In recognition of 2024 Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the MPR Archive Portal presents a curated sampling of varied stories, documentaries, arts, interviews, and reports on Native people, their culture, and history.
Please note: Most content related to this topic that is contemporary or created after 2005 can be found on our main content pages of MPR News, YourClassical MPR, The Current, APM Reports, and Marketplace.
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.
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.
March 17, 2017 - Upon the announcement that Louise Erdrich’s novel ''LaRose” won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Fiction, MPR’s Tom Crann presents an audio clip of Erdrich discussing book during a Thread live event. “LaRose” is set in an Ojibwe community in North Dakota and it opens with a brutal tragedy. A man shoots and kills his best friend's five-year-old son in a hunting accident. The guilt is so heavy that the man and his wife decide to give their own son, LaRose, to the bereaved couple.
October 20, 2017 - MPR’s Euan Kerr profiles Ojibwe writer Linda LeGarde Grover. The two talk about her collection of essays titled "Onigamiising," the Ojibwe name for the place she has always considered home: Duluth. There are themes running through the writing, like the Ojibwe concept of living a good life.
November 20, 2017 - MPR’s John Enger reports on boxing on Red Lake Indian Reservation. Enger profiles boxers Antonio Varney and Louis Jourdain.
October 14, 2019 - Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan issued a proclamation declaring it Indigenous Peoples' Day in Minnesota. Several cities, including St. Paul and Minneapolis, celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day. Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Nation and the first Indigenous statewide elected official, spoke to people celebrating at Indian Mounds Park.
March 9, 2020 - MPR’s John Enger interviews Native American author Dennis Staples about his first novel, "This Town Sleeps." The story depicts the struggle of a gay Ojibwe man to accept a Native tradition where he rarely felt at home, while escaping a reservation he could never quite leave. It is told through the eyes of a twenty-something narrator, who bears a striking resemblance to Staples himself.
May 11, 2022 - MPR’s Kirsti Marohn reports on the tradition of spearing or netting fish on Minnesota lakes. Tribal members say the annual ritual of gathering fish through spearing or netting provides a vital food source for the community and preserves a cultural tradition. The spring harvest is an exercise of tribal treaty rights, and the result of a long-fought legal battle.
August 23, 2022 - MPR’s Dan Kraker reports on a rare breed that has adapted to the forests along the Minnesota-Canadian border. It's called the Lac la Croix Pony, or the Ojibwe horse. A few decades ago there were only four of them left. Kraker interviews those dedicated to reviving the population and help Ojibwe people to reconnect with the horses.
October 5, 2022 - MPR’s Matthew Holding Eagle III reports on items related to tribal life in North Dakota being returned digitally. Thousands of culturally significant photographs, wax cylinder recordings and journals recently returned to the place where they were created over a century ago among the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes in North Dakota.