Materials created/edited/published by Archive team as an assigned project during remote work period in 2020
August 4, 2016 - Ojibwe author, poet, playwright Jim Northrup died at 73, due to complications from cancer. As part of a wake, a traditional fire is being started at his residence in Sawyer. Matthew Northrup, joins MPR’s Tom Crann to talk about his father, and what it was like being raised by Jim, who was known and quoted as being a tough man.
August 9, 2016 - MPR’s Euen Kerr reports on poet, novelist and academic Gerald Vizenor’s new novel “Treaty Shirts.” Book is a satirical novel examining the impact of the document in the future, blending Ojibwe history, tradition, and dream narratives with popular culture and science technology to create a surreal but pointed view of modern native life. Report includes interview and reading from Vizenor.
September 9, 2016 - MPR’s Tom Crann interviews 20-year-old Augsburg College student Donte Collins, who was given the Academy of American Poets' Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award for his poem "What the Dead Know by Heart." Segment includes Collins reading poem.
October 3, 2016 - MPR’s John Enger interviews Ojibwe storyteller Anne Dunn, who reflects on a lifetime of storytelling on northern Minnesota reservations. Enger spoke with Dunn in a cabin on Drewery Lake.
October 21, 2016 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao reports on the meaning behind the Diwali Festival. Local Indian Americans gather at the Minneapolis convention center for annual event. The ancient celebration is one of the biggest and most important holidays in Hindu tradition.
December 22, 2016 - Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century Pittsburgh industrialist, was one of the richest Americans ever, and also a benevolent civic patron. David Nasaw, a self-described "lunatic researcher," wrote a biography simply titled "Andrew Carnegie." Early in December he shared what he learned at the Minnesota Historical Society's History Forum in St. Paul.
December 23, 2016 - MPR’s Brandt Williams reports on Lyndale Community School’s Kwanzaa celebration. Twenty years ago, Titilayo Bediako, a Minneapolis public school teacher started telling her students about Kwanzaa - the week-long African centered celebration of black heritage and values which begins the day after Christmas. She discovered that the underlying principles of the non-religious holiday resonated with students from diverse backgrounds. Now that early classroom lesson has grown into an institution which hosts an annual musical Kwanzaa recognition.
December 23, 2016 - When Minnesota poet, author, and musician Bill Holm sat down to write a Christmas letter, he sorted through a lifetime of memories and put some of these memories in his 2009 book titled Faces of Christmas Past, published by the Afton Historical Society Press. That same year, Minnesota Public Radio produced this "Voices of Minnesota" special, with Bill Holm reading from his own book.
May 18, 2017 - MPR’s Marianne Combs profiles Vietnamese American spoken word artist Bao Phi, who talks of the how racial trauma affects both his poetry and life. Phi also discusses his collection, “Thousand Star Hotel.”
August 18, 2017 - The Minneapolis City Council chambers erupted in applause and a standing ovation Friday morning, as Medaria Arradondo was appointed the city's first African American police chief. One of the dozens of supporters in the chamber today was civil rights legend Dr. Josie Johnson. MPR’s Brandt Williams asked Johnson what Arradondo's appointment signals to members of the city's African American community.