American Indian

Thursday, January 19, 2023 - Christy Goulet joins us to discuss the latest news regarding the use of place names seen as offensive in the indigenous community. ~~~ Consumers have experienced higher food prices at the grocery in the last couple of years, especially for eggs. Kendall Crawford reports for Harvest Public Media…on what's behind the increase. ~~~ Sue Balcom says it's not too early to be digging into the seed catalogs and getting serious about planning the garden.

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 - We discuss yesterday’s election with news director Dave Thompson and NDSU political science professor Nicholas Bauroth. ~~~ Candace Stock is an Indigenous Chef -- she grew up on White Earth -- who now works at Bernbaum's in Fargo (an award-winning restaurant). This fall, she was engaged to prepare a Native American multi-course, ambitiously flavorful meal in Medora. The Theodore Roosevelt Library project had a meeting with tribal leaders from the area and they wanted something special. So, she put together a meal that is a treat to hear about. ~~~ In a special BirdNote, we share the first in a series called “Indigenous Voices.”

Monday, November 7, 2022 - Linda LeGarde Grover is a professor emerita of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and an award-winning author. She returns to Main Street to discuss her latest book, “The Sky Watched,” which gives poetic voice to Ojibwe family life in English and Ojibwe. November is Native American Heritage Month. ~~~ Tickets are still available for “The Moth,” which is coming to North Dakota with a mainstage event in Fargo next month. We share an encore visit with executive producer Sarah Austin Jenness.

Friday, September 16, 2022 - “Who Cares: A Nurse's Fight for Equity” features Whitney Fear, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where she, her family and other members of the Oglala Lakota Nation struggled to survive. It was filmed in Fargo and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Whitney joins us to discuss the issues raised in the film.

United Tribes Technical College is hosting hundreds of tribal leaders and citizens for the annual Tribal Leaders Summit and thousands more for the annual International Powwow. Alicia Hegland-Thorpe visits with United Tribes Technical College president Dr. Leander McDonald.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022 - Fox Creek is the latest in the Cork O’Connor mystery series from Minnesota-based, NYT bestselling author William Kent Krueger. He’ll be speaking in Grand Forks and Fargo this weekend. ~~~ The risk of death from COVID-19 among indigenous people remains the highest among all racial and ethnic groups. Alicia Hegland-Thorpe visits with Dr. Loretta Christensen, director of the Indian Health Service, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for providing federal health services to the country’s native population. ~~~ Midwest Flavor Fest is coming up this weekend in Mandan. It showcases food, arts & crafts, and music. And best of all, it’s free to attend. We visit with Phillip Schultz, the founder of BisMan Eats.

Monday, August 14, 2022 - Bismarck's Shane Balkowitsch is a wet-plate photographer. His latest exhibit, “Northern Plains Native Americans: A Modern Wet Plate Perspective” is on display at the Spirit Room in Fargo. There's an artist reception and gallery talk on August 20. ~~~ The North American Monarch Butterfly can migrate as much as 3,000 miles from its natural habitat in Mexico to North Dakota and Canada. But we are seeing fewer and fewer monarchs in the area. Monarch butterflies are now on the endangered species list. What does the research say about what’s behind the decline in population and what does it mean for North Dakota? ~~~ Historian Tom Isern shares a Plains Folk essay titled “Drummer’s Prayer.”

Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - Last week, the Interior Department issued a report detailing the brutal history involving federal Indian boarding schools. We take the occasion to share an address by Denise Lajimodiere, author of the book “Stringing Rosaries, the History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of North American Indian Boarding School Survivors.” She spoke last November at Concordia College. Alicia Hegland Thorpe has prepared an excerpt of that address. You can see the entire presentation here. ~~~ Ed Yong, a writer for The Atlantic, won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. He says the threat of future pandemics requires society to aggressively face and fix racial, economic and health disparities. He visits with Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter in this excerpt from the Conversations on Health Care podcast.

Prairie Public's "Ask A Native American" event paired up 8 Native and 8 non-Native people for one-on-one conversations -- 8 minutes, and you'd switch…