The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association used its unique ethnic affiliation to promote suffrage within Minnesota’s substantial Scandinavian community. By weaving celebrations of culture with targeted suffrage campaigns, the club contributed to Minnesota’s larger fight for women’s voting rights and even raised enough money to build a suffrage movement headquarters on the state fairgrounds.

Cottonwood County citizens have participated in local chapters of the national Sons of Norway organization, called lodges, since 1938. Since 1974, Stavanger Lodge 538 has brought members together to participate in cultural, artistic, and community events that celebrate Norwegian American traditions.

Between 1820 and 1910, it is estimated that at least 30,000 people emigrated from the Swiss canton of Graubünden to the United States. Included in this number were Romansh people—members of an ethnically distinct Swiss population—headed for Minnesota. Beginning in 1854, they settled in Stillwater, St. Paul, the St. Henry Colony (Le Sueur County), the Stillwater-sponsored Badus Colony (South Dakota), and other communities throughout the region.

Theater Mu is Minnesota’s first professional Asian American theater company. Since its founding in 1992, it has impacted both local and national theater landscapes, helping to create a pan-Asian community of artists and presenting world-premiere productions that illuminate Asian American experiences.

The stretch of land between present-day St. Paul, Minnesota, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, served as a highway for Native and mixed-ancestry (metis) fur traders—especially those with French heritage or kinship ties—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Building on Native trade networks, they created new communities, adapted to cultural change, and contributed to Minnesota’s recognition as a state in 1858.

The Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis opened its doors in 1872. During its long history, it survived locust plagues, economic panics, a major milling disaster, the turbulent times of the Great Depression, and a devastating fire. Acquisition of smaller banks and a growing list of services made it one of the top banking companies in the region. In 1929 it became a bank holding company organized as Northwestern Bancorporation (later Norwest Corporation). Norwest merged with Wells Fargo in 1998.

Since its founding in 1963 as the Center Opera Company of the Walker Art Center, Minnesota Opera has maintained a reputation as a highly regarded opera company. In the twenty-first century it produces standard classics while also commissioning and creating compelling new works.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Feminist Caucus was founded in 1973 to advocate for feminist positions on issues like poverty among women, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Its members lobbied the Minnesota State Legislature, endorsed candidates, and produced a US Senate candidate of their own in 1984.

Nurses organized the Clara Barton Club at Westbrook’s Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1948 with three goals. First, they aimed to study the health needs of their community. Second, they promised to keep themselves updated about new drugs and evolving nursing methods. Third, they pledged to support their hospital.

South Dakota Hutterite families with roots in the Anabaptist Reformation of the sixteenth-century moved to Cottonwood County in 1994. There, they established the Neuhof Hutterian Brethren Colony and the Elmendorf Hutterian Brethren Colony south of Mountain Lake, Minnesota.