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.
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 on Beltrami County Historical Society push 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. The court action 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.