About 13,000 years ago the melting glaciers that covered Minnesota and Canada created a vast lake, bigger than all the Great Lakes of today combined. Geologists later named this Lake Agassiz (AH-ga-see), for the Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz. The lake drained twice: first to the south, to form the channel of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi in the Twin Cities, and then, 1,600 years later, to form the course of the Red River of the North.

Between 17,000 and 21,000 years ago the last North American glacier reached its maximum depth and extent, covering all but the southeast corner of Minnesota. Its slow melting and retreat then began. Some 13,000 years ago its meltwater formed Glacial Lake Agassiz, which covered most of what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta, plus a sliver of northwest Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. Its waters were contained by the ice sheet to the north and a natural dam to the south, since named the Big Stone Moraine. (A moraine is a ridge of debris formed by a glacier.)

About 11,700 years ago the lake breached the moraine near present-day Browns Valley at a place now called Traverse Gap. The flow of water and debris surged south, then southeast, with unimaginable force, creating what geologists later named the Glacial River Warren. This river carved a wide, deep valley — now the Minnesota River valley — which turned north at Mankato, because it hit bedrock, joined the much smaller Mississippi River at Fort Snelling, and joined the St. Croix at Hastings. It thus formed the river network around which all human habitation in southern Minnesota has since been organized.

When River Warren’s surge reached what is now downtown St. Paul, about 10,000 years ago, it flowed atop the shelf of limestone upon which the city now stands. When it reached the edge of that shelf it met much softer rock — shale, with sandstone beneath. It then proceeded to cut deeply into that material, forming the basin still visible south of downtown. In time the flow dug a deep chasm, and the water cascading over the limestone edge formed a waterfall 175 feet tall and 2,700 feet across (later named River Warren Falls) spanning the entire basin from downtown to Cherokee Heights.

The force of falling water ate away at the sandstone under the limestone shelf, and little by little the edges of the shelf broke off, again and again and again. Thus the falls marched slowly upstream to the west, progressively diminishing in height and force, until they reached the Mississippi at the site of Fort Snelling. It then followed the Mississippi north, split off at Minnehaha Creek to form Minnehaha Falls (where the shelf and softer rock below can still be seen), and continued north to what became Minneapolis. Dakota people called the water feature Owamniyomni: Turbulent Waters. After 1680, when Father Louis Hennepin saw the site and named it for the patron saint of Padua, Italy, it became known to Euro-Americans as St. Anthony Falls.

While Glacial River Warren worked its way east, then north, the glacier, far to the north in Canada, continued to melt. Lake Agassiz re-formed, though smaller. About 7,400 years ago it broke through the weakening ice to the north and east, and flowed toward Hudson’s Bay, creating the shallow valley of the Red River of the North, which extends from Lake Traverse to the south to Winnipeg, and beyond, in a shallow, gently sloping valley. The breakthrough eventually drained all the accumulated melt water, and this marked the end of Lake Agassiz. In time the valley of the Red River proved to be fertile farmland, thus attracting European immigration and forming the population centers of western Minnesota and eastern North and South Dakota. The two successive drainings of Lake Agassiz created two of modern Minnesota’s three great river corridors: the Minnesota and the Red, along with the Mississippi.

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The history of Jewish immigration to Minnesota involved two distinct periods in the nineteenth century.

The first wave: German Jews

St. Croix Valley fur trader Maurice Mordecai Samuel was among the first Jews to arrive in Minnesota in the late 1840s. Other German and Central European Jews who had earned their living as peddlers elsewhere in the United States soon followed, attracted by commercial opportunities in the growing Minnesota Territory. German Jewish peddlers-turned-merchants could be found in market towns throughout the state by the 1880s.

In the 1850s, the German Jewish migrants who had accumulated capital started businesses and lived in St. Paul’s Lowertown district. Dry goods, liquor, and furs were among the commodities they sold. Two of their shops, Mannheimer Brothers and the Golden Rule, grew into large department stores. In 1856, eight St. Paul families founded the first Jewish organization in Minnesota, Mount Zion Temple.

Jewish people began to settle in Minneapolis around 1865. The shops they founded along Washington Avenue supplied workers in the city’s thriving lumber industry with ready-made clothing and dry goods. As they had in St. Paul, Minneapolis Jews lived and worshipped near their places of business. The small Minneapolis Jewish community consisted of fewer than two hundred people by 1877.

The Montefiore Burial Association — the first Jewish institution in Minneapolis — was founded in 1876 by German Jews. Two years later, the same group founded a synagogue, Shaarai Tov (later renamed Temple Israel).

The second wave: refugees from Eastern Europe

The earliest Eastern European immigrants in the Twin Cities initially settled in the same neighborhoods as their German coreligionists. They spoke a different language, Yiddish, and followed different religious and social practices. The Eastern European peddlers and small merchants set up their own synagogues: Sons of Jacob (1869) in St. Paul and Adath Jeshurun (1884) in Minneapolis.

On July 14, 1882, 200 impoverished Eastern European Jews arrived unexpectedly at the St. Paul train station. Their appearance marked the beginning of the second, and largest, wave of Jewish migration to Minnesota, consisting of émigrés from the Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Romania.

The established German Jewish community immediately came to the newcomers’ aid. There were only 1,000 or so Jewish people living in the entire state in 1882, so caring for the refugees, who numbered 600 by the year’s end, was a major task.

There was an ambivalent quality to this aid. On one hand, the German Jews were motivated by genuine benevolence and long-standing religious tradition. A key example is Neighborhood House, a settlement house founded by the women of Mount Zion in 1897 on the West Side Flats, where many of the Russian Jewish immigrants first settled. On the other hand, the established German Jewish community feared that the foreign dress and customs of the Eastern Europeans would cause an antisemitic backlash that would transfer to them.

As immigrants from Eastern Europe continued to arrive, they formed their own Jewish community, parallel to that of the established German Jewish community. As some emerged from economic dependency, they created their own social welfare groups, including the Jewish Home for the Aged (1907); Sholom Residence (1918); and the Jewish Sheltering Home for Children (1918). By the end of World War II, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth each maintained a community-wide social service agency and federated community-fundraising organization.

Outside the Twin Cities

Jewish individuals also settled outside the Twin Cities. The largest community was in Duluth, where the first permanent Jewish settlers arrived in 1869. Another decade passed before a significant number joined them. German and Central European Jews came first, followed a decade later by the Eastern Europeans. The small size of Duluth’s Jewish population helped prevent a community split.

