, spent more than $50,000 of his own money to hire genealogists who have identified more than 11,000 descendants. He said the Jesuits should share information about the true depth of its financial dependence on slavery.
“Jesuit slavery dates from the 1690s to 1864 when enslaved people were emancipated in the state of Maryland,” Cellini said. “Maybe there are a few lines or sentences — adding up to a paragraph or two — where Georgetown and the Jesuits allude to the fact that their slaveholding was not limited to 1838. But they've really not done anywhere near an adequate job of explaining the true extent, depth and duration of their dependence on human trafficking and slavery.”
Some descendants say they can’t make any agreement with the Jesuits and Georgetown until Jesuit institutions disclose how much income they have generated and collected from the legacy of slavery, from the early 1700’s to today.
In a signed petition sent last year, one group asked the Jesuits to publicly disclose the balance sheet from the Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergymen — the business entity that contained the Georgetown and Jesuits slavery operations — “from 1793 to the present day.”
As part of the petition, they requested “all information in the Society’s possession documenting how much wealth the Society generated from the enslavement of our ancestors; how this wealth was spent; and how much remains in the Society’s possession today.”
In 2009, the Jesuits sold more than 4,000 acres of former plantation land in Maryland for $57 million, real estate records show. The descendants’ concern about the sale of the plantation land is based partly on the fact that many of their ancestors are buried there.
The Jesuits denied the request for financial records. They have also declined to specify how much former plantation land the church still owns or at what it is valued.
Archives detail horrors of captivity A review of Georgetown’s archive gives a clear window into why Wright-Trusclair’s grandparents may have been reluctant to discuss what happened to their elders while they were in captivity. Once sold in the 1838 transaction, many of his family members never saw each other again. And DNA tests have revealed that some of the slavery descendants are the offspring of prominent Jesuit clergy and Georgetown officials from the past.
Some descend from Rev. John Ashton, a white Jesuit priest and Georgetown founder who fathered the children of Susanna Queen, a Black woman he enslaved, who is also documented as being whipped during her childhood.
One letter in the archive is from a Jesuit official who reported the anguish expressed by some of the enslaved people as they were being gathered for sale to Louisiana, away from loved ones. He quotes an unnamed pregnant woman who protested, "If ever someone should have reason for despair, do I not now have it? I do not know on what day the birth will come, whether on the road or sea. What will become of me? Why do I deserve this?”
Father Peter Kenney, a Jesuit sent from Rome to visit Jesuit plantations in 1820 to report on the financial health of the slavery business, reported accounts of Jesuit priests whipping enslaved people. Some of those whipped were pregnant and some had “been tied up in the priests own parlor.”
He also reported a dearth of food supplies at several plantations.
Less than 10 percent of the records pertaining to Jesuit slavery have been placed online. The vast majority of the records are stacked in about two hundred boxes in a Georgetown Library. Some descendants say the fact that so many records have not been put online makes it harder for them to find other descendants, especially since the Jesuits and Georgetown are not providing any funds to help them search.
They have asked the Jesuits and Georgetown to fund and launch a formal search for the remaining 828 of the 1,100 enslaved people. Unlike the 272 in the 1838 sale, the vast majority of those people and their descendants have never been searched for or identified.
For example, the archives show that around 1825, the Georgetown Jesuits took between six and 10 slaves to Florissant, Missouri to build a seminary, which became St. Louis University. They also built St. Charles College in Louisiana and other churches and high schools in Kentucky and Ohio.
Historically, at least one Georgetown official expressed interest in tracking down the people the school enslaved.
In 1912, Father Joseph Zwinge SJ, business manager of the Maryland Province, published a series of historical essays about the Jesuit slave plantations, writing: “It might be interesting to know what became of our negroes in Louisiana.”
Precedent for reparations requests The archive also shows that Georgetown’s refusal to consider direct reparations is at odds with its past. In 1862, following the Emancipation Proclamation, a top official at the Georgetown University School of Medicine sought compensation for the loss of seven enslaved people.
Dr. Noble Young, a founder and leader of the school, requested the U.S. government pay him $8,600, which he said was “moderate market values” for "Lucy $800: Henry $1,600: Matthew $1,300: Rachael $1,300: Henny $1,300: Eliza $1,100: John $1,000.
He described the people as invaluable. “What peculiarly enhances their value is their strict & scrupulous honesty: cheerful and affectionate dispositions: willingness to cook, capacity to learn and fidelity. Lucy an excellent cook — the men perfect waiters and the girls know nursing, washing and cooking."
Cellini believes the descendants should be paid direct restitution — similar to how some of Georgetown’s leaders once sought reparations.
“Sometimes when the topic of reparations comes up, even people who are pro-reparations will say, ‘Of course, we can't just give money to Black families and let them use it for just anything. We have to put some restrictions on it,’” he said. “Folks will say, ‘We can’t just give them $50,000, because they'll use it to buy a car.’ Well, my family is a white family, and last year we came into an extra $50,000, and can you guess what we did with it? We bought a new car.”
Some descendant families have retained attorneys to help them pursue reparations, including Georgia Goslee, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer.
“They are very disgruntled and very dissatisfied, feeling as though they have been deceived,” Goslee said. “Georgetown admits and accepts the responsibility. We believe part of that responsibility is compensation to the descendants individually, as opposed to an organization or a foundation that purports to represent the descendants. In fact, they don't, and they didn't at the time that the deal was cut.”
Georgetown’s student body passed a referendum in 2019 to establish a $400,000 charitable fund to pay for things such as health care costs and education programs for descendants.
Students voted to pay $27.20 per semester into the fund. Eventually, Georgetown told students their fund wasn't necessary, and established its own similarly focused $400,000 charitable reserve to be funded by the university.
As part of that effort, the university, which has an endowment of about $2.6 billion, intends to invest money in community-building projects instead of direct reparations. It has also re-christened a campus dormitory once named for the long-ago school president who had helped arrange the 1838 sale, re-naming it after an enslaved patriarch of the 272 people.
Children of descendants applying for entry have also been granted “legacy” status at Georgetown, which means they receive special consideration in the admissions process. But some descendants have expressed frustration that Georgetown does not currently offer any scholarships to the descendants of people that it trafficked and enslaved.
Lasting legacy of slavery Elton Wright-Trusclair feels proud when he thinks back to his grandparents' generation.
He says despite the actions of the Jesuits and Georgetown, his family survived. However, generations later some family members kept working for the Jesuits and as sharecroppers on the farms of Louisiana enslaver families until they died.
“They did a lot of people so bad and that's mainly why they should have reparations,” he said. “Because of the way that they treated us people so bad.”
A group of educators gathered around a canoe display at the Grand Portage State Park welcome center. Rick Novitsky, who used to be the park manager, began telling a story about how the Grand Portage band of Chippewa turned this land on the banks of the Pigeon River and the Canadian border from private property into reservation land and a state park.
“It’s become the destination that it always was — now for tens and thousands of visitors every summer and winter,” Novitsky said, “It’s the only state park in Minnesota that is not on state land.”
He spoke to more than 50 teachers from district schools, charters, colleges and K-12. They’d come from around Minnesota to spend a week training on the northernmost tip of Minnesota, next to Lake Superior, learning the history and present-day work of the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa.
After listening to Novitsky talk about the tribe’s DNR work stocking fish, buying land and counting wildlife moose populations, the educators leave the welcome center and begin hiking up to High Falls — the tallest waterfall in Minnesota.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
High Falls as seen on June 29 at Grand Portage State Park near Grand Portage, Minn.
The lecture and tour are part of a week-long educator training program called the Native Studies Summer Workshop for Educators. Darlene St. Clair, associate professor at St. Cloud State University, helped found the workshop and has been organizing and leading summer training sessions for more than a decade.
It’s meant to address a dearth of educator preparation to teach Native content. A recent statewide survey of educators commissioned by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community found that most Minnesota teachers lack the confidence to incorporate Native American content into their teaching practice. They also said access to Native tribes or individuals was the most significant factor necessary to increase their confidence in teaching. Nearly 30 percent said they didn’t have age-appropriate, culturally authentic resources to teach Native content.
For St. Clair, addressing this access to Native people and resources is central to her summer training program. Each year she works to locate the training on one of Minnesota’s 11 Native reservations. So far they’ve visited 10 of those reservations — in some cases more than once. St. Clair waits for permission to visit. Then she works with the tribe’s educators, elders, artists and authors to give workshop participants information about treaties and sovereignty as well as the history, current events, language and culture of the reservation.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Darlene St. Clair poses for a portrait on June 29 at Grand Portage State Park near Grand Portage, Minn.
This week they’re on Ojibwe land, learning about log building, hand weaving and food sovereignty. But they’re also listening to Dakota guest speakers talk about that tribe’s language, history and culture.
For St. Clair, this sort of training for educators is vital.
“Schools have been used to erase Native people,” St. Clair said. “We’re using those same institutions to address that erasure, to halt it and to sort of repair it and to restore Native people as the indigenous peoples of this land and that we should be central to all of these conversations.”
Summer workshop participants spend the first few days of the session listening to speakers and raising questions about everything from how to do hands-on botany work in the classroom, how to understand and address historic trauma with students and why the Little House on the Prairie series has problematic portrayals of Native people.
“Everyone coming into the workshop has some baggage that they’ve learned about Native people that’s problematic or 100 percent untrue, so we have to sort of start the week with grounding and think, ‘what is it that I’m bringing in?’” St. Clair said.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Anna Cournoyer (black sweatshirt) and Anais Cournoyer (blue sweatshirt) get their picture taken in front of High Falls Wednesday on June 29 at Grand Portage State Park near Grand Portage, Minn.
Awna Cournoyer is the Native American liaison for the Cedar Mountain district in southern Minnesota. She’s also an enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe. For her, the weeklong training is a corrective to some of the misinformation she’s come across in textbooks. It’s also valuable information she can bring back to her classroom.
“I’ve liked it. I primarily serve Dakota students, so this is a big change because we’re on an Ojibwe Anishinaabe Tribe(‘s reservation),” Cournoyer said, “Being able to tell my students (our history) goes beyond just southwestern Minnesota — it goes all the way up to the Canadian border and there’s sacred sites all over.”
But it’s not just lectures, tours and group discussions. In the last few days of the session, participants take what they learn and start to think about how exactly they can incorporate it into the work that they’re doing.
For Anna Best, who teaches special education to middle school students at online charter Minnesota Connections Academy, the training is about more than just figuring out ways to meet state standards for teaching Native content. She’s also thinking specifically about the ways she can address some of the stereotypes, labels and other barriers that affect her Native students.
“There’s data that shows there’s a large discrepancy of Native students in special education so my goal … has been to next year really dive into that population at our school and to really look and see what supports those students needs beyond just being labeled as special education and getting special services,” Best said.
The week-long seminar is not comprehensive, but St. Clair hopes it gets teachers started on learning what they need to do their jobs well, and introduces them to the resources they need.
“If I can help our educators improve the way that they teach about and to Native people, that’s the way we’re going to make the larger change that we want to see,” St. Clair said.
In the late 1940s, Anthony Brutus Cassius was the first Black man to obtain a liquor license in the city of Minneapolis. He went on to create safe social spaces, specifically bars, for Black people for 47 consecutive years.
After producing a radio documentary about his life in 2021, I found myself wondering, what is his legacy? Would Cassius be satisfied if he were alive today?
Courtesy of the John F. Glanton Collection via the Hennepin County Library
A.B. Cassius smiles for a photo after being granted a liquor license for his cafe in Minneapolis. He was the first Black man granted a liquor license in the city.
For decades, the Dreamland Café in South Minneapolis was often the place to be if you were Black and wanted to socialize. When Nat King Cole came to town in the 1940s, he played the Dreamland.
In many ways, the Dreamland grew out of Cassius’s experiences growing up.
Cassius was just 13 when he arrived in Minnesota in 1922. He came from Oklahoma, put on a train by his father just months after the Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed much of the city's vibrant and prosperous Black community, known to many as ‘Black Wall Street.’
On his first night in St. Paul, he got a porter job at the Merchant Hotel at the top of Kellogg Hill and slept on a mattress in the basement. That would remain his home until he graduated from Central High School.
Solvejg Wastvedt | MPR News file
St. Paul’s Central High School stands on the site of the school Anthony Brutus Cassius attended in the 1920s.
In his 70s, Cassius recorded an oral history for the Minnesota Historical Society, looking back at his life and accomplishments. He described his impressions of the Twin Cities when he first arrived:
“This was a prejudiced town, St. Paul-Minneapolis.” His voice sounds strong and angry. “Back then the only thing you could do was go to school. There was no prejudice in the school system. Because there wasn't enough [of us] to constitute a threat. The class I graduated in was 1,200, and there were only two or three colored in the whole school.”
Because few job opportunities were open to Black men at the time, Cassius went on to wait tables in hotels. This was even though he graduated from college as a top athlete and student at a time when having a college degree was a rarity for Black men. But he soon ran into extreme racial inequities in that industry. So he went and formed the first all-Black waiters union in Minneapolis.
Eventually, he began working for his liquor license. It took two years. “But through persistence, I got it,” he said in the oral history.
- Listen to Cassius The Godfather of Black Space in Minneapolis
Over 47 consecutive years, he owned three bars. They were known as some of the first, and most consistent, integrated spaces in Minneapolis.
But Cassius opened these bars for a specific reason. He wanted to give Black people a place to be, to socialize, to conspire and to dream. Finding safe space for Black people to gather was a precious commodity in 1940s and ‘50s America.
In the oral history, Cassius spoke about forming the Minnesota Club, a group of civil rights activists who organized to protest the screening of D.W. Griffiths’ now notorious “The Birth of A Nation” in downtown Minneapolis, among many other movements.
“There were about eight of us,” he explained in the history. We met once a month in Fosters Sweet Shoppe on 6th and Lyndale. We met in the back. And all they wanted us to do if we met there was to buy a dish of ice cream.”
At the end of the quote, you can hear him emit a gasp of incredulous laughter, as though the thought of being allowed to gather over a dish of ice cream was still a bit amazing to him.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Flowered curtains cover the windows of the former Dreamland social space May 5.
The shell of the old Dreamland Café, Cassius’ first bar, still stands on 38th street in the old southside of Minneapolis. Once a thriving Black community, cars noisily speed by the dilapidated intersection. But there’s a new dream unfolding for the space, and like Cassius’ original vision, it's a dream with a purpose.
Anthony Taylor is the community development lead of the Cultural Wellness Center. It’s a Minneapolis-based social justice organization with a mission to support the idea that active living and green space are crucial to the wellbeing of Black people. His organization wants to bring back the old Dreamland space, in a true evolution of Cassius’ vision.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Anthony Taylor walks through the neighborhood which used to be served by the Dreamland social space May 5.
“‘Dreamland on 38th’ is actually a revitalization of this entire community, as an African American legacy community,” he explained. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, the murder of George Floyd anchored that for us. We are now three blocks from there. So what we see is a connection between this development, what will emerge at 38th and Chicago, and we really see it as a destination for human rights and social justice fighters from all over the world.”
The vision for the project is ultimately a place to eat and drink. But the fact Taylor is imagining Dreamland as a destination for international social justice fighters, punctuates the importance of such spaces.
“We're saying ‘social’ right now, but in my head I substitute ‘safe,’” he said. “Creating spaces that the community knows are safe for them to be themselves that are anchored in their own renewal, regeneration and socialization, that is really the conscious development of a safe space. And really, there's a challenge around that for Black people. There's still a challenge for that.”
Several recent mass shootings have been identified as racially motivated hate crimes, including the May 14 killing of 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York. Safe spaces for Black people seem as crucial as they’ve ever been.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
The former Dreamland social space stands empty May 5, 2022.
“I think what people don't realize is there is an energetic cost of being Black in white dominated spaces all the time,” Taylor emphasized.
If we can agree that these spaces are crucial, how, really, are we doing in the city of Minneapolis? I posed the question to other Black owners and operators of social spaces, as well as some patrons.
There is a new generation of Black-owned space in Minneapolis, and with them comes a new outlook and sensibility, too.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Gene Sanguma, co-owner of Ties Lounge & Rooftop, poses for a portrait on the rooftop of his club.
Gene Sanguma is part of a collective of 20-something best friends who came together over a common bond: having a good time. But not any old kind of good time. A safe good time.
On a recent sunny spring day in the middle of downtown Minneapolis, sitting on the third floor patio at Ties Lounge and Rooftop, their new downtown Minneapolis nightclub, he recalled the energy that went into its creation.
“We [thought we could] provide fun, and safety. We said, ‘Let's do it. Let's come up with something.’”
“Something” ended up being the multi-story venue on the Nicollet Mall in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. You can eat, you can drink and you can dance. But you can also grab a quiet table with friends and talk into the night. It’s like an anti-nightclub that still manages to operate with nightlife and good times at the forefront.
“Ties is a community,” he went on. “We wanted to make it so it doesn't matter where you come from, what aspirations you may have in your life — you come into Ties, you feel welcomed. We wanted to provide a safe space for all people to come together and just enjoy themselves and network. We felt like the city really, really needed it.”
Ties feels like an echo of what Cassius wanted to build.
Dreamland on 38th’s Anthony Taylor realized this about Cassius’ mission, too.
“When young Black people are allowed to congregate, they start to look outward and organize themselves,” he told me. “When you’re creating spaces where Black people feel emotionally safe, you can imagine a future that includes you.”
The exclusion of Black people from public spaces is part of America’s fabric. As Taylor put it, Black people are afraid of public space. Because when it goes wrong? It goes really wrong. “It’s not a skinned knee,” he said.
Euan Kerr | MPR News
The exterior of Palmer's Bar in Minneapolis. The bar which opened in 1906 is a West Bank institution, and the only actual bar left in what was once a thriving entertainment area adjacent to the University of Minnesota.
As a young person, I gravitated to Palmer’s Bar on the West Bank of Minneapolis. Though the dive bar institution has a rough and tumble façade and reputation, I immediately found that it was one of the most welcoming spaces I had ever been to.
Tony Zaccardi has owned Palmer’s for four years, but he says it's long attracted a seriously diverse mix of customers.
“I always tell people, my motto of what Palmer's is, it's Black, white, gay, straight, trans, left, right, rich, poor. So on and so forth,” he said. Then he added “Everyone is welcome until you're an a-hole.”
But there’s something else about Zaccardi. He’s a Black man, and his ownership adds another layer of meaning to the already storied place. I put the question to him: would Cassius be satisfied if he were alive today?
“I think he'd be disappointed as hell at Black bar ownership and Black representation in bars. Restaurants are a little better, but it's still not at all where it could or should be. But I think he'd be proud of me. I just started tearing up when I said that. I think he’d be proud of me.”
Euan Kerr | MPR News
When Tony Zaccardi bought Palmer's Bar in 2018 he became the only Black bar owner in the city of Minneapolis.
I think Cassius would be proud of Tony too. I’m proud of Tony. But this is a story about whether or not Cassius would be proud of the Twin Cities.
I happened to catch Wain McFarlane, longtime fixture of the Twin Cities music scene and frontman of internationally known reggae-rock band, “Ipso Facto,” on the patio of Palmer’s, where he’s a regular. He didn’t think Cassius would be satisfied, either.
“I'd say we still haven't made the progress. It’s still controlled by another entity,” he told me from a table he’s sharing with his son. “But at least Tony (Zaccardi) finally owns something.”
McFarlane mentioned how difficult it is to get a foothold into the business, and he believes it’s time for something to change.
“I think we need some sort of financial institution to allow us to have our dream and help us manage it. You know, we don't want to waste the money,” he said.
I approached a group of other Black patrons on the patio. Zaccardi said one of them is in every day. I asked what it is about Palmer’s that makes them feel safe, and what keeps them coming back.
A guy with long braids named Caezar told me, “A cat can hang out with a dog here. Nobody would pay attention to it. It’s like everybody’s welcome. We’re all family. For real. We love each other.”
At the same table, a woman named Keisha agreed. “When you come here it’s so comfortable and laid back. It's just very peaceful. I've been to other bars, but at Palmer’s we have fun. We have a ball.”
Euan Kerr | MPR News
Pianist Cornbread Harris has been a fixture of Sunday afternoons at Palmer's Bar in Minneapolis for several years. In fact he claimed, with a laugh, during this session photographed on June 18 that he is the reason the bar remains open. The bar does attract customers on all other days of the week.
Black people feeling comfortable, laid back, peaceful and having a ball? It’s a much taller order than it should be in America, as Cassius attested to all those years ago.
There’s an energetic cost to getting there, as Anthony Taylor so eloquently put it. We’re not there yet.
These things run deep. Tony Zaccardi tells a story of hanging out at Mortimers, another south Minneapolis institution, chatting with the owner, and a friend.
“Somebody walked in wearing a Palmer’s Bar T-shirt,” he remembered. “And she said, ‘Palmers! I haven’t been there in years, but I heard a brother owns it.’ And [the owner said] ‘Yeah, the guy standing right next to you, he’s the guy that owns it.’ And she started bawling. And then I started bawling. And I was like, ‘OK, this is actually something that's pretty special.’ It was astonishing. It really touched my heart and I realized why it's so important to a lot of people.”
It’s so important to a lot of people because still, in 2022, Black people cannot take safe social space for granted. Places like Palmer’s, and people like Tony Zaccardi, are providing a service that goes far beyond pouring a drink. And Cassius would be proud — some 80 years after opening the Dreamland Bar & Café, these spaces are his legacy.
But I think he would be prouder if we were able to drop the word “safe” from social space.
What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
On the evening of July 6, 2016, Valerie Castile was sleeping in her bedroom, exhausted after a long road trip back home from a family reunion in St. Louis.
Just after 9 p.m. she was awakened by her daughter, who shared harrowing news about Philando, Castile’s 32-year-old son.
“She told me that Philando was on Facebook dying,” Castille recalled. “So, that’s how I found out.”
Her daughter watched her moaning, bleeding brother on a Facebook Live stream, as it was captured in real-time by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. The video showed a traffic stop in which St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez held a gun on Castile and Reynolds, only seconds after shooting Castile in front of Reynolds and her four-year-old daughter.
Yanez would later tell investigators that he feared for his life and thought Castile was pulling out a gun, not the ID that he asked for. On the officer’s body camera video, Castile — who was legally carrying a gun — can be heard saying he was not pulling his firearm out. Yanez fired the shots seconds later.
Castile says she still questions Yanez’s explanation.
“He stuck that gun in that car and shot my son while he was seat-belted in the car and had a woman and a child in the car,” Castile said. “What would make you afraid of a Black family?”
A jury acquitted Yanez of criminal charges in 2017.
It’s been six years since Castile’s death and the later acquittal of Yanez, which sparked enthusiastic protests and calls for change across the nation.
Evan Frost | MPR News 2021
Valerie Castile, mother of Philando Castile, speaks about his son's life, death, and legacy during a press conference on the five-year anniversary of his death in St. Paul.
“He's magnified and amplified a lot of the problems within the country,” Castile said of her late son. She believes that his killing exposed police brutality and racial disparities and differences in how Americans who are licensed to carry weapons are treated.
“It made the world stand still,” she said. “It uncovered a plague.”
Though the incident unfolded while classes were out for the summer, the news of Philando Castile’s death quickly traveled across the network of parents of the nearly 400 children at J.J. Hill Montessori School where Castile worked. He was the school’s beloved cafeteria supervisor — affectionately known as Mr. Phil. The people who knew him best say Castile had a knack for connecting with all students, but especially special needs students and students of color.
As one parent of a J.J. Hill student said: “People knew him from his smile, before they even knew his name.” Another parent called him “Mr. Rogers with dreadlocks.”
Before he was killed, Castile had been stopped by police in the Twin Cities at least 52 times and issued citations for minor offenses such as not wearing a seatbelt and speeding, but never for any serious crimes.
Maria Alejandra Cardona | MPR News file
J.J. Hill Montessori School in St. Paul, Minn., is the school Philando Castile worked as a cafeteria supervisor.
Many J.J. Hill students, including those who knew Castile and are now in middle school and high school, say the killing and the acquittal inspired a stronger commitment to social justice within them.
Fourteen-year-old Naomi Carter, who attended J.J. Hill in pre-K and kindergarten, is now an eighth-grader at Capitol Hill Magnet in St. Paul. There, she’s part of a student leadership group called “Where Everyone Belongs” and treasurer of the Black Student Union. She said the killing of Castile has helped inspire her to become a lawyer one day.
“I never really said I wanted to be a lawyer until after it happened with Philando Castile. And I held onto that for a long time,” she said. “So, eventually after it happened to George Floyd, then I started thinking about it again. Being a lawyer would really help this because a lot of these cases don’t get tried, and they don’t get justice. If I became a lawyer, then I could try these cases.”
Valerie Castile said she is encouraged by the youth, both those who came through JJ Hill and beyond.
“They're beginning to see what we've been saying all along,” she said. “And I can say technology has been instrumental in that.”
- Full coverage The death of Philando Castile and the trial of Jeronimo Yanez
- ChangeMakers Valerie and Allysza Castile, carrying on Philando's spirit
- 2021 Philando Castile's mother criticizes lack of progress in police accountability
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Located in the heart of north Minneapolis on West Broadway in the Five Points Building, KMOJ would surprise any bicentennial time travelers who knew it as a barely-there operation spread between two apartments in the Glenwood Projects. It crept onto local airwaves with a budget of less than $50,000. Sometimes records would skip on-air after someone stomped on the floor.
Founded in 1976 by the Center for Communications and Development, KMOJ was originally WMOJ because FCC naming conventions assigned W call letters to station transmitters east of the Mississippi River. Its transmitting power was 10 milliwatts — a range of four to six blocks — and its operating budget came courtesy of grants from the Lutheran Church and state of Minnesota. It became KMOJ in 1978.
Today, according to its management, KMOJ is a million-dollar business, which would be an astronomical sum for a community station just starting out 46 years ago. But, it’s on the low-end for a contemporary broadcaster.
Regardless of how much money the station has in the bank, the mission remains the same, to: “Teach communities of color media skills that help reinstate the positive affirmative Black image.”
KMOJ’s morning show co-host, Chantel SinGs, says she knows that the message of positivity is reaching its desired audience.
She’s reminded daily of the power of a Black-run radio station for a Black community.
“I had a caller that called me, crying,” she said. “She was crying and talking about the events that happened in Buffalo, New York, where 10 African Americans were shot and killed by a white supremacist shooter.
“She said that it affected her so badly, she couldn’t get through her workday.
“She’s sitting in her car, crying at 7:30 in the morning. She can’t go into her workplace. She’s thinking she needs some words of encouragement. Some kind of guidance. And, she calls KMOJ.”
General Manager Freddie Bell says he’s seen similar displays of connection from listeners.
“If we do the right things. If we focus on the mission — number one, to train broadcasters and number two, to provide for the needs of our listeners — we can’t lose,” he said. “And, as best as I can tell, we’re doing a wonderful job of staying true to our mission.”
After more than 40 years working at the station, Walter “Q” Bear Banks is a true believer.
Banks is the station’s afternoon drive time on-air personality. He’s a tall, powerfully built man with a smile that rivals the 1,400 watts of the station’s transmitter. He possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the north side, the Minneapolis Sound, Prince and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and all matters related to KMOJ.
“There’s a lot to radio, but even in the processing of everything that’s there, you have to have an understanding of self and community when it comes to KMOJ radio,” he said, “because that’s what its purpose is about. If you are not looking into the community side, then there’s no sense in being there.”
Courtesy of Freddie Bell
Photos taken over the years of different hosts and guests of KMOJ.
Early troubles Motown legend Marvin Gaye had a hit song in 1972 called “Trouble Man” four years before the station was founded.
There have been eras in the station’s history when it felt like Gaye wrote it with KMOJ in mind.
In 1983, the station’s founding management team, General Manager Jeanette Cotton and development officer Brian Allen, were fired by the station’s board and barred from entering the building. The pair countersued for wrongful termination.
There have been several instances when staff or taxes weren't paid. The station went silent for a short time in 1988 because of transmitter issues. In 2016 a group named Concerned Citizens of KMOJ accused the board of putting the station at risk.
Reverend Ewald “Joe” Bash was a liaison for the Lutheran Church’s grant, which effectively created the station. In 1978, he told the media that WMOJ and its target audience had their work cut out for them.
“Realistically, we’re an awfully long way from doing what needs to be done in the Cities,” he said. "How do you undo the damage of whole lifetimes of being put down, of being denied jobs on one hand and being punished for being out of work on the other, of hate, hurt and hostility?”
Caroline Yang for MPR News
Freddie Bell operates the control panels while hosting KMOJ's The Morning Show on May 27.
An act of faith Today, visitors see few signs of those past hardships. They walk into a tasteful suite of offices and studios with muted tan carpets and deep red and blue walls. The effect is professional, soothing. The gold and black KMOJ logo, shaped like the medallion of a 90s era rapper, dominates the main studio and imparts a slight bit of hip hop edginess.
Bell, who also serves as Chantel SinGs morning co-host, wants to push the station’s financial troubles even deeper into the past.
On a whiteboard in his office, he’s written a multi-million-dollar figure in black marker — a year-long stretch goal for his six-person management team.
Behind his desk, an ancient Philco radio, shiny and wooden, shares space with a montage of photos of his daughter who recently graduated from college with a degree in communications.
Bell is so immersed in the medium he might as well emit radio waves. He is the latest in a line of roughly a dozen KMOJ station managers, reaching back to co-founder Jeannette Cotton, responsible for leading the station to its current state of relative solvency.
Bell knew the station’s humble history when he was hired in 2016. Still, he left a well-paying job with a white-owned commercial station when KMOJ’s board of directors hit an impasse with its station manager.
Bell’s move was an act of faith. He felt indebted to KMOJ because his volunteer service there led to a commercial radio position. He quit his job and came on board as General Manager. A few of his predecessors worked without pay for stretches of time, just to ensure the station kept going.
The station’s financial situation was so tenuous when Bell took over that he kept a resignation letter at the ready, just in case.
Caroline Yang for MPR News
Chantel SinGs co-hosts KMOJ's The Morning Show with Freddie Bell.
A rich tradition KMOJ’s financial struggles and deep connection to its audience is part of a rich tradition. Black radio stations girded the success of the Civil Rights Movement. They were the town criers calling listeners to rallies and protests. DJs in Deep South states like Alabama broadcast coded messages to alert their audiences about locations for protests, times and police presence — reminiscent of the old negro spirituals that helped slaves plot their escapes.
That’s the legacy upheld by KMOJ and a scant 43 other Black-run public radio stations across the U.S.
“It’s a market that’s hanging on by a string,” says Paul Billings, founder and president of WUVS, 103.7 The Beat, a Black-run public radio station in Muskegon, Michigan.
“[From] the government and on the corporate side, Black radio has always been the stepchild when it comes to advertising and underwriting dollars … there’s never really been a strong advocacy there.”
Black radio stations, both commercial and public, are fragile unicorns. Black-owned commercial stations make up a little more than one percent of the nation’s 11,000 radio stations. The number of Black-owned stations reached a high of more than 250 stations, thanks to the FCC’s Minority Ownership Policy of 1978. However, Clinton era deregulation dropped the number to fewer than 180.
Billings says there is little political appetite to level the playing field for Black-run stations, either commercial or public. Advertisers call the shots in the radio business. Their purchases ultimately decide which audiences are worth the billions spent in radio advertising each year. A typical strategy for media buyers, he says, is to assume they can reach enough of the Black audience through ad buys with white-owned media.
Billings says it’s a reality Black stations want to change, but accept for the present. It’s a matter of survival.
Caroline Yang for MPR News
Freddie Bell, of Minneapolis, chats with co-host of KMOJ's The Morning Show, Chantel SinGs, during a break.
Job one, Bell said, is to bolster the community-focused mission and keep the station alive, no matter the distractions.
“I don’t care what organization it is; people all have their own ideas. They have their own ways of life,” he said. “But, making sure the station was financially solvent, that was the Big Lift and continues to be the Big Lift.
“I didn’t want to be the guy [with] the headline, ‘KMOJ fails because of Freddie Bell.’ Nobody wants to see that. Nobody wants that to happen under their watch. I was determined that wasn’t going to happen.
Continuing the mission Bell says the station’s latest, greatest achievement is melded to its mission of training young people of color. The Ice, touted as Minnesota’s first urban hip hop station, is broadcast on its KMOJ HD2 channel. It offers young, hip hop DJs a nerve-wracking training ground which includes tens of thousands of listeners.
“Oh, this is live,” said a staff person when asked if trainees ever made mistakes on the expensive and complex soundboard. “They’ll make mistakes, but they won’t do it twice.”
Bell is particularly proud of the journalism training a diverse group of young women received under the Racial Reckoning: The Arc of Justice initiative. The project is a 10-month joint effort of KMOJ, AMPERS and the Minnesota Humanities Center that reached a million listeners. Its five young journalists covered high-profile, breaking news stories such as the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd.
One of those young reporters, Chioma Uwagwu, shared her thoughts about the project on the station’s website.
“I never thought there could be journalists that were truly trusted in the community,” she said. “It was always, ‘there’s journalists and there’s community members.’ And, sometimes community members would give their stories, but it always felt very transactional.”
Uwagwu considers the project a solid step into a journalistic future that considers communities of color full partners in the news gathering process.
Bell’s pride in the project’s success may be due in part to the fact that KMOJ had no journalists on staff when he began his tenure.
Unluckily for him, that was a news-heavy 18 months starting in November 2015 when Jamar Clark was shot and killed by a police officer in north Minneapolis. Superstar Prince died suddenly at Paisley Park in April of 2016. Philando Castile was killed by a police officer later that summer sparking protests which made national news.
“All this happens and we didn’t have a news department,” he said. “People were calling us, asking for reports. We didn’t have a reporter. It was just us. I sent one of my producers, who wasn’t a trained journalist, to the scene [of the protests following Clark’s death].”
Caroline Yang for MPR News
A window in the KMOJ lobby.
A small miracle That kind of privation is business as usual for Black radio stations, Billings said. Without sufficient funding, the stations have to be creative in most areas, including news gathering.
But, the landscape has changed since 2016 for both Billings’ station WUVS and for KMOJ.
“It’s because of [Bell] and his leadership that we have Black news that’s running on not only on our station, but on other stations across the country because he advocated for us to get this Black news for free,” Billings said. “We have collaborated on talk shows, special editions, documentaries and those have made each one of our [stations] stronger.”
