Friday: A Lesson in the Urban Native Experience

We started the day bright and early, waking up at 5 am so that we could leave Grampie’s house in Duluth and make it to our first talk in Minneapolis at 10:15 am. We swung by Angie’s house to drop off our bags, then headed to Pow Wow Grounds, a coffee shop in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. We got some amazing coffee drinks there: we highly recommend both the white mocha and turtle mocha if you are ever in town!

Next we headed into the All My Relations Art Gallery. They were hosting an annual exhibit called “Bring Her Home: Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island”, which highlights the enormous problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW). The artwork was beautiful, but the story behind them is incredibly sad. I have heard about the epidemic of MMIW numerous times, and it is infuriating that it is so difficult to get the public to care about missing and murdered women of color. My personal favorite pieces were by Angela Babby; they were kiln-fired vitreous enamel on glass mosaic. One depicted a famous picture of Wounded Knee massacre, highlighting the fact that what appears to be a pile of blankets in the foreground of the picture is actually the bodies of several murdered Native women. The second depicted modern MMIW in the background with portraits of Native women who were recently elected to public positions. The thing that spoke to me the most about this pair of pieces was that they were both honest in depicting the brutality that Native women have suffered while simultaneously inspiring hope for the future.

After our tour of All My Relations Art Gallery, we walked over to the Minneapolis American Indian Center, where we got a rundown of all the programs offered there by Brian Joyce, the director of the Native Fitness and Nutrition Program (FAN). There are an array of programs available at the Minneapolis American Indian Center, including FAN, the Prevention Through Cultural Awareness Program, Indigenous Women's Life Net, Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, and Two Rivers Art Gallery, all of which focus on harnessing and reclaiming culture to empower Natives living in the Twin Cities area. We got the opportunity to shop at Charlie's Woodland Indian Crafts, where we befriended the owner (the eponymous Charlie). 

Next, we headed over to the Indian Health Board, where Angie works to get Narcan training by Steffany Devich, an alcohol and drug counselor in the Twin Cities area. Her presentation was comprehensive and incredible, addressing misconceptions and truths about opiate overdose. I learned a lot and got a couple of Narcan kits to bring back home. I hope never to have to use them, but I am glad that I have them just in case! We also got to meet some of the medical team at IHB that work with Angie. 

After our lunch talk at IHB, we got a quick tour of the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center with Patina Park and learned about some of their services. The group specializes in empowering Native women to live healthy and stable lives, free of violence. As we learned from the Bring Her Home exhibit earlier in the day, Native women are significantly more likely to be victims of domestic violence than women from other ethnic groups. MIWRC offers section 8 housing for women and families as well as support groups and mental health services to address historical and personal trauma. 

After our talk on the MIWRC we walked over to Little Earth, a HUD-subsidized housing complex with preference for Native American residents. We hosted a foot care clinic for elders who live there. Unfortunately, we only got a few "customers", but it was a unique opportunity to hear the elders' stories. It turned out that Sarah K. was a hidden talent at foot massage! 

Our final event of the night was a pow wow, which was held back in the Minneapolis American Indian Center. We volunteered to help with the logistics of the event. Some of us helped set up chairs, while others handed out surveys to collect data for the Center's funding purposes. Sarah K. and I helped make walking tacos; they're made by cutting open a Doritos bag and putting in ground beef and whatever taco toppings the attendees' hearts desired. I got a chance to talk with an elder named Wendy, who told me about some negative experiences she'd had with physicians in the IHS; while I'd read about such concerns in books, it was even more upsetting to hear about it from someone who'd been directly connected to it. 

At the end of the pow wow, the emcee asked all of the Dartmouth students to come out and stand in the middle with the head man and head woman dancer while the pow wow attendees came out to shake our hands. I have never felt so undeserving of thanks, because I felt that everyone I met this week gave me so much more though their teachings than I could ever repay in one evening.