Minnesota
How Minnesota’s Native Americans are safeguarding their musical traditions
At summertime social powwows and spiritual ceremonies throughout the Upper Midwest, Native Americans are gathering around singers seated at big, resonant drums to dance, celebrate and connect with their ancestral culture.
“I grew up singing my entire life, and I was always taught that dewe’igan is the heartbeat of our people,” said Jakob Wilson, 19, using the Ojibwe term for drum that’s rooted in the words for heart and sound. “The absolute power and feeling that comes off of the drum and the singers around it is incredible.”
Wilson has led the drum group at Hinckley-Finlayson High School. In 2023, Wilson’s senior year, they were invited to drum and sing at graduation. But this year, when his younger sister Kaiya graduated, the school board barred them from performing at the ceremony, creating dismay across Native communities far beyond this tiny town where cornfields give way to northern Minnesota’s birch and fir forests.
“It kind of shuts us down, makes us step back instead of going forward. It was hurtful,” said Lesley Shabaiash. She was participating in the weekly drum and dance session at the Minneapolis American Indian Center a few weeks after attending protests in Hinckley.
“Hopefully this incident doesn’t stop us from doing our spiritual things,” added the mother of four, who grew up in the Twin Cities but identifies with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose tribal lands abut Hinckley.
In written statements, the school district’s superintendent said the decision to ban “all extracurricular groups” from the ceremony, while making other times and places for performance available, was intended to prevent disruptions and avoid “legal risk if members of the community feel the District is endorsing a religious group as part of the graduation ceremony.”
But many Native families felt the ban showed how little their culture and spirituality is understood. It also brought back traumatic memories of their being forcibly suppressed, not only at boarding schools like the one the Wilsons’ grandmother attended, but more generally from public spaces.
It was not until the late 1970s that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act directed government agencies to make policy changes “to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices.”
“We had our language, culture and way of life taken away,” said Memegwesi Sutherland, who went to high school in Hinckley and teaches the Ojibwe language at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
The Center’s weekly drum and dance sessions help those who “may feel lost inside” without connections to ancestral ways of life find their way back, said Tony Frank, a drum instructor.
“Singing is a door opener to everything else we do,” said Frank, who has been a singer for nearly three decades. “The reason we sing is from our heart. Our connection to the drum and songs is all spiritual. You give 100 percent, so the community can feel a piece of us.”
In drum circles like those in Minneapolis, where many Natives are Ojibwe and Lakota, there is a lead singer, who starts each song before passing on the beat and verse to others seated at the drum, which is made of wood and animal hide (usually deer or steer).
A drum keeper or carrier cares for the drum, often revered as having its own spirit and considered like a relative and not like personal property. Keepers and singers are usually male; according to one tradition, that’s because women can already connect to a second heartbeat when pregnant.
These lifelong positions are often passed down in families. Similarly, traditional lyrics or melodies are learned from older generations, while others are gifted in dreams to medicine men, several singers said. Some songs have no words, only vocables meant to convey feelings or emulate nature.
Songs and drums at the center of social events like powwows are different from those that are crucial instruments in spiritual ceremonies, for example for healing, and that often contain invocations to the Creator, said Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe language and culture professor at Bemidji State University.
Meant to mark the beginning of a new journey in life, the “traveling song” that the drum group wanted to sing at the Hinckley graduation includes the verse “when you no longer can walk, that is when I will carry you,” said Jakob Wilson.
That’s why it was meant for the entire graduating class of about 70 students, not only the 21 Native seniors, added Kaiya Wilson, who trained as a back-up singer – and why relegating it to just another extracurricular activity hurt so deeply.
“This isn’t just for fun, this is our culture,” said Tim Taggart, who works at the Meshakwad Community Center – named after a local drum carrier born in the early 20th century – and helped organize the packed powwow held in the school’s parking lot after graduation. “To just be culturally accepted, right? That’s all everybody wants, just to be accepted.”
The school had taken good steps in recent years, like founding the Native American Student Association, and many in the broader Hinckley community turned out to support Native students. So Taggart is optimistic that after this painful setback, bridges will be rebuilt
And the drum, with all that it signifies about community and a connected way of life, will be brought back.
“Nothing can function without that heartbeat,” said Taggart, whose earliest memory of the drum is being held as a toddler at a ceremony. “It’s not just hearing the drums, but you’re feeling it throughout your entire body, and that just connects you more with the spirit connection, more with God.”