KMOJ, with its sprawling, joyous, messy, under-appreciated history is still standing and Billings doesn’t mind if you put your hands together for that small miracle.
“I think the community should be grateful that they have a voice, a vehicle that cares about their community that’s been independent, not bought-out and has put the citizens, the listeners, first for four-plus decades,” he said.
“They should be happy that this radio station is still there, still dedicated to the same mission that they had when they started off: to empower the Black community of the Twin Cities. That’s a strong commitment that KMOJ has given the people of Minneapolis-St. Paul. And, I hope that the people of that community have given KMOJ the same commitment.
The federal government’s hanging of 38 Dakota men from a Mankato, Minn., gallows in December 1862 brought an end to the U.S.-Dakota war. It also triggered a financial bonanza for the University of Minnesota.
Dubbed the “Minnesota Windfall,” sales and leases of parcels taken from the Dakota raised nearly $580,000 for the young university — part of a massive grab of wealth cleaved from Native people and given to American universities.
That troubling piece of American history remained largely hidden until two investigative reporters began digging into how colleges benefited from the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862, signed into law six months before the Mankato hangings.
The University of Minnesota is now broadly reviewing its treatment of Native people going back to its founding in 1851. Researchers with the TRUTH (Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing) Project are expected to release a report this summer.
What’s come to light so far suggests that history will be painful to read.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
Audrianna Goodwin, poses for a portrait outside Elliott Hall, at University of Minnesota.
‘Almost unbelievable truths’ Coming just weeks after the Mankato executions, the “Minnesota Windfall” was especially egregious, said Tristan Ahtone, who along with fellow High Country News reporter Robert Lee documented millions of acres granted to universities that were taken from Indigenous people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“We had found about nearly 11 million acres of land that originally belonged to Indigenous tribes and communities acquired by the United States through about 250 different treaties, many of them outright land seizures, many of those treaties backed by violence,” said Ahtone. “Those lands had basically been divided up for 52 universities.”
High Country News revealed those land grants raised almost $18 million for university endowments, with unsold lands valued at more than $5 million. Adjusted for inflation, that land would be worth about $500 million today.
“When it comes to higher education, the Morrill Act in 1862 provides the receipts for how the modern public university system in the United States was founded and how it was funded through the selling of Native land,” said Nick Estes, a professor who will join the University of Minnesota in the fall and whose ancestors were exiled to South Dakota following the Dakota conflict.
The TRUTH Project offers the U and other universities a chance to reflect on that history, he said.
The project includes fellows appointed by tribal nations, University of Minnesota graduate researchers and faculty who’ve spent the past year conducting research to better understand the relationship between the university and tribal nations.
“We're talking about a lot of really sensitive things. Intergenerational trauma, secondary trauma, almost painful, almost unbelievable truths that the University of Minnesota was involved in with our community,” said Audrianna Goodwin, a master’s degree candidate and TRUTH Project researcher appointed by the Red Lake Nation who’s examining the University of Minnesota Medical School’s study of children with kidney disease at Red Lake in the 1950s and 60s.
Researchers are also examining issues including the return of human remains and funerary objects held by the university, and the legacy of a boarding school on what's now the University of Minnesota campus in Morris., Minn.
The work offers the university a chance to understand its impact on tribal communities, said An Garagiola, a Bois Forte Ojibwe descendant and graduate student researcher helping to lead the TRUTH Project.
“This is an opportunity for the university to recognize the disastrous impacts its formation has and continues to have on our communities. And to look for ways to not only improve relations with Indigenous people,” Garagiola said. “But to also recognize the role that it's played in things like the perpetual opportunity gaps in education and housing — all of that is directly correlated to land dispossession.”
The project, she added, is “a lot bigger than any of us anticipated when we started.“
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
An Garagiola, poses for a portrait outside Elliott Hall, at University of Minnesota.
‘Reconciliation way, way down the road’ The TRUTH Project‘s report this summer is likely to unearth more pain, although those connected to the research see it as a path to healing.
In a presentation last May to the university's regents, Karen Diver, special advisor on Native affairs for university president Joan Gabel, addressed the potential impact of the TRUTH Project.
“This is actually really groundbreaking. A true part of reconciliation is really allowing people to have that space and time to speak their truth,” Diver said, adding that she hoped “for healing and for a resetting of the relationship, so that we can start to clear that plate and look forward to more meaningful relationships that aren’t clouded by the things left unsaid.”
Tadd Johnson, a member of the Bois Forte Ojibwe, led the TRUTH Project in his roles as a professor of American Indian Studies, director of graduate studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and senior director of American Indian Tribal Nations Relations before recently retiring from the U.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Tadd Johnson, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, talks about the TRUTH Project on June 21 at Cina Hall on the UMD campus in Duluth.
He said when he began meeting with tribal leaders on these issues a decade ago, there was no relationship between the university’s leadership and Minnesota’s tribes.
“They said, ‘Why don't we know who the president of the University of Minnesota is?’ and ‘Why don't we know anything about the regents?” he recalled.
For him, the TRUTH Project is an opportunity for Gabel and the regents to listen to concerns raised by tribal officials and communities.
“Reconciliation is way, way down the road,” said Johnson. “What we first need to get is the Native American perspective on their relationship with the University of Minnesota.”
Correction (June 30, 2022): A previous version misidentified Elliott Hall in photo captions. The captions have been updated.
The tall grasses are alive with the sounds of birds and insects at Dream of Wild Health Farm in Hugo, Minn. As one of the few Native-led farms in the Twin Cities, it’s a special place. I’ve come to meet with Hope Flanagan, the community outreach director for the farm, who is a Seneca plant expert and elder. She’s leading me on a plant walk that offers a snapshot of how food might have been gathered by her ancestors as few as a hundred years ago.
Sean Sherman, renowned Lakota chef and owner of the 2022 James Beard best new restaurant Owamni, has joined us on the walk. The two compare notes on what they’re finding and between little nibbles concur that prickly ash tastes like lemon lime, but also a little tingly with a spicy back-edge like black pepper.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, smells and tastes a leaf before deciding to gather it at Dream of Wild Health Farm.
As I myself taste, it occurs to me how like themselves these plants taste, rather than the sometimes bland, cardboardy flavor that many commodity produce fruits and vegetables can offer. When I mention this to Hope, she says that yes, it’s a lesson she’s learned from her Ojibwe teachers: eating wild food can impart your spirit with wildness, you don’t want to eat too many of “the enslaved ones,” as she calls cultivated plants.
But before we go too deep into the walk, she introduces herself in the traditional way of her tribe, in both English and Ojibwemowin, making note that it’s important for everyone to be able to hear the introduction, including the plants, animals and insects.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
A dragonfly, whose presence is an indicator of a healthy ecosystem, lands among plants at Dream of Wild Health Farm.
“Hello all my relatives my fellow living beings, I'm known by the spirits as Little Wind Woman. In English, I'm known as Hope. I am a snapping turtle, currently appearing as a human. I'm from over there,” she points. “The Tonawanda reservation over that way.”
Her first lessons from elders about the uses of the plants around her began when she was two years old, she recalls. Now some six decades on she says she’s still learning, and she carries that expertise, and the responsibilities that go with it, in her name.
“This one elder said, ‘Okay, you got to learn the language, because those plants are going to talk to you. And you got to know what plants they are. And now you're gonna have to carry this name,’” she said.
“So this is where all this responsibility is, when you get your name,” Hope continues. “It's not like, ‘Oh, look at me, I have this name!’ It's now you have this responsibility. And you're going to carry this for the rest of your life. For me, I have to thank these plants every year, go through any plant I've gathered, and thank them and do a food offering and go out to the woods and make sure that they're honored, make sure that I walk in a certain way so that I'm not disrespectful to the plants.”
As we walk, she stoops to pick up leaves and berries, petals and seeds, squishing, sniffing and tasting. With a great laugh she requests that I let her know if she has green things in her teeth, as she often does, she says. She finds lambs quarters, an unassuming leaf shaped a bit like a triangle. It’s incredibly versatile, she tells me, and even higher in nutrition than spinach.
“So this is probably one of those that people will tear out of their garden and throw it away. No! Don't throw it away! Eat it!”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Hope Flanagan, Community Outreach and Cultural Teacher at Dream of Wild Health Farm, places a tobacco offering of thanks on the ground before gathering plants.
But before she picks anything, she puts down an offering of tobacco, and offers thanks to the ground.
“Don't take anything unless you've got something to give back,” she explains as she points to a leather pouch hanging round her neck. “That's why you'll always see we have our tobacco bags to put something down to say thank you. The understanding is, if we don't thank them, they're just going to leave us and those are our teachers, those are our elders. What are we going to do then?”
Because Hope says she’s not much of a cook, Sean has offered to do the culinary portion of this meal. Much of the menu at Owamni, as well as the chef’s entire culinary ethos, is based in part on opening your eyes to what plant diversity can be gathered outdoors in any part of the world.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, cooks foraged herbs with wild rice and maple syrup at Dream of Wild Health.
“We’re hoping that we're enticing people to get interested in not only being creative and cooking with these flavors and creating new recipes, but also just being curious to be outdoors to create that connection with the world and the plants and to learn the stories which we can pass down,” he explains.
But as we get curious and creative, Hope offers constant reminders of the gravity of what we’re up to today.
“Every single plant has a gift of food, utility, medicine and then the green ones have the gift of breath,” Hope says. “So they have so much more to give than we have, in our way of thinking. In the stories, you'll hear that these are elders. They were here before us. They don't need us. We need them.”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Hope Flanagan, Community Outreach and Cultural Teacher at Dream of Wild Health Farm, watches as Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, cooks.
In her Indigenous tradition, she tells me, the life of plants goes beyond the function of food, or even medicine. They are woven into language and guide how people speak about the world.
“They're living beings. And that's what's so different when you're talking in the language. You can't think about any of this as not being living because the sentence structure changes when you talk about things that aren't living versus things that are living.”
In Ojibwemowin, she says, there were originally not any nouns, because things don’t matter in that tradition. Living beings, and our relationships to them, do.
Once we’ve gathered a sufficient handful of edible plants, we return to Sean’s induction burner set up on a picnic table in the field. He starts puffing wild rice in a pan, softening nettles and flavoring cooking liquid with the cedar and bergamot that we’ve foraged, sweetening it all with pure maple that he’s brought along.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, cooks foraged herbs with wild rice and maple syrup.
“The Western diet in the United States has rarely taken into account all this amazing stuff,” he explains, pushing the mixture around in the pan with the back of his chef’s knife.
“And so we're just showcasing that Indigenous peoples really hold such a wonderful key to living more sustainably utilizing a lot more of this knowledge. And people like Hope, who has so much of this wisdom, and is happy to share this wisdom, is just a great example of helping to spread this for future generations.”
In a few moments, the dish is finished. He quickly gathers the mixture in a cup plant leaf to form a green wrap about the size and shape of a sushi roll. He places it on a wooden platter, and garnishes it with purple chive flowers. I waste no time digging in.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, wraps wild rice cooked with cedar, maple syrup and foraged herbs, topped with chive flowers in a cup plant leaf.
The flavors are intense, and easily identifiable individually. I get a hit of vegetal from the cup plant that holds the entirety of the bite together. Then, a tiny bit of bitterness from the cedar, and earth from the wild rice. The maple adds a pleasant sweet and sticky finish. Purple chive flowers are both oniony and floral. It’s like a whole world in your mouth.
“You can taste your entire walk,” Sean laughs.
Later, he confesses that he was nervous because he forgot to bring salt, but I didn’t even notice its absence.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Sean Sherman, head chef of Owamni, tops wild rice cooked with cedar, maple syrup, and foraged herbs, with chive flowers.
But deliciousness aside, Sean and Hope reminds us that there is, truly, a whole world of knowledge in that little green wrapper.
“It’s that connection to the world, it's that connection to the plants, that creates that connection to our ancestors directly, because we can share that knowledge just like our ancestors did not that long ago,” Sean emphasizes.
“You know, because it’s less than 100 years ago that so many of our ancestors still carried so much of that knowledge in them. And so much of that knowledge was being wiped away this past century. So it's really important that we do everything we can to steward this knowledge moving forward,” he concludes, while plating the rest of the contents of the pan.
“We're just part of a community,” Hope adds as a reminder. “We're just members of a community of all this life. That's it, we're no better, we're no worse. We have to treat each other as living beings.”
Other North Star Journey culinary stories * Love in a corn husk * Hmong Snack connects the present with the past * The East African Twist on an American staple
A group working to identify and nullify racist language in Twin Cities property records is out with new data on Ramsey County. Researchers with the Mapping Prejudice project combed through reams of documents and found more than 2,000 homes that were off limits to people of color until the mid-20th century.
Racially-restrictive covenants have long been illegal, but supporters of the project say acknowledging past wrongs is the first step toward reversing Minnesota’s homeownership and wealth gaps, which are among the worst in the nation.
The new map came as a surprise to Etienne Djevi, who said that until this week he had no idea that the deed to his Roseville house likely includes a clause that once prohibited any non-white person from buying or renting it.
“I was shocked,” Djevi said. “I’m Black man. To be living in this house for two and a half years and to figure out that somebody in the past did not want my kind to be in here, it hurts.”
Djevi, an infectious disease physician who grew up in Benin, shares his home with his wife and two sons. Though he has yet to see the records for himself, Djevi’s property is marked on a new map from the University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice project, indicating that the parcel has a racially-restrictive covenant.
While the language can’t be removed from the title, Djevi said he’s contacting the group Just Deeds to have its volunteer attorneys add wording to renounce the racist clause “so that it’s not anything that maybe another Black person or another person of color will have to deal with in the future.”
Courtesy of the Mapping Prejudice project
A map released by the Mapping Prejudice project showing properties found to to have racially-restrictive covenants as of June 9. The properties are shown in green.
Mapping Prejudice technical lead Michael Corey said the earliest-known covenant in the Twin Cities dates to 1910. In the following decades the practice grew at the behest of real estate agents and developers. Corey said covenants, often mentioned in housing advertisements, continued even after 1948, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the clauses unenforceable.
“Covenants were often put on these properties as a way to attract white buyers,” Corey said. “And unfortunately they didn’t think anything of throwing a lot of people out and under the bus to attract people to those properties.”
Since it started in 2016, Mapping Prejudice has identified more than 25,000 covenants in Hennepin County. For the last three years they’ve partnered with the Welcoming the Dear Neighbor? project at St. Catherine University on a similar effort in Ramsey County, where they’ve confirmed about 2,400 covenants so far. Corey said that’s likely a significant undercount because of missing or unreadable deeds.
He said the process begins by feeding microfilmed records through optical character recognition software, which looks for racist language. Anything the computer flags then goes to a group of volunteers. It’s a laborious process.
“Combined between Ramsey County and Hennepin County we’ve had over 6,000 volunteers work on this data,” Corey said
Cindy Schwie is among the group of volunteers. Like Djevi, Schwie lives in Roseville and said she became interested in the project after spotting “disgusting” language in the title abstract for the home that she purchased with her husband in 1974.
Matt Sepic | MPR News
The deed to Cindy Schwie's house includes language forbidding “persons of any race other than the Caucasian race” from purchasing or renting the home.
The clause says that “No person or persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building on any of the hereinbefore described property except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with the owner or tenant.”
Even though the clause has been illegal for decades, Schwie said she’s working to discharge it, in part to send a message to her home’s future owners.
“As homeowners, we do not want this on there,” Schwie said. “It’s not what we believe in. And we want other people to know in history that we did not believe in this.”
Carol Gurstelle lives near Schwie in a mid-century subdivision where all the homes have racially-restrictive covenants. Gurstelle said the clause on her property deed is specific and explicit; it bans “Negroes,” as well as Jews and people of Asian descent.
Gurstelle said she learned about the clause when she purchased the home nearly five decades ago. Gurstelle said she long considered it a curious bit of archaic legalese.
“Since then, with the rising awareness of prejudices in this country, and how practices such as racial covenants have shaped the way our cities have grown, I’m more offended by it now than I was then.”
Besides Roseville, the new map shows pockets of covenants scattered across St. Paul, Maplewood, White Bear Lake and other cities.
St. Catherine University sociologist Daniel Williams said the effort to identify restrictive covenants is not just about nullifying racist language. Its larger goal is to illustrate how the pernicious influence of that language remains.
“Segregation was not inevitable,” Williams said. “But once segregation happened, it did effectively racialize space, and that had consequences that were really never ending.”
Because covenants and other racist policies restricted homeownership, Williams said that Black people have had far fewer opportunities than others to build wealth and pass it to future generations. He points to a 2021 Federal Reserve study that pins the median net worth of white households in Minnesota at $211,000. For Black households, that figure is $0.
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Natasha Lancour is a mother of five.
Every time she has given birth, Lancour, of Duluth, says she has felt unable to ask for the postpartum help she needed.
“In labor, it can be so rushed, everything is so fast. I wanted to know what it's like for the first time to breastfeed my child. I've never breastfed before,” she said.
As she reflects on her births, Lancour wonders now if having a doula — a non-medically trained professional who supports clients physically and emotionally through the childbirth process — might have been the answer. Especially if that doula, Lancour said, was Black, like her.
"I've always experienced birth as kind of violent,” Lancour said. “And when I was introduced to doula birth, it was something that I felt like every woman should have access to, to have a support in the community."
Lancour recently participated in a free, four-day doula training with the hopes of offering the service to clients in Duluth, where she’s from.
The training is organized by Everyday Miracles, a nonprofit based in Minneapolis that helps clients connect with doulas. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the state's largest nonprofit health insurer, pays for the program. The training is aimed at recruiting more doulas of color — who represent a sliver of the already small doula workforce.
Behind the effort is a growing body of research that suggests that doulas can have a positive impact on birth outcomes.
Pregnancy support from someone who isn't a family member or a hospital employee can have positive outcomes during and after birth, said University of Minnesota public health professor Katy Backes Kozhimannil, who has studied the role of doulas in the birth process.
"Everything from higher levels of satisfaction and feelings of agency to things like lower rates of preterm birth, lower use of pain medication and lower rates of surgical birth when it's not needed,” Backes Kozhimannil said.
But in spite of those positive outcomes, doulas remain financially and logistically out of reach for many pregnant women — especially women of color, she said.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Natasha Lancour stands for a portrait during a break while attending a doula training workshop.
‘Someone who looks like you’ Research shows that women of color and their babies face higher rates of death and more medical problems during childbirth — disparities that are connected to generations of institutional racism embedded in the health care system.
Doulas could help improve birth outcomes, especially when doulas share racial and ethnic backgrounds that are similar to their clients, said Ashley Kidd-Tatge, doula and outreach coordinator for Everyday Miracles.
"There's something so important about having somebody come into arguably the most vulnerable space and time,” she said. "Having somebody who looks like you, in the birth room can make a difference medically, emotionally, physically, spiritually, on every level."
Researchers haven't yet investigated whether doulas have an impact on death rates and medical complications among pregnant and birthing women, said Backes Kozhimannil.
But she sees an important role specifically for more doulas of color in helping pregnant people of color who have been marginalized within the health care system for generations.
Backes Kozhimannil points, for instance, to her own research that shows a higher rate of breastfeeding among mothers of color who employed a doula.
Easing the path into parenthood matters even more for people of color, she said.
"It matters, especially for Black and Indigenous folks who are birthing in a system that we know suffers [from] structural racism, and that we know produces inequitable outcomes, not just at childbirth, but across the lifespan,” Backes Kozhimannil said.
A tangle of barriers Still, access to doula care is uneven even though the state’s Medicaid program, called Medical Assistance, has covered the service since 2013.
The program serves a disproportionate number of people of color, but very few of those clients use the doula benefit.
"Something wasn't working. And we needed to try to understand what was going on,” said Amy Bloomquist, director of population health design at Blue Cross.
The health insurer partnered with Everyday Miracles to find out what was holding the program back.
What they discovered was a tangle of challenges and barriers.
For starters, Medicaid reimburses doulas $47 for each visit and less than $500 for each birth. Bloomquist said that's roughly a third of what people pay out of pocket for the service.
"You only have so many slots in your calendar. And when you can get less than $500 for a slot versus $1500 for a slot,” she said. “It's a no brainer.”
So, Blue Cross doubled doula pay for births covered by Medicaid — still not quite as much as a private pay patient, but closer.
And it worked with Everyday Miracles to submit more claims at regular intervals, so doulas would be paid throughout the process, instead of one payment at the beginning of the relationship with their client and another when the baby is born.
These are big improvements because babies show up whenever they want to, said Debby Prudhomme, director of Everyday Miracles
"Doulas do very, very valuable work. It is hard work. It's a lot of time. It's putting your life on hold,” she said.
But Prudhomme said that reimbursement rates are still too low.
"The fact remains, you can train doulas all day long. If they can't make a livable wage, we're not taking that barrier away,” she said.
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Free doula training In addition to low reimbursement rates, there are too few doulas of color in Minnesota, especially in rural areas. So working with Blue Cross, Everyday Miracles organizes free, four-day doula training programs aimed at expanding the workforce — like the one Lancour attended.
Joining Lancour in the training was Oyate Nixon. She had a doula for the birth of her child who was familiar with Indigenous traditions. Nixon, who identifies as Native American, said it improved her birth experience and she wants to share that support with her clients.
"I'm excited to have that sigh of relief when they see me walk through the door and they're like, 'Wow, she's Native, too.' You know, it's like, it's that automatic sense of relativity between us that I think is very important to them feeling comfortable and, and supported."
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Oyate Nixon stands for a portrait during a break while attending a doula training workshop.
Kozhimannil, whose research influenced the state's decision to expand Medicaid coverage to doula services, said the Blue Cross model shows promise.
"I'm so happy to see the attention to greater investment in doula services, the attention to racial and geographic equity in the distribution of doula services. I think this is an example of things going well."
At the end of the year, Bloomquist says Blue Cross will analyze its work to find out if more of its Medicaid members used doulas. The insurer will tweak the program based on what it learns.
But Bloomquist said one thing won't change: Those higher reimbursement rates for doulas are permanent.
Correction (June 16, 2022): This story has been updated to correct the amount Medicaid reimburses for doula work.
Located at the base of the Mississippi River bluffs in the footprint of the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary on St. Paul’s east side sits Wakan Tipi, a place Dakota people hold sacred.
“This is a really, really incredibly important site for Dakota cultural history, Indigenous history in the region,” said Maggie Lorenz, executive director of the Lower Phalen Creek Project.
More than a century and a half ago, Dakota people were forcibly removed from Minnesota to South Dakota and Nebraska. Others sought refuge in what is now North Dakota and Manitoba.
Wakan Tipi cave was blasted open for a railroad track.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
An empty sleeping bag in front of NorthStar Brewery Cave may indicate unsheltered St. Paul residents make temporary homes within Bruce Nature Sanctuary.
The Lower Phalen Creek Project works on a number of restoration projects related to the site. Over generations, Lorenz says Dakota people remembered its importance.
“It was a central meeting point for nation-to-nation kind of discussions and negotiations and agreements, treaty making, and then you know, of course, it’s never lost that connection.”
This month, the Lower Phalen Creek Project will begin construction on a 9,000 square foot interpretive center near the entrance of the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary to welcome people back to Wakan Tipi and educate the public.
The new interpretive center will include a multipurpose community gathering space, an exhibit area, teaching kitchen, meeting room and office space. The 3-acre grounds will be managed as native gardens.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
In the footprint of the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, hemmed in between railroad tracks and street overpasses sits Wakan Tipi, a place Dakota people hold sacred in St. Paul, on June 8.
Restoring the site Lorenz lives on the east side of St. Paul. She says as few as five years ago, she knew of only one elder who was working to build awareness around the sites.
“As a Dakota person who lived on the east side, it was really, you know, something I felt like I should be involved in,” Lorenz said.
In 2017, Lorenz worked alongside others in the neighborhood to persuade St. Paul city officials not to build a splash pad for children near the burial mounds of Indian Mounds Regional Park. They were successful in persuading the city to divert those funds for an updated cultural landscape study. On their recommendation, the city placed signs at the park that marked the site as a cemetery.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
The city of St. Paul placed signage atop an existing sign at Indian Mounds Regional Park affirming the site as a cemetery.
After gaining insight from Dakota community and tribal leaders, the former leadership of Lower Phalen Creek Project agreed Dakota people should lead the organization. Lorenz was hired in 2019, and began recruiting from across Dakota and Lakota communities.
When she was hired, she began to lead another of the organization’s projects — the daylighting of Lower Phalen Creek. The city had diverted the creek underground through storm sewers and tunnels in the early 1900s.
The Lower Phalen Creek Project expects to begin work to open an underground portion of the creek where it flows out of the south end of Lake Phalen with the help of $3.3 million from the Minnesota Legislature.
“There’s a historic amount of rainfall that's been happening pretty regularly and we need to start thinking of different solutions to help our communities be more resilient to climate change,” Lorenz said.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
Maggie Lorenz, the Executive Director of the Lower Phalen Creek Project and Wakan Tipi Center poses for a portrait.
Sacred and everyday On a warm afternoon, a 4th grade class from Dayton’s Bluff Elementary visited Wakan Tipi to learn Dakota history. They also observed birds and at least one turtle. They also got to touch the water pooling outside the cave.
Patrice Kunesh is Standing Rock Lakota and chair of the board of Lower Phalen Creek. She said welcoming the community is a big part of the Lower Phalen Creek Project.
“We have a real dynamic community. And all of it comes together, I think at this sort of starting place,” she said.
Kunesh wants to help people understand the linkages between Wakan Tipi’s past and present “through an Indigenous lens.” She draws a distinction between caring for a historic site and caring for an ancestral place.
“When I think of ancestors,” Kunesh said. ”It’s a relationship that I have to a space, to a place, to people, to that culture. It’s, to me, living.
On another weekday afternoon Hue Yang, walks down the footpath toward Wakan Tipi cave carting a small wagon loaded with two empty water jugs. He walks around the pond and carefully steps through a small opening of the otherwise closed entrance to the cave to gather water for everyday use. Yang says the water is clean enough for cooking.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
St. Paul resident Hue Yang visits Wakan Tipi cave within the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary to gather water for cooking.
Others who visited the cave left permanent signs.
Inside Wakan Tipi cave were petroglyphs — drawings made by generations of Indigenous people who visited the site. Some of those drawings were destroyed when the railroad expanded. Leadership and staff of Lower Phalen Creek Project want to protect the cave from further damage.
The project’s work at Wakan Tipi requires a balance between protecting the site and welcoming the community who visit the nature sanctuary daily. The Lower Phalen Creek Project will use historic photos of the Wakan Tipi petroglyphs to help visitors understand why the group wants to protect the remains of Wakan Tipi cave.
“We present ourselves in a very, very unique way. And that unique way is beautiful and exciting to share with others. But it also takes a lot of explanation,” Kunesh said.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
A small, temperate pond pools at the mouth of Wakan Tipi Cave, a sacred Dakota ancestral site, located within Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary.
Executive director Maggie Lorenz hopes everyone who visits the new interpretive center will feel welcome. “When people come to visit my house, I’m like, let me get them a cup of coffee, let’s visit. And so, we just kind of want to create that feeling,” she said.
When asked what makes a place sacred, Lorenz likes to quote a Dakota elder.
“The sacred is like rain, it falls everywhere, but it pools in places.”
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When talk turns to the greats of St. Paul baseball, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Joe Mauer and Jack Morris usually come to mind. The four grew up in the capital city and went on to storied major league careers.
A fifth legend, however, is often forgotten. Toni Stone, the Rondo neighborhood kid who shattered racial and gender barriers, once took the roster spot of Hank Aaron and proved over and again she could play the game.
A second baseman in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s, she’s considered the first woman to play professional men's baseball. More than two decades after her death, her efforts are slowly being recognized. This weekend, Major League Baseball and the Minnesota Twins will honor Stone's memory with a baseball clinic and scrimmages for girls at the Toni Stone Invitational.
"So many Minnesota natives don't know about Toni Stone and, you know, it’s no fault of their own,” said Chelsey Falzone, the Twins youth engagement manager who like Stone, grew up in Minnesota loving baseball.. “I think we need to tell her story more. It hasn't been told too much. And her story is really, really incredible."
‘Their attitudes changed’ Stone was born Marcenia Lyle Stone in 1921 in West Virginia, but soon moved to St. Paul, where her parents ran a barber and beauty shop downtown. They lived in the Rondo neighborhood, which is where Stone picked up a love of baseball.
Her first break came when her priest at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church convinced Stone’s parents to let her play on the parish boys’ team. In later years, Stone would hang around the old St. Paul Saints ballpark, where she kept showing up so much that the manager eventually gave her some baseball equipment and invited her to play in a summer baseball camp there for boys.
"So from there she then started playing for, oh, all these teams in St. Paul: the men's meatpacking league, St. Paul High Lex team, the Catholic boys league and then a traveling team with adult men called the Twin City Colored Giants,” said Martha Ackmann, author of "Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone."
MPR Photo | Tom Crann
Toni Stone is part of the "Black and Brown Baseball" exhibit at the Minnesota African American Museum. Stone grew up in St. Paul and graduated from Roosevelt High in Minneapolis. She was one of the first women to play Negro League baseball. She played for the St. Paul Giants, and for the Indianapolis Clowns. She once got a hit off the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige.
Ackmann, who writes books on women who shaped and changed America, said she was drawn immediately to Stone’s journey.
“Her story was one that told us something about not only who she was but about who we are as Americans,” Ackmann said. “And certainly Toni's story reveals much about Jim Crow America, sexism in the United States and what happens when you grow up with a dream that people don't think you should have.”
Stone eventually moved to San Francisco where she joined the barnstorming San Francisco Sea Lions and later the New Orleans Creoles, minor league African American teams.
Eventually, Syd Pollock, the owner of the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro Leagues team, picked her to replace future Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron after the Boston Braves bought Aaron’s contract.
"She knew she was a great baseball player, but she also knew that she was being used as a gate attraction. Now Pollock said, and I think rightly so, he said, ‘If she were not a good player, fans would come to see her one time. And that would be it. But if she had the talent, they would continue to come to see her,’” Ackmann said.
“And baseball historians say that in the 1952-1953 seasons, Toni Stone carried the Negro Leagues on her back, you know, in terms of making it still a financially viable business,” Ackmann added.
Stone later signed with the Kansas City Monarchs and played with or against many baseball greats, including Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and Satchel Paige.
She faced plenty of sexism from teammates, fans and media. A 1954 story about female athletes in Jet Magazine described Stone as "personable, effeminate off diamond." Ackmann said Stone was often taunted by fans, who told her to go home to make dinner for her husband.
Ackmann said it was tough to be a woman trying to gain a spot on a men's team.
"They thought that she would, you know, dilute the strength of the team,” Ackmann said. “But then when they saw that she was helping them and that she could play she was very fast. She was good. On the pivot at second base with double play. She could hit pretty well. Then their attitudes changed."
‘Most beautiful day of my life’ Stone retired following the 1954 season, but stayed active in baseball in the San Francisco Bay area through the rest of her life.
Ackmann and others who’ve researched Stone’s groundbreaking efforts in baseball say they are amazing, especially given the era.
“So her struggle, first of all, as a Black person. That had to be a struggle. Because again, even here in Minnesota, we had segregated baseball. So here was that difficulty, and now you add to it, here's this woman that steps in. And she wants to play,” said Frank White, author of “They Played for the Love of the Game: Untold Stories of Black Baseball in Minnesota.”
White helped to get the main field near St. Paul Central High School named for Stone. Two plaques outside the entrance describe her story.
"You can take this story and realize that it was this woman at a different time in life or the world. And she continued to pursue her dream,” said White, who coordinates the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities youth baseball program for the Twins. “Regardless of the challenges she met. She continued that dream and I think that's a good story for all of us."
Peter Cox | MPR News
The sign outside of Toni Stone Field in St. Paul, which was named after Stone, the first woman ever to play professional baseball. Stone grew up nearby in the Rondo neighborhood.
In her later years, Stone began to receive some recognition. St. Paul declared Toni Stone day in 1990, and she was invited to speak at local schools about growing up with a baseball dream. During one of those talks, she remembered when Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
"It was the most beautiful day of my life,” she told the class.
Stone died in 1996 before Ackmann's book was published, before the field in St. Paul was named after her and before an off-Broadway play about her life drew accolades from the New York Times and began touring the country.
“The recognition this weekend is personal for me, because I played baseball with the boys until college, and then in college I switched over to fast-pitch softball … I love them both so much,” said the Twins’ Falzone.
“We want kids to just play ball. And for the little girls who were like me, who just fell in love with baseball for some reason or another, we want them to know that they belong on a baseball field, if that's where they want to be."
Editor’s note: Registration for the Twins’ Toni Stone Invitational is open through Thursday night.
- Full series North Star Journey
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Updated: 9:11 a.m. When Heidi Adelsman was in fourth grade, her family told her she’d be going to a new school the next year. It was 1971 and Minneapolis was deeply segregated. Children attended public schools that were either mostly white or mostly Black, and schools with mostly Black students got fewer resources.
Adelsman, who is white, said her family’s home had been built with a racial covenant that legally prohibited anyone who wasn’t white from purchasing the property. She remembers not going to play in the nearest park because it was considered the “Black park.”
Tim Evans for MPR News
Co-curator Heidi Adelsman reads over an installment in the Separate Not Equal exhibition at the Hennepin History Museum.
“If you lived next to 35W, you couldn’t move south of the racially restricted areas,” Adelsman recalled. “We were living in an apartheid Minneapolis up until the 50s and 60s in some ways. People were very restricted as to where they could live.”
Adelsman is one of the curators behind a new exhibit at the Hennepin History Museum. “Separate Not Equal” tells the story of school desegregation and the pairing of Nathan Hale and Eugene Field elementary schools, which were less than 2 miles apart in south Minneapolis.
But for Adelsman, the story is not just public history, it’s personal. She was among the white students bused from Hale to Field when desegregation efforts started.
“It was really a wonderful thing for me to go to Field and have classmates that looked like my family. For many of us, for myself and the family that I come from, from our values, it made a big difference in my life.”
Tim Evans for MPR News
Co-curator Heidi Adelsman shows a photograph of former Minneapolis school teacher Bessie Griffin.
