MPR Archive presents a collection of varied Native topics in and around Minnesota. Stories include interviews, commentary, events, speeches, documentaries, and reports.
September 29, 2006 - At this Talking Volumes event, MPR's Kerri Miller and author David Treuer discuss his book, The Translation of Dr. Apelles. David Treuer's sly and heart-pounding novel tells a story within a story: A reclusive translator of ancient American Indian texts stumbles across a love story that upends his workaday world and triggers his own need for love.
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.
April 28, 2008 - One of Minnesota's best-known novelists, Louise Erdrich, discusses her book “A Plague of Doves,” a story that weaves together the murder of a family, a lynching of men innocent of the crime, and the tangled relationships of Ojibwe and whites living around the dying town of Pluto, North Dakota.
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.
May 6, 2009 - MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on some Indian activists that will fight a planned oil pipeline that would cross the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Segment includes clip of commentary from Native American environmentalist Winonna LaDuke.
September 21, 2009 - The inaugural formal meeting of The Kerri Miller Book Club presents an interview with Louise Erdrich, twenty-five years after Erdrich's novel "Love Medicine" was published and became a bestseller. Program recorded before an audience in Minneapolis.
January 15, 2010 - MPR’s Tom Robertson reports on DFL candidates for Minnesota governor participating in Bemidji forum on Native American issues. Report includes comments from Peggy Flanagan, director of Wellstone Action’s Native American Leadership program.
March 26, 2010 - On this Midday program, a collection of reports in which MPR News explores how changing our food culture could help cure obesity.
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.