Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA)

In 1985, Minnesota state legislators passed the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA) to address shortcomings in the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The federal law had been enacted in 1978 in response to the alarming number of Native American children being removed from their families and placed in non-Native foster and adoptive homes. MIFPA gave Minnesota tribes more authority in all child custody decisions involving Native children.

Lacemaking at Birch Coulee, 1893–1926

The lace-making school that operated at Birch Coulee at the turn of the twentieth century is an important part of the history of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Although the school was an extension of the assimilation efforts directed towards Dakota people in the late 1800s, the Birch Coulee lace-makers used the project to support their community, and to continue a long tradition of communal artmaking among Dakota women.

Minnesota State Seal

The original Great Seal of Minnesota was created by men who tied their fortunes to the progress (as they defined it) and settlement of the state, often at the expense of Native Americans. Starting in the late 1960s, critics of the seal argued that its imagery reflected an anti-Native American bias. In 2023, a State Emblems Redesign Commission chose a new design for the seal intended to better represent twenty-first-century Minnesota.

Minnesota State Flag

What good is a state flag? According to flag expert Lee Herold of Rochester, Minnesota, a good flag creates a distinctive brand. Ideally, Minnesota’s flag should also create unity, representing our state’s values everywhere it flies. But this has not always been the case. The people of Minnesota have altered their state flag’s design in the past to meet changing needs. They continued to do so in 2023, when public input informed a redesign commission’s choice for a new flag.

Highway 61 in Minnesota

For more than a century, the routes now known as US Highway 61 and Minnesota State Highway 61 have captured the imagination of Minnesotans looking for views of rushing rivers and cascading waterfalls. Although the road has been renamed, reconfigured, and interrupted multiple times, it continues to serve as a vital transportation channel along the state’s eastern corridor.

Transsexual Research Project

The University of Minnesota performed sex-reassignment surgeries (as they were called at the time) on twenty-five trans women from 1966 to the mid 1970s as part of a program called the Transsexual Research Project. Helmed by psychiatrist Donald W. Hastings and surgeon Colin Markland, the project sought to alleviate the gender dysphoria of its patients through hormone treatment, psychotherapy, and surgery. At the same time, it tried to reform them into middle-class, heterosexual, conventionally respectable members of American society. Fueled by a complex mix of empathy, sensationalized concern, and pity, the project established Minnesota as the center of trans life it remains today.

White Earth Land Recovery Project

Activist Winona LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989 in response to environmental destruction and a land-tenure crisis in the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe. Since then, WELRP has taken steps to recover stolen land, to aid and educate Ojibwe communities, to maintain traditional culture, and to restore sustainable ways of life.

Minnesota Human Rights Act

Minnesota enacted its first major human rights law in 1967. That statute made it unlawful to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, and national origin in unions, employment, education, public services, and public accommodations. Over the next twenty-five years DFL legislators tried and failed six times to amend the law to add sexual orientation. They succeeded in 1993.

Toastmaster (bread toaster)

Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast at the Stillwater, Minnesota, factory where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed an innovative pop-up bread toaster in 1919. After Strite modified his commercial-grade model for home use, the Toastmaster quickly made its way into kitchens nationwide.

Muralismo in St. Paul

Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. Chicanos painted murals in their neighborhoods to express their cultural pride, to protest injustice, and to celebrate their aesthetic values. While many of the first Chicano murals painted on St. Paul’s West Side are now lost, murals continue to reflect the community’s growth and progress.

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