These were classmates who looked like her African American brother, and that was in addition to a diverse teaching staff and curriculum. Adelsman and her family were excited to be part of the desegregation effort. But she remembers other white families who were against it.
“People would see you in the store and walk away, call your house and say, ‘We’re coming into your house in the middle of the night,’” Adelsman said. “There were some very real threats. This is a very Midwestern form of racism that we don’t want to acknowledge. This is part of what perpetuates our segregation, white supremacy in Minneapolis, I’m afraid — is that we don’t acknowledge this history.”
Tim Evans for MPR News
Co-curator Cindy Booker points out a map depicting how Minnehaha Falls served as an informal demarcation for racial segregation in south Minneapolis throughout much of the 20th century.
The exhibit documents pushback from white families, but there are also stories of success — school administrators navigating tricky situations and recruiting a more diverse staff with at least 10 percent teachers of color. And then there were the family and community interactions across racial lines that built new relationships and broke down racist stereotypes.
“There were stereotypes about Field being a ‘less than place,’ … this notion that the African American parents were uneducated at Field,” Adelsman said. “The African American parents at Field had very good jobs and were very educated … There is so much ingrained from white supremacy and racism that we can’t see other people for the human potential and the humanity that we are.”
Adelsman isn’t the only exhibit curator who lived through the Field-Hale pairing. Cindy Booker, who is Black, was in first grade when her mom got her ready to go to a new school as part of the desegregation effort.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Co-curator Cindy Booker looks fondly at a photograph of former Minneapolis School Board Member W. Harris Davis, Sr., who played a large role in pushing for educational racial integration.
“My mom kept on saying, school’s going to be different, you’re not going to be able to walk with your brother and your cousins and you’re going to have to take the school bus,” Booker said.
For Booker and her family, the desegregation effort came with wins and losses. She got access to more resources at Hale, but she also spent more time on the bus.
“The white parents and the Black parents with Hale-Field, they came up with a consensus of compromises. Each group got what they needed, not necessarily what they want,” she said.
Booker, who is one of the exhibit’s curators, said the process of learning the history of desegregation in Minneapolis has revealed important lessons that can be applied now.
She was recently elected to fill a vacant at-large school board seat for Minneapolis Public Schools. She’s taking many lessons from the exhibit into her new work. Booker was impressed by past leaders’ commitment to design and follow-through on a program that breaks down stereotypes and racial divisions to get Minneapolis communities what they need.
The exhibit at the Hennepin History Museum runs through the spring of next year.
Correction (June 6, 2022): An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quote about busing. The story has been updated.
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Correction (June 8, 2022): A previous version had a misspelling of Bessie Griffin’s name in a photo caption. The story has been updated.
In the basement of a Columbia Heights home, Baheerullah Shinwari offers an assortment of nuts and hot tea. There are enough almonds, pistachios and cashews to feed a dozen people, but there are only a few people seated on traditional Afghan floor cushions and rugs.
Hospitality is an important part of his culture, the father of five explained.
“Can I make you some lunch?” Shinwari offered in Pashto.
- Kerem Yücel for MPR News
It is a tradition in Afghan culture to serve candy and nuts to the guests who come to the house. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Baheerullah Shinwari offers tea to Ahmad Shah during an interview.
Since the United States pulled out of Afghanistan after a 20-year war last August, Minnesota has seen an influx of more than 1,500 newly arrived Afghans to the state. Among the Afghan evacuees was the Shinwari family which includes Baheerullah, his wife and five children, ranging in age from 2 to 13. All of them are learning English together.
“Once they learn English, life will be easy for them,” Shinwari said. He adds that he hopes they will all become doctors.
The Shinwari family is not unlike other groups of new Minnesota residents, like Hmong and Somali refugees who arrived here in the 1970s and 1990s, who’ve come here to escape natural or man made-disasters. Five agencies in Minnesota have been at the forefront of efforts to resettle refugees: the International Institute of Minnesota, Minnesota Council of Churches, Arrive Ministries, Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota and Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota.
Shinwari is still working on his English, so helping translate is Ahmad Shah, who worked as an interpreter in Afghanistan before coming to Minnesota himself in 2016.
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Ahmad Shah (left) and Baheerullah Shinwari (right) pose for a photo in Shinwari's home.
Shah founded the Afghan Community of Minnesota and also works with one of the five resettlement agencies in Minnesota, the Minnesota Council of Churches. When Shah first came to Minnesota there were about 300 Afghans in the state, he recalled. In the last several months since the end of the war, that number has grown to around 1,800 and counting.
And they are relying heavily on the people like him who have already settled in for help with basic needs like transportation, filling out paperwork, finding work and enrolling children in schools.
“We make their connections with communities and different organizations,” Shah explained. “Then they will understand in the future and they can solve their own problems.”
Shah said Shinwari was lucky he already had a cousin living in Minnesota who found him this home. The resettlement agencies help with six months of rent and other resources. For the Shinwari family, that time period has passed and this is the first month the Shinwaris are expected to pay all their bills on their own. Shah said that is when it is most important for the growing community to help one another. Shinwari, who has a background in military service working alongside Americans, found work as a security guard and then another job at Boston Scientific on his own, Shah said.
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Baheerullah Shinwari and his son Yasser play in their home.
Help is only temporary State Refugee Coordinator Rachele King explains the hard work is just beginning for many newly arrived Afghan individuals and families that came with nothing and have experienced a great deal of trauma. Assistance from the state resettlement agencies is not expected to be a long-term resource.
“It is really buying people time to fully integrate and draw on the resiliency they have, skills they came with and the experience and hope and desire for a future here,” King said.
King explains individual presidential administrations set a cap for how many refugees the country will accept every year. Those numbers fell to historic lows under the Trump administration and continued below average under the Biden administration and during the coronavirus pandemic.
The federal government then consults with the Minnesota Department of Human Services and resettlement agencies to see how many refugees they can reasonably accommodate when factoring in housing and other challenges.
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Yasser, son of Baheerullah Shinwari, steps out from their home.
In the case of Afghan evacuees, who worked along U.S. troops, King said the federal government created a parallel system for newly arrived Afghans that gives them humanitarian protection status for two years, but does not give them refugee status or a clear path to permanent residency, which is the goal since most fear for their lives if they returned to Afghanistan.
“So that is a really huge question, challenge and concern for so many of the people who are here right now because it’s an open question of what permanency looks like and what exact path that will take.”
Congress recently declined to pass a measure, the Afghan Adjustment Act, that would have created a path to permanent residency for newly arrived Afghans. Sarah Brenes, the Refugee & Immigrant Program Director for The Advocates for Human Rights, said in the absence of an adjustment act, organizations like hers are working hard to mobilize volunteer attorneys to represent individuals and families in asylum claims, one of the two main paths to permanent status.
“We are partnering with other legal service providers, resettlement agencies and community organizations to also support those who may be eligible for Special Immigrant Visas based on their work with the U.S. Government while in Afghanistan,” Brenes said.
Besides questions about how they will be able to stay in the United States, Shah said many newly arrived Afghans are extremely worried about their family members or colleagues among the thousands of Afghan allies the U.S. left behind in its chaotic withdrawal.
“Twenty-four hours per day, people searching for them to find them and kill them,” Shah said. “Their life is pretty dangerous.”
A familiar story The stories of Afghan arrivals and those left behind remind historian Chia Youyee Vang of her own family story.
Vang’s family members were among some of the first Hmong arrivals in Minnesota in the 1970s. The Vietnam War had spread to Laos and the United States recruited the Hmong to fight against communism.
“We paid for this migration with the blood of our men and women who died on behalf of the American nation, although knowing nothing about it,” Vang said.
Vang is now a historian, author and Vice Chancellor of Diversity Equity and Inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Vang described how war and natural disasters often lead to new groups arriving in Minnesota. While there are what she calls push factors, like war, there are also pull factors, like the hope for a better quality of life in the United States that lead to new arrivals and various forms of immigration.
The first large group of immigrants arrived from Europe, mostly Norway, Sweden, Ireland and Germany. Hmong refugees began arriving in the mid 1970s, and Somali refugees began arriving in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Somali government led to extreme violence. People born in Mexico, India and Ethiopia also make up the largest groups of foreign-born Minnesotans, according to state researchers.
Christopher Juhn for MPR News 2017
Aidarus Aden, a refugee from Somalia, holds a sign at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport on Jan. 29, 2017, in protest of the refugee ban that then-President Trump used an executive order to enact.
Minnesota is also home to other, smaller refugee communities from around the world. According to a 2017 State Department report, in 2016 people from more than two dozen countries, including Myanmar, Belarus, Syria and Sri Lanka sought refuge in Minnesota.
As communities began to thrive over time, mostly in and around the Twin Cities, Vang explained they invited others to come through a process called chain migration.
“There are pockets all over the state, too, but they are mostly in the Twin Cities where there is a critical mass and you can have social support,” Vang said “So nothing different, in my opinion, than what the Norwegians and Swedes, nothing different than what they did.”
New arrivals in workforce
Doualy Xaykaothao | MPR News 2016
Kaw Hai is the lead auto mechanic at SKD Auto Tek in St. Paul, here in October 2016. He's a refugee from the Karen State in Burma.
According to 2017 data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, resettling refugees benefits the country’s economy. While the exact yearly costs of refugee resettlement for Minnesota are difficult to determine, DHS receives approximately $5 million in yearly federal funds to support the statewide resettlement of refugees.
State resettlement agencies reported that in fiscal year 2017, Minnesota ranked 13th in resettling refugees but was the highest per capita in the country. Thanks to a reputation as a welcoming state, Minnesota ranked first in the nation for secondary migration, which occurs when refugees move to Minnesota after an initial resettlement somewhere else. As consumers, immigrants, not just refugees, have an estimated more $650 billion in lifetime earnings and annual purchasing power of $5 billion, according to Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota. Immigrants pay an estimated $793 million in state and local taxes, annually.
Immigrants are also a vital part of Minnesota’s economy, according to state Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Steve Grove. The state estimates 10 percent of Minnesota’s labor force are born outside of the U.S. About 105,000 new foreign-born residents joined the state over the last decade.
“In fact, the only reason we are growing at all is because of international immigration,” Grove said about Minnesota.
Minnesota also has an historic more than 200,000 open jobs, which is part of the reason the state created an Office of New Americans — which started services during the pandemic to help get resources to struggling immigrant-owned businesses.
“I think a lot of businesses would like to access immigrant talent and they don’t really know how,” Grove said. “Unless you're big enough to have the resources a larger company might have, finding that talent is harder.”
Grove hopes the office will provide more efficient and individualized resources to pair people with jobs that match any previous experiences.
“I think it’s just an awakening from an economic perspective, let alone a moral one, that this is imperative,” Grove said. “We have got to make the welcome mat for immigrants in this state as good as it’s ever been.”
But the office is grant-funded, leaving its future funding uncertain.
Vang said as a more diverse and international population continues to grow in Minnesota, and as conflict across the world continues to drive more movement across the globe, the state has a unique opportunity to embrace change and flourish as a result.
“As a historian I keep reminding others, the things happening now, they have happened before,” Vang said. “It is about how we respond to them.”
Pay it forward
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Baheerullah Shinwari and his son Yasser sit front of the their house in Columbia Heights on May 11.
Baheerullah Shinwari has hope. Hope that he, his wife and their five children — with help from the community — will thrive. Shinwari also looks forward to the day his family can pay it forward and help other new arrivals to Minnesota.
“I am happy, life is going well.”
- Full series North Star Journey
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
- Immigrants and refugees in Minnesota Connecting past and present
Greetings Friends of MPR News,
Our newsroom launched North Star Journey on March 14, 2022. Many of you have already heard the numerous installments of our “journal exploring the history and culture of Minnesota communities.”
Race, Class and Communities editor Brandt Williams jumpstarted the series explaining the power of names, from the Dakota origins of Minnesota to the power of George Floyd’s name.
Senior reporter Nina Moini visited the historic Rondo neighborhood to hear about ongoing efforts to “reclaim what was stolen” from the largest Black community in St. Paul, which was drastically altered and decimated by the construction of I-94 more than 60 years ago.
And then there’s the saga of Rochester’s racial covenants and the city’s effort to confront its segregated housing history and the role Mayo Clinic founders played, as uncovered by correspondent Catharine Richert.
The North Star Journey does more than showcase a reel of diverse, inclusive storytelling. It’s an effort to respond directly to the news and information needs of people across the state of Minnesota. We craft this response by purposefully telling stories about diverse communities that move beyond the tropes and trauma to truth telling and celebrating community champions. This is a deliberate shift.
If I were to apply a term broadly in practice that speaks to this next level of public service journalism, I propose this work at MPR News is “culturally responsive journalism.”
While referenced in pedagogy and academics, I’m offering a definition of culturally responsive journalism from the lens of a journalism practitioner. In practice, culturally responsive journalism listens to the complex needs of all communities, recognizes the power that inclusive stories shape for people, focuses on culture and responds to community news and information gaps through journalism.
Journalists don’t just report what is happening, they also engage citizens on topics that are of concern to and resonating with underserved communities. Local news has a powerful sense of purpose when using the lens of culturally responsive journalism.
Representation, content decisions and listening to communities — that’s what makes this work poignant and gives our work new purpose here. And culturally responsive journalism can be done anywhere.
MPR News is a mission-driven news organization and we take our responsibility as members of the Fourth Estate seriously. We recognize there are local news deserts across our state. Yet, MPR News is in a unique position as our radio signal reaches about 95 percent of Minnesotans. We understand and fill our audiences’ information needs.
Senior reporter Peter Cox talked with health care leaders in the Hmong community who stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other stories have struck a chord — Somali families in St. Cloud seek home ownership by senior reporter Kirsti Marohn; correspondent Dan Kraker explores Duluth’s East-West high school divide; Native women work to curb poverty and prison outcomes in their communities from correspondent Dan Gunderson; and Minnesota’s Black farmers aim to reconnect to the land by senior reporter Jon Collins.
MPR News recognized the need for more rich storytelling of all communities. Going forward we will integrate this brand of storytelling in all that we do. We are more aware, more intentional, more responsive to communities than before.
And yet, MPR News, like all newsrooms, has more work to do. We are working to ensure our news staff looks more like all the people we cover. We are training employees to improve cultural competency and working to raise the diversity of our sources in all of our reporting.
Newsrooms make choices every day regarding what to cover. MPR News made a significant commitment to the authentic coverage of diverse communities via North Star Journey.
As a star has five points, we dedicated five months to telling two stories per week that represent dispatches from across our fine state. Those stories surfaced from about 130 pitches from the staff and outside the organization.
The newsroom dedicated resources, effort and creativity to develop North Star Journey. Moreover, the news staff worked with freelance journalists to deepen our footprint in diverse communities, collaborate on storytelling and swap expertise in some instances. We’ve also worked to expand our news partnership strategy. The project also was made possible by our members and in part by the Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
MPR News recognizes and is reacting to the needs of communities we serve. We are listening to our audience and producing more grassroots reporting. More time has been spent consuming content in our North Star Journey section and audiences are downloading our podcast RSS feed of all of our North Star Journey stories. Our content distribution methods have been organic and these results tell us North Star Journey is resonating with our audience.
So what’s next?
MPR News is developing a good news beat. We are hiring a community reporter in the summer of 2022. We are launching a new podcast called “Untangled Roots” on June 7 with Brandt Williams as a co-host.
In addition, we plan a few “IRL” or in real life events this summer; at the Black Market in St. Paul on June 11, and an event in Duluth at a later date. The staff expects to weave North Star Journey-esque stories into our workflows henceforth and beyond our five-month journey.
Thank you for your support of the MPR News team. Our journalists work hard each day to earn your trust. I’m so proud of the North Star Journey, and MPR News’ improved efforts to respond to the communities we serve. Culturally responsive journalism is here to stay.
Have a story idea to share? Reach us at northstarjourney@mpr.org.
Yours in Journalism,
Sarah Glover
MPR News Managing Editor
Updated: 11:20 a.m. Dozens of students in rain coats and parkas gathered by a parking lot outside the Billy Graham Community Life Commons on the University of Northwestern campus in November 2020.
Some took shelter from the rain under the school’s columned porticoes. Most of the student body went about their day, climbing steps emblazoned with the names of books of the Bible, or returning to dormitories named for Christian heroes of the school’s past.
A blue pickup truck loaded with speakers backed into a parking space near Riley Hall, named for the university’s founder. Senior Payton Bowdry, 22, grabbed a microphone connected to the speakers and started talking.
After asking God to “unravel the ugly truth, so that we can really be healed as a Christian community,” he began to talk about life as a Black student on campus and how belief in God’s compelling love, spelled out in the university’s vision statement, seemed too often to disappear when he brought up issues of racism and the needs of students of color.
“BIPOC students have been asking for help for years, but it hasn’t yet been received,” he told the crowd. “BIPOC students are in need. Are we a part of that vision?”
They were asking their peers, teachers and church leaders to recognize and disrupt more than a century of history and theology, to change a way of thinking that had birthed a religious and political movement and a brand of conservatism that continues to define the theology and worldviews of many white Minnesota evangelicals today.
The school, which counts the Rev. Billy Graham among its past presidents, is working on change, said current president Alan Cureton. But he conceded not everyone agrees the university needs to change.
“We’re slowly doing it and I think we’re making progress … but we’re never going to reach utopia, and I keep reminding students we’re a microcosm of a big culture,” Cureton said. “We still have issues … but not everybody in my community believes we have an issue.”
Cureton noted the school, among other steps, had hired a “director of intercultural engagement and belonging” last year. “We’re doing that work, we’re just not using the terms that cause people to get angry about,” he said. “Especially when I’ve got multiple constituencies.”
‘Two worlds’ In interviews, Bowdry and other students of color detailed recurring experiences of casual, exhausting bigotry on the Roseville campus — from tone-deaf comments on race by students and professors to disbelief over claims of discrimination to a kind of passive-aggressive behavior that made them feel unwelcome.
Bowdry and others seeking change that day came with a list of actions they wanted the university to take to improve the campus climate, but they were pressing for more than a diversity office and language changes to university documents.
Among the marchers was Ruti Doto, a 2016 University of Northwestern graduate. In her years at the school, Doto said she frequently ran into conflict with students and faculty members.
She recalled hearing a professor denounce a Black student-led gospel music group as “not Christ-like” and “not real worship.” Another teacher, she said, called her requests for racial justice on campus “diabolical.” A few times, she said, she heard fellow students say they believed Michael Brown — a Black man killed in 2014 by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. — deserved to die.
“I think there were two worlds at Northwestern,” Doto said. “There were white students who saw Christ as the end-all-be-all, as we should. But it was a blanket over all the injustices that we see people facing. It was, ‘Let’s just pray about it. Thoughts and prayers.’ But then (there’s) the other world where Black students and students of color were continually being traumatized by the racism they experience.”
Courtesy of Ruti Doto
A group of students painted the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on a rock, traditionally used for student expression on the University of Northwestern campus in Roseville.
Following the Twin Cities police killing of Philando Castile in 2016 during a traffic stop fewer than four miles from campus, Doto said she and other students painted the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on a rock traditionally used for student expression.
That night, she said, members of the university security team covered the rock and its message with white paint because, as a university official explained later, “it was misinterpreted by the university as a political statement.”
Doto said she and others returned the next day to repaint “Black Lives Matter” on the rock but discovered a group of students had blotted out the word “Black” and wrote “All” there instead, turning the phrase into “All Lives Matter.”
In June of 2020, when she saw a picture of the rock on Instagram, newly painted with the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” it felt to her like the university had forgotten its actions four years earlier.
Courtesy of Ruti Doto
A group of students blotted out the word “Black” and wrote “All” on a campus rock used for student expression, turning the phrase into “All Lives Matter.”
“Of course, this triggered me and multiple students of color,” Doto said. “When we did this, you all painted over it and we were dismissed. You didn’t care for what we had to say. Now that it’s the trending topic is when you decide to speak up. But what really angered us is … there wasn’t any meaningful actions. It was just painting the rock.”
Doto and some of her fellow alumni drafted a petition in response, suggesting a list of “measurable actions to support students and address institutional racism” at the university.
“I have a ton of Black high school students who ask me if it’s a place they should consider. And my truthful answer now is no,” Doto said. “And I want to get it to a place where I can say it’s a great place that you can be part of.”
Thousands of supporters added their names to Doto’s online petition, some with their own stories of racism they’d experienced at Northwestern. One person wrote about resident assistants hanging a Confederate flag in a dorm hallway as decoration. Another wrote of people on campus referring to Obama as the anti-Christ after his reelection.
“This place was supposed to be my community,” one signer wrote. “Instead I was reminded of how much I didn’t fit in or belong … most of the passive aggressive racism that I’ve experienced came from this school.”
When Bowdry, the student who led the protest on campus, returned to campus in the fall of 2020, he and his fellow students used Doto’s petition as a framework to guide their list of demands.
They asked university leadership to establish a diversity, equity and inclusion office, mandatory anti-racism training for faculty, staff and students, core courses on Black, Native, Latino and Asian theologies and histories, a zero-tolerance policy on racism, a George Floyd memorial scholarship for aspiring Black American leaders and language in the university’s Declaration of Christian Community requiring students and staff to condemn racism.
“We are no longer willing to endure our campus’s compliance with racism,” they wrote. “For too long, the interests and desires of our white counterparts have been held at a higher consideration. The Gospel of Jesus Christ that we have placed our faith in is incomplete without the commitment to restore justice in our world.”
‘Even if they’re trying to understand you, they don’t’ Kenneth Young is one of the first full-time African American faculty members hired at the University of Northwestern. He’s been at the institution for close to 30 years and teaches systematic theology and Christian ministries. It’s a job he dearly loves at an institution he considers a good fit.
“They pay me to teach the Bible!” he said, laughing.
Young, though, said he’s had unpleasant run-ins with students and colleagues during his tenure, and he knows students of color there have also had bad experiences.
“I don’t think it’s those overt experiences of marginalization or even racism that is discouraging them. I think that there’s a gap, a hole in the European American evangelical Christian worldview that students of color sense … there’s a lack of empathy,” he said. “Not because the European American students are bad or racist but because there’s a gap in their worldview … even if they’re trying to understand you, they don’t, and so you feel marginalized.”
It’s a problem grounded in teaching from Sunday School classes to Bible colleges, he said, noting that Blacks were largely excluded from the Bible college movement.
“The people who were teaching had no clue. This space, this worldview space, is just rampant within the context of the greater Christian community and it leaves us with a gap, with an inability to communicate with each other.”
Young said he prefers not to use the terms “racist,” “Black” or “white.” Instead, he speaks of geographic origins, cultures and worldviews. For him, the problems he and students of color have experienced at Northwestern are based in theology and ideology with a long history in the evangelical church “that make us vulnerable to complicity in social injustice.”
He said he tells students two things: “We need to learn how to have real dialogue and we need to enter that dialogue with a high degree of humility. Critical thinking, having dialogue, you gotta be able to consider what somebody else is saying … let it really sink in.”
Many Christian colleges and universities now brand themselves as conservative “and that’s really part of their identity,” said Jemar Tisby, a historian who has written extensively on the history of racism in American Christianity. So it’s a lot harder for these institutions to change because their institutional vitality depends on them not being progressive in any way.”
These institutions were not founded with racial or ethnic diversity in mind, and that works against social progress, Tisby said. “It’s much more about a social, political identity than it is about a religious identity.”
For David Fenrick, who worked at the University of Northwestern from 2008 to 2019, the experiences of students of color on campus like Bowdry and Doto are directly linked to the school’s history.
“It’s a historically white institution, a very conservative evangelical school. And the experience of students of color there was not very positive. They felt that their voices weren’t heard, their culture wasn’t recognized, their perspectives weren’t validated. Sometimes there was open hostility,” said Fenrick, who served as director of the school’s Center for Global Reconciliation and Cultural Education.
He could remember many times students would come to him with stories of bad experiences. That includes an Ethiopian Orthodox student who spoke up in a theology class to offer his perspective. The student said the instructor was dismissive, Fenrick recalled — “‘Well, that’s great, but we’re not here to study Black theology,’ … or ‘We’re not here to study Ethiopian Orthodox theology. We’re here to study Christian theology.’”
Elizabeth Shockman | MPR News 2020
Students at the University of Northwestern in Roseville march in a protest in November.
For Fenrick, those kinds of stories illustrate the problem at the University of Northwestern.
“There’s a kind of welcome (at Northwestern) that says, ‘We’re glad you’re here, now be like us.’ That’s what they (students of color) were experiencing. What they wanted is a place to say, ‘Welcome, we’re glad you’re here, let’s all be who we are, the way God made us in our cultures and our gifts, our abilities and our experiences.’”
The school was founded in 1902 as a Bible and missionary training school by Baptist pastor and evangelist the Rev. William Bell Riley. Riley was also politically active and focused much of his attention on trying to get the teaching of evolution banned from public schools. He has also been accused of antisemitism for his writing and speeches that blamed a “Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy” for a variety of social and economic ills.
Randy Moore, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota who’s studied Riley’s influence, points to Northwestern’s founder as a father and organizer of the Christian fundamentalist movement.
“What came to be known then as ‘fundamentalism’ — contrary to most people’s knowledge of it now — originated in the north in towns like New York City and Minneapolis and Chicago,” Moore said.
“He tapped into this discomfort that what we now call fundamentalists had with the direction of the country … and he organized it,” Moore said. “And it was militant. That was very unusual. Now it’s very common — Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. There’ve been others, but you can trace them back to William Bell Riley.”
Riley was succeeded in his leadership by Graham, who was president of the institution for four years.
For the Rev. Curtiss DeYoung, CEO of the Minnesota Council of Churches, the histories of Graham and Riley offer clues to the difficulty modern-day white evangelicals have when it comes to dealing with racism.
On a personal level, DeYoung points out, Billy Graham abhorred racism and refused to hold segregated rallies. But, although he invited Martin Luther King to pray at his crusades, Graham was not involved in the civil rights movement.
“If your priority is just to convert people to Jesus so they can go to heaven, you have less of a focus on the systems that exist right now because you’re thinking about eternity. Therefore these systems continue to exist and reproduce themselves,” DeYoung said.
For historian Tisby, this individualistic theology is at the crux of white evangelicals’ inability to deal or make progress on many social issues, including race. The problem is compounded at institutions like Northwestern.
“White evangelical colleges and universities are more individualistic than the larger society. They’re focused on maintaining the status quo and racial justice is not within the scope of what they’re looking at,” Tisby said.
‘Our beloved University is at a turning point’ The changes pushed for by students of color at University of Northwestern in the last several years have also brought protest from students, staff and the wider evangelical community. Last year, a group of conservative students on campus released a petition, condemning anti-bias training, curriculum changes and the new DEI position, among other initiatives.
“Our beloved University is at a turning point,” the petition authors wrote, “Perhaps more significant than any other in its history.”
The petitioners objected to the university including cultural competency in curriculum, mandating racial bias training for staff, funding a diversity and inclusion office and sponsoring campus-wide events promoting “reconciliation” among other things and suggesting that the school was implicitly endorsing critical race theory or social justice, leading down a road to Marxism or other “anti-biblical ideologies.”
The petition authors took their concerns to Fox News, saying “as Christians we believe our primary call is to preach the gospel. And we firmly believe Critical Race Theory is unbiblical and that it preaches a different gospel.”
The petition was reviewed by local pastors then published online. It has since been signed by thousands, many of them raising concerns about critical race theory in schools. One threatened to withhold financial donations to the school “unless things turn around.”
‘Still really harming people’ Conditions have improved during Kenneth Young’s time at Northwestern. While the percentage of students of color remains less than 20 percent, it’s grown from about five percent the past two decades.
Close to a decade ago president Cureton oversaw the preparation of a “strategic diversity and inclusion framework,” which included directives such as examining “systems that may be preventing full diversity, equity and inclusion” and intentionally increasing “the diversity of students, faculty, staff, administrators and board of trustees.” The framework was affirmed by more than 90 percent of the school’s faculty and unanimously adopted by the university’s board in 2018.
And there were changes that the university made in response to the protests and demands of students of color like Bowdry and Doto in 2020.
Student body president at the time, Qashr Middleton, helped shepherd those demands into action.
Middleton, a 24-year-old from Colorado pursuing a degree in ministry leadership, was the first student body president of color in Northwestern’s history. He stepped into his role in the summer of 2020, after spending weeks protesting the murder of George Floyd, getting chased by white supremacists, tear-gassed by police officers and almost getting run down by a semitrailer on the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis.
When he tried to talk about his experiences on campus, he felt like it made some white students and staff on campus uncomfortable.
“It’s hard to tell that story at Northwestern. Because you really get to see people’s conflict of interest within themselves. Because now you’re telling a personal story. And they know your character. You peacefully were protesting and almost got hurt. And yet they still were able to find a way to say, ‘Well, what about this?’” Middleton said.
After the 2020 student protest, Middleton organized a student government committee to begin working on those and the other demands.
Eventually, the school inserted phrases into its Declaration of Christian Community, requiring students and staff for the first time in its history to commit to “refrain from racism, prejudice, and social injustices” and “condemn oppression which can manifest itself in individuals and systems.”
Leaders did not create a “George Floyd memorial scholarship” as requested by students, but they did endow a scholarship geared toward students planning to work with “urban youth leadership” or “biblical reconciliation.”
There is anti-bias training for faculty and staff at Northwestern, although attendance is not required because, as Cureton said, “You can’t force people. It may appease people (saying) you’re required to go, but it doesn’t work.”
The university president, who’s set to leave his position this year, has said he believes it’s the school’s job to help students and staff learn how to “live amidst multiple cultures” — something he believes is integral to the university’s mission of “reflect(ing) the essence of the Kingdom of God.”
He does not believe the university has a “culture of racial intolerance.” But he concedes his community falls short.
“Are there acts of insensitivity exhibited by some towards people of color? Yes. Is learning to live amidst multiple cultures a learning process? Yes.” Cureton said. “We still have a ways to go. But acknowledging that we have a ways to go, acknowledging that we still have issues — that’s a huge step. But not everybody in my community believes we have an issue.”
Katy St. John, 21, who graduated from Northwestern in May, said she has a hard time understanding why Northwestern students and faculty are not more wholehearted in embracing change.
St. John, who is white, is a pastor’s daughter. She grew up leading youth group programs and going on mission trips. As an incoming freshman, she’d been excited about Northwestern’s beautiful campus, and the opportunity to grow her faith there as she studied communications and sang in the chapel on the worship team.
Her first year on campus was filled with good memories, but she soon became worried by what she saw and heard. A white professor, she said, insisted it was OK to say the n-word. White students questioned her relationship with students of color asking, as she put it, “Why are you friends withthose people?”
When St. John expressed her frustration to other white students about professors who said “ignorant things” about race, she was surprised at those students’ reactions.
“It ended up blowing up in my face a lot where they misunderstood what I was saying, took it very personal, and they got very, very angry at me and told me that I was racist towards white people,” St. John said.
In 2020 St. John helped organize the protest and the list of demands with students of color. She’s pleased that some of the demands they made were met. And she has glowing reports of individual people she thinks are fighting hard to change things at the school. But overall, she doesn’t think enough change has been made.
“There’s ways I’ve seen Northwestern grow. Very tiny little pieces that feel like they’re doing a good job … (but) they’re also working under people who are not prioritizing it the same way and still are prioritizing whiteness and white feelings,” St. John said. “The institution is systemically still really harming people. There are people I know who’ve left here who act like (they have) actual diagnosed PTSD from being here as a student of color.”
Even more difficult to understand for St. John is the way in which her fellow white students are pushing back on racial justice.
“The liberation of Black people is liberation of all of us,” St. John said. “There’s this concept that when whiteness has its privilege and its power and its position stripped from it, then we’ve lost, we’ve fallen … but the reality is, is what we get is so much better. What we get is the opportunity to be human, to see other people as human.”
St. John said her experiences on campus have challenged her faith.
St. John’s roommate, Kiera Sconce, feels similarly. A 21-year-old Black woman, she also graduated in May. The school’s racial and ethnic affinity groups are where she grew, learned and made friends. But outside of those groups, she said she didn’t feel safe to be herself or say what she thought.
She said she and some of the other students of color she knows at Northwestern spent their last semester in 2022 isolating themselves, keeping their heads down in class and escaping back to their rooms or other places they could be alone afterward.
“There is very little time when I feel or felt seen on this campus. Whether it’s by professors or it’s by other students. They don’t know you,” Sconce said. “A lot of students of color tend to hide at Northwestern.”
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- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Editor’s Note: University of Northwestern is a financial supporter of MPR News.
Correction (May 26, 2022): An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated where Qashr Middleton is from and the degree he is pursuing. The story has been updated.
Correction (June 5, 2022): An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the location of the campus rock used for student expression. The story has been updated.
Sabrina’s Cafe & Deli, in the East African enclave of St. Paul’s University and Snelling neighborhood is the kind of place where someone is always coming and going. A trio of radio producers with recorders rolling interview does not stop the real business at hand, serving customers who come and go at brisk intervals mostly in search of something fast — and delicious.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Karima Omer, owner of Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul, makes coffee for a customer.
And Karima Omer, who named the restaurant for her daughter Sabrina, has the goods.
The tiny storefront is modest and unassuming. A few sweets are on display in the bakery case, and the sound of the espresso machine fills the air. But more importantly, the sizzle of Karima’s flat top grill is almost constant.
The specialty of the house is Karima’s fresh chapati wraps. While chapati is an everyday food in East Africa, Omer’s scratch chapati more closely resembles the special occasion bread that people get in she learned to make in her hometown of Harar, Ethiopia about 150 miles east of the capital Addis Ababa.
Like a good pie or slice of pizza, Omer’s creation is all about the foundation. The warm chapati bread has a pleasant, dense chew, with a freshly baked fragrance. This is no ordinary bread, and no ordinary sandwich. It’s all in the details.
“Most restaurants don’t make it fresh,” said Omer. “If I tried to buy it from outside, people would know.”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Karima Omer, owner of Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul, cooks beef with spices and onions for a chapati and beef wrap.
Standing at the grill, dressed in an apron over a dark abaya, she watched a small mountain of steak and onions sizzle as it absorbed her own mix of East African spices. When it was just about done she laid an uncooked chapati, about the size and thickness of a piece of copy paper beside it on the grill. The dough quickly rose and browned.