Duluth (and its sister community, Superior, Wisc.) thrived as a commercial center after the Mesabi Iron Range opened in the 1890s. Those originally from Lithuania founded Adas Israel Congregation in 1885. Hungarian and German Jews formed a Reform synagogue, Temple Emmanuel, in 1891. Duluth’s West End, between Twelfth and Twenty-fourth Avenues (later the Central Hillside neighborhood), became home to the Eastern European group.

Jewish Duluthians were integrated into the economic and public life of the city. By the end of World War I, the Jewish population of Duluth was 2,300. It reached its height in the 1930s, with about 3,500 people. During this era, Duluth supported four synagogues, two cemeteries, charitable organizations, a Talmud Torah, three social clubs, and four lodges. By 1940, Duluth’s Jewish population had declined to 2,633.

In the 1890s, some Duluth–Superior Jews moved to the Iron Range to found retail and other businesses that served the booming region’s mining towns. Though small in numbers (1,112 at their peak in 1920), Iron Range Jews supported a vibrant Jewish community for decades. Synagogues were founded in Eveleth, Hibbing, Virginia, and Chisholm.

Small Jewish communities arose at the turn of the twentieth century in several southern Minnesota towns, including Faribault, Mankato, Albert Lea, and Austin. Only in Rochester, where the founding of the Mayo Clinic in 1905 created a need for a local congregation that could serve Jewish patients, was a synagogue (B’nai Israel), established.

The dispersion of Jews throughout the state reached a peak in the 1920s. Some four thousand were counted in 145 small towns outside of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth at the end of World War I.

Twin Cities neighborhoods

By 1910, St. Paul’s three major Jewish residential areas were home to between 4,500 and 5,000 of Minnesota’s total Jewish population of 13,000. The older, more prosperous, and largely German families lived in the downtown area; some had begun to move to the Summit Hill neighborhood.

The Eastern Europeans lived in two areas of St. Paul. One enclave was east of the state capitol and the home of the Sons of Jacob synagogue, founded by Polish Jews. The other was the 10-block-square West Side Flats. By end of 1880s, the Flats had three small Orthodox synagogues; by 1900, there were three more.

As their economic standing improved, the Eastern Europeans left the flood-prone Flats for the Selby–Dale neighborhood. From the remnants of the small Flats congregations arose Temple of Aaron (1911). The temple’s first home at Ashland Avenue and Grotto Street was two blocks from Mount Zion, which had left Lowertown in 1901 for a new home at Holly Avenue and Avon Street, just off Summit Avenue.

Three Hebrew schools were founded in St. Paul between 1880 and 1920. Each had its own constituency and neighborhood. Not until 1956 did they merge to become the Talmud Torah of St. Paul.

Early on, Neighborhood House and other settlement houses deemphasized their Jewish focus. The St. Paul Jewish community recognized the need for a Jewish community center as early as 1916. After years of fundraising, the Jewish Education Center, forerunner of the Jewish Community Center of St. Paul (JCC), opened in 1930 in the Summit Hill neighborhood.

As Minneapolis boomed and overtook St. Paul in overall population, so did the Jewish population of Minneapolis. From a small group of five hundred individuals in 1880, the community grew tenfold to approximately five thousand by 1900.

By 1915, the earliest settlers and their synagogues, Temple Israel and Adath Jeshurun, were moving west from their original downtown neighborhood toward Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues and the Chain of Lakes. Newer arrivals primarily from Romania concentrated in the Elliot Park area of South Minneapolis. The neighborhood contained a handful of synagogues and religious schools, the South Side Neighborhood House, and Jewish-owned stores. The South Side’s population remained stable until the 1940s.

The largest and best-known Jewish neighborhood was Minneapolis’ Northside. Through World War II, North Minneapolis had the largest concentration of Jews in the Upper Midwest between Chicago and Denver. Eleven Orthodox synagogues, including Kenesseth Israel, Mikro Kodesh, Tifereth B’nai Jacob, Sharai Zedeck, and Gemelus Chesed, were founded there between 1884 and 1905.

Northside children came together in one institution to learn their Jewish heritage. The Talmud Torah of Minneapolis evolved from Old World-style methods into a modern, coeducational school.

Jewish institutions continued to grow on the Northside, including the Emmanuel Cohen Center (forerunner of the Sabes Jewish Community Center, the Labor Lyceum, and Beth El Synagogue). By the 1920s, however, the immigrant-era neighborhood had become less habitable. First-generation synagogues and the homes of 126 poor Jewish families were among the structures razed between 1936 and 1938 to create the New Deal-funded Sumner Field housing development.

Community integration and the challenge of antisemitism

Efforts by community leaders coupled with sociological forces began to break down the German–Eastern European divide within the Twin Cities Jewish communities by the time of World War I. Among the efforts was the Anglo-Jewish newspaper the Jewish Weekly (forerunner of the American Jewish World), founded in 1912 by Rabbi Samuel Deinard.

The Zionist movement, which affirmed the need for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was another mechanism for community integration. Initially, support for Zionism in the Jewish community was split along Orthodox-Reform lines. Deinard’s advocacy of Zionism in the pages of the American Jewish World and from the pulpit of his Reform congregation helped bridge the divide. By the end of World War I, virtually all Minnesota Jews supported Zionism and enthusiastically joined local and national Zionist organizations. The largest of these was the national women’s group Hadassah, which had chapters in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and Chisholm. Generations of Minnesota youth attended the Zionist Herzl Camp, near Webster, Wisconsin, after its founding in 1946.

Antisemitism, racism, and anti-Catholicism were on the rise throughout the United States in the 1920s. The advent of the Great Depression began a decade of intense discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations for Minnesota’s Jewish population. The situation was most acute in Minneapolis, where Jews were almost totally excluded from civic and social organizations. In St. Paul, circumstances were less dire.

The roots of the contrast between the two cities can be found in their early histories. Jewish individuals arrived in St. Paul simultaneously with other settlers. From the outset, Jewish people were knit into the fabric of the city’s economic and civic life. In Minneapolis, they were among those groups who arrived after its major industries were established by self-sufficient New Englanders, who set the tone of exclusivity and discrimination that was perpetuated by other non-Jewish residents of Minneapolis.

Antisemitism was used as a political weapon during the 1930s. Many Jewish people supported and advised governors Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson of the Farmer Labor Party. In the 1938 governor’s race, opponents conducted an organized antisemitic campaign to defeat Benson, the incumbent.

