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.
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.
December 23, 2022 - MPR’s Hannah Yang profiles the Dakota 38+2 riders, as they make trip honoring ancestors. The group travel hundreds of miles on horseback to honor 38 men hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. The ride also remembers the many others who died as a result of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
July 27, 2023 - MPR’s Mathew Holding Eagle III reports that Beltrami County Historical Society is pushing to return sacred Indigenous artifacts to communities. A court granted the Beltrami Historical Society’s museum permission to break up arguably its most important collection, The John Morrison collection. This will allow culturally sensitive artifacts to be repatriated to the Indigenous communities where they originated.
August 28, 2023 - MPR’s Alex V. Cipolle presents a profile of Jim Denomie, an Ojibwe painter who died in 2022. Cipolle visits Minneapolis Institute of Art to view “The Lyrical Artwork of Jim Denomie,” which has transformed into a posthumous survey of the latter half of the famous colorist’s career; one that skewered mainstream histories and purveyors of injustice, from Fort Snelling to Standing Rock, while championing the joy and resilience of Native communities.
September 7, 2023 - MPR’s Melissa Olson reports on Lower Sioux Community exploring reconciliation through an 'honor tax.' The Mni Sota Makoce Honor Tax was created as another way Minnesotans and Dakota people could build relationships.
November 3, 2023 - MPR’s Melissa Olson reports that conservators and artists have worked nearly a year to restore a work of art created by artist George Morrison half a century ago. Morrison’s vision is felt by the people who helped to restore his work, and by those redesigning the building where the mural lives.