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.
May 17, 2005 - The Current’s Mary Lucia talks with Native American poet and saxophonist Joy Harjo who shares thought about her work. Segment includes excerpt of “Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window.”
September 23, 2005 - MPR’s Greta Cunningham interviews Minnesota author Louise Erdrich about her book “The Painted Drum.” The story is of a New Hampshire woman, an Ojibwe Indian and a Native American drum.
October 9, 2006 - MPR’s Dan Olson reports on the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary on the edge of downtown St. Paul. The land occupies an area that used to be the home of Native Americans, and Dakota want to reclaim Wakan Tipi, a cave they consider a sacred site.
October 26, 2007 - MPR’s Karl Gehrke profiles Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, a Chickasaw composer dedicated to spending his life looking for North American Indian solutions in classical music composition. Tate's new guitar concerto is titled "Nitoshi' Imali." It was a commission from the Joyce Foundation, and awarded to Tate and the St. Paul-based American Composers Forum.
February 3, 2009 - A rare, original oral history of Indian life has surfaced in the Twin Cities. It's one of the oldest known examples of it's kind. In 1910, Lakota Chief Martin White Horse dictated stories about his community, located on a reservation in South Dakota. After the oral history, called a winter count, was typed up, the transcript went into storage. There it lay for decades, forgotten about. The descendants of the white woman who typed up the document rediscovered it last summer, and opened up a window to the history of the Lakota and to their own family.
September 16, 2010 - MPR’s Kerri Miller interviews Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich about The Guthrie Theater production of Erdrich's novel The Master Butchers Singing Club. Francesca Zambello, internationally renowned opera and theater director, is also interviewed.
March 14, 2011 - MPR’s Euan Kerr talks with Ojibwe writer Jim Northrup. For almost 22 years, Northrup has entertained and chastened readers of his syndicated “Fond Du Lacs Follies” newspaper column. He's covered everything from the rise of casinos and treaty rights, to his love of tapping trees for syrup, and harvesting wild rice…and he always included lots of jokes.
October 4, 2011 - MPR’s Julie Siple reports on the fight against hunger on the White Earth Reservation. Tribal officials estimate up to 50 percent of American Indians on the reservation live below the poverty line. For some, ensuring there is enough healthy food to feed themselves and their families is a problem. There is a growing effort to return to traditional foods to help alleviate hunger and improve the health of people on the reservation while reconnecting them with a diet that served their ancestors.
November 8, 2011 - MPR’s Dan Gunderson reports on creation of four Native American radio stations in Callaway, Nett Lake, Cloquet and Cass Lake. Gunderson interviews tribe members behind the efforts to provide service to American Indian audiences in the northern Minnesota area.
November 8, 2011 - Native American activist Winona LaDuke speaks about the importance of Native American radio stations. LaDuke is one of the individuals behind starting station for White Earth reservation.