The 1938 campaign prompted statewide anti-defamation groups to merge into the Anti-Defamation Council of Minnesota. (In 1959 the group was renamed the Jewish Community Relations Council.) Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis, which opened in 1951, was a Jewish-sponsored, non-sectarian hospital founded as a direct result of Jewish doctors’ exclusion from the staffs of Twin Cities private hospitals.

Journalist Carey McWilliams’s 1946 investigation of antisemitism in the Twin Cities coined a phrase that stuck to describe Minneapolis: “the capital of antisemitism in the United States.” The unfavorable publicity that followed pressured Minneapolis officials, goaded by newly elected mayor Hubert Humphrey, to enact antidiscrimination ordinances. State measures followed.

Ordinances and laws, educational efforts, and Jewish community vigilance led to a decline in overt acts of public antisemitism. One measure of declining prejudice was Jewish success at the polls. Arthur Naftalin was elected as Minneapolis’ first Jewish mayor (1961–1969), and Lawrence Cohen was St. Paul’s first Jewish mayor (1972–1976). Private attitudes persisted, however, and individual Jews continued to experience more “discreet” expressions of antisemitism for decades. (Minnesota was not represented by a Jewish politician in the US Senate until Rudy Boschwitz’s first term, in 1978. Paul Wellstone and Al Franken followed him in 1991 and 2009, respectively.)

Upward mobility and the move to suburbia

Hard work, acculturation, and a focus on education as a means of uplift for the second generation led to a decline in blue-collar employment in the Jewish community in the postwar era. As late as 1947, almost half of Minneapolis Jewish people worked blue-collar jobs. By 1971, only 8.8% were classified as working class. Educational levels and median incomes were higher than their Hennepin County neighbors.

Some of the post-war blue-collar workers were recently arrived displaced persons (DPs) —survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who began arriving in Minnesota in the late 1940s. By 1952, 269 families, consisting of about 800 individuals, had settled in Minneapolis, 168 families (365 people) in St. Paul, 28 families in Duluth, and a smaller number in other parts of the state. Many prospered.

Like other middle class Americans, Jewish GIs and their new families aspired to move to the suburbs. The gradual lifting of restrictive housing covenants and socio-economic upward mobility meant the end, within two decades, of the self-contained, cohesive Jewish immigrant neighborhoods.

For example, as late as 1949, 60% of Minneapolis’s roughly 23,000 Jewish residents lived on the Northside. Ten years later, it was home to only 38% of Minneapolis’ Jewish population, while 28% had moved to suburban St. Louis Park.

The first congregation to make the move from Minneapolis to St. Louis Park was south Minneapolis’ B’nai Abraham, in 1956. In the early 1960s, others followed. Volatile summers of racial unrest on Plymouth Avenue in 1967 and 1968 spurred the remaining Jewish institutions in north Minneapolis to close or move. Two Northside synagogues joined with B’nai Abraham in 1972 to form a new congregation, B’nai Emet.

In the postwar era, young St. Paul families moved from the Summit Hill neighborhood to the newly developed Highland Park neighborhood. As they did, the community’s center of gravity shifted. Temple of Aaron Synagogue, the St. Paul JCC, and Talmud Torah moved to Highland Park in the mid-1950s. When the time came for the venerable Mount Zion Temple to construct a new building after World War II, however, it did not choose to move to Highland Park. Instead, the congregation erected a new facility on Summit Avenue, just blocks from its old one, in 1954.

In Duluth, upward mobility led to outmigration to larger cities and other states. The Jewish Education Center in 1951 at the corner of East Second Street and Sixteenth Avenue was built. The Center was the home to the Ida Cook Hebrew School and social activities. In 1970, Duluth’s Jewish population was 1,100 – less than half of what it was 30 years earlier. In 1973, the city’s Jewish federation recommended that all of Duluth’s Jewish groups consolidate in the Center. Temple Israel, one of two synagogues remaining in Duluth, did so. The other, Adas Israel, stayed put.

Immigration, identity, and continuity

Jewish communal and fraternal organizations saw high rates of participation in the 1950s and 1960s. Synagogue membership was widespread. As late as 1971–1972, 88 percent of Jewish adults in Minneapolis identified themselves with one of three movements: Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform.

A third phase of Jewish immigration to Minnesota began in 1971 and continued into the late 1980s. This group, from the Soviet Union, was permitted to emigrate after years of refusal. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought more immigrants. By 2000, Jewish people from the former Soviet Union made up approximately 10% of Minnesota’s Jewish population.

At the same time the Jewish community worked to integrate Russian Jews, it also struggled to retain the American-born. Population studies conducted in 1995 and 2004 showed declining levels of synagogue membership and increasing rates of intermarriage. In 1994, the Minneapolis Jewish Federation created the Commission on Jewish Identity and Continuity to ensure that the next generation of Jewish people would maintain a commitment to the Jewish community.

Reform and Conservative synagogues strove to become more inclusive for women, intermarried couples, and, eventually, gays and lesbians. The path was not always smooth. The genesis of Shir Tikvah Congregation (1988) was a dispute at Mount Zion Temple over Associate Rabbi Stacy Offner, the first woman rabbi in Minnesota, when it became publicly known that she was gay. New non-Orthodox congregations founded in the 1980s and 1990s included Bet Shalom (Reform), Beth Jacob (Conservative), Or Emet (Humanistic), and Mayim Rabim (Reconstructionist).

The era’s trend toward liberalism and secularization was countered by new energy in the small Orthodox community. Two new St. Louis Park congregations, Bais Yisroel and Darchei Noam (2000), provided alternatives to Kenesseth Israel (Minneapolis’ oldest Orthodox synagogue) and Adath Israel (St. Paul). About 200 Minnesota families belonged to the Chabad-Lubavitcher Hasidic movement in the early 2000s. Hasidism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism whose spirituality is based in Jewish mysticism. In 2015, Chabad maintained six centers in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester, and Fargo, North Dakota.

The 2004 population study of Twin Cities Jewish people portrayed a relatively stable community of 40,000. Almost half were locally born — well above the average for American cities. Significant levels of poverty coexisted with wealth, particularly among immigrants from the former Soviet Union. One finding — that 36% of Jewish people surveyed declined to identify with a movement and selected “just Jewish” — attracted much attention within the community. Twin Cities results for this answer ranked seventh highest among 50 comparison American Jewish communities.