Omar said she stumbled on her signature dish creation by accident one day as she made lunch for herself. Short on time, she wrapped her steak mixture in a chapati warm off the grill.
“A customer walked in and said to me, ‘What are you eating? What is that?’”
She told the guy it didn’t have a name. She laughed as she told the story, and about how she just came up with something.
“‘It’s a chapati wrap!’ And he said, ‘Can you do it for me?’ So now it's popular and everybody knows now” she said.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Karima Omer, owner of Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul, cooks house-made chapati a for chapati and beef wrap.
Karima arrived in Minnesota in the year 2000, escaping the border warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea. She said that in her country there was always war for as long as she could remember. Her family was unable to safely stay in one place when she was a child.
“We were kids and the way I grew up we would go to Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya — so I can now say that America is now my home, more than my country,” she said.
But there are some things about home that she misses, and that includes mealtime.
“All of the family eats together from one dish. It’s very good, our country has everything, except peace,” she said
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Karima Omer, owner of Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul, finishes a Chapati and beef wrap.
My friend Jamal Hashi, local Somali chef and culinary instructor, introduced me to Karima. He also told me about East Africa, and the chapati’s popularity in the region. He said it reflects East African history, going back before when European colonists created new borders.
“Chapati is a very popular bread option,” says Jamal. “You will find it in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, but all those regions before colonialism were just one, right? So people just roamed freely and you know, influenced one another. So now you can find chapati bread in Zanzibar, in Yemen, you can find it all the way to India and Pakistan, right?” he said.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Chef Jamal Hashi sits next to Karima Omer, owner of Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul.
“What makes Sabrina's chapati special is she makes it the traditional way that her mom taught her,” he said. “And it's fresh to order. And I don't think there's other places that are doing it the same traditional way, because it's a lot harder. There’s about five or six different steps that go into it.”
And her bread is so good, Hashi continued, that customers from all over converge on Sabrina’s in St. Paul to enjoy it,
“She gets Somali customers, she gets Ethiopians. She gets everybody. Because she gets Somali customers, she gets everybody. And I don't think there's other establishments that get that. Yeah, I don't know any other restaurant that gets mixed crowds like this on a consistent basis" he said.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Chapati and beef wrap at Sabrina's Cafe & Deli in St. Paul.
Karima Omer thinks the appeal is because she won’t serve anything to anyone that she wouldn’t herself love to eat.
“Back home we mostly get chapati like this on a special day like Eid [the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan]. You know why? Because it’s hard to make,” she said.
But Karima chose to make her famous chapati into a sandwich for a very American reason: being on the go during mealtime.
“I made a sandwich so you can go to work and you can drive in your car and eat,” she said.
It’s East African, it’s American. Karima’s cooking really belongs to everybody.
“There’s no borders at a restaurant,” said Hashi.
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Pastor Don Barlow sits in the front pew of his Baptist church on Rochester’s southeast side, holding a piece of paper, faded by decades in Olmsted County’s archives but still clear in its intent.
“This property shall never be occupied by a Negro,” Barlow reads from the deed for the plat of land where his predominantly Black church now stands.
It’s a moment of poetic justice for Barlow, who recently learned that about a century ago he and his congregants would have been legally blocked from worshiping there.
“The shock, the alarm comes from the clearness of the statement found within the legal documents,” he said. “It’s not so much the usage of the word Negro, because it was the language of the day, but more so the fact that in a legal document, it was being stated and accepted as the norm.”
For years, such covenants were a tool used across the nation and in Minnesota to keep nonwhite people out of white neighborhoods. They’re illegal now, but their impact remains, cascading into thousands of individual decisions about schools, homes and jobs that have collectively kept cities shackled to the past.
Reckoning with that past is hard for any city, but Rochester’s comes with an unusual twist: New research into housing covenants makes it clear how the founders of Mayo Clinic — a giant in Minnesota and Rochester, viewed globally as a force for good — played a role perpetuating practices that favored all-white neighborhoods.
Racial covenants in Rochester Roughly 850 racial covenants have been found so far. Hear from Rochester residents who own homes with racial covenants. Map https://features.mprnews.org/2022/rochester_covenants/index.html
Note: Numbers represent racial covenants found so far. This is an ongoing project and not all properties have been checked. The percentage indicates for each census tract the share of properties with racial covenants out of the properties that were both platted before 1953 and have been checked. This map focuses on central Rochester and does not include all racial covenants found so far in Olmsted County. Source: NAACP Racial Covenant Mapping Project / Phil Wheeler. Map: Elisabeth Gawthrop/APM Research Lab.
With the city expanding rapidly now around Mayo Clinic, city leaders hope Rochester can be a magnet for a diverse workforce. Part of that journey, though, means coming to terms with a troubling part of the city’s history — decades of intentional housing segregation. A recent push to map the city’s racial housing covenants shows how deep those roots lie and the challenges moving forward.
‘Racists buying real estate’
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Phil Wheeler refers to a map of homes in Rochester's historic "Pill Hill" neighborhood on April 13, where restrictive neighborhood covenants were once enforced.
Armed with a stack of historical maps and documents, Phil Wheeler walks the streets of Pill Hill, a historic neighborhood just southwest of Mayo Clinic’s downtown campus that was home to some of the hospital’s first professionals.
Today, homes in this neighborhood can cost millions. In the early 1900s when Pill Hill was being developed, prices were high for the time, too, said Wheeler, an urban planner who once worked in planning departments for the city and county.
Now, as a member of the local chapter of the NAACP, he’s leading a volunteer effort to map intentional segregation in Rochester. The project was born from a 2021 decision by the Rochester City Council to be the first greater Minnesota city to join Just Deeds, a project that helps homeowners and cities find racial covenants and then legally disavow them.
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Phil Wheeler points out homes in the historic "Pill Hill" neighborhood where restrictive neighborhood covenants were once enforced.
Price minimums were required by the deeds for the land houses were built on — one way of making sure only wealthier people were able to access the neighborhood, Wheeler said.
So were racial covenants. Some were applied when the land was first being developed, some applied retroactively after homes were built to preserve the demographics of the neighborhood.
Courtesy of History Center of Olmsted County
An ad printed in the Post Bulletin sometime in the late 1920s.
The restrictions were used as a marketing tactic, too. A newspaper ad from the late 1920s for lots near Mayo Clinic warned buyers not to build on cheap land.
A Westlawn lot will add to the sale and rental value of your home and building restrictions assure of a desirable neighborhood to live in.
The ad promoted a watch raffle — but the ad said that only white people 18 and older would be eligible to enter.
Some racial covenants were hyper-specific, Wheeler said. He read from one associated with a neighborhood in Pill Hill:
“None of said respective tracts or any parts thereof shall be sold to or occupied by any person of Negro, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese or Japanese descent, provided however, this restriction shall not apply to a bonafide servant employed by a resident thereon and housed in his residence.”
Wheeler said this language can be found repeatedly in land sold and developed by Mayo Properties Association, an entity founded in 1919 by Mayo Clinic founders and brothers Drs. William and Charles Mayo, according to the Olmsted County History Center.
At the time, the duo transferred their property and capital to Mayo Properties Association, marking the shift from Mayo Clinic being a family-run organization to a nonprofit, according to the history center.
Deeds unearthed by Wheeler and his volunteers show Mayo Properties Association started subdividing land for sale in the early 20th century.
- Read Mayo Properties Association deed including a racial covenant
Of the roughly 850 racial covenants Wheeler and other volunteers have discovered and mapped so far, about 25 percent of them bear the Mayo name, along with that of other Mayo and city leaders of the time, including Harry Harwick, the hospital’s first administrator.
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Mike Resman holds a deed from a Rochester home dated in 1941 bearing the name of the Mayo Properties Association corporation.
Wheeler said that while racial covenants were employed in many cities at the time, it’s hard to decipher Mayo and Harwick’s motivations. Most of the more than 5,000 plats Wheeler and his volunteers have examined so far never had a racial covenant.
“I don't know how much slack we should cut somebody like Harry Harwick, who did this everywhere that he was involved in property,” he said. “The argument that he's a product of his time is countered by the fact that about 80 percent of the plats that were made during that time had no [racial] covenant, as far as we can tell.”
Wheeler’s best guess is that the covenants were meant to create prestigious enclaves in an effort to attract physicians to Mayo Clinic.
“That depends on racists buying real estate,” he said. “And selling it too, of course.”
Disparities in black and white
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Barbara Jordan, Mayo Clinic Administrator for the Office for Equity, Inclusion and Diversity.
Documents dating back to this time period were disposed of consistent with record retention policies, a Mayo Clinic spokesperson said.
“It’s hard to know the nature of the thinking in the minds of those property holders drafting the covenants at the time,” said Barbara Jordan, the administrator for Mayo’s equity, inclusion and diversity office. “But I just look at it as a sign of the times and probably along with the segregation that was occurring across the country.”
Jordan, who is Black, said that it’s important for Mayo not to ignore this aspect of its history.
Mayo has grappled before with racist episodes in its past. In 2018, the institution apologized for William Worrall Mayo’sdesecration of Marpiya Okinajin, a warrior hanged in the 1862 mass execution of Native people in Mankato, Minn. William Worrall Mayo — father of William and Charles — took Marpiya Okinajin’s remains following the execution, dissected them and kept the skeleton for years for research and display.
“We don't want to let [the racial covenants] go on unnoticed or, or let it sit and say, ‘That was wrong,’ but to take affirmative, actionable steps,” said Jordan, noting that Mayo is lending some of its legal team to the covenant mapping project on a pro bono basis.
And that’s just one aspect of Mayo’s work to improve diversity and equity within its walls and in its communities. After George Floyd was murdered at the hands of a police officer in 2020, the institution pledged $100 million to diversity efforts — money that’s been used to pay for equity and inclusion training among staff, and a leadership camp for BIPOC teens, among other things.
Meanwhile, Mayo’s population of nonwhite employees across all its campuses has increased from 8 percent of its workforce in 1999 to 18 percent last year.
Jordan said she’s had her own experiences with racism in Rochester. Decades ago, she said, white students at her daughter’s middle school were allowed to display the Confederate flag until students and families pushed administrators to ban the practice.
When Jordan talks to new recruits of color at Mayo, she often hears that they don’t feel like they fit in. Despite its international visitors and increasingly diverse demographics, Mayo Clinic remains predominantly white; the city of Rochester is 78 percent white.
“They are the ones who are surprised when they see that our staff may not reflect the diversity of our community,” she said. “Our learners have told us, our employees have told us that their sense of belonging is not at levels that we would like to see.”
Exclusion can take many forms, Jordan said, like not being invited to work-related social events or being told they speak too loudly. These microaggressions can accumulate over time, Jordan said.
“It’s constantly helping people to understand that the white-centered viewpoint is not the only viewpoint or perspective,” she said.
Addressing racism inside its walls and community is essential to Mayo’s success as a health care provider. Even a decade ago, Jordan said the Mayo community was less receptive to this.
“But today, they demand it,” she said. “They expect it because we know in order to provide the best care to every patient, we have to prepare learners and our staff to care for a diverse group of patients, as our doors are open to all.”
Segregation that’s ‘hard to dislodge’
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Rochester's director of diversity, equity and inclusion, Chao Mwatela.
It’s not yet clear how these racial covenants have powered racial and economic disparities in Rochester, but city leaders are eager to use the data to better understand the city’s inequities and work to fix them.
Still, Chao Mwatela, Rochester’s diversity, equity and inclusion director, sees hints of the practice’s legacy everywhere. Some of the neighborhoods that were born with racial covenants remain largely white, affluent, and with access to higher-performing schools. They tend to have more green space and sit farther away from industrial areas.
Meanwhile, city data shows that clusters of households that earn less than the area median income also have high counts of people of color, and seniors.
The starkest example, Mwatela said, is in homeownership among the city’s nonwhite population, an indication that Rochester’s residents of color today continue to be blocked from accessing generational wealth just as they were 100 years ago.
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Roughly 60 percent of the city’s renters are people of color — a notably high proportion, Mwatela said. Members of these communities are less likely to have had parents or grandparents who owned homes that accumulated wealth to pass on to their children, she said.
“The process of buying a home is not a simple one,” she said. “We don't realize how much of that is passed down from generation to generation and what impact it has on someone's ability to navigate that system, or to even purchase a home.”
Mayo Properties Association perpetuated racial covenants, but so did other developers in Rochester. In some cases, neighbors adopted racial covenants after homes were built in an effort to keep out nonwhites.
Racial covenants became illegal in Minnesota in 1962 and illegal nationally in 1968.
But they were common in Minnesota in the first half of the 20th century, said Kirsten Delegard, co-founder and the project director for the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries.
They were popular in part because they were promoted by the National Association of Real Estate Boards as a tool to protect property values and promote neighborhood stability, she said. The federal government’s underwriting manual mandated that racial covenants be in place to get the most favorable terms.
“That mandate from those big national institutions meant that anyone who is considered to be a respectable or credible or ethical dealer in this realm was going to certainly come under a lot of pressure about racial covenants,” Delegard said.
Racial covenants are still relevant today, she said. Her organization’s mapping efforts of communities in and around the Twin Cities show that neighborhoods established with racial covenants are still overwhelmingly white.
And houses in Minneapolis that had racial covenants at any point are worth about 15 percent more today than an identical house that never had a racial covenant, Delegard said.
“What that does is it sets up this cascading effect for intergenerational wealth transfer, which increases inequality,” she said.
Delegard uses her own family as an example: Her grandparents bought a home with a racial covenant on it in 1942 in south Minneapolis near Lake Nokomis, and it appreciated significantly over the years. When they died, Delegard’s family sold the home and gave all the grandchildren a share of the proceeds.
“I took my piece and was able to put a down payment on a house in south Minneapolis that would be out of reach for people who did not have that same kind of family help,” Delegard said. “These patterns, once they're entrenched, they're very hard to dislodge.”
‘People here are so friendly’
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Mike Resman of Rochester.
Racial covenants are being discovered all over Rochester by a small group of volunteers who comb through and map property records one block at a time.
Mike Resman is one of those volunteers. In Pill Hill, he’s sitting in the living room of the home he and his wife have lived in for 45 years. In his lap is a cache of property documents his bank sent him in the 1980s, including a racial covenant that would have prevented his two adopted daughters from Korea from living there a century ago.
“I knew that it was not enforced. So I wasn't worried about it as a parent of nonwhite children,” he said. “But the thing that surprised me the most is that it had been sold by the Mayo Properties. I always associated Mayo Clinic with all good things, but here they were in the business of real estate and had put a covenant on the land.”
Resman said he wants this information to be used as a tool to educate his neighbors and the community about their city’s history, how some people have enjoyed privilege in Rochester at the expense of others.
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
A deed from a Rochester home dated in 1941 bearing the name of the Mayo Properties Association corporation.
“I'm not one of those people who thinks that we should literally whitewash history and pretend that none of these things happened,” he said.
Across town on the porch of her home in the Slatterly Park neighborhood, Wilhelmina Jacob said she wasn’t shocked that her home has a racial covenant. As a Black woman, she said it’s validating.
“What is phenomenal is that things that have been in the dark for years are now being exposed,” she said. “I think the validation of being rejected is not taboo, or ‘it's not real.’ It is real, it has been real.”
Ken Klotzbach for MPR News
Wilhelmina Jacob, a homeowner in Rochester.
She said that, unlike her upbringing in New Orleans, racism is harder to decipher in Minnesota; people here, she said, are hard to read and really get to know.
“There are wonderful people here, but it is very Minnesota Nice. And the difference for me is that in the south, [racism] is just there. So we don't have to wonder — it just is what it is,” Jacob said, pointing out that as a child in New Orleans, there were informal rules about where Black people could go at night. “Here, you don't know. Everybody just smiles, and you don't know … I think it's a little bit more difficult to navigate.”
Pastor Barlow sits on the Rochester School Board and hears echoes of racial segregation in schools today. Schools in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods reflect those demographics, a challenge the district is constantly working to address through redistricting, resources and by hiring more staff of color.
But even still, Barlow can understand how it feels to be excluded in Rochester — a city purported to be welcoming when he moved here with his wife years ago so she could access long-term care at the clinic.
“I was staying at a hotel downtown. It was a Friday, early evening, and a car of white youth passed by and yelled out the N-word,” he said. “It wasn't like it was the first time I heard it. But it shocked me because I've heard a number of [Mayo doctors] at the clinic say, ‘You're not going to find a nicer place to live’ and ‘people here are so friendly.’
“And I'm sure from their point of view, and their lived experience, those are all true statements. But then I began to realize it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone,” he said.
At Rochester’s City Hall, Mwatela is thinking along the same lines. Once racial covenants are fully mapped, the city will create a process for homeowners to discharge those covenants for free.
But she said interweaving this information into all aspects of city policy — in zoning decisions or in targeting homeownership classes at disadvantaged populations — is the bigger goal.
“I think sometimes when we say we want to do those things without having the data and the history to inform it, it is perceived as ‘Why is this community getting it and I don't,’” she said. “Laying the groundwork for people to understand that a lot of times [some people] are not starting from an equal playing field, whether it is monetarily, education and access.”
Back at his church in southeast Rochester, holding the deed that declares the “property shall never be occupied by a Negro,” Don Barlow said uncomfortable conversations about the city’s past are necessary for it to be the welcoming community it perceives itself to be.
“We benefit when we're willing to acknowledge the truths associated with our past, however uncomfortable they may be,” he said. “Because these are the types of things that have affected generations.”
Editor's note (May 23, 2022): An earlier version of this story suggested the University of Minnesota used racial covenants. To clarify, researchers say the university in the 1950s refused to denounce the use of covenants.
Table
The data for the map and table in this story come from the Rochester NAACP Racial Covenant Mapping Project led by Phil Wheeler and including the following additional volunteers: Natasha Adams, Ashton Boon, Melissa Bush, Ellen Goode, Kathy Meyerle, Kelli Morin, Michael Resman, Sue Wheeler, Julie Gilkinson, Yoko Kan, Emma Miller-Shindelar, Christopher Carter, Dan Yeates Kelsey Skodje, Katie Chapman, Justin Cook, Christine Kirt and Matt Tse. Data originally comes courtesy of Olmsted County Property Records and Licensing Office. Map: Elisabeth Gawthrop/APM Research Lab.
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For decades, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe pressed the federal government to give back tracts of northern Minnesota land it wrongfully took from the tribe in the 1940s and 1950s. Now, Washington is close to returning nearly 12,000 acres.
The roots of the dispute reach back to 1948, when the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs incorrectly interpreted an Interior Department order to mean it had the power to sell tribal land allotments without the consent of a majority of the rightful landowners.
The land transfers were acts of outright theft, said LeRoy Staples Fairbanks III, representative for Leech Lake’s District 3, which includes Cass Lake. “They mailed out letters to people. If they didn't get a response, they took them as ‘Yes.’ They took them as approval,” he said.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Old pines stand tall in an eastern section of the Pike Bay Experimental Forest.
Fairbanks said he asked his staff to begin looking into the issue in 2012 after hearing from community members for many years. Then-President Donald Trump signed legislation in December 2020 allowing for the return of the land, which currently sits within the Chippewa National Forest in Cass County.
More than 18,000 acres of land were taken before the Interior Department ended the sales in 1959. The band has submitted its survey detailing each of the parcels to be returned; 11,760 acres are expected to be restored to the community in coming months.
Fairbanks said the Leech Lake band’s relationship with the Cass County leaders played an important role in getting the Leech Lake Reservation Restoration Act signed into law.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
LeRoy Fairbanks hopes that the positive experiences of negotiating with Cass County can serve as a model for future talks with other counties.
Historically, tribal communities and county governments in Minnesota have had difficult relationships, so a 2014 agreement was a breakthrough for Leech Lake and Cass County. It called for the two governments to work together on projects from public works to law enforcement. As the land transfer neared approval, Cass County stayed effectively neutral.
Fairbanks called it “a humongous turning point for our relationship with the county.”
County commissioners respect the sovereignty of the band and agreed that they should “not get in the middle of negotiations between two sovereign nations,” said Josh Stevenson, the Cass County administrator.
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Tim Sumner, a commissioner in nearby Beltrami County, sees the cooperation between Cass County and the Leech Lake band as an important step forward for county-tribal relations across Minnesota.
“It's great to have these partnerships,” he said. “I think, you know, as time goes on, we can only anticipate that the relationships will be no stronger. It all just started with the memorandum of understanding between Leech Lake and Cass County.”
The tribe shares more than 2,000 miles of boundary with the Chippewa National Forest, and nearly 40 percent of the forest lies within Leech Lake tribal lands. Faron Jackson Sr., the Leech Lake tribal chair, made the land’s importance clear in 2018 testimony to a U.S. Senate committee.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Traditional birch bark harvesting is seen in May on a parcel of the Chippewa National Forest that is part of the federal land being returned to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.
“A robust land base is the foundation of tribal sovereignty, and self determination lands from [within] the geographic reach of our jurisdiction supports our tribal population,” he said. “It is the basis of our economy, and provides an irreplaceable forum for our cultural vitality, practices.”
Land ownership within the bounds of the reservation is a patchwork. While Leech Lake maintains civil regulatory authority over the entire reservation, it owns just 5 percent of the reservation’s original land base.
The partial restoration of the reservation land base brings with it an opportunity to address some of the pressing needs of Leech Lake’s citizens.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Ben Benoit drives down Bayview Loop on May 6 near the Pike Bay, a dirt road that in some places marks the boundary between Chippewa National Forest leases for lakefront summer homes and parts of the Chippewa National Forest land that is about to be returned to the Leech Lake Band.
On a recent drive through towering red cedar and pine south of Cass Lake, Ben Benoit, the tribe’s environmental director, pointed to an area across the street from an elementary school where he believes housing for families could go.
“People want to live by where they work, by where their kids go to school, by the store,” Benoit said, adding that the tribe is already making plans for the future.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Sports field of the Cass Lake-Bena School, home of the Panthers.
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Birthdays are about celebrating the arrival of a child, but in Korean tradition, one special dish made every birthday honors motherhood and the relationships between parents and their children.
During my husband’s birthday weekend, his favorite foods are on the menu: baked mac n’ cheese and yellow cake with fudge frosting. Aaron chooses these every year, but I always make a small pot of miyeok guk — seaweed soup.
Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang lifts a handful of seaweed.
I wash and soak the dehydrated seaweed in cold water. As a kid, I always wondered how the green slimy things you find in the ocean transformed into these crinkly strands. Now, whenever I make it, the smells and the taste remind me of my Umma, my mom, making Korean food for me.
It’s simple: mostly seaweed, with stew beef sauteed in sesame oil, soy sauce and garlic. There’s a secret ingredient my Umma uses, and I think she’d get mad if I revealed what it was, but it’s key to add it to give the soup that extra depth of flavor.
Every birthday, she’d cook it for my birthday without fail. For my oppa, my older brother, and my appa, my dad, too. Umma tells me after each birthday, she would eat miyeok guk during postpartum recovery, my halmoni, my grandmother, made for her.
There are health benefits to eating seaweed, which is rich in iron and vitamins. It’s the epitome of home cooking, as my Umma calls it.
Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang celebrating her first birthday in Strongsville, Ohio in January 1994. The ceremony is known as dol or doljanchi, which is a Korean tradition that celebrates the first birthday of a baby. This ceremony blesses the child with a prosperous future and has taken on great significance in Korea. Doljabi is a tradition where the baby is placed in front of various items or objects. Then, the baby is encouraged to grab one or two items from the set of objects where each choice symbolizes a certain future of the baby with respect to his or her career or a lifestyle. A pencil means they will be a scholar; rice means never going hungry and string can indicate they will live a long life. Yang grabbed a pencil, which might tie to her career as a journalist.
“In Korea, starting from when you’re in the hospital, from when the baby is born you eat miyeok guk,” she said. “So there was a point that for one month, I just ate seaweed soup.”
Postpartum care is known as sanhujori. It’s traditionally provided by the new mother’s family members and in-law families. They cook healthy, warm foods and help care for the baby while the mother recovers.
It’s also important to keep the body warm. For Korean mothers, getting exposed to even a cold breeze is considered a taboo. Umma said it’s because if a new mother fails to keep her body warm, it’s believed she may become susceptible to a life-long illness.
When Umma gave birth at the hospital in the United States, she found a very different approach to postpartum recovery.
“What surprised me was the different culture,” she said. “When I gave birth in an American hospital, I wanted to eat miyeok guk. I said I could eat something warm because I was cold. But at the hospital, they gave me ice cream.”
By eating miyeok guk on our birthday, we’re reminded to thank our mothers by eating the same food they did postpartum. Umma said that my halmoni took care of her after each birth, staying for almost a month until she recovered.
Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hyun Ji Kim and her daughter, Hannah Yang.
“All mothers care for their daughters,” Umma said. “If they take off their socks, they put them back on. Even when they don’t want to, they still put it back on for them. They dress them in warm clothes, otherwise later it’ll get strenuous.”
And they make birthday soup.
My parents immigrated to the United States in the 1980’s. They wanted to be sure my oppa and I grew up speaking Korean in the house and we ate Korean food for pretty much every meal. Umma says she was so happy that I learned how to cook, adding “If you didn’t learn, or didn’t want to learn, then [cooking Korean food] could end with my generation.”
I didn’t marry a Korean, but Umma said she was so happy Aaron and his family love Korean food. She also loves that there are traditions we can pass down to our own kids someday.
Now, I’m cooking these dishes in my own kitchen. I cooked my Umma’s soup for my husband in celebration of his birthday. He asked me to teach him how to make it so that he could make me miyeok guk on my birthday next winter.
Because of my Umma, whenever I choose to have kids of my own, miyeok guk will be on the menu to remind them of me, just like I’m reminded of my own mother.
Gallery * Hannah Yang | MPR News
After soaking dehydrated seaweed, Hannah Yang combines the seaweed with other ingredients to make miyeok guk, Korean seaweed soup, for her husband's birthday on May 3, 2022. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang fills a bowl of cold water with dehydrated seaweed to prepare it for making miyeok guk, seaweed soup. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang adds some soy sauce into a steaming hot pot to make miyeok guk, seaweed soup. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
MPR News Reporter Hannah Yang sautees seaweed in a pot to make miyeok guk, seaweed soup. It's a Korean custom to eat miyeok guk on someone's birthday as a reminder of the types of food that their mothers ate during postpartum recovery. It's a traditional homecooked meal. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang spoons steaming fresh white rice to fill a bowl for plating. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang as an infant. In Korea, a baby reaching 100 days old is considered a significant milestone back when infant mortality rates were high. Birthdays are a large source of joy and celebration. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Sun Hyung Yang and Hyun Ji Kim with their children Hannah Yang and Joseph Yang taking a family portrait. Sun Hyung and Hyun Ji immigrated to the United States in the 1980's. Their children were born in Parma, Ohio in 1989 and 1993. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang wearing her Korean outfit as an infant. * Hannah Yang | MPR News
Hannah Yang grew up in a Korean household and eating Korean food. That's what inspired her love for learning more about her heritage and cooking ethnic cuisine.
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Most Minnesotans know the state is home to the largest urban concentration of Hmong immigrants in the country.
I grew up on the East Side of St. Paul thinking of Southeast Asian cooking as my birthright. Pho, rice noodle salads and banh mi are more Minnesotan to me than any lutefisk or lefse. Still, I didn’t know much about Hmong food, even though we have about three times as many Hmong neighbors as we do Vietnamese.
Until I met my friend Chef Yia Vang, who has been our state’s emissary for understanding Hmong cuisine, I didn’t really know much about the cooking. He runs a wildly successful restaurant, Minneapolis’ Union Hmong Kitchen, with another in the works.
I asked Yia what he thought of as an iconic home cooking dish from the culture, and whether his mom would teach me how to make it. He asked her and she said yes.
Mecca Bos | MPR News
Pang Vang ladles batter into a frying pan as she prepares Fawm Kauv, a Hmong steamed rice roll filled with a ground pork mixture.
“Hmong cooking is not naturally a restaurant cuisine,” Yia began, standing in his mom’s impeccable sprawling suburban mansion kitchen. “Because it's not made to be cooked in a restaurant. You know, there's all these processes, all these parts to it, that if you think about how this food came to be, it was pulled from different moments of suffering.”
Pang remembers living through a constant state of war as a girl. Born into a village in Laos she says didn’t really have a name, her family was forced to move from place to place just to survive. Many people were killed, she says, and that’s just the way it was.
Through listening to stories of his parents’ ordeal and hardships, Yia has built not just a restaurant but a storytelling space that’s an homage to them. Though he towers over her by more than a foot, Pang is boss and chef in this home kitchen. Her influence on her son is as palpable as the food we’re about to enjoy.
“The food that we do at the restaurant, yes, it's Hmong food,” Yia explains, “and it's a reflection of mom and dad's table, but [at] mom and dad's table, that's where you're gonna get what you’re longing for. We want to give people a taste — so that they want to actually explore more.”
Mecca Bos | MPR News
Fawm Kauv, a Hmong steamed rice roll filled with a ground pork mixture.
That further exploration was why I wanted to get into Pang’s kitchen. I knew that is where Yia’s food story began — the one that compelled him to start his businesses Union Hmong Kitchen and Vinai, his upcoming restaurant named after the refugee camp where he was born.
And it began with dishes like the one we would be making, a steamed rice roll called Fawm Kauv, which is pronounced ‘pho-kau.’ This roll with the texture of pho noodles stuffed with seasoned ground pork was a childhood favorite of Yia’s, but I wanted to know what it meant to his mom, too.
As it turns out, she loved it as a child too but her experience with it was a little bit different.
Yia translates for Pang as she masterfully pours batter into three lightly oiled pans. She looks almost bored as she stands by the stove, but Yia says she is watching everything closely, simultaneously listening and watching for signs the wraps are done. She flips the finished ones onto an old carefully cleaned rice bag that she reserves solely for the purpose thanks to its non-stick properties. Then she fills and rolls while fielding difficult questions and painful memories.
“In Laos when they were making this, it literally was just like maybe scallions or onions inside. There was no meat — meat was probably about two or three times a year — that's all you got. But growing up this was their favorite,’ Yia translated.
Mecca Bos | MPR News
Fawm Kauv, a Hmong steamed rice roll filled with a ground pork mixture which is served with dipping sauce. Pang Vang makes them in bulk and distributes them to friends and family. Her son Yia Vang points out they take a lot of work to prepare, but just seconds to eat and enjoy.
I asked Pang what cooking was like growing up, and if she could remember making dishes like this one with her mom and grandmother.
“She said the moment you know how to dress yourself is the moment you start working in your part of the kitchen. [They] didn't have school — it was you get up and you're contributing to the home. So I think that that aspect of it is what makes home cooking completely different. You know, because it is a part of the rhythm of life.”
And that rhythm of life was very different from the three-point pivot that Pang is able to make from her sink to her stovetop to her refrigerator in one fluid swoop.
“She said that it was very difficult,” Yia continues. “Especially the way that they cooked in Laos — you didn't have running water, so you would go to the river, or you go to a stream. You bring the water back and boil it. You know, just to steam rice. Sometimes you didn't have pots and pans so you cut down bamboo. But everybody just jumped in and got involved.”
I wanted to know more about the circumstances of Pang’s birth, and asked about the path that brought her to Minnesota.
Those circumstances offer a snapshot of the Hmong immigration experience.
She was born in the hills in Laos in the late 1950s, and for as long as she can remember her father was fighting in some kind of war.
“Eventually they went to Long Cheng,” Yia translates, “A really big village where a lot of Hmong people ended up. More people died — people were killed — life just moved forward.”
Pang adds that watching the war in Ukraine right now resonates with her deeply as she remembers what happened in Laos.
“That’s exactly the way it was,” she says.
After visiting the Hmong Marketplaces in St. Paul — sprawling food courts with myriad food stalls offering all sorts of Hmong dishes, I started to understand the food as survival cooking — the nomadic people being forced to move from village to village, country to country, picking up influences from each place they passed through. Pang’s recollection of her ordeal as a young woman living hand to mouth underscored this.
Yia listened intently as his mother recalled her, at times, horrific past.
“They slaughtered all the men, and all the women and children were hiding in the jungles — over half of them were killed — but they hid there for about a month with no food. So they would have to eat tree bark and roots.”
Eventually enemy soldiers discovered and captured them. All of the boys 12 and over were imprisoned, but the small children and women were fed — the first time they ate proper food in a month.
Yia said he was hearing parts of this story for the first time. His parents have tried to shield their kids and grandkids from their difficulties, focusing on giving them a better life in the U.S. But making Fawm Kauv whenever her kids crave it, always filled with meat and not just scallions, is a poignant snapshot of that better life.
Euan Kerr | MPR News
Pang Vang rolls Fawm Kauv.
Still, Pang says she worries a bit about the younger generations, and what might get lost when they lose touch with at least some of the history of that hardship.
“She said that her fear is that they’re not going to know how to make any of this stuff after her generation is gone,” Yia says. “That they won't even know how to simply make rice. How are they going to eat? You know, who's going to take care of them? She's afraid that eventually they're not going to know how to be Hmong.”
But today, even as Pang cooks Fawm Kauv with avocado oil from Trader Joes and non-stick pans from Target — all of which she keeps aside especially for this process — the survival of Hmong culture is more than evident.
“This is something where it's like, if you want this, and you want it right, you have to go to a home,” Yia concludes. “This isn't a restaurant dish. And I don't want to mess with it.
At least where it comes to Fawm Kauv, Pang needn’t worry about her kids forgetting how to be Hmong.
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Correction (May 11, 2022): A previous version of this story contained a misspelling of Fawm Kauv. The story has been updated.
On even the most ordinary days, teachers can impact the lives of their students in extraordinary ways. I learned that on one morning in 1979, as a third grader and one of the few Black kids at Weaver Elementary School in Maplewood.
That day, I was swarmed at the coat rack by a cluster of hyped-up, freckled and rosy-faced classmates who greeted me by yelling, “Your dad is here! Your dad’s gonna be our teacher today! Is that your dad?”
The year was already a disaster. A small few of my tiny classmates were calling me the n-word more than they called me by my actual name, prompting me to respond with my fists. In fact, my teacher had sent me to the principal’s office several times and called my parents to complain about my behavior — including one time for punching kids who had a fascination with touching my short afro and would follow up by saying, “Ewww, you have grease in your hair!”
