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.
April 16, 1998 - Mainstreet Radio's Leif Enger speaks with Mille Lacs Band member Vince Merrill about gillnetting, the warrior society, and whether tradition can survive as written law.
April 17, 1998 - As part of Mainstreet Radio’s Treaty Rights and Tribal Sovereignty series, Catherine Winter presents report on the concept called tribal sovereignty, and a look at the where this complex set of rules comes from, and how it affects Indian people today. Report includes various interviews with tribe members.
April 21, 1998 - A Mainstreet Radio special broadcast from Mille Lacs Indian Museum, highlighting Indian treaty rights and Native American sovereignty. Rachel Reabe interviews Don Wedll, Commissioner of Natural Resources for the Mill Lacs Band of Ojibwe; Doug Sam, tribal elder; and Henry Van Offelen, treaty biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Group discussion includes spearfishing topic and answering audience/listener questions.
April 21, 1998 - A Mainstreet Radio special broadcast from Mille Lacs Indian Museum, highlighting Indian treaty rights and Native American sovereignty. Rachel Reabe interviews Henry Buffalo, a Minneapolis attorney, sovereignty expert, and member Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe; Chief Tribal Judge Mary Jo Brooks Hunter, of Ho chunk Tribe; and Jim Genia, solicitor general for the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe. Discussion topic is tribal sovereignty and how the rules are different on the reservation.
May 19, 1998 - MPR’s Chris Roberts profiles Native American blues band, Indigenous.
September 7, 1998 - MPR's Tom Robertson reports from Bemidji, where It's harvest time for wild rice in Minnesota, and nowhere is the season more important than on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. The reservation has more than 6,000 acres of wild rice beds within its boundaries.
May 31, 1999 - A PRI presentation of "The Mississippi River: A River of Song" by Smithsonian Productions. This program in series is titled “Land of Lakes and Immigrant Songs.”
June 22, 1999 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports that the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe are looking ahead at a future without gaming. Like many Indian tribes, the Mille Lacs Ojibwe got an enormous boost from gaming in the 1990s. Its two casinos brought in millions of dollars annually, and hundreds of new jobs. Now the Band is trying to broaden its economy.
July 22, 1999 - MPR’s Dan Gunderson reports on the history of tribal government in Minnesota, and its potential changes.
March 24, 2000 - MPR’s Leif Enger presents various commentary from tribal members during treaty holiday celebration.