Twenty-first-century unaffiliated Jewish people, as well as those already firmly identified, have new options beyond the synagogue. Organizations such as Jewish Community Action, Rimon, and TCJewfolk.com empower Jewish individuals to maintain their identity through social action, arts and entertainment, adult education, and spirituality. At the same time, Minnesota Jewish individuals are firmly integrated into the economic, civic, and cultural life of the state.

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Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born in 1899 in Marshalltown, Iowa. Her family later moved to Anoka, where they were the only African American family. Hedgeman’s father stressed religion, education, and hard work.

In 1918, Hedgeman graduated from high school and was the first African American to attend Hamline University. In 1922, she was the first African American to graduate from Hamline. In college, she attended a lecture by W. E. B. Du Bois and was inspired to be a teacher. However, after graduation, Hedgeman was unable to find a teaching job in St. Paul public schools because she was black. She accepted a teaching position at a historically black school: Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Hedgeman’s experience in the South was a rude awakening to racism. Her first encounter with the South’s Jim Crow segregation laws occurred on her train ride to Mississippi. From St. Paul to Chicago, Hedgeman rode in the dining car, which was open to blacks and whites. However, the conductor told her that when the train reached Cairo, Illinois, she had to sit in the “colored” car behind the train’s engine, which was dirty and overcrowded, and she was banned from the dining car.

Hedgeman taught at Rust College for two years. Upon her return to Minnesota, she was still unable to find a teaching job because of discrimination, so she changed careers. In 1924, Hedgeman became an executive director of the black branch of the YWCA in Springfield, Ohio. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) at the time maintained segregated facilities for blacks and whites. From 1924 to 1938, Hedgeman worked in several positions with the YWCA in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. In 1933, she married Merritt A. Hedgeman, an opera and folk musician.

In 1944, Hedgeman was appointed executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), where she led the fight against employment discrimination and lobbied for a permanent FEPC agency. From 1954 to 1958, she served in the cabinet of New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., where she was the first black woman to hold such a position. Hedgeman left after becoming frustrated with gender discrimination and the mayor’s inaction on progressive housing policies. In 1959, she was an associate editor and columnist for the New York Age newspaper. In 1960, she unsuccessfully ran for congress, and in 1965 for city council president (both in New York City).

In 1963, A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The planning committee consisted of the “Big Six” — leaders from civil rights organizations, which included King, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and Whitney Young, Urban League.

Hedgeman was the only woman on the committee. She urged the men to include women in the planning, but they ignored her. Women were also not included as speakers at the march, but instead, Randolph planned to say a few words about women activists. Hedgeman was furious, so at the next meeting, she read a statement to the men:

“In light of the role of the Negro women in the struggle for freedom and especially in light of the extra burden they have carried because of the castration of the Negro man in this culture, it is incredible that no woman should appear as a speaker at the historic March on Washington Meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.”

Hedgeman suggested Myrlie Evers or Diane Nash as speakers. The committee selected Evers, but she was stuck in traffic, so Daisy Bates spoke. Despite these struggles, the march was a success, and Hedgeman organized 40,000 people from the National Council of Churches to participate.

Hedgeman was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. She also published two memoirs and continued advocating for African Americans and women until the mid-1980s when her health declined.

Hedgeman died at age ninety in 1990 in New York. Hamline University dedicated The Hedgeman Center for Student Diversity Initiatives and Programs in her honor.

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The company eventually known as Honeywell began in 1885 with Albert Butz’s invention of the “damper flapper.” The flapper opened a damper that allowed outside air to enter a coal-fired home furnace. This increased the oxygen in the furnace and made the fire burn hotter. When the temperature rose to a desired point, the damper closed.

Butz, a Swiss immigrant who had moved to St. Paul in 1881, patented the device. In 1886 he founded the Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator Company in Minneapolis.

Two years later, Butz left the business, but his patents were retained for its use. In 1888 it was renamed the Consolidated Temperature Controlling Company. Andrew Robbins (the namesake of Robbinsdale) became company president in 1889.

William. R. Sweatt, a Minneapolis businessman, joined the company and by 1900, he owned all of it. By then the name had changed again to the Electric Heat Regulator Company.

Sweatt’s thermostats were stamped with “Electric Heat Regulator Co” in the form of a semicircle. The first three words formed the arc and the last one appeared within the circle. Underneath the semicircle were the words “Minneapolis, Minn.” Because the company often received letters addressed to “The Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company,” in 1912 Sweatt renamed the firm yet again.

Between 1888 and 1937, the company evolved. It moved from making one thermostat and one motor to producing more than three thousand control devices and holding a thousand patents. When Sweatt’s sons, Harold. W. and Charles. B., turned eighteen, they were named company directors.

Meanwhile, by the 1920s, Mark Honeywell’s Wabash, Indiana-based plumbing company was succeeding in the heating-oil business. At the time, oil was replacing coal as the preferred fuel for heating homes.

In 1927 the Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company merged with Honeywell Heating Specialties. The new firm, the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company, was based in Minneapolis. Harold. W. Sweatt became its president in 1934.

In 1941 engineer Carl Kronmiller and industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss created a round-shaped home thermostat. The project, however, was shelved because of World War II. The Round was introduced to the public in 1953, when Minneapolis-Honeywell was seeking a new product to increase sales.

The T-86 Honeywell Round thermostat — known simply as The Round — was easy to make, easy to use, and easy to identify. Sales to both contractors and homeowners soared.

Minneapolis-Honeywell offered The Round in various shades, to match wall colors. In 1960 a day-night version was introduced. It featured a windup timer for semiautomatic lowering of temperature at night. By 1966, customers could buy a model that controlled both heating and cooling.

According to Jeffrey L. Rodengen’s 1995 company history The Legend of Honeywell, about one million units of The Round were sold each year. The Round has also been widely praised as a fine example of modern industrial art. It was featured in a 1997 exhibition of Henry Dreyfuss’s work at the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. It remains part of the Smithsonian’s collection.

In 1963 the company’s name changed to Honeywell. The group became involved in aerospace, turbochargers, computing, and military weaponry as well as electrical controls. It later shed some of these divisions through new acquisitions and mergers.

In 1999 Honeywell merged with AlliedSignal. Its headquarters moved from Minneapolis to Morristown, New Jersey. The new company kept the name Honeywell because of its strong brand recognition — due in no small part to the enduring popularity of The Round.