Sometimes, my teacher’s in-class punishment for some errant students was placing our desks in the corner facing the wall, surrounded by a foldable wooden partition that felt like a little pop-up jail for budding juvenile delinquents. Much worse, was the belt whipping that followed at home. Like many parents from the ‘70s and ‘80s, my folks considered the belt to be the highest expression of love and protection that a Black parent could show. They believed it was a way to scare me — as a third grader and a Black male — into learning how to self-govern my behavior to keep myself away from street violence, the drug trade or gangs, or deadly encounters with the police.
My mother worried that bad reports from teachers was the beginning of what we now call the “school to prison pipeline.” Considering the statistical reality that Black students across America are more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled or arrested for the same kind of conduct, I now know that, in fearing that possibility, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
When my classmates greeted me, I was immediately overcome with worry, thinking that my father came to the school to do what my mother often promised she’d do if I didn’t straighten up: Give me an ol’ fashioned, American Southern Baptist belt whipping in front of all of my white classmates.
I bravely took off my red snowmobile suit and silver moon boots and walked into the room. And then, there he was, my so-called “dad,” looking down at all our innocent faces. Thankfully, he carried a welcoming grin and a kindly introduction. “Hello boys and girls, my name is Mr. Bridgeman. Mrs. Blumer is out, and I will be substituting for her today.”
Indeed, he was Black, and he was rather tall compared to all of us, but he wasn’t my dad. In fact, he looked nothing like Lee Hawkins Sr. But his paternal spirit immediately filled me with a sense of wonder and a brand-new feeling of security. Without him saying a word, I felt a higher standard of expectation and sensed a loving, but no-nonsense accountability that my father inspired at home.
Maybe Mr. Bridgeman would understand that this Black boy’s errant behavior had more to do with boredom and with there being a loss of challenge than there was with any kind of instinctual criminal disposition. Maybe — just maybe — if I were to punch a kid for touching my hair, this guy would understand why and talk to the kid and tell him to stop, instead of just sending me to the principal’s office and just saying I hit somebody.
On some of the days when Mrs. Blumer called home, Dad explained things from his point-of-view to try to reason with me. “I don’t care what name they call you, boy. If you keep fighting these white kids, you’re always gonna be the one to get in trouble,” he said. “Don’t you know that when these white teachers see those kids, they’re seeing the faces of their own kids, and their nieces and nephews? When they see you, they don’t see anything but a trouble-making Black boy. That’s all they see.”
I never wanted to believe him, but when Mr. Bridgeman introduced himself to the class that day, I guess I’d just hoped that, if only for a second, the opposite would be true. Not that I wanted preferential treatment or anything like that. I just wanted a day where I could feel less alone in that classroom. I wanted a clean slate, with no labels or assumptions. I wanted to rid myself of that feeling that was gradually building up in my brain, that maybe I was just “that bad Black kid” who would inevitably end up in prison one day. And I knew I would finally get a break from the stuffy air in between the walls of that wooden partition. Even more, maybe my white classmates would get to learn firsthand that not every Black man wearing a shirt and tie had to be my dad.
That day, all those wishes came true. It was just another day to Mr. Bridgeman, but it was a turning point for me. I stood up straighter, listened more intently, talked less, and read out of my workbook louder — with more clarity and certainty than ever before. It felt a lot like the Sunday School at my family’s church, Mount Olivet Baptist Church, in the heart of St. Paul’s Black neighborhood. My teacher there, Deaconess Verda Williams, never once felt the need to threaten to whip me or to give me the trademark “look.” With her, there was never any talk about prison because she never feared that I would end up in one, because I never disappointed her — and that’s probably due to the fact that she never made me feel like I was a disappointment.
The same goes with Mr. Bridgeman. He gave me the basic respect that all the other children got. And because of that alone, I wanted to make him just as proud as he made me that day. To this day, I hope that I did.
After that day, Mr. Bridgeman never came back. In fact, for the rest of my educational career, I never had another Black teacher or professor, male or female. For years, I wished that I could thank Weaver Elementary and Mr. Bridgeman for giving me at least one day with a Black teacher.
Representation matters As the years passed, I became a journalist, working at two newspapers before landing at the Wall Street Journal, where I was a reporter for 19 years before joining American Public Media as a special correspondent last month. From my research, I’ve learned that Black men make up only two percent of the country’s teaching force in the modern day, but the presence of Black teachers in the classroom is shown to improve outcomes for students. A 2017 study by the Institute of Labor Economics found that low-income Black students who have a Black teacher — man or woman — for at least one year in elementary school are less likely to drop out of high school and more likely to consider college. Still, only seven percent of teachers nationwide are Black.
Off and on through the years, I have often thought about how cool it would be to finally find Mr. Bridgeman. I believe devoutly in the power of expressing gratitude to the people who give to us and impact us. Before my father died in 2019, I got to thank him for being an omnipresent, extraordinarily loving and principled dad. And weeks before Deaconess Williams passed in 2015, I talked to her on the phone and even spoke at her funeral. But maybe the chance of finding long lost Mr. Bridgeman, just for a chance to send him a card, a pair of cufflinks or even just buy him a cup of coffee, was forever gone.
Still, I recently posted a message on Facebook asking my Minnesota friends to ask around and see if anybody knew of a Black man by the name “Mr. Bridgeman” who would have been a substitute teacher at Weaver Elementary in 1979. Droves of my friends, of all races and walks of life, reposted the message and did everything they could to try and help me find him.
What’s fascinating is that many of the approximately thirty classmates I had in Mrs. Blumer’s class are now my Facebook friends, and I consider some to be family. Several wrote that they were excited to see the post, but none of them remembered Mr. Bridgeman. Though nevertheless, in a true display of how small Minnesota’s Black community can be, it only took a few days to get some promising responses from a few long-time family friends. They each told me that my Mr. Bridgeman was probably one of the two 80-something-year-old Bridgeman brothers — John or Harold — who had lived in the Twin Cities for decades. John, they said, was a teacher for his entire career, and had died in 2015, while Harold taught off and on while putting himself through law school and later became a psychotherapist.
I prayed that my Mr. Bridgeman would still be out there somewhere, and eventually, his daughter and a few others from the community eventually reached out and gave me his contact. I called Mr. Harold Bridgeman, and we had a nice one-hour interview and chat, in which he told me that he remembered me, and that to him, it was “a pretty normal day,” except for him having to explain to the kids that he wasn’t my dad.
But the deeper significance of that reconnection was the fact that I was able to find out more about Mr. Bridgeman, including how he ended up teaching, particularly in Minnesota. He explained that as a student at Indiana’s Ball State University in the 1950s, his white academic advisor told him to forget about his interest in studying business, because a corporation would never hire a Black man. Education, the advisor told him, was a safer bet, because at least he could teach at a predominantly Black school. He also told me about how he’d worked in a factory for two years to save up money for school, and that since most white landlords would not rent to a Black student on campus, he had to rent at a rooming house several miles off of campus from an older Black woman — who cooked him one meal a day. Most often, that one meal was his only meal.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Journalist Lee Hawkins speaks with Jonathan Palmer, Executive Director of Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, about the history of the center April 13.
But most importantly, I got to thank him, and ask if he would be open to meeting me in person. He agreed and asked if we could meet at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center in St. Paul. That, coincidentally, is where I attended preschool before my family moved to Maplewood — a place where we were taught about Black History icons every day.
Meeting Mr. Bridgeman, again
Don't see the video? Click here.
When Mr. Bridgeman and I finally got the chance to meet in mid-April, he looked a lot younger than 83. We became fast friends, quickly easing into a conversation about how it was that he became our teacher that day, and then into a wide-ranging conversation about his life as a Black man, a few generations older than me, in America.
I’m happy that I got the chance to meet and finally thank Mr. Bridgeman. Even though that one day didn’t mean much of anything to him, it meant — in that troubling period of my life — everything to me. He helped me see what class could be like outside of that wooden partition, and showed me that I — or any other student for that matter — didn’t belong there. And he came at just the right time. Because being underestimated as one of the few Black kids thrusted me into so much of a racial identity crisis that I had begun to personify the stereotype of the J.J. Evans class clown, a younger version of the character portrayed by Jimmie Walker on the 70s show “Good Times.” That disappeared upon the sight of Mr. Bridgeman.
It really is true: Teachers, especially Black teachers, can impact the world, one student at a time.
Meeting Mr. Bridgeman, again * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Journalist Lee Hawkins meets with his former substitute teacher, Harold Bridgeman at Hallie Q. Brown Community Center. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Bridgeman was the only Black teacher Hawkins ever had growing up, and he left a lasting impression on Hawkins. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Journalist Lee Hawkins takes a selfie with his former substitute teacher, Harold Bridgeman. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Journalist Lee Hawkins and Harold Bridgeman walk through Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, talking about the history of the center. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Journalist Lee Hawkins meets with his former substitute teacher, Harold Bridgeman.
Lee Hawkins is a special correspondent for American Public Media.
- Full series North Star Journey
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
MPR News has a new reporting project called North Star Journey, focusing on the history and culture of Minnesota’s diverse communities.
Since the project launched in March, MPR News reporters have produced a wide range of stories. Some look back at the history of communities, including Black migration to Fargo-Moorhead after the Civil War and the multi-ethnic mosaic of West Side Flats in St. Paul.
Other stories explore how communities today are finding solutions to problems that disproportionately impact communities of color, including stories about boosting Somali homeownership in St. Cloud, Worthington’s fast-growing communities of color and schools in Duluth trying to bridge the city’s long east-west divide.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two editors about what led to the series, highlights from the reporting and what’s next.
Guests:
- Sarah Glover is managing editor of MPR News.
- Brandt Williams is editor of the Race, Class & Communities team at MPR News.
North Star Journey was made possible in part with funds from the Legacy Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
More than a generation ago, the construction of Interstate 94 dug a deep trench through the middle-class Black neighborhood of Rondo in St. Paul.
The freeway destroyed hundreds of houses. More than 600 Black families were forced to move. Homeowners never saw fair compensation for the destruction of their homes. Renters got nothing.
Now, community members are pitching ideas for how to repair some of that harm. A group called ReConnect Rondo has proposed putting a concrete cap over a stretch of the highway roughly between Lexington Avenue and Dale Street and using the new space to build a Black cultural district. The goal is to bring green space, housing, jobs and economic renewal to the surrounding neighborhood.
The local effort is part of a larger national conversation about how new transportation projects could be used to rectify historical injustice.
On Thursday, MPR News host Angela Davis talked about the history and future of the historic Rondo neighborhood.
Guests:
- Nina Moini is an MPR News reporter.
- Keith Baker is executive director of Reconnect Rondo.
- Jonathan Palmer is executive director of the Hallie Q Brown Community Center, Inc., which has provided services for nearly 100 years in the Summit-University neighborhood, which includes much of historic Rondo.
North Star Journey was made possible in part with funds from the Legacy Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Angela Dawson has been farming for three years on land near Sandstone, Minn. She describes herself as a fourth-generation “reclamation” farmer, getting back to her ancestors’ agricultural roots.
“Part of my family is Black and the other is Native American,” Dawson said. “Our history over the last 150 years is layered with a lot of separation and forced moving.”
It was in the mid-70s that Dawson’s father’s family lost their farm in southern Iowa after falling into debt on the rented land.
“It was a bit traumatic,” she said. “A lot of my family at first thought I was crazy for wanting to get back into farming because of the trauma that most Black farmers have experienced in the United States.”
Courtesy of Angela Dawson
40 Acre Co-op co-founder Angela Dawson speaks to a crowd at a Juneteenth celebration on the farm.
Black farmers have experienced discrimination in the United States for the last 150 years. That’s decimated the number of Black farmers in the country. But some African American farmers are still trying to connect with their agricultural roots, and at the same time, build a more sustainable and equitable agricultural system.
Her family’s experience is part of what inspired Dawson to start up the 40 Acre Co-op, a reference to the never fulfilled promise from the Union army that people freed from enslavement should get 40 acres and a mule. It’s a cooperative that offers farmers from socially disadvantaged backgrounds support and resources to succeed in the field. As of now, the co-op has about three dozen active members across the country and many more on a waiting list.
Dawson said it’s time for people in the state, including those involved with traditional agricultural co-ops, to start taking issues of equity seriously.
“Let’s find a better way to talk about quality of life here in Minnesota for all of us, and to find ways to address some of these systemic issues that have long kept us from all achieving the same quality of life that we all deserve,“ Dawson said.
Discrimination built into the system What Dawson’s father experienced wasn’t unique. The number of Black farmers in the country has plummeted from about a million a century ago, to just about 45,000 now, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. That accounts for just 1.3 percent of farmers in the country.
This wasn’t just a coincidence, said historian Pete Daniel, who authored a book called “Dispossession,” which documented the struggles of Black farmers to hold onto their land. After slavery was officially abolished in the United States, he said Black people overcame prejudice, terror and discriminatory policies to actually control significant tracts of land.
Since 1920, Black farmers have lost tens of millions of acres of land. A study released this year put the value of this lost land at $326 billion.
Part of the loss is due to how the agricultural system started to change in the 1930s. And the New Deal was a major influence, Daniel said.
Whereas before, Black farmers could sue in court for inequitable treatment. The New Deal created county committees made up of local elites in each county, who were typically white. Those committees controlled land and federal loans.
“They had the power to manipulate the county acreage, to give more acres to the people who they favored and to take away acres from the people they didn’t favor, who were a lot of times the Black farmers,” Daniel said. “African American farmers had no representation and very little chance to appeal anything, so they were vulnerable to this system.”
At the same time, the Department of Agriculture was prioritizing the modernization of American agriculture. So their policies emphasized the use of things like chemical fertilizers or mechanization, which were out of reach of smaller farmers who didn’t have access to large amounts of money or federal loans.
Daniel said mechanization of farms meant large landowners no longer needed as many workers on the land, so sharecroppers were thrown out of work, moved into town or even moved north, further decimating the numbers of Black farmers.
And this trend didn’t slow after the New Deal. These systems continued on for decades. Until they resulted in a class action lawsuit from Black farmers in the late 1990s. The farmers won the case, which is known as Pigford v. Glickman, but the terms of the consent decree limited only to farmers who could provide evidence of discrimination by the USDA between 1981 and 1996, severely limiting the impact.
More debt relief funding for Black and minority farmers in the recent American Rescue Plan was blocked after lawsuits from white farmers.
“I can’t hardly find anything that’s not profane here,” Daniel said of the lawsuit, “but it’s just chicken****.”
These are some of the systemic policies that contributed to a drastic decline in the number of farmers both across the country and in Minnesota. As of the most recent state agricultural survey, there were only 38 Black-owned farms in the state.
Black on mostly white farmland
Tim Evans for MPR News
Henry Mitchell and his daughter Peace Mitchell pose for a portrait with wreaths made of balsam fir and jack pine trees grown on their Wadena family farm on April 20.
It wasn’t just the official systematic discrimination that Black farmers faced, especially in the heavily white rural Minnesota of decades past.
Henry Mitchell grew up picking cotton in Mississippi, started a blues singing career in Memphis that brought him to a ski resort out west. That’s where he met his future wife, Maren Mitchell, who came from a farm in Minnesota.
Mitchell and his wife moved to a hippie commune in northern Minnesota, but after being converted by evangelicals, they started a farm in Wadena County.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Farmer Henry Mitchell shows an old photograph of his wife, Maren Mitchell, and children, Peace Mitchell, Isaac Mitchell, Samuel Mitchell, and Peter Mitchell, gathered on their Wadena County farm in the 1970s.
As a farmer, Mitchell specialized in mushrooms. He said the first season was a “booming success.” He had fans of his mushrooms coming up from the Twin Cities suburbs just to get them: “I mean, I couldn't raise them fast enough.”
His daughter Peace Mitchell remembers what it was like growing up on that farm.
“My mom loved horses, so we had quarter horses. We had chickens and ducks and pigs, I mean, we had all kinds of animals,” she said. “It was pretty cool.”
But growing up, Peace Mitchell remembers feeling slightly tokenized in the mostly white, rural community.
“I, and my brothers, were the only brown kids in my school,” Peace Mitchell said, noting that the people in the area were always very nice. “I think that we were always like mascots, but in a way, you’re always like a novelty.”
- Tim Evans for MPR News
Peace Mitchell shows an old family photo of her and her mother, Maren Mitchell, in Wadena County in the 1970s. * Tim Evans for MPR News
An old family photo of Henry Mitchell in Wadena County in the late 1960s. * Tim Evans for MPR News
Peace Mitchell shows an old family photo of her and her father, Henry Mitchell, in Wadena County in the 1970s.
Henry Mitchell said his farm did well. He and his wife picked up jobs in town to supplement their income. But it wasn’t always easy. He said he’d largely learned how to shrug off racial slurs, but one day a man in a bar threatened to kill his family. Mitchell said the man was motivated by racism.
“I was minding my own business when I went to get just a cheeseburger and they started talking,” Henry Mitchell said. “Nobody is going to tell me what they’re going to do to me or my family and walk away.”
Mitchell shot and wounded the man, and was later found not guilty. But he said he learned to find peace with people in the mostly white community, and insists that there were way more good people in the area than bad.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Henry Mitchell poses for a portrait in Brooklyn Park on April 20, 2022.
Even now, Henry Mitchell said he can’t wait to get back to farming. He’s hoping to do that at his old farm, where his daughter and her family have started a tree farm with plans to do more farming. They’re envisioning it as a retreat for people who want to learn about agriculture.
Carrying on the legacy
Jon Collins | MPR News
Eugene Sublett and Luella Williams show a photo of the farm they grew up on.
The experience of Black farmers in the state isn’t uniform.
Eugene Sublett and his family moved to a farm in 1970 when he was a young teenager. His father, who is also named Eugene, retired from the railroad, and had always been interested in farming.
Sublett remembers what it was like moving from a Black middle-class family life in south Minneapolis to a rural farm with ducks, pigs, chickens and cows.
“Twice a day every day milking cows and all the things that go with that: cleaning the barn, doing the crops, harvesting the crops, baling hay, getting everything ready,” Sublett said. “So it was a lot of work, and I think for the four of us, it was quite a transition.”
Jon Collins | MPR News
The Subletts on their farm near Ogilvie, Minn. in Kanabec County. (Seated) Eugene, (from right) Eugene, Delcie and Luella.
Neither Sublett nor his sister Luella Williams remember any overt discrimination at the time, which they chalk up partly to the fact that their father, who was a minister, was famously gregarious.
After their father experienced health problems, more of the farm chores fell to the children and their mother. After the elder Sublett died in 1983, they sold off the final animals.
But Williams said she still carries lessons from her time on the farm.
“I learned how to value and cherish things. Where today, kids don't like to value,” Williams said. “We worked for everything we got. And that's one thing I can say that came out of the whole ordeal.”
Sublett and Williams bring their families to the land now, and still do some gardening there, sharing the farm they grew up on and their experiences with younger relatives.
Angela Dawson, who said she still experiences discrimination in trying to get resources like federal loans, said her father was traumatized by losing the family’s Iowa farm and lost touch with her family for years afterwards. She said her dad only ever really wanted to farm.
“He can’t be in the city too long, he’s not really into the trappings of urban life,” Dawson said. “I think there were a lot of people who never really adjusted to urban living.”
But Dawson’s father, who was the last member of his family to be removed from their Iowa farm when their family lost the land, is planning to stay with them at their farm later this year. She’s hoping to learn from her experience, as she carries on the family legacy.
- North Star Journey Celebrating Minnesota communities
- Pass the Mic What should we cover next?
When it first hit in 2020, COVID-19 tore through Minnesota’s Hmong community, sickening and killing people as it reached into family get-togethers, cultural celebrations and other gatherings favorable to its spread.
By early 2021, researchers estimated Hmong people accounted for about 50 percent of deaths among Minnesotans of Asian descent though they made up only about 25 percent of that population.
“Because we're such a tight-knit community, all our events were like a huge gathering — weddings, funerals, social events, birthdays. Everything large and small, we would gather as a huge community,” said Dr. David Thao. “It was prime for COVID to spread, super spread.”
While the disease devastated early on, conditions are significantly better. COVID in the Hmong community appears to be mostly in check for now. Despite an early hesitancy, people of Asian ancestry now boast Minnesota’s highest COVID vaccination rate.
What made the difference? Observers point to a growing class of young Hmong doctors, nurses and public health leaders who recognized COVID’s threat and worked to guide people toward science-based answers. Many in that emerging professional generation have grown from kids helping their parents navigate medical appointments to adults helping stymie a deadly disease.
‘We look like and we sound like them’ For many Hmong health professionals, COVID is the biggest challenge they’ve faced. Early on, it was brutal.
The disease claimed several high-profile leaders in the first few months. St. Paul School Board Chair Marny Xiong, just 31, died in June 2020. In October 2020, COVID killed Choua Yang, 53, founder of a Hmong cultural language charter school in Brooklyn Park. Shortly after came news of the death of Tou-Fu Vang, 76, who’d fought in the Secret War and helped refugees resettle in the United States.
Five months later, the illness killed 52-year-old attorney Kao Ly Ilean Her, executive director of the council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans and the first Hmong person to serve on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.
With COVID hitting the community hard, Thao knew he needed to reach out to people in Hmong, in mediums where Hmong people got information. He began posting videos to YouTube and social media and went on local Hmong television to help educate people.
Peter Cox | MPR News
Dr. David Thao, a plastic surgeon, stands in the lobby of his clinic Woodbury Plastic Surgery. Thao founded the Hmong Medical Association in 2018, in part, to recruit more Hmong people into the healthcare field.
“Our goal was multifaceted,” said Thao, 50, who founded the Hmong Medical Association in 2018. “One was we wanted to provide an education, outreach for the community so that if they had any questions about medicine, we would be able to answer that.
“Our second goal was because there are so few of us, we want to encourage the younger generation and the youth to pursue medicine. There's a community growing. The more physicians out there, the more we can kind of touch everyone in the community in a positive way.”
- ChangeMakers Asian and Pacific Islander Minnesotans making history
- Senior services reach out Try to build trust in communities not served before
When vaccines became available, the association along with the Hmong Nurses Association began hosting vaccination clinics, as well as the Minnesota Department of Health. Hmong leaders posted online about getting vaccinated, the associations held vaccine clinics at community sites like the Hmong Village Shopping Center and Hmongtown Marketplace, which are both in St. Paul.
Those efforts paid off. More than 88 percent of Minnesotans of Asian ancestry are vaccinated now with at least one dose — 15 percentage points higher than any other racial group.
“It felt like everyone was trying to do their part, right? You know, social media influencers, faith leaders, other smaller nonprofits and groups, professional associations,” said Xp Lee, Asian Pacific Islander COVID community coordinator lead with the Minnesota Department of Health.
Thao, now a plastic surgeon with a clinic in Woodbury, said he remembers being a kid translating at medical appointments for his family. It’s a touchstone for many among the small but growing cadre of Hmong medical professionals.
Tim Evans for MPR News
Nurse practitioner May Hang examines a patient at NorthPoint Health and Wellness Clinic in North Minneapolis on Wednesday.
“As a child of refugee parents, when we first came, I remember being the interpreter for my family at the age of 10, trying to figure out how to explain these medical terminology or procedures to my parents,” said May Hang, 48, a doctor of nursing practice and a family nurse practitioner at NorthPoint Medical Clinic in Minneapolis.
“So, for us, fast forward to going through this pandemic, and being able to have health care professionals who are bilingual, bicultural,” she said.
“We look like and we sound like them, we actually have the knowledge to explain the issues, the concepts, the science behind what's happening. I think that has been very helpful for the elders to understand what needs to be done and how to protect themselves and how to keep them safe.”
Real progress, growing needs Just a few decades ago, things were much different.
Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul, recalled 1990, when there were more than 450 cases of measles, almost half of which were in the Hmong community. Three children died from the disease.
“Some of the kids died because Hmong were using their own medicine to cure measles that was pretty much curable in America… back then you didn't have children teaching the parents because they didn't know, either,” he said. “But now you have family members with children in college or they graduated already. They're able to convince their parents or educate their parents about this.”
Xiong noted that Hmong medicine is grounded in a culture 5,000 to 7,000 years old and that Hmong people have been in the United States for only about 50 years, so older generations are more likely to be skeptical of medicine here.
He also said there’s a spiritual and cultural aspect to things that most non-Hmong doctors don’t understand — people who “practice the old faith” that says people have three souls and 32 spirits, who trace sickness to one of those souls leaving the body and believe only a shaman can restore them.
“For the medical professions, they basically shrug off the spiritual aspect of things,” Xiong said. “But perhaps, for moving forward, perhaps some of these, the Hmong practitioners will say, ‘Well, that's wonderful, I'm glad that you've done that. But you know, this medication I'm prescribing for you will help strengthen your spirit … so that you can better protect your soul and your spirit.’”
Xiong said he chose a Hmong doctor because he felt more comfortable talking to her. “So, if you say this is the best way to help me, I'm going to believe you, right? Because you come from my background, you understand my history, my culture, and you also understand my language, versus someone who knows nothing about me.”
Click to view the graphic https://www.datawrapper.de/_/aLrz1/
There’s still a need for more Hmong health care professionals. Thao says his organization estimates there are around 35 to 40 Hmong doctors in Minnesota.
According to a Minnesota Department of Health study in 2019, just 0.2 percent of all doctors in the state speak Hmong. That’s compared with 2.4 percent of households in the state where Hmong is the main home language.
“I'm very, very pleased with the fact that we have grown in that sense. But to reflect the percentage of the makeup of our community, compared to the large community, are we proportional? The answer would be no,” said Hang, who sits on the executive board of the national Hmong Nurses Association and in August will co-chair the first-ever Hmong nurses national conference, which will be held in Minnesota.
She said whenever she sees patients, it’s clear to her how much representation matters.
“Even after all these years of practicing and being in the medical field, I feel like whenever I walk into the room, and they look at me and I look like them and we can talk the same language, it puts them automatically at ease,” she said. “And it never gets old. It never gets old.”
- COVID-19 Coverage of the pandemic from MPR News
- North Star Journey Celebrating Minnesota communities
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Flags are a big deal in Minnesota. Civil War flags line the rotunda of the State Capitol. A Confederate flag captured at Gettysburg is among the state's most prized historical artifacts.
But the official state flag, critics say, is a racist relic best left in the past.
Efforts to change the design have made some progress at the Capitol this legislative session — but face stiff headwinds from supporters of the existing flag who say it’s an important part of Minnesota's history.
Based on state seal From a distance, the design of the Minnesota state flag isn't particularly memorable. Dating back to the 19th century, the iconography is all but indiscernible atop a typical flag pole.
Tim Nelson | MPR News
This engraved Minnesota state seal, long used in a press for official documents in the Secretary of State's office, may be one of the oldest examples of the the state's official symbol, showing a European settler and a Native American in what has become a controversial depiction of state history.
The central feature of the flag is the state seal. And there actually is such a thing.
Tim Nelson | MPR News
This massive steel press — with a broken handle — was once used to emboss Minnesota's state seal on official documents. The device's lever handle has a broken pivot and has not functioned for years.
It's a 2-inch engraved medallion, mounted on a massive steel hand press in the Secretary of State's office — although the handle is broken, so it doesn't really work anymore. A digitized version is its modern stand in.
But in whatever form, the seal retains some details that critics find increasingly troubling, including the depiction of a Native American on horseback — maybe being driven away, maybe escaping. But usually interpreted as leaving behind a settler at his plow, beside the Mississippi River, a rifle leaning nearby.
"It is very consciously part of the design of the seal to depict the displacement of Native Americans, and I don't think it has any place on our state flag," said DFL state Rep. Mike Freiberg of Golden Valley, author of a bill to redesign both the state flag and the state seal the flag is based on.
‘Not a stretch to call it genocidal’ A poem purportedly penned by Mary Eastman, spouse of the Fort Snelling soldier who designed the seal, offers the decidedly retrograde interpretation of the original image, urging the "red man" to flee all the way to the Pacific coast, leaving white settlers to claim the state's wealth. Military and civilian officials eventually did force hundreds of Native Americans out of the state, in 1863 — killing untold numbers along the way.
Freiberg says that poem lends clear meaning to the seal. "It's not only racist. I don’t think it's a stretch to call it genocidal," he said.
Tim Nelson | MPR News
This is a modern version of Minnesota's state seal, on display at the public counter in the Minnesota Secretary of State's office in St. Paul.
His measure would create a state commission to weigh proposals and make recommendations for a change to the seal and flag by next January. The bill has already had a hearing and is being incorporated into one of the big House bills the legislature will be negotiating in end-of-session conference committees.
DFL Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn of Roseville, herself of Native heritage, says the time has come for a change. She has already opted out of the state seal lapel pin legislators often wear to note their office at the Capitol. And she says digital technology means longstanding barriers to change, like printing and stocks of official letterhead, are easier to overcome.
"I think people have become more comfortable with the idea that change is okay, especially when we might end up with a better product for everybody," she said.
Andrew Krueger | MPR News
The Minnesota state flag flies in the wind on April 21 on the State Capitol grounds in St. Paul.
She also said a good flag, simple and recognizable — like the flags of Arizona and New Mexico — could actually become a familiar logo and statement about the state, even to non-Minnesotans.
Some have pushed the state to adopt the so-called "North Star Flag" — a text-less design with a gold star on a field of blue, white and green.
North Star flag
‘It’s still our flag’ But the idea of making any changes to the flag is at a dead stop in the GOP-controlled Senate, where it won't get a hearing this year.
State government committee chair Mary Kiffmeyer — a former secretary of state who was once the custodian of the official seal — says that with the state just emerging from a historic pandemic, and a $9 billion budget surplus before lawmakers, the state flag is a low priority.
Kiffmeyer also says history didn't stop in 1863: in the Civil War and ever since, thousands of Minnesotans have served under the existing flag, many of them wounded or killed in battle.
"This is our flag. Love it or hate it or whatever you want to think about that, it still is our flag," she said.
Andrew Krueger | MPR News
The Minnesota state flag flies in the wind on April 21 on the State Capitol grounds in St. Paul, with the Capitol dome in the distance.
And she says she's reluctant to involve the legislature in historic reinterpretation.
"If we redesign this, then what next? Where would this stop? 10 years from now? 20 years from now, when somebody else doesn't like that one?" she said.
But supporters, like Sen. Mary Kunesh, a DFLer and the first Native American woman to serve in the state Senate, says it's simply about correcting the symbolic record — that Indigenous Minnesotans did not, in fact, ride away into the sunset.
"Look at how our Native folks have persevered and stayed connected with the culture and the religion and the language, and the land appreciation," she said. "We have been here, we are here, and we're still contributing to the health and wealth of Minnesota."
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For nearly a decade, Tiffany Kingbird went from jail to prison to jail, leaving a trail of charges mostly related to drugs and the property crimes she committed to pay for drugs.
“Your soul gets tired,” said Kingbird, 37, as she spoke recently of her years fighting addiction, and a resulting string of arrests and incarcerations. “Just that lifestyle, going in and out of jail and just having nothing, always having nothing. Just coming out and picking back up where you left off, because you didn't have nowhere to go.”
That downward spiral is deeply rooted in the historical poverty, generational trauma and persistent judicial system bias against Indigenous people in Minnesota. The data around Native women is especially startling. They make up less than 1 percent of Minnesota’s overall population but are 20 percent of the state's female prison inmates.
While many of the crimes that lead to jail or prison time are relatively small-time offenses — stealing, drug use, failure to show for a court date — the consequences of incarcerating Native women are enormous and cascading: children separated from mothers, metastasizing family poverty, financial and psychological costs that linger for generations.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Natasha Kingbird, right, is the lead coordinator of the Women’s Reentry Program at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center in Bemidji and a vocal proponent of helping incarcerated women heal from trauma.
In Bemidji, Kingbird and other Native women are part of a growing effort to share their stories and break the cycle. A pilot project intended to help women find their economic footing and reconnect to their families spiritual lives offers hope and shows promise. Safe housing is often the first need, and securing that can light the way.
Observers worry permanent change won’t come until Native people are no longer disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system. That fact shows few signs of changing. In Beltrami County, near Minnesota’s three most populous reservations, 70 percent of people arrested on an outstanding warrant over the past five years were American Indian.
‘Eventually, I just gave up’ Themes surface in the stories of many Native women: youthful mistakes that morph into insurmountable hurdles, poverty that couldn’t be overcome, family rifts that wouldn’t heal, addiction and violence that fell on them and those they love.
Tiffany Kingbird was raised mostly by her grandmother while her parents struggled with addiction. She recalls a “pretty good childhood” growing up on the Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, going to school and traveling with family to powwows.
Things changed in her late teens when a family member brought her cocaine, opening the door to a persistent drug habit. Her life was upended about 10 years ago, she said, by the death of her grandmother, the person she leaned on most.
“When I lost her, everybody lost me,” Kingbird recalled.
She survived violent relationships. She was homeless. Her drug addiction deepened.
“I was pregnant with my baby. And I couldn't quit, so I did drugs through my pregnancy with my youngest one,” Kingbird said. “And they took her right from the hospital when I had her.”
Reconnecting with her daughters, ages 18 and 10, has been a primary motivation for Kingbird to maintain sobriety for the past three years.
“The only time my kids ever heard from me is when I was locked up. And I was sick of saying the same shit, promising stuff that I wasn't gonna do,” she said. “So this last time around, I was like, ‘I'm gonna get out. And I'm just going to show them’, and I'm still doing it.”
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Billie Mountain’s world changed in March 2005 when a teenager shot and killed seven people at the Red Lake High School where she worked.
Dan Gunderson | MPR News
Billie Mountain is working to rebuild her life after drug and alcohol abuse led to incarceration.
“I think it kind of broke me. I don't know, I’ve never talked about it,” said Mountain, 51, as she choked back tears during an interview.
Born in Minneapolis and raised on the Red Lake Reservation, she was “doing what was expected,” raising a family and working.
Soon after the school shooting, she left Red Lake and moved to Bemidji, intending to return to college. Looking back, she believes she was just escaping the trauma of the school shooting.
After life on the isolated reservation, she wasn’t prepared for life in a community where eight in 10 people are white.