As dancers – from toddlers to adults in traditional shawls – circled the floor to the drum’s beat in the Minneapolis center’s gym, Cheryl Secola, program director for its Culture Language Arts Network, said it was heartwarming to see families bring children week after week, building connections even if they might not have enough resources to travel to the reservations.
On reservations too, many youths aren’t being raised in cultural ways like singing, said Isabella Stensrud-Eubanks, 16, a junior and back-up singer on the Hinckley high school drum group.
“It’s sad to say, but our culture is slowly dying out,” she said, adding that several elders reached out to her and the Wilsons after the graduation controversy to teach them more, so the youth can themselves one day teach their traditions.
Mark Erickson was already about 20 when he went back to Red Lake, his father’s band in northern Minnesota, to learn his people’s songs.
“It’s taken me a lifetime to learn and speak the language, and a lifetime to learn the songs,” said Erickson, who only in his late 60s was awarded the distinction of culture carrier for Anishinaabe songs, a term for Ojibwe and other Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.
Believing that songs and drums are gifts from the Creator, he has been going to drum and dance sessions at the Minneapolis Center for more than a decade to share them, and the notions of honor and respect they carry.
“When you’re out there dancing, you tend to forget your day-to-day struggles and get some relief, some joy and happiness,” Erickson said.
NOTE: The original airdate of the video attached to this article is July 17, 2024.
Veteran federal prosecutors in Minnesota resign after pressure from Justice Department leaders to investigate the widow of Renee Macklin Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent, raising new questions about political interference.
President Trump takes his economic message on the road, pitching affordability as voters remain frustrated by high prices.
And while gas prices have dipped, rising heating costs, grocery prices, and stubborn inflation show why relief still feels out of reach for many families.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Rebekah Metzler, Gigi Douban, Krishnadev Calamur, Mohamad ElBardicy and Alice Woelfle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
And our Supervising Producer is Michael Lipkin.
(0:00) Introduction
(02:19) Minnesota Prosecutors Quit
(06:10) Trump in Detroit
(09:52) Inflation Report
Hundreds more ICE agents coming to MN, Noem says
DHS Sec. Kristi Noem says hundreds more ICE agents are coming to Minnesota. They began arriving on Sunday, and more are expected to arrive on Monday. This comes days after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and comes amid rising tensions as people protest ICE in Minnesota, demanding they leave.
(FOX 9) – Several Minnesota lawmakers are backing an effort signed by more than 50 Democrats in the House of Representatives to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem stemming from accusations of obstructing Congress and violating public trust.
Noem impeachment effort
What we know:
A total of 53 House Democrats have co-signed a bill set to be introduced by U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (Illinois).
Tensions have risen in the Twin Cities following the shooting of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE officer Jonathan Ross. The shooting has sparked protests across the city, including outside the regional ICE headquarters.
In December, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge, bringing more than 100 federal agents into the Twin Cities.
In January, the Department of Homeland Security launched a new 30-day surge, bringing a reported force of 1,500 ICE officers and 600 Homeland Security investigators into the state with an aim at tackling fraud.
According to Noem, the total has since increased to more than 2,000 agents presently operating within the state.
In the months prior to the focus on Minnesota, the Trump administration also sent additional troops to cities such as Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Dig deeper:
The articles of impeachment that are set to be formally introduced on Jan. 14, 2026, will accuse Noem of three counts:
- Obstruction of Congress: Stemming from members of Congress being denied entry to DHS facilities and for withholding congressionally appropriated disaster relief funding.
- Violation of public trust: Allegedly denying ICE detainees due process and violating the First and Fourth amendments.
- Self-dealing: Stemming from reports that Noem awarded $220 million in contracts to a firm run by her spokesperson’s husband.
What they’re saying:
“Secretary Kristi Noem is an incompetent leader, a disgrace to our democracy, and I am impeaching her for obstruction of justice, violation of public trust, and self-dealing. Secretary Noem wreaked havoc in the Chicagoland area, and now, her rogue ICE agents have unleashed that same destruction in Minneapolis, fatally shooting Renee Nicole Good,” said Rep. Kelly in a statement on her official website. “From Chicago to Charlotte to Los Angeles to Minneapolis, Secretary Noem is violating the Constitution while ruining — and ending — lives and separating families. It’s one thing to be incompetent and dangerous, but it’s impeachable to break the rule of law.”
Minnesota Reps. Angie Craig and Betty McCollum also plan to support the impeachment efforts.