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Christopher Columbus Andrews was born in Hillsborough, N.H., attended Harvard Law School, and practiced law in Boston and Kansas. A prolific writer, he wrote a series of articles for the Boston Post about his travels through Minnesota and Dakota Territories in 1856. He settled in St. Cloud in 1857.

A Democrat, Andrews served in the Minnesota Senate from 1859 until 1860, when he campaigned for presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas. After the Civil War began, however, he and 20 young men from St. Cloud reported for duty at Fort Snelling. He was elected captain of his company, part of the Third Minnesota Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Observers praised the Third for their professional appearance, skill and cleanliness, frequently mistaking them for Regular Army troops.

Captain Andrews argued strongly against the surrender of the regiment at Murfreesboro, Tenn., and was a prisoner of war for about three months, until his exchange in October 1862. He rejoined his regiment and took command in July 1863, following service at the Siege of Vicksburg. The model actions of Andrews and the Third during the occupation of Little Rock resulted in an increase in pro-Union sentiment. Arkansas Governor Isaac Murphy wrote, “Such men are an honor to the government and the cause they serve. Their state may be justly proud of them[.]”

After the war, Andrews (by now a general) returned to St. Cloud to practice law. He married Mary F. Baxter of Boston in 1868. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated him to be U.S. Minister Resident in Denmark, but he was soon reassigned to Stockholm, Sweden. As the top American diplomat in Sweden and Norway, Andrews was a keen observer of sustainable forestry practices there, so unlike the “slash and burn” logging he had observed in the United States. His reports to the secretary of state on the practice and teaching of forestry in Sweden were published. King Oscar II of Sweden–Norway confided to former President Grant in 1878 that “General Andrews had been the most useful representative the United States had ever sent there.”

Andrews and his family returned to Minnesota in 1877. He spoke in support of presidential candidate James Garfield at the 1880 Republican National Convention, then became the U.S. Consul in Rio De Janeiro, in 1882. While serving the needs of U.S. citizens and businesses there, he wrote a book about his experiences in and observations of Brazil.

Andrews delivered a paper at the American Forestry Association meeting in August 1894 entitled “The Prevention of Forest Fires.” Nine days later, the tragic Hinckley Fire broke out and claimed 418 lives. In response, Minnesota passed its first forestry law in 1895, creating positions for town fire-wardens and a chief fire-warden with scientific investigative duties. Andrews was appointed the state’s first fire-warden chief. In 1905 the title of the position changed from chief to forest commissioner; Andrews retired as commissioner in 1911.

Andrews initiated the movement to create national forests in northern Minnesota. In 1902 he recommended that 225,000 acres be set aside at Cass Lake, and a half million acres preserved in Lake and Cook Counties. The effort prevailed, and on Feb. 13, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the creation of the Superior National Forest with 644,114 acres.

Following his retirement as Forestry commissioner, Andrews served on Minnesota commissions to place memorials at significant Civil War sites. His work helped add memorial sculptures to important battlefields and create national cemeteries. Conservation, however, remained a personal priority. He wrote, “The last years of my life were spent in the cause of forestry and in that cause, I believe, the best work of my life was done. I always loved trees.”

Andrews died in St. Paul on Sept. 21, 1922, and was buried in Oakland Cemetery. General C. C. Andrews State Forest in Pine County was established to honor his legacy in 1943.

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Since its founding by F. Melius Christiansen, who started the school’s music department, the festival has attracted people to the Northfield campus from all over Minnesota and Wisconsin. It also draws alumni from around the nation.

F. Melius Christiansen began teaching music at St. Olaf in 1903. Seeking to improve the quality of choral music, Christiansen focused on developing the tradition of unaccompanied singing called a cappella. His choir soon began performing concerts at the school and touring around the region.

Under Christiansen’s leadership, the St. Olaf Lutheran Choir became known as one of the finest choirs in the Midwest. To showcase the choir and celebrate Christmas, the choir performed in the first Christmas Program, as it was then known, on Dec. 17, 1912. The choir was called the St. Olaf Choral Union for that concert, and they performed in the Hoyme Memorial Chapel.

Under Christiansen’s direction, the choir’s status continued to grow. As the festival’s audience expanded, the event moved from the chapel to the school’s gym in 1922. Because of its popularity, the school added a second performance beginning in 1936.

The festival expanded to three shows in 1941. Because of World War II, the festival was reduced to one show in 1942 and 1943, but returned to three shows in 1945. It later grew to four shows.

In 1943, F. Melius Christiansen’s son Olaf became the festival’s director. He ran it until 1968, when Kenneth Jennings took over. Under Olaf Christiansen, the still-growing festival was moved to the Skogland Athletic Center (later named the Skogland Center). In 1990, St. Olaf graduate Anton Armstrong became director.

Attracting more than 15,000 people to Northfield, the early 21st century’s Christmas Festival features five different choral groups. The St. Olaf Choir is the school’s premier a cappella choir. The Cantorei is the choir that performs during Sunday services at the chapel. The Chapel Choir is the largest choir on campus. The Viking Chorus (men) and Manitou Singers (women) are choirs composed of first-year students.

During the festival, each choir performs as an individual unit before all five sing together to close the concert. More than 500 singers perform, accompanied by the St. Olaf Orchestra. At various times, audience members may rise and join the choir in singing, following along with lyrics published in the concert’s program.

The St. Olaf Christmas Festival has been televised since 1975, around the country and even internationally, such as in Norway in 1978. It is broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and many of its affiliates, around the world on Armed Forces Television and Radio, on the Internet, and in movie theaters. PBS frequently broadcasts highlights as Christmas specials.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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Early 20th-century winters in Minnesota were a hardship for the state’s residents―including those of Cottonwood County. Newcomers, hearing stories about the weather, soon learned that the accounts weren’t exaggerated. A few storms stand out, but the blizzard of 1936 topped them all.

The first settler-colonists of Westbrook Township had intimate experience with Minnesota’s harsh winter weather. A severe blizzard that hit the area on January 7, 1873, continued for three days. The “Winter of the Big Snow” (1880–1881) left snow on the ground from October to April. The blizzard of January 1909 left huge drifts that blocked doors, forcing some people to leave their homes through upstairs windows.