“It’s only 30 miles, but you move to Bemidji and it’s like you’re in another world,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, I gotta come to Bemidji and be white now.’”
“It’s intimidating,” she said. “And then you don't think you are good enough. Or you have to work extra hard to be able to get anywhere.”
The stress led to increased alcohol use, she said, and her first arrest was for drunk driving. Then a new relationship brought her into a circle of people using and selling illegal prescription drugs. That led to more encounters with the justice system.
“I got my kids taken away from me, I lost my house, I lost my job, I had to go to court, and I ended up in jail,” said Mountain.
Mountain shares with other Native women a sense the system is stacked against them, that no one hears them when they ask for help.
After getting out of jail, she struggled to get her kids back from foster care, unable to navigate a system she didn’t understand.
“Depression, anxiety was to the roof,” she said. “And eventually, I just gave up. OK, I'll just go get high, because it's easier,” she said.
Mountain now has a job, her kids are back home, and she’s sober, thanks to support from a local nonprofit organization.
“When I look back on my life, I know where it went wrong was when I was feeling weak, or hopeless, or lost,” she said.
‘We have to take you to jail’ American Indians are often excluded from data comparing incarceration rates based on race.
There are many reasons, including overlapping jurisdictions, differences between tribal justice systems and federal government policies that make data collection difficult, according to the National Institute of Justice.
But available data shows the disproportionate incarceration of American Indians is striking across the justice system.
American Indians are just over one percent of Minnesota’s population, but American Indian women make up about 20 percent of the inmates at Minnesota’s only women’s prison in Shakopee, and American Indian men make up about nine percent of the overall prison population in the state, according to DOC data.
The racial disparity is evident at an early age. Nearly half of the 62 incarcerated Native women interviewed through a project funded by a federal grant reported being arrested more than 10 times before age 18.
The Northwestern Minnesota Juvenile Center in Bemidji housed juveniles from 38 counties last year, but almost 60 percent came from Beltrami, Cass and Itasca, counties near reservations.
American Indian youth were 58 percent of the females and 44 percent of the males housed there, according to the center’s annual report.
Beltrami County is adjacent to three tribal nations located in northern Minnesota. The most recent census data shows about 22 percent of the county population is American Indian.
They are disproportionately represented in the courts and the county jail. From 2017 to 2022, 70 percent of people arrested on an outstanding warrant in Beltrami County were American Indian, according to data collected by the sheriff’s office. For the same five-year period, 53 percent of those arrested for non-warrant offenses were American Indian.
Dan Gunderson | MPR News
A corrections officer books an inmate at the Beltrami County Jail.
While there is relatively little research on American Indians in the justice system, a recently published peer reviewed study found there is a financial cost for being Native in the Minnesota judicial system.
Researchers analyzed five years of court cases, examining the legal financial obligation imposed by criminal courts.
“We found that Native American defendants had the highest debt load per case, compared to any other racial group,” said University of Maryland assistant professor Robert Stewart.
Researchers found rural counties, and especially those in Indian Country, were more punitive.
“It is when they're in counties that overlap with reservations [or] that are in close proximity to reservations, that they actually receive the highest average fines and fees than any other group,” said Stewart.
Researchers wrote that the average outstanding legal debt for Native defendants was “more than 80 percent higher than the next highest racial group and more than four times higher than the average debt for white defendants.”
“The counties that really stick out, we're talking about Beltrami, we're talking about Becker, Mahnomen, Mille Lacs County, Cass County,” said Stewart. “These are all counties that have large reservations, or at least are in close proximity to large reservations.”
University of Minnesota doctoral student Brieanna Watters was part of the research team, and heard the stories about the economic impact of legal debt when people have no way to pay.
“What these cases demonstrate is just how compounding fines and fees are, especially for the marginalized people and the poor. They can be very devastating for people and entire communities,” said Watters.
American Indians have the highest poverty rate — 31 percent — of any racial group in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.
The researchers argue in their paper that disproportionate legal debt is an extension of previous government programs such as assimilation, relocation and boarding schools that were intended to break up Indigenous families and communities.
“There's an evolution from targeting the Native collective as a community, to targeting or subjugating individual Native people,” said Watters.
Researchers also interviewed defendants, judges, attorneys and probation officers about the legal, financial disparities they found.
“It was common for judges, prosecutors, and probation officers we interviewed to candidly assert that Native American defendants did not experience racialized disadvantage in the criminal legal system in their jurisdiction,” they wrote.
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Beltrami County Attorney David Hanson said his office doesn’t track race data on those charged with crimes, and he rejects the idea the justice system is biased.
“I don't see direct evidence of explicit bias,” he said. “I'm going to prosecute each crime. To seek justice. That's what I do.”
Hanson said he was not aware of disproportionate rates of incarceration for Native women, but he would not be surprised “given the demographics of the county” where American Indians make up about 22 percent of the population.
“However, if it is statistically unproportionate, or if there's some sort of underlying racial component that is driving it, well, then it would be concerning,” he said.
He sees reducing drug abuse as the key to reducing incarceration rates.
Hanson points to local efforts, including a recently created drug court, but those efforts are limited by lack of resources in one of the poorest counties in Minnesota.
“You know, we're going to put every resource we have available at it, but we don't have a lot of the resources, so it becomes a larger societal question,” Hanson said. “What does the state of Minnesota want to do with this? We're all ears when it comes to solutions, we just need help to implement them.”
Dan Gunderson | MPR News
Beltrami County chief deputy Jarrett Walton stands for a photo in the county jail on March 18.
Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office chief deputy Jarrett Walton is very aware that American Indians are disproportionately represented in arrests. He compiled the data showing 70 percent of people arrested on an outstanding warrant in the county were American Indian.
“A lot of times there's transportation issues, you know, you can't get to your court hearings. Thus, they issue a warrant for your arrest. If you have a warrant, of course, the court says we shall arrest you. So we have to take you to jail,” he said.
Many of those arrests happen because of traffic stops for minor violations. A broken tail light, or a burned-out headlight. Poverty is an underlying factor, said Walton, and the county recently started a voucher program to help pay for minor repairs like a broken tail light, with the intent of reducing those traffic stops.
Beltrami County recently started a program that has a social worker working in the jail, helping connect inmates with services that can help them be successful when they leave the jail.
“This reset program meets them exactly where they're at,” said jail administrator Calandra Allen.
“Some days, you know, if you were battling depression for six months, and you got out of bed and put one step in front of the other, that's a success for that person that day,” she said.
Walton, who's a candidate this year to succeed retiring Sheriff Ernie Beitel, hopes to expand that program, but funding remains a hurdle.
“It comes down to the almighty dollar,” said Walton, who added that the county is looking for creative solutions to add another two or three social workers needed to meet demand in the jail.
“Just so we can provide [inmates] what they need on the outside and help them so they don't have to come back here (to jail),” he said.
The county is also working to restart cultural programs, shuttered by COVID-19 restrictions, where volunteers provide cultural and spiritual counsel to Native American inmates.
County officials are in preliminary discussions about building a new jail, and tribal leaders are part of the steering committee. Walton said those discussions include the need for more space and programming for culturally specific activities.
‘Give them back to the community’
Dan Gunderson | MPR News
Natasha Kingbird leads the initiative at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center in Bemidji to help women who have been incarcerated rebuild their lives.
Natasha Kingbird has been in the place where hope is elusive, and she’s using the experience to provide support for Native women trying to overcome the sense that no one cares.
She leads the reentry program at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center in Bemidji where Billie Mountain, Tiffany Kingbird and other women come for support, and help navigating the system. The Kingbirds are relatives.
“I’ve dedicated a lot of time to help women to be looked at as equal and not as ‘Oh they're just a criminal, they ain’t going to amount to nothing,’” Natasha Kingbird said.
The 40-year-old knows about the struggles incarcerated women face. She recalls “a really nice life,” until at age 10 her great grandmother died and her parents split up.
She spent time in foster care, and the Northwest Juvenile Detention Center in Bemidji, where a disproportionate number of children in custody are American Indian.
“I didn't know what I wanted, and I was lost,” she recalled. “I was a young girl trying to figure out what I wanted, not having any guidance and feeling like nobody cared.”
She survived domestic abuse and spent time in jail. Reconnecting with her Anishinaabe culture gave her a new identity, focus and strength. Now she starts every day asking herself what she can do to help other Native women make the same connection.
“You know, I've never experienced this sense of pride,” she said. “I can say that I'm really proud to be Anishinaabe and I'm proud to be a woman who has experienced the same stuff as all these other women. You know, we're smart, and we're gifted, and we just have to find it.”
She’s become a leading advocate for a unique project designed to help incarcerated Native women regain their place in the community.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
During the ongoing discussion about the outside space of the Healing House project, some women suggested a garden where sacred plants can grow but where they also can grow and process their own food.
This month, a pilot project called the Healing House opened in a three bedroom home in Bemidji, and work is underway to raise funds for a much larger facility. The home is leased by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, but the program will be run by the local community.
Bemidji was selected for the pilot project because of its location near the three most populous reservations in the state, and the fact that 40 percent of the Native women incarcerated by the state return to northwestern Minnesota when they are released.
In 2017, the Minnesota Department of Corrections received a $900,000 federal grant to help address violence against women.
The agency collaborated with the Northwest Indian Community Development Center and other nonprofit groups to focus on examining how to help Native women who are disproportionately incarcerated, and more likely to be victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
As part of the project, 62 women either in the Minnesota women's prison in Shakopee, or who had been incarcerated in the past five years, were interviewed in 2019 and 2020 before COVID-19 restrictions ended the interviews.
Nearly nine in 10 of the women said they were dependent on drugs or alcohol. Three-fourths reported mental illness, and 97 percent reported being victims of violence and abuse before they were incarcerated.
A long list of recommendations for change came out of the project. They include equal access to spiritual advisors and ceremonies in prison, helping women stay connected with children while they are incarcerated, and improved cultural training for prison staff.
But the top issue was safe, supportive housing after release from prison or jail and that’s the first challenge to be addressed through the Healing House model, a concept based on Indigenous cultural and spiritual teachings.
While many correctional release programs focus on helping inmates find housing and get a job, the priority of this model is to help the women heal from trauma.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Liz Richards with the Minnesota Department of Corrections talks about the Healing House project during a meeting in Bemidji on April 7.
“That's the whole focus really, about the Healing House. If you can't address that trauma, then everything else is not going to be successful,” said Liz Richards, the corrections department’s director of victim services and restorative justice.
“I am confident that it is going to be far and above more successful than previous models.”
Richards said this model appears to be the first of its kind in the country.
If the program is successful, it might well be because the department is ceding control to the women who have lived the trauma they seek to heal.
That reflects a significant shift in thinking, according to Nikki Engel, policy and legal systems program manager with Violence Free Minnesota, a nonprofit that’s part of the project.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Nikki Engel with Violence Free Minnesota talked about how gratifying it is to see support for the Healing House during a meeting about the project in Bemidji.
“Government can pay for things like this and they don't need to own them,” she said. “Give them back to the community because the community knows best what is needed to break these cycles and to support the people in their community.”
The data showing disproportionate incarceration rates for Native women in Minnesota is not new. But the stories those 62 women told have shifted the narrative within the Department of Corrections, said Richards.
“Statistics are something that appeals to the head, the stories appeal to the heart. I can give you statistics all day long about disproportionality within the system. We all know those,” she said. “The difference is to hear those stories that really touch people's hearts. I think there are plenty of people who care and who have cared for a long time, but have not known what to do.”
The Healing House project is a first small step toward building trust with Indigenous communities, said Richards.
Addressing the array of issues that contribute to the disproportionate incarceration rates will require a much broader long-term response.
‘Feel like me again’
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
No decision about a site for the Healing House has been made yet. Ideally, according to the women who participated in the listening sessions, it will be on tribal land between Bemidji and Red Lake, not in an urban environment but with a lot of trees and walking areas.
A group of women recently spent a few days meeting with architects in Bemidji, offering insights on what they would want from the Healing House model.
There’s currently no funding in place to build the design they came up with, but Gov. Tim Walz has included money in his budget to fund a project manager for three years. That funding still needs legislative approval.
Community member Renee Gurneau told assembled local and state officials that just adding a cultural component to programs designed for non-Native people will not be successful.
“But what really works for us is having culture based [programs], rather than having a white system with some culture thrown at it,” she said, as women around the room nodded in agreement. “To really be who we were created to be is guaranteed success.”
Northwest Indian Community Development Center administrator Martin Jennings urged local officials gathered to learn about the Healing House project to think of the formerly incarcerated women gathered around the table in the center of the room as valued community members.
“Think of the women we’re trying to support here as our sisters, our aunties, our grandmothers and mothers. We’ve got to think differently about how we value and see each other in this community,” he said.
Jennings is optimistic, he sees a new level of communication and collaboration with local officials in Bemidji and Beltrami County.
At a recent Bemidji City Council meeting, council members and the mayor expressed support for the Healing House project.
That included Audrey Thayer, the first Native American woman elected to the Bemidji City Council. She’s confident the Healing House will help women find a path that leads them away from the justice system’s revolving door. She thinks the system continues to punish people long after they are released.
Monika Lawrence for MPR News
Bemidji City Council member Audrey Thayer speaks during a conversation about the Healing House project in Bemidji on April 7.
It’s like the path now goes straight uphill,” she said. “You paid for what happened in your life, you served some time, you made a mistake. When do we start looking at reconciliation and redemption of a human being in our society?”
Thayer, a long-time community activist and an instructor at the Leech Lake Tribal College, said it’s important to acknowledge the generations of trauma in Indian Country that need to be unraveled.
“It's easier to explain it as a very serious dysfunction that the U.S. government did, trying to mold us into something we weren't by stripping us of who we were,” said Thayer.
“I think we have about three generations of really crazy behavior by the federal government,” she said. “Relocations, assimilation programs, boarding schools, and when you strip somebody of who they are, their values, and you take that all away, you have an empty shell.”
To be successful Thayer believes, reentry programs need to restore those cultural values, filling the empty shell with a sense of identity and purpose.
Tiffany Kingbird is now working at a chemical dependency treatment facility. She’s also trying to rebuild her credit after amassing thousands of dollars in court fees and fines she couldn’t pay.
She credits traditional ceremony and culture with rebuilding her sense of self after more than a decade spent sliding to the depths of addiction and despair.
“I feel complete,” she said. “I don't know how to explain it. I just feel whole, like me again.”
- Full series North Star Journey
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
During the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd, members of the Little Earth Protectors, a Minneapolis neighborhood patrol, were caught between protestors and law enforcement. Two years later, residents of Little Earth are trying to improve the safety of the area, but they say trust in law enforcement is a work in progress. A recent report leaves unanswered who fired so-called less lethal munitions at people permitted to patrol their neighborhood.
“Nobody's apologized. So it makes us feel like they don't really care,” said Jolene Jones, who was a lead organizer of the Little Earth Protectors.
Little Earth of United Tribes is an urban housing development for people from as many as 32 distinct tribal nations.
Photo gallery * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Little Earth on Sunday, April 10, 2022 in Minneapolis. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Little Earth on Sunday, April 10. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Little Earth of United Tribes is an urban housing development. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
George Neadeau, AIM patrol member opens his arms during an interview at Little Earth of United Tribes on April 15. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
An AIM patrol member stands guard at Little Earth of United Tribes. * Kerem Yücel for MPR News
AIM patrol members gather at Little Earth of United Tribes on April 15.
In the days following the murder of Floyd by police, community members in Minneapolis called on relatives from a northern Ojibwe community who work as EMTs.
Leech Lake EMT Jeff Harper remembers seeing Little Earth Protectors meet protestors attempting to march through Little Earth.
“There's probably about 50 community members…mostly women and younger people. And they just…locked arms and said go back to back to where you're coming from. And they didn't realize it but National Guard and law enforcement were coming up on each side of them,” Harper said.
Mayor Jacob Frey’s office had granted the protectors and other community patrols an exemption from curfew, but officers fired hard foam rounds and chemical munitions. Little Earth protectors say at least two people were injured.
An outside review of state enforcement action during the unrest does not specifically indicate who did the firing. Officials with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety declined an interview request.
‘We were just witnesses’
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Jolene Jones looks on outside the Little Earth on April 10.
Jolene Jones said Little Earth Protectors choose to engage the community in ways that police haven’t. In one instance, working to earn the trust of youth at Little Earth who like to hang out on the footbridge that crosses over Cedar Avenue.
At first, youth were distrustful of adults carrying walkie talkies, who could be talking with police. Jones said patrols would turn up the volume so the younger people could hear the civilians talking with each other.
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
AIM patrol member No Face burns wood and smudge before starting patrolling at Pow Wow Grounds parking lot on, April 15.
“We kept telling them…we were just witnesses. We're here to keep the community safe,” said patrol member Jackie Neadeau, president of the Little Earth Resident Association. Neadeau also works with the American Indian Movement Patrol.
Kerem Yücel for MPR News
Jackie Neadeau looks on outside Little Earth on Sunday, April 10 in Minneapolis.
American Indian Movement chairman Frank Paro has patrolled the Phillips neighborhood. Paro would like Minneapolis police to commit more resources within the police department’s 3rd Precinct.
“I'd like to see more … beat cops,” Paro said. “More police athletic leagues, where they're interacting with the youth in the community.”
Mike Goze, CEO of American Indian Community Development Corporation, said the city let them know where community patrols would be most needed during the unrest, along parts of Franklin Avenue. Now he worries about the shortage of officers.
“I think the key for any community is, is presence, you know, you gotta be there,” Goze said.
Five minutes of basketball Sandra Corona, a Little Earth Patrol member, says she would like to see Minneapolis Police return to Little Earth to do more outreach with youth.
“They used to play basketball here,” Corona said, “Just that little five or ten minutes makes their day.” Corona said.
Inspector Jose Gomez heads the 3rd Precinct where Little Earth is located. Gomez said he’s working to re-create partnerships at Little Earth. He said officers used to socialize and learn more about Native American culture.
“We used to do one barbecue a year at Cedar fields, they would have a homework club where the officers would help [kids] with homework,” Gomez said. “I want to get back to that. I mean, when is that going to happen? I don't know. But it's a goal of mine to get back where we were.”
Jones, the Little Earth protector, said during the unrest a lack of communication on the city’s part may have compromised the trust people had in law enforcement. Despite that, she hopes Little Earth residents and Minneapolis Police can begin rebuilding their relationship.
“It's going to be…one step at a time and meeting needs and seeing if getting back to us feeling like they care about us, care about our community, care about our future,” Jones said.
“It's easy to break that bond and trust. It's hard to build it.”
Survey
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- Series North Star Journey
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For centuries, food and eating have helped connect lives and cultures. As part of the North Star Journey project, MPR News reached out to Twin Cities food writer Mecca Bos to share some stories about iconic cultural dishes and around how the rituals of making and eating food can pull people together.
Me and my friend Jeremy Moran bonded over tamales.
Katie Myre, who knew us both, recognized our shared love of tamales. She introduced us, and bam, now we love each other. We make tamales together, and it makes us closer. That’s just how tamales work.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Jeremy Moran helps Mecca Bos with a torn corn husk during a tamale rolling gathering Sunday, March 27, 2022.
Jeremy was born and raised in the Bronx, and arrived in Minnesota in 2015 to follow a relationship. Then he got a great job. Then he got married. They bought a house, so this is his home now.
But without a true taste of his other home, he was too homesick to really call Minnesota home.
So he called his mom, and started asking her about her cooking. And the cooking of her mom. And through the act of making masa wrapped in corn husk, he started to feel better.
“I want to continue this not only for me, but for her,” Jeremy remembers of those first phone calls. “To have those moments of when I was first learning how to make tamales and FaceTiming her from Minnesota and just being like, ‘Hey, how does this look? This is my masa!’ And with not very good connection or video quality, she could look at it and be like, ‘You forgot the lard didn’t ya?’ And I was just like, ‘Yes, I did. You're right. I'm gonna go fold some in right now!’”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Mecca Bos mixes her masa to the right consistency during a tamale rolling gathering Sunday.
Jeremy talked as I joined him, Katie, and another friend — Chef Sean Sherman of Minneapolis Indigenous restaurant Owamni — to make up a batch of tamales.
It’s about as iconic a Mexican dish as there is: corn masa mixed with lard and stock, wrapped around meat, veggies or cheese, then wrapped again in corn husk or banana leaf and steamed. Usually, it’s a community effort with family and friends coming together to make dozens upon dozens at a time.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Jeremy Moran adds red sauce to a pork adobo tamale while Chef Sean Sherman watches.
“That’s how you get all the chisme,” says Jeremy.
“Chisme” means gossip in Spanish.
And yes, while you roll tamales, it’s the perfect time to laugh, talk, gossip and bond.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Jeremy Moran and Katie Myhre eat chips and Oaxaca cheese with the red sauce left after all the tamales were rolled.
“It truly is a lot better with people,” said Jeremy. “It is. Traditionally, it's an assembly line. There’s a hierarchy within the making process. Which is like, the younger kids who aren't mixing the masa or cooking anything, you make them clean the corn husk and just make sure it's all soaked so that it can actually be used for the tamale making process.”
Making food like tamales together is like a language, perhaps offering an even more intuitive or visceral communication than speaking to one another. It’s a story, a history, a culture. It’s a family lineage that can be passed along even when words or other histories might fail or be lost.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Mecca Bos and Jeremy Moran add masa to their corn husks.
To me and Jeremy, tamales are a perfect snapshot of this phenomena.
“It’s all about connecting as a first generation Mexican American,” Jeremy said. “It's all about connecting to that motherland, connecting to my mom's culture, connecting to what she experienced, what my grandma experienced and so on and so forth. You can always work towards that. It's just something that you invest in, and it pays forward, you know?”
I do know.
Making the tamales * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Jeremy Moran pours broth while Mecca Bos mixes her masa to the right consistency. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Mecca Bos rolls a Oaxaca-style tamal, which is rolled in banana leaves instead of corn husks. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Mecca Bos adds red sauce to a pork adobo tamale. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Katie Myhre rolls a tamale.
While it might be easier to just get together at a bar and grab a beer, the extra work and effort that it takes to roll a hundred tamales pays forward in ways that go beyond the bonding experience of accomplishing this task together. Jeremy calls tamales “love in a cornhusk.”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Rows of tamales wait to be transferred to a steaming pot during a tamal rolling gathering Sunday, March 27, 2022.
Meaning that, when we are finished with the task, after all the tamales are stacked inside of the pot and steamed, cooled, and wrapped into foil destined for the freezer, we can pass them along to friends and family until the freezer is empty.
Then it’s time for another session. Those people can really taste that love, and they’ll be looking forward to the next batch.
“For me, this was holidays, birthdays — this was very special,” Jeremy remembers of the tamales of his childhood. “And then when I learned that “Oh my God, this is so much work — then it just became even more special to share with my friends and be like, ‘Hey, this is what I did for you.’”
And what tamales do for me and for Jeremy — this shared ritual — is help us cut out imagined borders and bloodlines, and make family out of our friendship.
“I still remember my first attempt at making it over here. I made it with a friend that I had from work. And being a person who moved into Minnesota — making friends wasn't always easy. But being able to say, ‘Hey, let's do this together.’ We got to know each other better.”
Tamales have no time for imagined boundaries.
More on food and culture * Minnesota cookbook Mesoamerican history, culture and food together * Sean Sherman Teaching Indigenous food traditions as cultural preservation * 'Taste like home' Food program offers free, culturally specific meals
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Bishar Hassan’s parents and five siblings had lived as renters in the 16 years since coming to the United States. But their rental house felt increasingly cramped, and when the building’s owner said he was selling, Hassan knew it was time to move.
He helped his family buy a house in north St. Cloud, with a large yard, three bathrooms and at 2,900 square feet, far more space than they had before. Equally important to him, it put them on a path to building wealth.
“When you're renting, you're actually paying someone else's mortgage and you're not really getting anything back,” Hassan said. “But when you own a house, it's an investment for you, and you get that back.”
Owning a home has long been viewed as an economic stepping stone in America, a source of pride that can build generational wealth for families and stability for neighborhoods and cities.
It’s a prize, though, that Minnesota’s new immigrants sometimes find out of reach. While many have the income to buy a home, they face significant challenges, including rising home prices, an extremely tight real estate market and, in some places, prejudices that make them feel unwelcome.
Muslims face another unique barrier: a rule in Islam that prohibits profiting from lending or receiving money. So getting a conventional mortgage that charges interest isn’t permitted.
With St. Cloud’s East African population rising rapidly, finding answers is important to the city’s future. As many as 70 percent of the region’s Somali community lives below the federal poverty line, according to a recent Wilder Foundation report. Home ownership can be a poverty fighter.
‘American dream’ elusive Mohamed Nuh Dahir rented an apartment when he first came to St. Cloud 20 years ago. After he got married and had five children, Dahir said the three-bedroom apartment was getting crowded.
After looking for years for opportunities to buy a home without paying interest, he purchased a five-bedroom house in southeast St. Cloud in 2020 that offers his family more space.
“Everyone is happy,” he said. “Everyone has their own room. They have an area they can play. It’s so different.”
Dahir, who is imam of the Islamic Center of St. Cloud, said he thinks home ownership benefits people of all communities, but especially for Somali families, who tend to be larger and close-knit. He said more families have been looking to buy homes in the past couple of years, and the mosque sometimes offers educational classes on home ownership.
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News 2020
Imam Mohamed Nuh Dahir stands at the Islamic Center of St. Cloud on April 17, 2020.
“One part of Somali culture is we see each other on holidays and we stay together for a couple of nights,” Dahir said. “So it’s important for them to have a home.”
Home ownership rates among St. Cloud’s Somali community, however, are considerably lower than other populations, said Mónica García-Pérez, an economics professor at St. Cloud State University.
She analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and found it’s just 7 or 8 percent — much lower than that of African American or Latino communities, or among white residents.
Because homes tend to increase in value, the lower home ownership rate has likely made it harder for the Somali community to build wealth that can be transferred across generations, García-Pérez said.
“Home ownership — real estate — has been one of the faster growing wealth accumulators in the U.S.,” she said.
Kirsti Marohn | MPR News
Shirwa Adan, executive director of the Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization.
There’s a strong connection between lower home ownership rates and poverty, said Shirwa Adan, executive director of the Central Minnesota Community Empowerment Organization.
“When you are paying $1,500 [a month] for a four-bedroom apartment, that could have been your mortgage,” he said. “But that rent money you’re giving every month, that is not coming back to you in terms of a tax return or even purchasing a piece of your home every month.”
Adan’s group was formed in 2015 by Somali elders to help the East African community bridge language and cultural barriers to applying for jobs and housing, navigating the health care system and starting businesses.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has helped many families get rent support, Adan said. But lately, a growing number of families are interested in buying homes.
“If you own a home and it takes you 30 years to pay it off, after 30 years, your kids have a place they can call home,” he said. “I think it’s really a huge aspect of building wealth and getting into that American dream of having your family sustain and not pay rent every month, because they have something that they own.”
‘Nobody had savings’ New immigrant families, however, often face other obstacles to home ownership, including a lack of knowledge of the real estate process, and language barriers that make the already-complex paperwork even more daunting.
And after years of renting, many families don’t have the savings for a down payment on a home, said Johanna Osman, executive director of the Sakan Community Resource, a Twin Cities nonprofit.
“They were living paycheck to paycheck, maybe,” she said. “And so nobody had savings. And because of all those years of avoiding using credit, they had no credit score.”
Since starting in 2017, Sakan has raised money from the community to provide down payment assistance for about 350 families, Osman said. It also offers financial literacy and homeowner readiness programs, and recently expanded those to central Minnesota.
- Financial education in schools Helping reduce economic disparities
Many families go through Islamic financing companies to get a no-interest loan, but there are also predatory lenders who are purchasing houses and offering them for sale by contract for deed, Osman said.
“The community doesn't understand that with a contract for deed, yeah, there's no interest. But if something happens, like COVID, in the middle of it, you don't own anything,” she said. “You don't own that house until you pay your last payment.”
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Existing homes in the Lake George neighborhood are an attractive option for first time home buyers in St. Cloud.
Adan said some local real estate agents have been selling homes on a contract for deed, giving families 10 years to pay the cost instead of 30 years like a traditional mortgage. The monthly payments are often high, and the homebuyer usually is required to pay additional money at the end of every year, he said.
Ten years is a long time for something to go wrong in a family’s life that could leave them unable to make those payments, Adan said. If the buyer is unable to make the lump sum payment at the end of the year, the seller could take back the home.
“A lot of people in our community do not want to go to maybe Wells Fargo and get a mortgage, even though they might have the credit and the financial means to do so,” Adan said. “They’re not able to take that loan with interest.”
Farhan Jibril grew up in a Somali American family in St. Cloud, and now works as a real estate agent, helping other Somali families navigate the homebuying process.
David Schwarz | The St. Cloud Times
Farhan Jibril poses for a photo in the ReMax offices in St. Cloud on Friday, Sept. 21, 2021.
For families planning to stay in St. Cloud for the long term, owning a home rather than renting makes sense, he said, and can also help them get loans for college or to start a business.
“I think initially, just building that generational wealth for your kids,” Jibril said. “If you’re a parent, the most important thing should be, ‘How do I put my kids in a better position 20 years from now?’”
There are other less tangible benefits to home ownership for Somalis, who have faced some hostility since first settling in central Minnesota two decades ago. Owning a home makes it easier for neighbors to get to know one another, Jibril said.
- Community conversation What it is like to be Somali in St. Cloud
- As state considers repairs to I-94 Rondo residents look for reconnection
“Because not only are you paying taxes, but you're also becoming a part of the community,” he said. “You're doing your lawn. You're also getting to know your neighbor, taking them some Somali foods and traditional foods, teaching them about the religion. And they also see how you live.”
‘Making Minnesota their home’
Paul Middlestaedt for MPR News
Many single family dwellings are being constructed across the street from St. Cloud Tech High School.
Beyond homebuying, the St. Cloud region still struggles to meet the housing needs of many of its new residents.
It’s often difficult for immigrant families to find four- or five-bedroom apartments in central Minnesota that are large enough to accommodate families with several children, Adan said.
“So if you have six or seven kids, when they are 3, 4 or 5 years old, or even elementary, it is kind of OK to have them in the same room,” Adan said. “But at some point, the landlord is going to tell you … ‘Hey, you have too many people.’”
In St. Cloud, families sometimes have more luck finding a house than an apartment with the needed space. That’s what Bishar Hassan discovered when he secured a home in north St. Cloud for his parents and siblings.
Hassan, 36, was able to overcome Islam’s prohibition against interest by securing a no-interest mortgage through an Islamic-approved, or halal, financing service.
While there are different types of arrangements, they typically are structured as a partnership between the homebuyer and the financing company. The homebuyer makes monthly payments to the financing provider, increasing their investment in the home over time.
Although Hassan’s parents and siblings moved into their new house in February, he still lives in an apartment with his wife and their two young children.
They have enough space for now, but Hassan would like to move into a house himself someday, and he believes more in the East African community will be looking for opportunities to do the same as they work to grow their families and put down roots.
“I think in the long run,” he said, “it shows you that people are making Minnesota their home, which is a good thing.”
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
For "Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota," Chad Montrie, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, researched how white Minnesotans used legal and illegal means to prevent people of color from coming to the state, to drive them out or segregate them.
Montrie spoke with MPR News editor Brandt Williams. The interview has been edited.
Montrie: Whiteness, the way that I'm describing, is what is achieved from racial exclusion. And so I don't mean it in an abstract conceptual or philosophical sense, but the actual result or consequence of white people excluding African Americans, or at least keeping them contained in an area in a town or particular place in a city.
Is whiteness the same as white supremacy? No, I don't think it's the same as white supremacy. But people's ideas about themselves as a race, I think, in the case of white people thinking of themselves as at the top of some kind of racial hierarchy is what motivates them or what's prompting them to practice racial exclusion.
How do you go from the history of exclusion in Minnesota, to the current disparities that we see today? What that [exclusion] means for white people oftentimes is that they have certain privileges that come with it. They have access to better-funded schools, they maybe are more connected in terms of social networks that allow them to have some kind of social economic mobility. And they also can buy houses, which over a course of several generations means they're building up home equity, which is federally subsidized, and they're gaining economic mobility that way. And that means that they're going to have more wealth after that many generations in comparison to African Americans who are the people denied that kind of access to homeownership.
With segregated neighborhoods, you have segregated schools, how did that impact the current disparities that we see in education? Well, I guess maybe my way of connecting racial exclusion to disparities in education now is more like in terms of where people live and what kind of funding the schools get in the places where they live. And also what kind of wealth does a family have and what does that wealth mean in terms of enabling them to provide a better education for their kids or to survive or to get through hardships? So if somebody has a serious medical issue or health problem in a family, does that bankrupt the family? Or does the family make it through because they can draw on that wealth that they've acquired through time in terms of having a history in the generations preceding, of homeownership?
What’s an example of how racial restrictive covenants were used to exclude Black people? The Minneapolis suburb of Edina was originally an interracial farming village, sort of a rare example of African Americans and whites living together and not only just living adjacent to one another, but being actually integrated. Black people were involved in the Grange (an early farmer’s union); involved in schools, involved in governments, people socializing together. But as people sold off their farmland for suburbs, the Thorpe brothers who developed the Country Club district put racial restrictive covenants on all of their houses, which said that that property couldn't be sold to someone who was not Caucasian. The only African American residents allowed were domestic workers for those households.
Courtesy of Edina Historical Society
A blackface minstrel show held at Edina High School in the 1950s.
In the beginning of the book, you describe how violence determined where people of color could live. There are different examples where whites used violence to either remove African Americans who were there, and then also having used violence, having a reputation in that community that this is what could happen if anyone tries to violate the color line again. So in Austin, for instance, there's a railroad workers strike in the 1920s. White strikebreakers were there and white people didn't run the strikebreakers out of town until the Black strikebreakers showed up. The newspaper in Austin reports that people were saying to the crowd, “Do you want your town to be a Negro town?” And so that is as much about removing African Americans than it is trying to support the strike.
Are there other names of people that you came across that you feel like, 'more people should know about this person?'
Courtesy Photo from Carter family
Matthew Carter (right) and his family, Tony (left) Bill, Kai, and Helen in a family portrait. Carter faced discrimination as he tried to buy property and build a house along the lakeshore in Duluth.
