“There’s such a need for interfaith dialogue,” said Sophia Park, a fourth-year biology major and the vice president of the University of Minnesota’s Interfaith and Culture Student Association (UMN ICSA). The group was established last March and regularly hosts social events purposed for interreligious education.

Starting this month, UMN ICSA is hosting a Ramadan book club series for participants to read and discuss an internationally-bestselling book titled “Secrets of Divine Love.” As described by UMN ICSA board members, the book provides an “inspiring, uplifting and spiritual take on the beliefs, practices and principles that millions of Muslims share.”

Since Islamic holidays follow the lunar calendar, the holy month of Ramadan does not occur at the same time every year. For the first time in 30 years, this year’s Ramadan overlaps with Lent and Passover, two major holidays in Christianity and Judaism.

In a recent Instagram post, UMN ICSA said the coinciding holidays have provided people with “an amazing time to learn from each other, appreciate our differences and grow in solidarity from our shared values.”

Amal Suri is a Muslim and a third-year biology student who serves as UMN ICSA’s president. She is leading the book club alongside the group’s secretary, Mahnoor Ghumman. About the book, Suri said, “There are a lot of religious people that believe in a God and so it’s applicable to so many different faiths.”

At the first book club meeting, the two leaders facilitated discussions around prompts like the following: “How do you view God? How have your impressions of God changed since childhood? Has the book changed your impression of God?”

Book club members represent a diverse array of religious and contemplative traditions including Islam, Christianity and agnosticism.

Park is a nondenominational Christian and she said she helped found UMN ICSA alongside its other leaders.

“It was sort of born a little bit out of strife,” Park said. “We were seeing a lot of religious intolerance and I think each of us has individually experienced some form of ignorance … We were thinking about what could be a good solution to that and this is what we came up with.”

“I noticed a lot of individual religious groups on campus,” Suri said. “There wasn’t very many interfaith conversations happening and so I thought that it would be good to form an interfaith organization…I think there’s a lot to learn in talking to people that are different than you.”

Park cited the interfaith panel as the UMN ICSA event she is most proud of. At the panel, speakers from the respective Abrahamic religions discussed how faith can help combat racism.

Park said panelists considered how to “rectify the wrongs that have happened in this country surrounding racism with God as the center…and repair some of the harms that have been done.”

Anantanand Rambachan is a professor of religion at St. Olaf College and has been involved in interfaith work for over 25 years. He recently began serving as co-president of Religions for Peace, the largest global interfaith network.

“Peace is a common ideal of all of our religious traditions,” Rambachan said. “We share that commitment that a good human community is a peaceful and just community. We can’t speak of peace without speaking also of justice.”

Referring to how religion has been used to legitimize injustice and oppression, Rambachan said, “The historical legacy of religion is a mixed one…Religion should be a resource for human unity and for human flourishing. The God of compassion is a great inspiration for transforming social structures into infrastructures of justice, infrastructures of compassion, infrastructures of care.”

UMN ICSA and similar groups reflect longstanding historical trends related to interfaith relations.

“The religious landscape of the U.S. really changed dramatically in the 1960s,” Rambachan said. The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated nationality-based immigration quotas, which dramatically increased religious diversity in America.

“This is where we’ve got the transformation,” Rambachan said. “The demographic changed which meant that people were encountering each other, working side-by-side with each other. People started living their lives in an interfaith context.”

Jeanne Kilde serves as the director of the University’s Religious Studies program. Kilde cited the ecumenical movement as a major development in American interfaith work. The movement consisted of Protestants, Catholics and Jews who worked together to address shared social questions in communities.

Other religious groups like Muslims and Native American religious practitioners were not widely included in these interfaith collaborations until the 1990s. Then, Kilde said, “We start to see the kind of interfaith organizations that we’re familiar with now.”

Rambachan called groups like UMN ICSA “expressions of religious diversity growing.”

“This is what, for me, changes attitudes,” Rambachan said. “Sharing meals together, going to each other’s homes, talking about hopes and fears and dreams, discovering what I call common humanity.”

Suri shared similar sentiments. “There are a lot of tensions between people from the different Abrahamic faiths,” she said. “We are actually similar in a lot of our beliefs. You can actually come together and have these discussions and relate to each other and talk about our similarities and bond.”

Reflecting on the power of interfaith work, Suri said, “I think that there are some people that have come to interfaith events with preconceived judgments about people from different faiths. I definitely think that leaving conversations and learning about the other person, learning about the ways that you’re actually so similar in your belief in God … they would leave that conversation having a newfound respect for the other.”

A group of University of Minnesota students recently founded Lovelace, a startup company that seeks to address the gender gap in the STEM field by making coding more enjoyable for young girls.