The winter of 1936 was a memorable occasion that surpassed even these earlier storms. Temperatures dropped to 30 degrees below zero in late January and did not rise above zero for thirty-six days. This 1936 North American cold wave ranks among the most intense in the recorded history of North America. The winter (December through February) of 1935/36 was the coldest on record for Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, with February being the coldest month.

Although the wind, snow, and temperatures were similar to previous memorable winters, they impacted residents in different ways. Farmers were not lost in their ox carts or frozen on their property a few yards from their homes, but stranded by automobiles and trains and interruptions of electric power.

Several feet of snow accompanied the cold. Farmers strung ropes between their farmhouses and barns to prevent themselves from getting lost even on short walks outside. Even brief exposure was dangerous, since frost bite and hypothermia could occur in a few minutes. Many animals died. On some days, winds and snow were so intense that farmers could not see their fingers stretched out in front of them.

Blocked food and fuel deliveries created critical shortages by the end of the first week of February. By the middle of the month, all schools were closed by deep snowdrifts, and medical aid was delayed by a shortage of serum. In a February 14, 1936, account of the blizzard in the Windom Reporter, a reporter stated that the snow halted train and truck service from early Saturday to Monday night. The storm hit the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha railroad especially hard, and the line between Mountain Lake and Butterfield short-circuited most of the day. 209 passengers on this train waited for nearly twelve hours for the snow to be cleared.

With roads closed by large drifts, churches canceled their services on Sunday and schools were closed to students on Monday. Rural schools in Cottonwood County lost approximately a month of class time that winter. Frozen water pipes overwhelmed plumbing establishments, automobiles refused to start, and the wire service was impeded, though not totally paralyzed.

The blizzard caused medical emergencies and made it difficult for doctors to attend their patients. Doctors at the Windom Hospital treated two cases of frozen feet. People with severe injuries and illnesses managed with the ingenuity and help of others to get to hospitals and receive the help they needed. One doctor from Westbrook reportedly reached a pneumonia patient in Storden on skis. A farmer with a badly cut hand stopped the bleeding and the following day hitched a ride with a snow plow to the hospital.

The early February blizzard wasn’t the end of Cottonwood County’s winter woes in 1936. A storm on February 17 stopped trains and mail service for two days. After a promising thaw, another storm a week later dropped ten inches of snow, again bringing transportation in the county to a standstill.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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Economic instability, a tight housing market, and disinvestment from social welfare programs set the stage for a nationwide homelessness crisis in the early 1980s. Long before then, however, housing had been more available to some Americans than to others. Racism in the South led many African Americans to look for new homes during the Great Migration (1916–1970). Termination and relocation policies (1953–1969) did the same for Native Americans. Redlining and racial housing covenants made it challenging for these and other groups to secure housing.

These factors were in play in Minneapolis in the mid-twentieth century. City planners and business leaders embraced urban renewal and interstate highway construction, both of which removed thousands of units of low-cost housing without replacing them. A 1976 city task force on rental housing reported that rental housing in Minneapolis was “in a state of crisis” that “could not continue in its present form.” By 1978, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated that more than 57,000 Minneapolis–St. Paul renting households needed financial assistance to afford their housing.

Before 1981, a patchwork of “emergency housing” ensured that most people had a place to stay, at least temporarily. Hennepin County social workers paid for people to stay at residential hotels or the YMCA downtown. City relief workers had a list of private homeowners who would take in mothers with children. Single men could stay at one of two Christian missions. The Urban League, the Native American community, and Sabathani Community Center each had a few units of emergency housing. And domestic violence shelters and youth shelters were developing. In the summer of 1981, however, the waves of housing loss became a tsunami. Minnesota redefined eligibility for General Assistance (GA), a critical financial benefit for people who don’t qualify for other support. The state dropped 58 percent of enrollees, more than 9,000 Minnesotans, from the program between June and November.

People who’d relied on the assistance for their low-cost housing were evicted. The manager of a social service center said the result was hundreds of people looking for help and housing. Native American leaders called an emergency community meeting about the spike in homelessness in the Phillips Neighborhood, and a pastor from Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church brought that call for help back to his church. A member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church told her church that she’d seen evidence of people sleeping in her unlocked car overnight, so she filled it with blankets. A housing activist attending a retreat with St. Stephen’s Church challenged attendees to open the empty, heated part of their building and get people indoors. Hennepin County Social Services kept its lobby open overnight so that people could sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs.

Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser petitioned the City Council to fast‐track a resolution permitting churches and organizations to shelter people overnight. The council passed the resolution unanimously—but it also added stipulations that limited hours, reduced operation to cold-weather months, and allowed the effort as a “one‐season experiment.”

In December 1981, the Minneapolis American Indian Center, St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, Faith Mission, and Holy Rosary Catholic Church began taking people into whatever spaces they had: a gymnasium, a parish library, a classroom. Catholic Charities worked to streamline referrals to the two missions.

During the following month, January 1982, and throughout that year, another five churches and organizations opened spaces for shelter. The United Way, Hennepin County, and local foundations provided funding to operate the spaces. A survey of shelter guests that year showed that 60 percent had lost some form of government assistance that had been helping them make ends meet—general assistance, social security, or food stamps.

These early shelters were started to address an emergency. Over time, however, they became part of an emerging national housing rights movement that included the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, formed through a merger of Minneapolis and St. Paul groups in 1983.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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A migratory diver of the loon family, the common loon (Gavia immer) has been important to people living in the Great Lakes region for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Its striking calls and black-and-white summer plumage have made it an emblem of Minnesota, where more of the birds live than in any other state except Alaska. The loon became Minnesota’s state bird in 1961.

Adult loons weigh eight to twelve pounds and are shaped like torpedoes. Their summer plumage is a spotted white and black, with iridescence on the head; in winter, that coloring changes to gray and white. Males can be a bit larger than females, but in all other ways they are identical.

Loons have four calls: the yodel, the wail, the hoot, and the tremolo. They live on lakes in central and northern Minnesota but migrate south every September to the Atlantic coast (their northern range includes the northern US and Canada) before returning north in the spring. Their bones, unlike those of most birds, are not hollow, allowing them to dive deep underwater for their food: small fish, minnows, amphibians, insects, crayfish, and mollusks.

The loon (maang in Ojibwemowin) is culturally important to Ojibwe people. It plays a role in some versions of Ojibwe creation stories, while other legends connect Maang to Nanaboozho, an Ojibwe cultural hero. It is said that when Maang calls in the rain at dusk, the bird is calling for Nanaboozho. Many Ojibwe people are members of the Maang Doodem (Loon Clan), and Maang is sacred to them. It is taboo for a member of the Maang Doodem to harm a loon or to marry another member of the clan.