Matthew Carter in Duluth. And people will know more about him because he and his wife were part of an effort to desegregate an area along the lakeshore in Duluth.
Carter, who moved to Chicago from Georgia, married his wife, and then they moved to Duluth. He was working on a lake boat. They decided that they wanted to move from the apartment they originally moved to but they can't get anything to rent. [White people] would just tell him, ‘No, I'm not renting my apartment to you.’ Or they would just not answer the door.
Carter decided to buy some land that he liked. The guy that was selling the land, who was white, would not sell it to him. So then he got a straw purchaser, a local white minister to buy [the property] on London Road.
Then he tried to get the permit to build a house on the land. The neighbor organized to stop him by saying it would cause ‘traffic problems.’
He persisted. People stole the plywood. That slowed him down a little bit. They finally built the house. And there were a couple of cases during the night in the next couple of years where whites came and spray-painted racist graffiti on his house.
Are there people who pushed back to change laws or policies?
Courtesy of University of MN Archives
Josie Johnson as a member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents during a meeting in 1972.
Well, the most important is Josie Johnson, who really is the reason why there was a fair housing law in 1961. There were people who had been organizing to get fair housing legislation in Minneapolis, as well as St. Paul, to have local municipal legislation. And that wasn't really going anywhere, mostly because the city attorneys were coming back with reports saying that if you said that someone couldn't discriminate on the basis of race or sell their property to whoever they wanted, then you are taking away their property rights.
And Johnson had allies in the state government. And she intervened and got the governor to also intervene with the Senate committee that's holding the [fair housing] bill. They moved the bill out and the state legislature passed it.
In researching the book, did you come across something that astounded you? I was doing my research in Edina. The archivist brought out an envelope and said, ‘you're gonna want to look at these.’
It was a set of black and white glossy photographs of blackface minstrel shows being performed at the Edina High School in the 1950s. Just seeing these pictures, there's something really shocking about it. There's a way in which I can get wrapped up in the storytelling I'm trying to do and I began to maybe think of it as an abstract thing. And those pictures made what was going on in Edina very real.
Who taught you about money and when?Some of us learned about personal finance from our parents or other adults in our lives. Others learned from teachers in school. And some had to figure it out on their own.
Minnesota doesn’t require that students take a stand-alone course on personal finance before graduating. But more states are beginning to mandate these classes. And advocates say that financial literacy can be a tool to reduce wealth gaps.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two guests who work in economic education and financial literacy.
Guests:
- Julie Bunn is the executive director of the Minnesota Council on Economic Education, an economist and a former state legislator.
Jennifer Garbow is an educator and associate extension professor for the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Family Development.
North Star Journey was made possible in part with funds from the Legacy Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began more than two years ago, reported violence and hate incidents targeting Asian Americans spiked.
The national organization Stop AAPI Hate recorded close to 6,300 reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans in 2021. That’s a 35 percent increase from the year before. And more than half of those hate incidents happened to Asian women.
One-third of Asian Americans say they fear threats and physical attacks, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center.
MPR News host Angela Davis talks with two Asian American women in Minnesota about how they are doing and how their communities are responding.
Guests:
- Naomi Ko is a performer, filmmaker, activist and founding member of Funny Asian Women Kollective.
- Rep. Samantha Vang is a DFL lawmaker in the Minnesota House of Representatives. She represents Brooklyn Center.
Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.
Hodan Hassan lives in one of the most diverse areas in Minnesota.
Her Minneapolis neighborhood includes East Africans, Native Americans, Black people, white people and people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Hassan immigrated from Somalia more than two decades ago. She’s a mental health clinician and a self-described social justice advocate who also represents the area in the Minnesota House as a DFL state representative.
Hassan worries that many of her young constituents and other students around Minnesota are not getting enough information in school about how to manage money.
“I finished high school without knowing anything about personal finances,” said Hassan, 40, who said she learned the hard way.
Mark Zdechlik | MPR News
Rep. Hodan Hassan, DFL-Minneapolis, wants a personal finance course to be a graduation requirement for Minnesota high schoolers.
“I went to college and got myself into a lot of debt, and I thought I was the only person that was struggling with managing personal finances,” Hassan said. “Then I talked to some of my friends who are either immigrants or from communities of color, and I realized that many of us were struggling with this because money is not something that families with lower socio-economics talk about.”
There is no requirement in Minnesota that students take a stand-alone course on personal finance. Hassan is pushing legislation that would require all students to take such a class before graduating.
In Minnesota, communities of color consistently lag the majority white population in income, employment, home ownership and other measures of wealth. There are likely many reasons for that, but Hassan and others believe that educating students about financial literacy may help begin to change it.
Even though there's no mandate, many Minnesota schools offer some personal finance education. But unlike English, science, math, and social studies there are no standards as to what should be taught.
Some schools, including Woodbury High School, offer a course as an elective credit.
Greg Waugh enthusiastically teaches the class, which he said is one of the most popular electives at Woodbury High School.
“When you have an emergency fund in place, all of the other stresses in your life tend to be more minimal,” Waugh explained to his students. “Everything is just less because you've got that money back there as a security blanket to you — knowing if anything goes wrong, you've got something to fall back on.”
Judy Griesedieck for MPR News
Greg Waugh, left, teaches financial literacy to Woodbury High School students in the hope of instructing them how to avoid the pitfalls of debt.
Waugh said his passion for personal finance education is rooted in his own mistakes. Before becoming a teacher Waugh was a high-income salesperson spending more than he earned. He ended up divorced, laid off and broke.
“I think if students understand at a young age, if they're just smart with the income that they have and the money that they have, whether they go to college or whether they don't, they can be fine,” Waugh said. “They can build wealth and they can be happy and do the things they want to in life.”
Classes like Waugh’s are becoming more popular across the country, according to Billy Hensley, the president of the National Endowment for Financial Education.
“People are really waking up to the fact that our financial landscape is much more complicated,” Hensley said. “You know, we went from a society where a majority of workers had access to pensions and so forth. And now we all have to be the CFO of our retirement as well as the CFO of our financial lives.”
Breaking the cycle Businesses have CFOs — Chief Financial Officers — but most of us are on our own when it comes to managing the cost of health care, using credit cards, doing taxes, buying a house or a car, planning for retirement and even having enough money on hand to buy groceries.
John Pelletier, who runs the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College in Vermont, tracks and grades the way personal finance skills are taught in high schools throughout the country.
He applauds Minnesota’s move toward joining more than 10 other states which have imposed personal finance high school graduation mandates. That’s nearly twice as many as five years ago, Pelletier noted.
Like Hassan, Pelletier talks about personal finance education in the context of equity and the cycle of poverty.
“And if you want to break that cycle, I think you've got to get this knowledge to those who I believe need it the most,” Pelletier said. “Who are those who are the poorest? And as the data shows, minorities tend, on average, to be in that poor category. And so they're struggling.”
Supporters of mandating personal finance education for high school students often point to research done by Montana State University economics professor Carly Urban.
By comparing states, Urban has demonstrated when teenagers are taught personal financial management skills, they change their money management behavior for the better.
“So their credit scores are higher after they're required to take financial literacy courses in high school,” Urban said. “Also, they're less likely to be delinquent on any of their outstanding debt, which again, is a good thing. And then a really interesting finding, in my mind, is that for students who go on to post-secondary education, they're borrowing smarter.”
Judy Griesedieck for MPR News
Senior Kenna Smutny listens intently during a high school class taught by Greg Waugh. "Saving is a function of discipline, not about how much money you make”, Waugh tells them.
‘It’s an issue of this era’ Republicans and Democrats are increasingly in rare agreement when it comes to imposing financial literacy requirements for high school graduates.
Last month Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill mandating personal finance education as a graduation requirement after it passed both houses of the Florida Legislature unanimously.
“It’s an embarrassment if our high schools and even our middle schools don't realize that personal finance is very important to the students,” said Minnesota Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton. Even though Erickson supports personal finance education, she was one of two Republicans to vote against the bill in the House Education Committee.
“It's best if we leave it up to the locals instead of mandating it,” Erickson said. “I really honor that local control and think that our districts can make that decision. If we leave this up to districts, they might do a better job.”
Hodan Hassan countered that without a statewide mandate, many young people are going to continue missing out on critical personal finance skills.
“It's a social justice issue. It's an equity issue,” Hassan said. “It’s an issue of this era.”
Editor’s note: The following story contains a derogatory term.
Augustine “Augie” Garcia was born in St. Paul’s west side in 1946. He lived in the West Side Flats until his family moved in 1959.
By the time the neighborhood was torn down, Mexican immigrants had become one of the largest groups living in the West Side Flats.
Despite the years, the memories of the West Side Flats as a vibrant and multiethnic community remain.
Garcia is one of several gentlemen who regularly meet on Tuesday mornings at the Sunlight Restaurant in South St. Paul to talk and reminisce. The men are now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, but to look at them, you would be hard-pressed to guess their real ages.
Growing up in the West Side Flats, they knew of each other and decades later they would come together through mutual acquaintances.
“The West Side Flats was a melting pot as far as I was concerned,” Garcia said.
The West Side Flats was also home to other immigrants. Russian Jews began settling there in the 1880s.
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Aerial view of the Flats, 1953, showing Robert, Wabasha, and railroad bridges and American Hoist and Derrick facilities.
He also was quick to point out that he isn’t that Augie Garcia.
Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
Musician Augie Garcia plays his guitar in 1954.
The other Augie Garcia, who was also from the West Side Flats, is the man who came to be known as the godfather of Minnesota rock-and-roll.
Augie Garcia died in 1999. But he is perhaps best-remembered for nearly upstaging Elvis Presley. In 1956, Elvis performed at the St. Paul Auditorium and the Augie Garcia Quintet was the opening act. News reports recount that Garcia whipped the crowd into such a frenzy that Elvis’ manager had him pulled off the stage.
Despite the passing years, Nick Arenas, who is in his 90s, still recalls the address where he grew up and the spot of the nearby businesses.
“I lived at 167 Fairfield, I moved three times in the same block. On the corner of Fairfield and Eva was the New Ray Theater. And kitty corner to that was Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Across the street from the theater was the Coronado Café,” Arenas said.
Arenas still has fond memories of the Neighborhood House. It was founded in 1897 by women from the Mount Zion Temple. It initially opened to help Russian Jewish immigrants. Later it would be a place of assistance for all immigrants. The West Side Flats was its home for its first 65 years.
“They had a woodshop downstairs in the basement of the Neighborhood House. I built my first pair of skis there,” Arenas said.
Garcia said his family lived on State Street before leaving the Flats in 1959. His grandfather lived on Robertson until leaving a couple years later.
“But there was only two houses on the block — my grandfather’s house and the people who lived across the street,” Garcia said.
Gallery * Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Our Lady of Guadalupe Church stood at 186 East Fairfield. Photo taken 1951. * Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
St. Paul Hebrew Institute on Kentucky Street, 1921. * Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Lafayette School was on the corner of Kentucky and Fenton. It was the only public school in the Flats in 1921. * Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Students at Casa Coronado Restaurant, 154 East Fairfield, 1947.
He also recalled going to Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe on Sundays; and then stopping at the Jewish bakery. They’d buy horns and bagels and then go to his grandfather’s to eat.
“That’s where I also learned how to eat rye bread and pumpernickel. But I did like bagels. And I was having bagels at a young age where most of the time people my age didn’t know what a bagel was,” Garcia said.
Frank Cruz, who is in his late 80s, also grew up and lived in the West Side Flats until they were forced to move. Cruz acknowledges some of the not-so-good memories. He doesn’t shy away from talking about the discrimination Mexicans faced.
Cruz recalled being 5, 6, 7 years old and how he and his siblings would head across the Robert Street bridge with a wagon in tow. They’d go to the warehouses to collect scrap metal. He said that on their way back down, people from the upper part of town would call them names.
“They’d always be criticizing us to go back to Mexico, ‘wetbacks,’ this and that, always had different name calling. But like you say, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words aren’t going to hurt. But they do stick to your head,” Cruz said.
The West Side Flats was not the only place where Mexican immigrants and other newcomers settled.
Swede Hollow — as its name implies — was settled by Swedish immigrants in the 1850s.
Both Swede Hollow and the West Side Flats welcomed immigrant newcomers during the same time period.
Lena Norrman, a senior lecturer in Swedish at the University of Minnesota, has studied Swede Hollow. She said not much is written about Swede Hollow because people were working hard to simply survive. And they didn’t have time to write down their memories, Norrman said.
“It was difficult to find work at the time, especially for the first generation not knowing any English and trying to get into the labor market. So these are not the people who would write down the history,” she said.
Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
Swede Hollow, as it appeared about a century ago.
The homes that made up Swede Hollow were shacks. There were no sewage lines. Outhouses were built over the creek.
The early immigrants who settled in Swede Hollow had one goal, said Norrman.
“The game was to move up to come to the street level. Because if you made it to the street level, then you could disappear into Minneapolis. So, if you started at the very bottom of the creek, that was the worst place ever to live,” Norrman said.
In its nearly 100 years welcoming immigrants, Swede Hollow never had a sewer system. Citing unsanitary conditions, the city of St. Paul ordered the settlement to be burned down in 1956.
- Burning Swede Hollow Why an immigrant community deliberately went up in flames
Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
The burning of Swede Hollow in St. Paul, as photographed by the St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press.
Back across the river, residents of the West Side Flats would also face displacement.
The community was built in a low-lying area that was prone to flooding. The city of St. Paul would eventually use this as a reason to demolish the neighborhood.
A devastating flood hit the area in 1952. In 1956, the city announced it would build Riverview Industrial Park.
By 1962 the last families had left the West Side Flats. And to protect that industrial park, the city built a flood wall.
Cruz has bitter memories about how much — or rather how little — the city paid families for their homes.
“They cheated you. The most people were getting was $6,000, 7,000 for their home,” Cruz said.
Cruz said his brother fought that low-ball price. He recalled how his brother would see houses like his. He’d knock on the door and ask the homeowner the house’s value. He’d also take a photo. His brother eventually went to court, Cruz said.
“The judge looks at him. He said, ‘How much do you want to give you?’ $6,000. And the judge looked at him he says no, you give him $13,000,” Cruz said.
There was a reason it wasn’t higher, he said.
“And the only reason he didn't go more because the city was already saying the reason they're chasing us out of here,” Cruz said. “It's because we live in wetland. It was all wet and all of a sudden 100 years later it's wetland.”
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Tennessee Street in West Side Flats seen during a flood in 1952.
- What should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Vicki Adame covers Minnesota’s Latino communities for MPR News via Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
In the Woodland neighborhood on Duluth’s east side, the average person lives to be more than 90 years old. Six miles away, in the west side’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, the average person lives to be only 69.
Twenty-one years of life, separated by a 12-minute drive.
That data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts into sharp focus the geographical and generational divide separating Duluth's more working class, racially diverse west side above the St. Louis River from the city’s whiter, more prosperous east end, overlooking Lake Superior.
The gaps extend from health to income to housing but are perhaps most evident in education, where graduation rates and test scores are substantially lower at the west side’s Denfeld High School than at East High School, and where recent efforts to redraw school boundaries laid bare the divisions that remain between the two sides of town.
“It’s a justice issue,” said Mary Owen, a Native American physician and professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Duluth who helped found a community group that advocates for equity among the city’s public schools. “This is not a level playing field … if you don’t have the resources because of where you were born.”
Map: Duluth's east and west sides https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qo9hv/3/
There have been significant efforts to close those gaps in recent years.
Owen and other advocates have persuaded school officials to allocate additional funding to western schools.
Efforts within the schools to improve outcomes have begun to bear fruit.
But achievement gaps remain stubbornly persistent. Recent test scores showed 73 percent of East High students scoring proficient in reading, compared to 44 percent of students at Denfeld.
“That shows you the difference in the education that our students are getting from the west side of town in comparison to the east side of town,” said Ebony Hillman, education committee co-chair of the local chapter of the NAACP.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Duluth East High School (foreground) and Northland Country Club (top) as seen on Sunday in Duluth.
Redlining’s legacy The roots of Duluth’s east-west divide can be traced to the city’s industrial boom in the late 1800s, when lumber mills, grain elevators and factories sprouted up along the St. Louis River southwest of downtown.
Those jobs lured low-income, immigrant laborers, who lived in nearby neighborhoods so they could walk to their jobs, said regional historian Tony Dierckins.
Those early factories were powered by coal-fired generators that belched clouds of black smoke into the air. The city’s wealthier residents began migrating east, away from the pollution, where they built large homes and imposing mansions overlooking Lake Superior.
“So you get this wealthy, residential, eastern end of town, and the poor, blue-collar, industrial, lower-income folks on the west part of town,” said Dierckins, who wrote about the east-west divide in his book, “Duluth: An Urban Biography.”
Racial segregation began to take root in the early 1900s when U.S. Steel built a mill along the St. Louis River, and recruited African Americans from the South to work there. They weren’t allowed to live in Morgan Park, the company town U.S. Steel built to house employees, so many instead settled in neighborhoods farther west.
That segregation was further cemented in the 1930s when the federal government evaluated the perceived lending risk in neighborhoods in more than 200 cities, including Duluth.
The maps drawn by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corp. color-coded in red the neighborhoods that were considered the highest risk for lenders.
“They looked at neighborhoods through a very racist perspective,” said Duluth city planner Kathy Wilson, who’s researched redlining in Duluth.
Many of Duluth’s western neighborhoods were infamously “redlined,” either coded red for “hazardous” or yellow for “definitely declining.” They included descriptions such as “occupied by many nationalities of the low income class, including negroes,“ and “foreign industrial workers occupy the area, Italians predominating.”
Even people who were able to buy homes, Wilson said, couldn’t get loans to help maintain them. “And then that legacy is those neighborhoods were not invested in for decades.”
The disparities that exist today between the east and west sides of Duluth are clear reflections of those past policies, Wilson added.
Almost two-thirds of Duluth homes built more than 75 years ago are in western Duluth. More than three-quarters of the city’s Native and Black populations live on the west side. Two-thirds of people living in poverty live in western Duluth. Life expectancy is significantly greater in many eastern neighborhoods.
“It's like they … took a snapshot of the neighborhoods in Duluth in 1936, and said, ‘We're gonna keep it like this,’” Wilson said. “And that's the problem that we now are faced with.”
- An In Focus conversation On equity in education
Equal is not equitable The city’s geographical divide intensified in 2011, when Duluth’s Central High School closed. That left just two public high schools in the city — Denfeld on the west side, and East High.
In the years since, Denfeld’s enrollment has hovered around 1,000 students or fewer, as hundreds of students left for schools in neighboring districts, or for private and charter schools.
East, meanwhile, has grown, and now serves about 1,600 students. That’s created its own challenges, including crowded classrooms and study halls.
But more students also mean added opportunity, including more scheduling options for students to take upper-level courses.
The school district also added a voluntary class period several years ago called “Zero Hour,” after officials canceled a seventh hour of classes because of budget cuts.
Zero Hour is available at both schools. But critics argue it unfairly benefits students from more privileged backgrounds at East because the students have to provide their own transportation.
“What it really did was it widened the opportunity and the educational gap between students,” says Tonya Sconiers, a former assistant principal and principal at Denfeld for 19 years.
Sconiers joined a group of Denfeld parents and teachers in 2017 to push for greater equity between the two high schools. They argued that because students came to Denfeld with greater needs, the school needed additional resources to help them succeed. A system based on equality, where schools receive the same amount of money per pupil, only perpetuates disparities, they said.
“I can honestly tell you that it was an ongoing struggle and battle and challenge to make known the resources that were needed at Denfeld to meet the needs of the students,” Sconiers said.
The equity group eventually convinced the school district to reallocate funding it received for low-income students, to keep a greater percentage of those dollars at schools like Denfeld with higher concentrations of poverty.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Duluth East spanish teacher Kim Kroll Strukel talks to her students during her class on March 18 at East High School.
But Sconiers’ advocacy came at a cost, she said. In 2019, she was fired for, among other reasons, “insubordination" and "inappropriately" using sick leave.
Sconiers sued. In her 52-page federal lawsuit, she argued she was fired for speaking out on equity issues in a district divided by “East vs. West, or, the haves and the have-nots.” She also alleged Duluth schools treated her differently as a Black woman.
The school district denied discriminating against Sconiers. Eventually the two sides settled. Sconiers received $229,000 after attorney’s fees. The district didn’t admit any wrongdoing.
Sconiers, who now works for a statewide group pushing for education equity, said the legal fight helped shine a light on inequities in the system.
Since Sconiers’ firing, Duluth schools have hired new leaders who community members say are committed to addressing equity issues.
- 2021 Advocates call for constitutional amendment to help close state’s achievement gaps
- Inside one Minnesota school district’s battle Over an equity training program
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Duluth Denfeld principal Tom Tusken talks about being an educator at Denfeld High School.
They include Tom Tusken, Denfeld’s principal, who served as assistant principal under Sconiers and was involved with the community equity group.
A former civics teacher, who graduated from Denfeld, met his wife there and lives less than a block away.
Tusken choked up as he talked about Denfeld’s students and the daily hurdles many face.
He said it’s hard to grasp the challenges many of his students face before even showing up at school. Nearly half qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. About a quarter are eligible for specialized education services. Many face trauma at home stemming from mental health issues and other challenges.
“And what really can get to me is the fact that sometimes the only thing that we report on is test scores or graduation numbers, but we don't look at what's behind those,” Tusken said. “What is reported simply is a comparison to our counterpart across town.”
That “counterpart” is East High School, where fewer than 15 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and where test scores and graduation rates consistently outpace Denfeld.
The community, he said, needs to start looking at high school students not as Denfeld kids or East kids, but Duluth kids.
“People have to understand the challenges, so they can then say ‘I'm OK with supporting kids that are not, quote-unquote, my own kids,’” he said.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Duluth Denfeld principal Tom Tusken shakes hands with sophomore Nevaeh Sanders earlier this month at Denfeld High School in Duluth.
Some programs at Denfeld that give students additional emotional, social and academic support have begun to show promise.
One of those, “Check and Connect,” was developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota. At Denfeld, it’s geared toward students of color and those receiving special education services.
Mentors work closely with students to check on their assignments and attendance and identify challenges they’re facing. They also connect with the student’s family and teachers and identify additional resources, including an after-school tutoring program that offers free city bus passes so students have a way to get home.
Since the program began at Denfeld about five years ago, the graduation rate of participating students is 100 percent.
During a recent visit to the school Tusken described “glimmers of hope.” That included the story of a student that morning who received a perfect score on an international studies project.
“This kid doesn’t smile,” Tusken said. “But he actually had a smile on his face.”
“‘I guess I did pretty well,’” the boy told him.
- In Duluth Groups are working to close the 'adventure gap' in ourdoor sports
‘Change is hard’ Despite signs of progress, a proposal two years ago to shift school boundaries to better balance student demographics between East and Denfeld revealed just how entrenched the divide remains.
At a public meeting at East High School, parents reacted furiously, yelling and interrupting presenters.
“I was taken aback,” said Nikolas Bayuk, an east-side father of two who became involved with a Facebook parent group opposed to the proposed boundary changes.
But while he disagreed with how opponents to the changes behaved that night, he shared their point of view. Under some of the proposals, Bayuk’s kids would have been sent to Lincoln Park Middle School and Denfeld on the west side of town.
Bayuk said he wasn’t worried about the quality of education his kids would receive there, but with the hourlong bus ride the change would create.
“It wasn't so much of a concern for our kids being at the, quote-unquote, ‘bad school,’” he said. “It was how long is it going to take for our kids to get to school. We didn't move to the east end of town so our kids would go to school on the west end.”
But the debate over the boundary proposal — and how western schools were often portrayed at those meetings — was frustrating for parents like Lindsay Kern, whose oldest daughter is a freshman at Denfeld.
She said she’s fielded all kinds of questions and comments about their decision to send her daughter there, from “Do you think she'll be safe?” to “You guys can afford to send her anywhere, we're surprised that you made the decision to send her there.”
Kern said those comments, which she described as based in fear, only reinforced their decision, adding that it’s important to her and her husband, who are white, that their kids experience racial and socioeconomic diversity at school. She now counts herself a proud ambassador for western schools.
“I think that that's really where the change is most likely to happen, when people have those opportunities to have one-on-one conversations with people who are actually a part of that school community.”
But it’s hard to change long-held perceptions. On her street, only two families attend Denfeld. The rest send their children to private and charter schools, or to public schools in neighboring districts.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Math teacher Ed Lewis works through some math problems during his class on March 15 at Denfeld High School.
Meanwhile, some families have moved to eastern neighborhoods because of concerns about the schools.
Jnana Hand got involved in the discussions over border changes because she feels people of color are often left out of those conversations. Hand is of African American, Native American, Hispanic and European heritage.
She’s very concerned about racial segregation in Duluth schools and the concentration of poverty in western schools. But as the mom of a ninth grader, she was also concerned about sending her daughter to a high school that she didn’t feel was getting the support it needed to serve its students.
“I just wasn't confident that my daughter would be OK.”
So, Hand ended up moving to the east side of the district, where she found a good deal on a house she could afford. She says her daughter is slowly acclimating to a new school, and that staff there have been very supportive.
The Duluth school board eventually put the boundary debate on hold. The district says the time frame for revisiting the issue is still under consideration.
Tusken, Denfeld’s principal, doesn’t believe the community will ever get past its east-west divisions until it addresses the boundary issue.
Part of that responsibility, he said, lies with Denfeld to do a better job attracting students. Families, he noted, need to trust that regardless of where their children go to school, they will receive an excellent education.
“Because change is hard. And part of that conversation has to be how we address some of the disparities and inequities that have been inherent in Duluth for a long time.”
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Duluth Denfeld principal Tom Tusken helps student Gabriel Carrillo with a map on March 15.
More from North Star Journey series * As state considers repairs to I-94, Rondo residents look for reconnection * Moorhead museum tells long-overlooked stories of Black history * Artists craft new ways to teach Indigenous languages * Worthington’s fast-growing communities of color see economic gains but little political power. Yet. * Minnesota names reveal our connections, struggles for inclusion
Neil McKay was 15 when he heard two men speaking in Dakota for the first time. His family was attending a relative’s wake, the men were standing at the door as McKay walked by.
“They were speaking this very, very beautiful and enchanting language.”
McKay, a tribal member from the Spirit Lake community in North Dakota, instructs students in the Dakota language at the University of Minnesota.
He remembers hearing his language the same year his interest in music suddenly sparked. He was at a friend’s home watching a video of Robert Smith from the Cure playing guitar. It looked like the guitar his father owned.
“My dad said my grandma could hear a song once, pick up a guitar and fingerpick it. And that's something that I wish I could do,” McKay said.
Gallery * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Neil McKay, Dakota language specialist at the University of Minnesota, poses for a portrait while playing guitar in his office Monday, March 21, 2022. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Neil McKay shows his hands -- one with long nails, one with short for playing classical guitar. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Neil McKay is classically trained in guitar.
McKay became classically trained in guitar. He learned to meld his interest in the Dakota language and music over time. And he said his work as a musician has helped him to understand how he learns.
“The best way that I learned language is to visit in, listen,” McKay said. ”I use my ears a lot,” McKay said.
For decades, Indigenous language speakers have been part of a larger movement for cultural revitalization for tribal communities in Minnesota and across the U.S. As the movement grows so does the need to engage language learners in new ways.
'Grandmother gets stronger' Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson are co-founders of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, a puppet theater in Minneapolis. For the past four years, they have been performing “Say It! Sing It! Play It! In Cherokee.”
Click to watch
“We describe it as a musical adventure into the Cherokee language with a turtle and a rabbit, and Grandmother Turtle has slipped and turned upside down,” said Aronson, “and every time they say, or share, or sing a Cherokee sound or word, Grandmother gets stronger.”
Griffith said the same metaphor might apply to all endangered languages, “I broaden it out so that the idea of there's many different grandmothers out there, and there's many different endangered languages out there. And so when you see a turtle that's on its back, it needs some help to get it back on its feet.”
Gallery * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson teach Cherokee words in their play. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson, pose for portraits. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson, pose for portraits. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative director and founder of Z Puppets Shari Aronson shows her rubber chicken. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson, pose for portraits. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Creative directors and founders of Z Puppets, Chris Griffith and Shari Aronson, fix each other's costumes.
Though he has performed in puppet shows for more than two decades, Griffith hadn’t thought of himself as a musician until he picked up his ukulele and began making music for the play.
“Songs started falling out of me, almost literally falling out,” he said. “And I could put the concepts of the Cherokee language that I was learning into a song.”
“People will come up to us and say, thank you in Cherokee, wado, and people will sing the songs afterward. So it has that stickiness which is really important for revitalization,” Aronson added.
Teaching through illustration Another artist and educator says his elders inspired his work. Wesley Ballinger has worked on two series of Ojibwe language textbooks. He describes drawing characters from Ojibwe stories in a room of Ojibwe speakers.
Gallery * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger shows his sketches and books he's illustrated in his University of Minnesota office, March 3, 2022. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger shows a book he illustrated. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger shows a book he illustrated. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger poses for a portrait in his University of Minnesota office. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger shows an illustration reading "Ginibiiminaan," which means "our water" in Ojibwe. * Nicole Neri for MPR News
Illustrator Wesley Ballinger shows his sketches and books he's illustrated.
“They just started taking off and then creating their own stories. That moment of everyone coming together, master speakers, second language learners, artists. And it’s trying to create this beautiful thing, this very necessary thing, in this world of language revitalization,” Ballinger said.
Years ago, Ballinger was inspired by Steve Premo, a fellow artist, when he was taking his first Ojibwe language class in high school.
“And Steve had these dynamic ink drawings that coincided with Ojibwe phrases. It had a very much a comic book dynamic, like approach to the line weights, the confidence and just throwing down those lines,” he said.
Ballinger aims to inspire that same interest in young learners who read his books.
“I saw through the immersion movement, folks wanted to get rid of all English. So how do you convey a meaning …? You do it through imagery, you do it through form.”
Related reporting * Discussion Teaching kids Indigenous language and culture * In Focus Sustainability in Indian Country * Teaching Ojibwe Mille Lacs launches Rosetta Stone program * What should we report on next? Pass the Mic
Updated: 7:01 a.m. Markus Krueger wants to bust a myth about the history of Fargo-Moorhead.
"There arose this myth about us that isn't true, that everybody here was white for so long, up until year X. And that wasn't true," said Krueger, programming director for the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County. "We had a thriving African American community for the first 50 years."
"This was a part of local history that we hadn't delved into before. And it's about time,” he added.
A new exhibit curated by the society focuses on the history of this long-overlooked group of early residents.
Black communities and other BIPOC communities have a history in the area that hasn’t been written down or documented well, said Gabby Clavo, communications manager for the Clay County Museum in Moorhead. “Collecting these stories is really important, so we can tell this story for future generations.”
Courtesy North Dakota State University archives
Frank Gordon quickly reopened his barbershop in a tent after a fire destroyed much of downtown Fargo in 1893.
Some of the first non-Indigenous people to settle in Fargo-Moorhead were Black. Many were barbers attracted to new railroad boom towns in the late 1800s.
"That profession happened to be what drew a lot of the first Black families to Fargo-Moorhead in that original generation,” said Krueger.
"White men thought that it was the height of luxury to be able to get a shave and a haircut and get a bath drawn by an African American barber, by a tonsorial artist, they called them," said Krueger.
Learning the stories of those early residents was a challenge.
“For some people, we know almost nothing except for names,” said Krueger. “And then you find out about Julius Taylor, and Julius Taylor was a barber in Fargo in the 1880s. And then he left in 1889 to found the Broad Ax, which was Chicago's first African American newspaper, so we know a lot about him.”
They learned some details by painstakingly tracing family histories.
“We know that Frank Gordon was a barber who ran for (Fargo) city alderman in 1900. He didn't win, and he and his family eventually moved out to the West Coast. His grandson is actually world famous jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon.”
Much of was was learned about the early Black families came from The Appeal, an African American newspaper in St. Paul that tracked social happenings across the region including Fargo-Moorhead.
"They describe in detail the parties that are held by the families they call “the elite”, and these tend to be the barber families," said Krueger.
A notable resident discovered in the newspaper pages was Lottie Adams, the daughter of an 1880s barber family. She was a colorful figure and because only one photo of her could be found, the museum commissioned a Moorhead artist, born in Nigeria, to paint her portrait.
"She's always organizing a party or there's a party being organized for her because she's visiting St. Paul or Grand Forks or Duluth,” said Krueger “She is one of the queens of the social scene in Fargo in the 1890s."
Courtesy Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County
The Horton Adams family in a photograph from the 1890s. Adams was one of several Black barbers who opened businesses in Fargo Moorhead in the late 1800s.
The researchers found even getting an accurate count of early Black residents was difficult. The Black population of Fargo-Moorhead might have reached 200 by 1900, but Black families were often listed as white in census records. Clavo said decisions about identity were complicated, and obscuring their race might have been a necessary choice.
"Because it could endanger their businesses, their safety,” she said. “And so we did see that researching some of the people in this exhibit. So safety was a big part in choosing what to identify as, and identifying as white was probably the safest option."
By the 1930s most of those early families had left, lured away by economic opportunity and larger Black communities in the Twin Cities or Chicago, or perhaps driven away by the rise of a local Ku Klux Klan movement in the early 1900s, also documented in the exhibit.
Krueger said Lottie Adams moved to the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, as did many other Black residents of Fargo-Moorhead.
By 1965, when Yvonne Condell moved to Moorhead as a college professor with her husband, a psychologist and jazz musician, she recalls only one other Black resident.
"I was fascinated by the fact that one could come to a town that was so unlike places we'd been before, Florida, Kentucky and Georgia,” she said in a recent interview. “So it was quite an experience to come to a town where you were persons two and three."
The Condells taught at Minnesota State University-Moorhead, and they helped recruit students of color to the school.
Yvonne Condell is an advisor to the Historical and Cultural Society on this exhibit, and she was struck by the history of Black barbers in the 1800s.
Courtesy Rick Henderson
Minnesota State University Moorhead Professor Emeritus Yvonne Condell served as an advisor to the Stories of Local Black History exhibit. Condell and her husband James, a psychologist and jazz musician, moved to Moorhead in 1965. Their story is part of the community's history.