“Secretary Noem should be fired. If she is not, I support impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate for her obstruction of Congress and violation of public trust,” said Rep. McCollum in a statement. “This past year, Americans in cities across the United States have felt the chaos and terror of Secretary Noem’s Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Secretary Noem has demonstrated that she is unable to enforce immigration law in a peaceful and ethical manner. Her deployment of unprofessional, poorly trained, masked immigration agents has put our neighbors in danger of physical harm.”
Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers, along with mayors Jacob Frey and Kaohly Her, along with Gov. Tim Walz, have also been vocal critics of DHS immigration enforcement efforts in the wake of the shooting of Renee Good.
DULUTH — The University of Minnesota Duluth received a visit from University President Rebecca Cunningham last week, just days before the start of the spring semester.
Cunningham’s Northland visit included meetings with several local legislators, as well as stops at some of the system’s regional facilities.
The trip was capped off with a forum hosted at UMD on Friday. Cunningham and UMD Chancellor Charles T. Nies met with college community members and discussed the university’s new strategic roadmap, outlining upcoming initiatives and opportunities at UMD and across the university system.
“We have these five wonderful campuses that serve different students with different interests in different study and learning environments,” said Cunningham in a sit down with the News Tribune, “and we’re working together in really just new and exciting ways.”
Back in October, the university unveiled its new strategic plan, Elevating Extraordinary 2030, which outlines its goals and mission over the next five years. Building on the last strategic plan, which concluded in 2025, the university’s next phase will be guided by five main areas of focus: preparing and engaging students, innovative learning, serving communities, advancing research and investing in the local workforce.
“The strategic roadmap … really gives us the framework and the structure to say we’re doing this, not only because we know it’s good for our students,” said Nies, who co-chaired the development committee for the new plan, “but it’s also helping to advance the mission and the programming for the University of Minnesota, across all campuses.”
Contributed / University of Minnesota Duluth.
How each of the five main university campuses puts the elements of the strategic plan into action will likely look a little different at each school, Nies said, but having a set of system-wide goals will also create more opportunities for campus partnerships and shared resources.
One of the overall facets of the strategic plan focuses on serving the community through the development of health care and health research, which has led to “exciting” investments in the university’s medical programs, Cunningham said.
Earlier this year, the UMN’s Medical School Duluth Campus expanded to a four-year program, opening new opportunities for students looking to focus their education in areas such as rural health, family medicine and Native American health.
The UMN School of Dentistry, which trains more than 70% of Minnesota’s practicing dentists, is also planned to undergo changes, Cunningham, said as the university looks to restructure and renovate the school.
However, the university’s top priority right now is reaching an agreement on continued funding and support for the state’s largest medical school.
In November, the University of Minnesota rejected a proposed deal between Fairview Health Services and University of Minnesota Physicians, the clinical practice for the school’s faculty. While the $1 billion deal would have provided funding and support to the medical school for the next 10 years, the university objected to the proposal, claiming a lack of involvement in negotiations and that the university’s control over the medical school would be greatly reduced under the new plan.
Contributed / University of Minnesota Duluth
All parties have since returned to the negotiating table, with the help of a Minnesota Attorney General-appointed mediator.
“We’re in mediation right now, and I expect that we’ll come to a solution that works for all three parties here,” Cunningham said. “The university remains very committed to rural health care, and once that gets sorted, we can continue to look to other plans and phases. … There’s lots of opportunities for next conversations and next partnerships, but my first job of business is to sort out our partnership with Fairview.”
Among those “next conversations” are discussions about the proposed medical center in downtown Duluth, a project that has been under discussion since 2022.
The idea to expand current health care services and training options in Duluth through a new academic health center has received
continued support
from the city since it was first proposed. While Essentia Health and Aspirus St. Luke’s have
offered locations
for the potential medical school campus, Cunningham says the plan still requires some more thought.
“The university is still interested in exploring that opportunity, and it remains in our five-year plan that we worked with the regents on last June,” Cunningham added. “We plan to continue to explore the opportunities … for what the right opportunity is for medical education here, and how we could expand that.”
Expanding medical education efforts go hand in hand with local initiatives, like
the Duluth Promise,
Nies said. Focused on creating career pathways in fields with high workforce demands, Duluth Promise is a coalition of local schools and industry groups, including UMD, Duluth Public Schools and the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce.
The initiative launched last year and has since narrowed its focus to health care careers.
“It fits in rather nicely with some of the overall focuses of our strategic plan,” Nies said. “We’re creating a pathway from kindergarten to med school right here in Duluth. … We’ve got a lot of strong partnerships here, and we’re going to really lean into that strength as we move forward. There’s a lot of great things ahead.”
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