In Ojibwe culture, clans are named after animals (or parts of animals) and perform distinctive roles. The members of bird clans, such as the Crane and the Loon, take on civil leadership roles. Members of the Maang Doodem historically served as diplomats, often leading negotiations until a member of the Crane Clan (Ajijaak Doodem) offered final decisions. “Leading with your Loon” is an Ojibwe teaching today that encourages people to be diplomatic with others. Dakota people call the loon Mdóza and have incorporated some elements of it into their culture as well.

As white settlers entered Minnesota in the 1800s, the loon population declined due to hunting and habitat destruction. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibited the taking of loons without the authorization of the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service. Though protected from overhunting, loon habitat continued to decline in the 1920s due to residential development and summer vacationers in northern Minnesota. In the 1930s, loons began to disappear from central and southern Minnesota lakes.

The loon became Minnesota’s state bird in 1961. Spurred by the work of Dr. Judith McIntyre and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, programs focused on protecting and learning more about the state’s loons began in the 1970s. In 1977, Minnesota’s Nongame Wildlife Program started raising funds to conserve Minnesota’s nongame species. The investment paid off. By 1989, the loon was struggling across the US but not in Minnesota, where there were an estimated 10,000 loons for the state’s 10,000 lakes.

To gather more information about the state’s loon population, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources began a loon-monitoring program in 1994. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed thousands of loons overwintering in the Gulf of Mexico, a settlement awarded Minnesota $7.52 million as compensation for injury to its natural resources. The money has been used to support Minnesota’s Loon Restoration Project, which focuses on eight counties in north-central Minnesota.

The loon is a Minnesota icon, and organizations have adopted it as their emblem. When the Minnesota State Lottery began in 1989, it used the loon as its logo to remind people that some lottery earnings supported state conservation programs. In 2002 a loon design became an option on Minnesota license plates, and in 2005, it was put on the state quarter. The Minnesota United FC, Minnesota’s professional men’s soccer club, started using a stylized loon logo in 2013. The team is often called “the Loons.” And in May 2024, Minnesota adopted a new state seal featuring a loon at its center.

Also in 2024, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) rated the loon a species of “Least Concern” for extinction, and the bird continued to return to its range south of the Twin Cities. In spite of these gains, however, climate change, pollution, habitat loss, disturbance by humans, and use of lead fishing weights continue to threaten the loon population in Minnesota.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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Maybe I do this because the Ojibwe worldview could not conceive of influencing the land, or aki (earth), so any notion of who influences what must be turned upside down and inside out by asking: “In what ways has aki shaped us? In what ways has everything about this land and sky, this place called Minnesota—all things animate, inanimate, and spiritual—shaped the Ojibwe?”

How the Ojibwe have helped shape the state’s people—inclusive of cultures, institutions, languages, beliefs, and ways of being—is another matter, however, and some knowledge of Ojibwe history is helpful in understanding our influence.

The Story of the Seven Fires

Ojibwe oral history tells us that the migration of our ancestors to the Minnesota region beginning in approximately 900 CE resulted from a series of prophecies. In the telling of the story, seven prophets appeared out of the ocean and each told a prophecy of what would happen to the Ojibwe people.

The first prophet said the Ojibwe should move west from the eastern ocean or they would perish, and that they would know that they had reached the chosen land when they came to a place where food grew on water. The food was mahnomen (wild rice), found in Minnesota’s shallow northern lakes.

Each of the other prophets predicted parts of the Ojibwe story, too: the coming of the light-skinned race (Europeans) and the resulting generations of great suffering; of when the People would become lost spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically; of the loss of their lands; the taking of their children (in the mission and boarding school era); Christianization and the banning of their traditional spiritual beliefs; and the decline in Ojibwe language use, cultural practices, and ways of being.

The seventh prophet said there eventually would be a time of healing from the period of great suffering and described the cultural and spiritual renaissance the Ojibwe are experiencing today, when some Ojibwe would return to their language and spiritual teachings, and to living out the values of the Good Path (Mino-Bimaadiziwin). Gitchi Manito (Great Spirit, or God) gave these values to the Ojibwe at the time of our creation.

Knowledge of the teachings of the Seven Fires is important for Ojibwe people because it reminds us we are part of a larger plan. As a result of the story, we know why we are here, living in the region, including Minnesota, and we know why non-Native people are here, as well. The story also reminds us why we came here, how historical events have shaped who we are today, and, more importantly, our role in perhaps shaping the way all of us as citizens of this earth should care for the precious resources of the air, water, and land.

Maple syrup, moccasins, the fur trade and more

An introductory, and in many ways superficial, way to look at how the Ojibwe have shaped the state is through contributions. The first major impact began with the arrival of the French into the Great Lakes region in the 1600s and the resulting fur trade, whereby the Ojibwe and other tribes traded furs for guns, metal tools, pots, pans, utensils, cloth, and alcohol. During that period, the Ojibwe had a global impact on the economy as the beaver changed European fashion tastes and some traders, particularly John Jacob Astor, became rich as a result of trading with the Ojibwe.

No waffle or pancake served up in an restaurant or home in Minnesota would be the same without pure maple syrup, first harvested and boiled down by the Ojibwe and their tribal relatives. And the state’s world-famous casseroles would not be the same without wild rice, initially gathered and eaten by the tribes (Dakota and Cheyenne, to name two) that first lived in the land that is now Minnesota. Today, however, it is the Ojibwe who are known for wild rice.

Minnesota winters would seem even longer and more brutal if we didn’t have the toboggan for sliding down snow-covered hills and snowshoes for hiking through the woods. The Ojibwe and their tribal relatives first developed the toboggan and snowshoes. Indeed, toboggan is an Ojibwe word, added to the English language by early white pioneers. So is moccasin. The Ojibwe and their tribal relatives first developed moccasins, and lounging around the home wouldn’t be the same without them.

What would we call a moose if the Ojibwe hadn’t first called it moose? What would we name the Mesabi Iron Range and the towns of Bemidji, Bena, Biwabik, Mahnomen, Ogema, and Washkish if they hadn’t been given names of Ojibwe origin?