"For example, African American barbers could cut white men's hair. Okay, no problem. When the reverse came, when our students came, we had to find a way to get their hair cut because all the barbers at that time were white barbers who refused to cut black folks hair,” recalled Condell.
The Black community remained small until the 1990s when immigrants from African countries began to resettle in Fargo-Moorhead.
Krueger said the population has grown steadily in the past 20 years, and while the communities are still mostly white, according to the 2020 census, about 8 percent of residents in Cass County, (Fargo) and nearly 6 percent in Clay County (Moorhead) identify as African American/Black.
The exhibit also discusses recent history, including the 2018 election of Johnathan Judd as Moorhead's first Black mayor. Judd is now a Minnesota district court judge, but he was mayor when George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, and in the aftermath, he challenged local residents to have difficult conversations about race.
- Moorhead's Judge Johnathan Judd: Welcoming tough conversations about race
"We need to embrace the fact that we don't like having tough conversations that might cause us to think internally about how we view things, because we're not about expressing our vulnerability," he said in an MPR News interview in July of 2020.
"During the protests, he said that our community has to start having conversations about these questions,” said Krueger, “I'm hoping that this exhibit can maybe be part of that conversation.”
“Contributing to those uncomfortable conversations,” added Clavo, who expects the exhibit to make some residents uncomfortable. “But you know, to learn you have to get uncomfortable."
Clavo wants this exhibit to spark conversations across the community, perhaps generating new stories about race and history the museum can collect, creating a more complete local history story for future generations.
When Eugenio Lopez and his family moved to Worthington 17 years ago, only a few families of color lived on their block. Arriving from Canton, Miss., southwestern Minnesota seemed like another world.
“We kind of felt like [we were] outside of the group of these people,” said Lopez, whose parents came to the United States from Guatemala. “But, they took us in and they welcomed us with open arms.”
These days, Lopez’s street is a mix of neighbors able to trace their roots to Central America as easily as Central Europe. Like all of Worthington, it’s been transformed by people of color who’ve found work, built businesses and bought homes, and whose kids have sustained the public schools in an era of declining white student enrollment.
Their rapidly growing numbers and economic muscle, however, have not yet translated into political power. While people of color are the majority now in Worthington, politics in the city and across Nobles County remain nearly all white and male. That came into sharp focus in the last election cycle when three women of color ran for city, county and Minnesota House seats, and all lost.
The reasons for that are more complex than racial or ethnic bias or the power of incumbency. But lack of representation is still a concern for those who need support from government leaders to fund projects and provide resources to fill in gaps for needed services.
There are signs of change. Voters in 2019 backed a bond sale allowing Worthington to build a badly needed school for its growing student body, a measure that had failed for years before with some supporters feeling white Worthington didn’t want to pay for a school needed by nonwhite kids.
Stephen Groves | AP 2019
A yard sign supporting a school funding ballot measure is seen in Worthington, Minn., Nov. 5, 2019.
People of color are also increasingly willing to run for office. That includes Lopez, 18, who expects to run for mayor someday. “It doesn’t cause discouragement, it even empowers me,” he said of the lack of political diversity now. “It even motivates me even further to actually run for public office here in Worthington.”
People who’ve been fighting for years to break through those barriers, though, know the time, energy and money it will take to win hearts and minds.
An uphill battle
Hannah Yang | MPR News
Leticia Rodriguez frequents Mini Market Lupita in Worthington. Rodriguez says small immigrant-owned businesses in town like Lupita’s don't receive assistance from their elected leaders.
Leticia Rodriguez, 60, frequents Mini Market Lupita, where her friend and owner, Maria Parga, can be seen working behind the counter. Adjacent to the Mexican restaurant is a market with fridges for fresh produce and aisles of specialty items.
Rodriguez said that small immigrant-owned businesses in Worthington like Lupita’s started from scratch and didn’t receive any type of assistance from their elected leaders to get their livelihoods off the ground.
“Worthington has been making changes in approaching people and trying to teach people [where] the resources there are, but for the most part, all the businesses didn’t start that way with any help from the government, or the county, or the city, or anything,” Rodriguez said. “They just started on their own.”
Courtesy of Leticia Rodriguez
Leticia Rodriguez, a community organizer in Nobles County.
Rodriguez ran for Nobles County Commissioner in 2020, but lost. When she ran, Rodriguez wanted to have her voice heard. She didn’t want to run as a person of color, but just as a person because she felt that local officials didn’t engage all communities and understand what their needs were.
During her campaign, though, Rodriguez began to understand the challenge of winning. She received comments from white voters that she wouldn’t represent them at all and that she’d only be serving people of color if elected. Meanwhile, voters of color expected her to enact policies immediately to solve long-standing issues that required time.
Rodriguez said she counted as only one vote and would need the support of others.
She’s not running again for office and instead, shifted her efforts elsewhere into directly working with community members to see results. But with Worthington changing so much in its businesses, its schools and neighborhoods, Rodriguez is hopeful that eventually the community will elect a person of color into office.
“It’s a changing world,” she said. “It’s not gonna go back to the way it always was. It’s gonna continue to change and evolve and our young people are going to be the testament of that change.”
Worthington Mayor Mike Kuhle has been active in local politics for years but won’t seek reelection when his term expires in December.
“I figure it’s time for some new blood, some new thinking,” Kuhle said. “There’s a lot of people in this community that could do a great job. And that’s including all the different cultures. But they have to step forward.”
They have. Besides Rodriguez, two other women of color recently ran and lost — Aida Simon for city council in 2020 and Cheniqua Johnson for state representative in 2018. However, they are not running for any office in this election cycle.
A turning point
Alex Baumhardt | APM Reports 2019
A former storage room, photographed on Jan. 7, 2019, has been turned into a classroom at Worthington Middle School in Worthington, Minn.
Minnesota towns are fiercely proud of their local school systems. Many in southern Minnesota struggled to keep the doors open as white student counts fell. Students of color helped sustain them. Overcrowding, though, became a chronic problem in Worthington. It needed a new school but for years couldn’t get the voters to agree.
“I had a class that was like 36 students, and there were only around 30 chairs,” Lopez said. “That’s a major concern around the school. There wasn't any space at all and they were running out of closets to convert into classrooms.”
By the time Lopez was in high school, the measure failed five times. He and other youth had enough. Lopez couldn’t vote because of his age, but he decided that he could still do something to help.
“I’m going to talk to my neighbors. I’m going to people in my neighborhood, at church, [to] get them to be informed [about] what is actually going on in school, because many people are just based on the money,” he said. “They don’t hear when it’s students, when it comes to what is going on in school, what is happening.”
After canvassing, calling and knocking on doors, talking to adults at church, Lopez and his classmates were also able to make some breakthroughs in conversations.
“I think parents and adults started to kind of understand, that’s not how you grew up,” he said. “This is how we are growing up right now, and if you want to prevent this, your vote is important.”
Alex Baumhardt | APM Reports 2019
Students squeezed into a regular classroom for band class at Worthington Middle School on Jan. 7, 2019.
Weeks before, a high-profile Washington Post article with the headline “Immigrant kids fill this town’s schools. Their bus driver is leading the backlash” stung the Worthington community, which prompted a response from Kuhle in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that “without immigrants moving to Worthington, we would likely be a community in decline.”
Weeks later, voters approved nearly $34 million in new bonds. A new school is being built where Lopez’s younger sister will be attending as a fifth grader. She won’t experience overcrowding like he did. She was his biggest motivation to get involved.
“Being part of the movement and leading something, it's something that brings joy to me so that my sisters don't actually have to bear and suffer what I actually go through, so that they can have an easier path forward,” he added.
Organizations like Seeds of Justice — a collective born after leaders envisioned supporting leaders of color in the area and empowering leaders of immigrants, refugees and people of color — Voices for Racial Justice, and Unidos MN have been working in the area to meet community needs.
Leaders organized mobile vaccine clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped register people to vote, hosted food drives and answered questions about applying for housing assistance.
Hannah Yang | MPR News 2020
Volunteers of Unidos We Win set up base in Worthington, Minn. on Nov. 3, 2020.
Yet, Adyiam Kimbrough of Seeds of Justice, said that getting a person of color elected is still a priority and having someone with voting power is still a necessity.
“At the end of the day, we can do all the organizing that we want, get all the grant funds that we want, but when we actually want to do something big in our community … we can’t do that without the support of our local government,” Kimbrough said. “At the end of the day, we do need folks that understand us and that value the marginalized communities to get things done.”
More than a decade ago, people of color made up one-third of Nobles County residents. Now, they make up nearly half. In Worthington, the county seat, nearly two-thirds of residents identify as people of color.
‘I do want to see a change’
Hannah Yang | MPR News
Eugenio Lopez says he wants to make the town better and plans to run for office when he returns from college in four years.
Minnesota’s identity shifted, becoming less white and more diverse over the past decade. About 76 percent of Minnesotans identified as white and non-Hispanic in 2020 compared to 83 percent in the 2010 census. Each county statewide became more diverse during that time, but the fastest changing is Nobles County.
- Welcome to Nobles County: Minnesota's most rapidly diversifying county
Eugenio Lopez said he loved growing up in Worthington, despite not always feeling like the community reciprocated. While he and his family put down strong roots — his parents became homeowners six years ago after saving up a down payment — there were times in his life when he was reminded that people in Worthington lived very different lives.
In 2006, an immigration raid at JBS Pork Processing struck fear and tension in relationships between community members and their government officials. During the 2016 presidential elections, Lopez also had personal experiences with racism in town when walking off a bus on his way home from school.
“A kid shouted out, ‘When Donald Trump is elected, you and your family are going to be deported!’ And then that night, I just went into my bedroom, I started crying. I was like ‘Why would people do that? Why would they say that?’ And also my sister during the election of 2020, she also had to go through that same thing. A Caucasian student said to her, ‘Why are you and your people here? You should go back to your country.’”
Lopez wants it to be better, but to be better Worthington needs to have someone who can represent everyone’s voices. Not all of them have been heard yet.
“Actually having a voice in there, I think it’s completely important,” he said. “Because, just to have one group of people making a decision, or shutting off another group who don’t have any decisions at all or they don’t care about them, it’s just benefiting yourself, but not for other people.”
Lopez plans to attend Minnesota West Community and Technical College in the fall and eventually go for his political science degree at a four-year school. But after, he still plans to come back to Worthington and run for office.
“I’ve always called Worthington my home,” he said. “I’ve always put my dedication, hard effort in this town, and I do want to see a change.”
North Star Journey * Pass the Mic What should we look into next? * Minnesota names Connections, struggles for inclusion * As state considers repairs to I-94 Rondo residents look for reconnection
Correction (March 21, 2022): Worthington's new school will serve grades 3-5. An earlier version of this story had described it as a middle school. The story's also been updated to note Cheniqua Johnson lost her Minnesota House election bid in 2018.
It’s been more than a century since John Cheatham last walked out of a Minneapolis firehouse after serving more that 20 years as one of the city’s first Black firefighters and the city’s first Black fire captain.
And the street a block from his old station now bears his name.
Mayor Jacob Frey and current Fire Chief Bryan Tyner marked the redesignation Thursday, changing the name of Dight Avenue to Cheatham Avenue in a ceremony on 38th Street, surrounded by the descendants of one of the city’s first Black families.
Tim Nelson video of the ceremony
“Captain John Cheatham is certainly a big set of shoulders for me to stand on,” said Tyner, who noted that it took more than 75 years for his department to appoint another Black firefighter to be captain. Tyner himself is the city’s first Black fire chief.
“Continuing that tradition, continuing that progress is something I will strive to do,” he said. “Let’s celebrate.”
He then helped Cheatham’s family pull down a ceremonial cover to unveil the first of many new signs that will designate the new name.
- North Star Journey Minnesota names reveal our connections, struggles for inclusion
Tim Nelson | MPR News
Descendants of the first Black fire department captain in Minneapolis history, John Cheatham, posed for a photo at the intersection of 38th Street and the newly renamed Cheatham Avenue, now commemorating his service from 1888 to 1911.
Cheatham was born to an enslaved family in Missouri in 1855. His parents came up the Mississippi and settled in Minneapolis shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation banned slavery during the Civil War in 1863. They were among the first Black families in the city.
Cheatham worked as a porter and a church sexton, and was hired to work for the Fire Department in 1888. He was thought to be one of the first Black firefighters ever in the city if not the first. He was appointed captain in 1899, and in 1907 was named one of the captains in charge at the station at 45th and Hiawatha, better known recently as the Flair Fountains building.
Cheatham died in 1918 and lies buried in another nearby landmark: the Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery on Lake Street.
His role in Minneapolis history was largely forgotten, but was revived as critics worked to remove the long-standing name of the street, Dight Avenue, after Charles Dight. Dight was a University professor and City Council member, known for food safety but also for advocating for human eugenics, forced sterilization and his expressed admiration for Adolph Hitler.
- From NewsCut achieve Minnesota's eugenics past
“This is recognizing and valuing the contributions of who we are as African American,” said Tracey Gibson, pastor at St. James AME church, which considers itself the oldest African American church in the state and is onthe former Dight Avenue. She watched the unveiling Thursday.
“What he stood for, what Cheatham stood for, and what [Dight] stood for are on opposite ends of the spectrum,” Gibson said.
The break room inside of Taste of Rondo Bar and Grill overlooks a well-traveled portion of Interstate 94 in St. Paul.
An estimated 160,000 vehicles per day travel the stretch of I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. As the cars sped past on a recent weeknight, Robin Hickman-Winfield and her husband Steven Winfield wondered how many of those travelers know about the history of Rondo.
“Just imagine,” Robin said. “Our homes and businesses again.”
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Robin Hickman-Winfield and Steve Winfield talk about their memories of the Rondo neighborhood before the construction of I-94 and their hopes for the area’s future at Taste of Rondo Bar and Grill earlier this month.
The walls of the restaurant are lined with black and white photos depicting past generations of Black families enjoying life in Rondo. Pictures of members of Robin's own family also adorn the menu.
"This is my father, Bobby Hickman and uncle Gordon Parks," Robin said, using her finger to point them each out.
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Robin Hickman-Winfield points to an image of her family members, including her uncle Gordon Parks, on the menu at Taste of Rondo Bar and Grill on March 3.
Bobby Hickman was a community activist and educator and Gordon Parks was a renowned photojournalist and artist whose works highlighted the Rondo neighborhood.
When she first saw the menu, “I just boo-hooed,” Robin said. “We are Rondo.”
Named for an early settler, Rondo Avenue was the heart of the largest Black community in St. Paul from the 1930s through the 1950s. The surrounding neighborhood stretched into today’s Summit-University neighborhood and north to University Avenue.
There are many stories of generations of Black families that prospered even with the challenges that came from building I-94, Robin explained. But 1,000 or so family homes and businesses were demolished to make room for the highway and the effects linger in lost opportunities to build generational wealth.
“I am taking my rightful place in reclaiming what was stolen from us,” Robin said.
Robin and her husband Steven are spreading the word anywhere they can about an idea called the Land Bridge. The goal is to reconnect the vibrant community that was split in two by the construction of I-94 from 1956 to 1968. The bridge would serve as a cap over the part of the highway that encompasses what used to be the entire Rondo neighborhood.
Steven has fond childhood memories from the old neighborhood.
"Whether it was here or on the other side of University, Frogtown or wherever, people were just close and cared about each other," Steven said.
When Steven was growing up in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was as if I-94 was growing along with him.
It started as a giant hole in the ground Winfield and his baseball teammates would run through during practice.
"That’s one of my fondest memories is wondering ‘What is this hole they are digging here?’"
The new east to west interstate highway would eventually connect people all over the region, but for Steven Winfield’s family and many other Black families, it meant their homes were chosen by the government to be demolished.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
An aerial view of St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood on Monday.
The Winfield name would go on to become part of baseball history as Steven and his brother Dave grew up to play professionally. Dave was inducted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame in 2001.
ReConnect Rondo — The Land Bridge
Courtesy of ReConnect Rondo
A rendering for the Land Bridge, and idea which would attempt to connect the Rondo community that was split in two by the construction of I-94.
“Now is the moment,” says Keith Baker. “We will not be in this moment again.”
Baker is the executive director of ReConnect Rondo, the advocacy organization that has been studying and planning the Land Bridge idea for more than five years.
Baker secured $6 million from the state last year to continue developing the idea and say the descendants and current residents of Rondo should be at the center of planning the project and what is built on top of that land bridge.
”To generate the economic opportunities that stay within the community for wealth-building," Baker said.
MnDOT has been working on a project called Rethinking I-94 since 2016. The goal is to make needed repairs to the aging infrastructure, while creating methods to reduce further harms caused by the freeway. Metro deputy district engineer Sheila Kauppi said the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 represented another moment to reflect and listen.
“It has pivoted from where we were in 2016 to where we are now,” Kauppi said. “We listened to a lot of people, we learned a lot about the community.”
Kauppi said MnDOT does not currently have funding for anything beyond the most needed repairs to maintain the infrastructure that already exists along the entire 15-mile stretch of the project between the Twin Cities. It encompasses the stretch of I-94 between Broadway Avenue in Minneapolis and Highway 61 in St. Paul.
Derek Montgomery for MPR News
Interstate 94 runs through the Rondo neighborhood with a view toward St. Paul near the Chatsworth Street North pedestrian bridge on Monday.
Kauppi said MnDOT is in the process of gathering public input to consider any proposed project alternatives and plans to have some initial plans ready to release in late summer. The next steps for I-94 will take 15 to 20 years to implement.
“We are making a long-term effort to engage with communities, making sure we are making decisions with the community context that we have,” Kauppi said. “Recognizing cities and counties have built economies around the I-94 corridor.”
MnDOT has about a dozen examples of highway caps and buildings over highways including Target Field, Lowry tunnel in Minneapolis and Superior Street Bridge-Cap in Duluth.
Baker said the land bridge across the Rondo community would rely on a combination of public and private funds, and could cost more than $450 million to complete.
“So, you can see, the land bridge is just simply the tool for catalytic economic benefits,” Baker said. “Housing benefits, open park space benefits, all of the amenities that we know improve quality of life.”
Our Streets — Twin Cities Boulevard
Courtesy of Our Streets
A rendering of Twin Cities Boulevard, an idea that would replace a stretch of I-94 with various modes of travel.
Another alternative proposal for I-94 emerged this year that suggests ripping out the entire stretch of the highway MnDOT is considering and replacing it with various modes of travel. The idea is called Twin Cities Boulevard.
The Minneapolis nonprofit Our Streets aims to make cities more easily accessible to bikers and walkers. The group’s plan still includes some driving lanes, which Our Streets argues would accommodate locals who mostly use the freeway to make shorter trips. Others traveling between suburbs or through the state could use alternatives like Interstate 694.
On a recent unseasonably cold evening, Our Streets transportation policy coordinator Alex Burns was knocking on doors to raise awareness about Twin Cities Boulevard. Two next-door neighbors living right next to I-94 told him they did not know big changes were even being considered.
The two houses were split on the idea of a freeway-to-boulevard conversion as they looked at the renderings.
Burns said the idea also would center communities along I-94 that experienced demolition along with other economic and environmental harms.
“A difference we have tried to make clear is we feel like a land bridge over a reconstructed or expanded freeway, that cements I-94’s harms for another half-century is an unacceptable outcome for this project,” Burns said.
Keith Baker of ReConnect Rondo said Our Streets never tried to work with his organization ahead of releasing its plan.
“It fails to recognize the extraordinary time we are in post-George Floyd, and the disparities that exist in the state of Minnesota,” Baker said.
MnDOT will consider both ideas.
A vision of possibility
Nicole Neri for MPR News
Robin Hickman-Winfield and Steven Winfield talk about their memories of the Rondo neighborhood.
For the Winfield’s, their family stories are more than a window to the past, they are lessons for the future.
“I drive around St. Paul and see representations of community Utopias,” Robin said. “Why not us?”
Robin and Steven chuckled as she referenced the Black Utopia in the movie Black Panther.
“I’ve had folks laughing talking about ‘Rondo Wakanda forever,’” Robin said. “Why not? Our children need to have that vision of possibility.”
More from North Star Journey series * Minnesota names Connections, struggles for inclusion * What stories should we cover next? Pass the Mic
Minnesota doesn't have just one story or one history. It never has. Minnesota's stories are a constellation of experiences, histories, moments and journeys that shape our lives today. Many of these stories are difficult to hear and untold. Others are beautiful and heroic. MPR News wants to share some of them with you in our new reporting project, North Star Journey.
Across our newsroom, we'll be deeply investing in reporting on the history and culture that make up diverse communities across our state. We are focused on providing solutions, as well as celebrating stalwarts who are driving them, and not just pointing out the problems.
MPR News staff is working to get to the root of the issues and to present a spectrum of narratives. We'll bring these stories to you on-air and online, via podcast and video, in long form and short form. However you want to hear them.
North Star Journey is a celebration of communities in Minnesota and the champions who are doing the work that we should be bringing a voice to. We hope to bring new understandings of our state and what brought us to today.
- Pass the Mic Share your stories and insights
The first people to call this land home often named their surroundings by using descriptions of what those natural resources looked like. Names we use today for Minnesota waters and lands come from Ojibwe and Dakota people. Cultural observers say how we treat names reflect the barriers Indigenous communities — and Minnesotans of color generally — encounter to be fully seen in society.
“Our language is very visual. It’s descriptive,” said Kate Beane, who is Dakota and holds a doctoral degree in American Studies. “It is something that you can close your eyes and really sort of see through the eyes of those who came before us.”
Beane is a descendant of people who were removed from Minnesota by U.S. soldiers to the Flandreau Santee reservation in South Dakota in the 1860s. A public historian as well as the executive director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Beane thinks deeply about what place names contain.
“The way that I was taught is that ‘Minnesota’ is a reflection of the sky on the water,” she said. “And it's sort of that reflection, which is why oftentimes it gets translated as cloudy water, clear water, it depends on the weather.”
Evan Frost | MPR News 2020
Kate Beane sits for a portrait at the public art site on the shores of Bde Maka Ska honoring Maḣpiya Wicaṡṭa (Cloud Man) and Ḣeyata Ọtuŋwe (Village to the side), the Dakota leader and community that inhabited this area in the 19th century, on Nov. 16, 2020.
European fur trappers and explorers would often ask residents what a lake or river was called. Beane is not sure if some titles are names, directions to a place or descriptions of food found there.
As Europeans settled in large numbers they often changed those names.
Beane said the renaming is just part of the larger process of erasing Native culture. That’s reflected in how many Dakota names are mispronounced or anglicized.
“But they [English versions] are actually harder for us to pronounce as Dakota people because they are mispronunciations,” she said.
Some names of cities and landmarks like Nicollet, New Ulm and New Prague are pronounced differently than the European languages spoken by early immigrants and explorers.
Naming is tied closely to the history of colonization and oppression of Indigenous people, Beane said. In 2015, Beane and others led an effort to return Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis to its Dakota name Bde Maka Ska which means white earth lake.
Beane said opponents seemed to be more angry about who was leading the reclamation effort than about the name itself. She said they were called ‘militant Dakota’ who were trying to take away the lake.
The restoration effort was successful, Beane said, in part because the Indigenous community and its allies worked together. She recalls Minneapolis park board hearings where members of the Somali community came to advocate for a stop sign near a park where their children played. These Somali neighbors also voiced their support for Bde Maka Ska.
Changing values
George Dornbach | MPR News 2017
A painted mural in the halls of then-Ramsey Middle School reads, “Rename Ramsey” as students and teachers campaigned to change the name of their school, June 9, 2017.
“We are certainly seeing an acceleration of this idea of reclaiming space and of changing names to reflect changing values,” said William Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society.
“In Minnesota, it's played out from everything from the movement to reclaim the name of Bde Maka Ska to renaming middle schools and high schools named after Minnesota governors who were involved in Native American extermination,” said Convery.
Following a student led-effort, the Minneapolis school board in 2017 agreed to remove the name of former governor Alexander Ramsey from a middle school and honor Alan Page, the former Minnesota Viking who became the first African American to sit on the state’s supreme court.
Ramsey called for the driving of the Dakota people out of Minnesota in the 1860s.
Last year, Henry Sibley High School, named after the state’s first governor, changed its name to Two Rivers high school for similar reasons.
The debates and discussions over the use of historical names or of derogatory terms for places and things in Minnesota is not unique to the state, nor is it new.
In 1995, after a campaign by northern Minnesota students the state prohibited applying a derogatory word for an Indigenous woman to geographic place names. Despite this, a town in Itasca county still goes by the slur.
Until 1977, two Minnesota lakes bore a racial epithet aimed at Black people.
Indigenous activists in Minnesota have also been at the vanguard of efforts to eliminate the use of Native American mascots for sports teams.
As people in southern states forced some symbols of the Confederacy and white supremacy be removed from public places, Convery said Minnesotans are considering how names of the past no longer reflect modern sensibilities.
“So in some ways, these names are always changing and we're always updating our values and thinking about the way we name things in order to reflect those values,” said Convery.
‘Say his name!’
Brandon Bell | Getty Images 2020
Anna Barber fixes a tombstone in the Say Their Names Cemetery on June 19, 2020, in Minneapolis.
While protests followed nearly every police killing in Minneapolis over the last 10 years, they did not match the intensity of the global response to the murder by Derek Chauvin of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who begged the officer to let him up so he could breathe.
The chant, “say his name, George Floyd” resounded through the streets of Minneapolis and in cities across the world.
“Mr. Floyd harkens to a particular, deeper history,” said Rose Brewer, a sociologist and a distinguished teaching professor of African American studies at the University of Minnesota. Brewer said repeating Floyd’s name recalls so many other African Americans killed by Minneapolis police officers.
“But it also, from my perspective, harks to the push for us to place that in the broader Minnesota context.”
That context, said Brewer, is that Minnesota has not always lived up to the progressive image that social liberals aspire to. Racial disparities in health care, employment, housing, education, as well as the criminal justice system have long disadvantaged Black residents.
In response to Floyd’s killing, community members closed down the intersection of 38th and Chicago where he took his last breaths under Chauvin’s knee. Though the area has since reopened to traffic, it has retained the name George Floyd Square.
The square continues to draw people. Brewer believes George Floyd Square is important for several reasons. It is a place where people come together to push for social and political change.
“But also, how can you not have a memorial of sorts that recognizes a heinous, but powerful, emblematic expression of structural racism, of institutional racism?” Brewer said.
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Two decades ago, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in east-central Minnesota had 145 fluent speakers of the Ojibwe language.
By 2019, that number had dwindled to just 25. Then, COVID-19 took a deadly toll. Today, there are only about 20.
“That's incredibly devastating,” said Baabiitaw Boyd, who is senior advisor to an effort by the Mille Lacs Band to revitalize the language of the Ojibwe, or Anishinaabe.
The reality that those skills and knowledge were in danger of being lost has brought a new sense of urgency to the band’s ongoing efforts to preserve the Ojibwe language, and pass it on to future generations.
While serving as an apprentice to fluent native speakers, Boyd said she learned that many elders were worried that younger generations growing up speaking English were missing out on important aspects of their culture and identity.
Red Circle Agency
Baabiitaw Boyd
"A lot of our understanding of the natural world and how we interact with one another is embedded in the language and how we talk about something,” Boyd said.
For example, while some languages assign a gender to different nouns, Ojibwe differentiates between what is alive, and what is not. Trees are animate. So are feathers, drums and snow.
"A deeper respect is grown when you have a good grasp of the language because you're starting to see things and feel and understand things on a deeper level of their existence,” Boyd said.
- Anishinaabe Bizindamoo Makak On a new podcast, Ojibwe elders tell their stories
- 'Our hearts are heavy' COVID-19 deaths of tribal elders leave a void
With that in mind, the Mille Lacs Band launched an effort to bolster the teaching of Ojibwe and provide more resources for learning the language.
That included working with the Minnesota Historical Society Press to publish several monolingual books exclusively in the Ojibwe language. They capture stories told by elders and illustrated by local artists.
Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe professor at Bemidji State University who's been working for decades to preserve the Ojibwe language, served as editor for the book project.
"The Ojibwe language embodies the unique worldview of Ojibwe people,” Treuer said. "It's one of the things that defines us and distinguishes us from the rest of the world."
With most fluent speakers in their 70s or older, Treuer said, the transfer of the Ojibwe language from generation to generation has been interrupted, and the window of opportunity for the Mille Lacs Band's fluent speakers to share their knowledge is closing.
- Bdote Learning Center A Minneapolis school is immersing students in both Dakota and Ojibwe
Tom Robertson | MPR News file
Anton Treuer is Bemidji State University' Ojibwe language professor.
"So I said, ‘Why don't you set them up to teach people our language for hundreds of years to come?’” Treuer said.
The Mille Lacs Band partnered with the language software company Rosetta Stone to develop a series of Ojibwe courses accessible by computer or smartphone.
The interactive lessons include videos, illustrations and speech recognition technology that compares a student's pronunciation to native speakers.
The program can be used by teachers in a school classroom, or by adults who want to learn on their own, no matter what their level of experience is.
"We really want to provide access to anyone, anywhere, who wants to learn the language,” said Alexandra Loginov, Ojibwe curriculum development lead for Rosetta Stone.
Loginov said the program was a collaborative effort with the Mille Lacs Band. Rosetta Stone staffers traveled to Minnesota, and willing band members helped make the lessons and record videos in their local dialect.
"A lot of people are very excited to have this opportunity to put their knowledge out there and get it into the hands of so many people down the line, who will have it for years to come,” she said.
- 'Ojibwe Netflix' Tech developer launches video streaming service for Ojibwe speakers
The Mille Lacs project marks the first time that Rosetta Stone has partnered with a Minnesota community to help preserve an endangered language, Loginov said. But it’s worked with about 10 communities in other states.
"We're kind of in a race against time to record their knowledge and capture what they know about culture as well as language, and make that available to a lot of people in different ways,” she said.
Treuer said he understands why there might have been some initial skepticism of the project, given the long history of outsiders taking advantage of Native people.
"Some people would naturally be distrustful,” he said. “Like, how come a corporation is going to be doing something with our language, and then they're going to be holding it hostage and selling it to the world?”
Evan Frost | MPR News 2019
A student at Bdote Learning Center writes in Ojibwe in her name journal at the beginning of the day's Ojibwe immersion classes in Minneapolis in April 2019.
But Treuer said the Mille Lacs Band will own the copyright and licensing rights. The program will be free to all band members and their descendants. Non-band members will have access to the courses for a $100 fee, with proceeds going to the band.
Treuer stressed that the technology doesn't take the place of Ojibwe speakers sharing their knowledge from person to person.
"It is not a silver bullet that will save the language,” he said. “It is not a replacement for a fluent speaker. It's just another tool in the toolbox."
The first Rosetta Stone course launched this month for band members. In March, the program will be available for a fee to anyone interested in learning Ojibwe.
Learning the Ojibwe language isn't just a novelty or an extracurricular activity, Boyd said. Rather, it helps provide a sense of identity and self awareness that will help people succeed in the workforce and in life, she said.
"Because when somebody speaks Ojibwe, they will never question who they are,” Boyd said. “They will never have to question whether they're Anishinaabe or not. This is their language. This is how they see the world. This is how they understand themselves.”
Robert Larsen has waited years for the Minnesota Historical Society to return 114 acres of land to the Dakota people of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. When the unanimous vote finally came this year, Larsen was watching on his computer. As soon as it was official, he drove to the spot off of County Highway 2, east of Redwood Falls.
He said a prayer, sang a song and made an offering of tobacco.
“Steps towards healing is what we need,” Larsen, the tribe’s chair, said. “And this is one of those steps.”
This land is part of the Lower Sioux Indian Community’s homeland, C̣aƞṡayapi, and until last month, it was controlled by the state.
The historic site commemorates the start of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
The conflict began when the United States refused to distribute to the Dakota people the food and supplies stored there, violating its treaty.
- Documentary 'Little War on the Prairie'
The war between Dakota tribes and the U.S. government lasted six weeks. After it ended, President Abraham Lincoln ordered 38 Dakota men hanged in Mankato, the largest single-day execution in the country’s history.
“This land has been paid for over and over and over with the blood and the lives of our ancestors,” Larsen said.
Hannah Yang | MPR News
A sign in the Dakota language welcomes visitors to C̣aƞṡayapi, the name of the Lower Sioux Indian Community's homeland, along County Road 24 in Redwood County.
The historical society bought the property from private landowners starting in the 1960s. Its return to Lower Sioux Indian Community was a culmination of talks that began in 2004. Local government officials were skeptical about the change, Larsen said.
The land transfer ultimately required the involvement of the state Legislature, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the federal government and 31 different tribal nations.
- Lower Sioux Agency Lonely outpost marks war's start
- Photos The U.S.-Dakota War, remembered
- MPR News coverage The U.S.-Dakota War, 150 years later
“Preserving our state’s history doesn’t always have to mean the Minnesota Historical Society is doing that all by ourselves,” said Ben Leonard, who oversees the historical society’s portfolio of sites outside of the Twin Cities and is pleased the Lower Sioux Community now controls the site. “That is their history. That is their story,”
Larsen’s family was involved throughout the long process of reclaiming the land. His father and great-aunt were there from the start, and he says many community members deserve credit for the achievement.
“If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
In February, tribal citizens accepted the transferred land on behalf of their ancestors.
“By reclaiming some of our traditional homelands, we’re expanding the opportunity for our generations to have a broader connection to their Dakota identity,” said Cheyanne St. John, the community’s historic preservation officer. “It was certainly a milestone within our nation's history.
The Minnesota Historical Society will still help maintain the interpretative trails on the site and for now, the tribe plans to leave the property mostly unchanged. Its goal is to encourage more visitors to visit and learn about Dakota history.
It’s an unusual move for the state to return a historic site to the tribe that once owned it, but Larsen hopes it is only the beginning.
“To get back to that relationship with the land is important to us,” he said.
- History we don't teach Mankato hangings an uneasy topic for MN schools
- On 150th anniversary Feelings last long over U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
Hannah Yang is MPR News’ newest regional news reporter. She covers the communities south of the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota, from the South Dakota border all the way to Mankato and south to Iowa. She’s new to the region, and would love to hear your stories. Share news tips, ideas or just say hello at @HannahMYang on Twitter, or email her at hyang@mpr.org.