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.
November 30, 1990 - MPR’s Beth Friend interviews Native American poet Joy Harjo, who discusses language, the Earth, and Western reality. Segment includes Harjo reading her poetry.
December 29, 1990 - MPR’s Paula Schroeder interviews Native American activist Clyde Bellecourt, who talks about Red Road Pow Wow, spirituality, and education of younger generation.
February 8, 1991 - MPR’s Catherine Winter reports on opening of Elaine M. Stately Peacemaker Center in Minneapolis. The center is designed as a safe place for Native American and other neighborhood youth to gather. Segment includes speech by Clyde Bellecourt, a founder of center.
July 8, 1991 - MPR’s Paula Schroeder interviews Patricia Locke, a Lakota and White Earth Chippewa educator and activist, about her efforts to keeping the Native American language alive. Locke states that by preserving and speaking tribal or native languages, they can provide a solid source of identities.
September 15, 1991 - MPR presents the documentary “Learning the White People Way: A Documentary Essay on the History of Federal Indian Boarding Schools.” It is narrated and co-written by Ted Mahto, a Native American from the Red Lake band of Chippewa in northern Minnesota. Mahto reflects on his experience at boarding schools in Pipestone, Minnesota and Flandreau, South Dakota.
March 2, 1992 - Midday program presents two documentaries - Messages from the Grandparents, a look at Cherokee, Winnebago, Pueblo, and Mohawk elders who present oral narratives which provide the basis for community behavior at how oral traditions are passed from one generation to the next; and Cultural Identity, a look at the cultural and social bases for contemporary Indian identity among the Houma, Lumbee, and Yaqui.
March 9, 1992 - Midday program presents two documentaries…America's Heritage: Preserving Our History, about cultural centers and the new National Museum of the American Indian; and Rebuilding our Nations, a documentary about Native American economic development projects.
March 16, 1992 - Midday program presents two documentaries…Education: Learning to Fix Our World, about how Native Americans are taking control of their own educational systems through curriculum design to preservation of language; and A Visit to the Chief Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, Dan Olson's documentary on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation school in Northern Minnesota.
March 18, 1992 - Midday program presents two documentaries - Shared Visions: Art, Music and Literature, reflections on cultural continuity by Native American artists, writers, dancers, and musicians; and Traditional Caring: Non-traditional Health Issues, a look at how Native Americans confront contemporary health concerns such as diabetes, alcoholism and AIDS with traditional healing practices.
March 30, 1992 - Midday program presents two documentaries - Battle Lines, Pressures on the Land, which details modern-day struggles over issues of sovereignty and land ownership between Native Americans and the Euromerican peoples; and Sustaining Our Communities, Natural Resource Management, an examination of traditional Indian farming techniques for growing corn, natural resource management practices and the revitalization of the buffalo and salmon population within various tribal communities.