And the list goes on: floral beadwork and birch bark basketry handcrafted by Ojibwe artisans are displayed in state and county museums, artist studios, tourist shops, and Minnesota homes; Ojibwe dream catchers dangle from thousands of rear-view mirrors. Birch bark canoes, developed by the Ojibwe, built with cedar hulls and a birch bark covering, traversed Minnesota’s beautiful rivers and lakes. Early French traders abandoned their watercraft and adopted the Ojibwe canoe, which was superior in design and efficiency. The design is still replicated in most non-motorized regional watercraft. Today, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, in particular, would not be the same without the canoe, which is similar in design to those made by its original Ojibwe builders.

Finally, the Ojibwe migration into the western Great Lakes Region in the late 1600s and early 1700s also influenced the Dakota move to the southern region of the state, although better hunting also played a role in the Dakota’s southward and westward migration.

Education and self-determination

An overlooked influence of the Ojibwe on the state (and the nation) is in the area of leadership in educational reform. In 1969, two Ojibwe educators, Rosemary Christensen (Bad River) and Will Antell (White Earth), spearheaded the formation of the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) to combat the disproportionately high dropout rate and low achievement of Native students in public schools. The first NIEA convention was held at the former Andrews Hotel in Minneapolis.

The early work of Christensen and Antell in Native education in Minnesota eventually led the way for other Ojibwe and Dakota leaders to push for the development of scholarship programs. These programs would allow more of the state’s Native students to access higher education and PK–12 culture, language, and academic support programs in public schools, tribal schools (on the Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, and White Earth reservations), and tribal colleges (at White Earth, Fond du Lac, and Leech Lake).

About the same time, Native people’s cries for social justice and self-determination rang out in the streets along Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis and in its back alleys, where the American Indian Movement (AIM) was born, led by Dennis Banks (Leech Lake) and brothers Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt (White Earth). Started in 1968 as a citizens’ patrol to combat police harassment and mistreatment of Native people, AIM grew to become a national and international presence in Native people’s struggle for self-determination.

At the heart of AIM’s founding mission was a call for the return to spirituality for Native people as a way to combat centuries of injustice and maltreatment, to fight for the reversal of state and national policies that negatively affect Native people, and to demand that the federal government fulfill its treaty obligations.

Some mainstream and traditional Native (and non-Native) people might question the often assertive and confrontational strategies used by AIM in its efforts to affect social change. But no one can challenge the organization’s lasting influence on the Native self-determination movement (the ability of Native people to make their own decisions determining the future) or the cultural and spiritual renaissance of Native people that began in the late 1960s during the height of America’s civil rights movement, of which AIM was a part.

The voices of Ojibwe writers and artists also have had a deep impact on our state’s writing and art scene, beginning with William Warren, who wrote the first history of the Ojibwe people, which is still used as the definitive source for Ojibwe history. Minnesota has been blessed with many other fine writers, including Turtle Mountain (North Dakota) transplant Louise Erdrich, a nationally known novelist and poet who lives and works in Minnesota.

Books by Gerald Vizenor (White Earth), Kim Blaeser (White Earth), Winona LaDuke (White Earth), Peter Razor (Fond du Lac), Ignatia Broker (White Earth), Jim Northrup (Fond du Lac), and Linda LeGarde Grover (Bois Forte) have large groups of followers throughout the country. And in major U.S. galleries, works are shown by these noted Ojibwe artists: George Morrison (Grand Portage), Patrick DesJarlait (Red Lake), Steve Premo (Mille Lacs), Frank Big Bear (White Earth), Joe Geshick (Bois Forte), and Carl Gawboy (Bois Forte).

Native American gaming contributions

Many Ojibwe people of my post-World War II generation grew up poor. Until the growth of tribal governments in the 1960s and the jobs they created, there was little in the way of work in many Ojibwe communities. Without jobs in the community, there was little hope. Many people left the reservations for urban areas, where they continued to live in poverty, holding low-wage jobs.

From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, the economic landscape improved as tribal governments expanded the education, human services, and health care they offered to their citizenry. Some tribes operated small construction companies, landfills, stores, and other small businesses. However, it wasn’t until the advent of the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act in 1988 that tribal governments achieved their greatest impact.

Not since the fur trade era have Ojibwe entrepreneurs affected the regional economy so profoundly. The Ojibwe reservations of Minnesota operate thirteen of the eighteen casino-resorts throughout the state. According to the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association figures (2007), tribal governments and casinos employ 20,550 persons and supply $576 million in wages; $539 million in services and goods; and $329 million in capital (building) projects. Tribes expend $1.4 billion, and that stimulates another $1.31 million in other economic spending. The indirect impact of tribal government and casino jobs results in an additional 21,150 jobs and $774 million in income.

Ojibwe communities have used the resources created from the gaming industry to create tribal infrastructure: schools, roads, improved health care, services for the elderly, and housing, to name a few. Jobs translate to hope. And a sense of hope hasn’t been felt in our communities in many, many generations.

The will to endure

Perhaps the greatest impact of the Ojibwe on the state, however, is our very presence, our survival as a people. We are a living testament to the tenacity of culture, of the will to endure, even to flourish. Despite our language being banned in the mission and boarding schools that our ancestors were forced to attend from the 1870s until well into the 1960s, it survived and is being joyfully taught in Minnesota tribal, alternative, and public colleges, and at language tables in our communities.

Although our ancestors’ spiritual practices were banned by Indian agents, priests, and missionaries, and Christianity was forced upon the people, our spiritual beliefs are thriving today in our lodges and ceremonies. And despite the historical despair of losing much of our traditional land (see the summary points for more detail on the land cession treaty period), of many of our ancestors becoming poor and dependent on rations, of having generations suffer all the social ills of people who have been dispossessed, of losing hope, we are still here—still strong—still Ojibwe.

There is one last thing. The story of the Seven Fires contains a final prophecy. The prophecy tells that non-Native people, the light-skinned race, eventually will be given a choice of two paths. One path will lead to peace, love, and brotherhood. The other will lead to the destruction of the earth. Some of our traditional people say that the prophecy refers to the sacred trust we have in caring for aki, our mother earth, to stop poisoning the land, water, sky, and collective spirit of this beautiful place. The other path can only lead to suffering for all of earth’s people, and the ultimate destruction of the planet.

The final prophecy tells us why we Ojibwe are here, to share the story of the final prophecy in hopes that it will influence the ways non-Native people treat this beautiful earth. That is a gift our ancestors passed down to us and that we now share with you.

Mi-iw! That is all.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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