Lovelace emerged from Entrepreneurship in Action, a two-semester University course that provides students with the opportunity to launch a startup under the guidance of experienced entrepreneurs, attorneys and bankers.

Anna Pedrick, a fifth-year computer science major, serves as Lovelace’s Chief Executive Officer.

“We all kind of explored different problems,” Pedrick said. “ In the middle of October, we came together and started honing in on the gender gap and then more specifically coding.”

Pedrick said she personally experienced feeling minoritized as a woman in computer science. She cited an upper-division class in which she was shocked by the lack of female representation.

“It was all men that were coming in, and so I counted, and it was eight girls to 75 males,” Pedrick said.

Pedrick said she considers this not only a problem for the women deterred from and marginalized within the field, but also for society at large.

“Tech affects everything. The companies that you buy from … when you go on Google what information you see … every single facet of society,” Pedrick said. “Not having equal representation has a negative effect.”

According to Lovelace’s website, “the majority of STEM products don’t align with a young girl’s interests: social, collaborative, creative and building things that don’t just live on a computer.”

Pedrick described how many educational products related to coding are biased towards traditionally male aesthetics.

“[They’re] very male focused, and then even when it’s like ‘gender neutral,’ it still has male undertones, so it’s like a robot,” Pedrick said. “We also found a lot of research that showed that girls engage better when STEM is presented to them in a collaborative and creative environment.”

Pedrick cited research that concluded gendered stereotypes decrease a sense of belonging for girls in the computer science field.

In Lovelace workshops, participants are invited to construct a board with colored light bulbs and code various patterns. Throughout the three-hour workshops, the participants are led in eight to 12 coding challenges. Additionally, the workshops provide participants with the opportunity to connect with the Lovelace team.

“Something that we didn’t even anticipate either is being role models,” Pedrick said. “A lot of times in these workshops, they’ll ask us basic questions about college and our jobs, when we graduate or just really basic questions that you would ask an older sister.”

Ellie Burkholder is 15 years old and recently attended a Lovelace workshop.

“I did know what coding was prior to the workshop however I had no experience,” Burkholder said in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “It was so much fun! My friend and I got to work together on learning how to code and got to create a design. Both of our names start with an E, so we programmed the board so it would light up with an E and change colors … After doing the workshop I signed up for an intro to computer science class for school next year.”

According to data collected by Lovelace, 90% of girls expressed an interest in coding after attending a Lovelace workshop. Speaking about the company’s success, Pedrick said “I don’t think [the Lovelace team] or our Professor could really anticipate the responses we got on the first day of the first workshop.”

Lily Yang is a third-year entrepreneur management and marketing major and she serves as Lovelace’s Chief Operations Officer.

“I think honestly it’s really empowering to see us making a difference because in the beginning we didn’t know what we were going to do, and if it was going to make a difference at all,” Yang said. “Every time it’s like a reinforcement what we’re doing really does matter, and this does have an impact on these girls’ lives.”

The company is named after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first programmer who lived in the early 1800s. Pedrick spoke of Ada Lovelace as a testament to the capacities of young women in the STEM field.

“If you’re interested in something, do it, even if you walk into a room and it’s all males,” Pedrick said. “If you are good at coding or you’re good at whatever you’re doing, do it and pave the way for someone after you.”

A newly-revived student group launched this month seeks to represent Eritrean students at the University of Minnesota.

The Eritrean Student Association (EriSA) plans to host cultural events and launch initiatives to support the local Eritrean community.

As described by their webpage, the Eritrean Student Association (EriSA) “strives to embrace Eritrean heritage and culture in all its forms by creating an intellectual, cultural and social environment for students at the University of Minnesota.”

Previous versions of EriSA have existed at the University in past years, but the group had periods of inactivity due to gaps in leadership.

Jasmine Adam is a second-year student majoring in urban studies and geographic information systems who serves as EriSA’s president. About the group’s history, Adam said, “They tried before, many times … in 2011, 2016, 2018.”

This time, Adam said, she and the other founding members will ensure the group’s longevity by instituting systems for the transition of EriSA leadership.

Selam Gerezgiher is a first-year student who intends to major in cinema and media culture. She is a founder of the newly-revived group and serves as its treasurer. Gerezgiher’s sister served on the former EriSA group in 2016 and Gerezgiher said she was excited to re-establish it.

“There’s a group for almost every single East African country,” she said. “I saw a lack of Eritrean representation. I just wanted to create a space for me and my Eritrean friends to have fun on campus and have our chance.”

EriSA’s founders have planned several events for this year and next year. This April, they will host their first event titled “Meet the Culture.” At this event, they will introduce EriSA’s founding members, present on Eritrean culture and lead games and activities for attendees.

“One of the things I’m most excited for is the shadowing opportunities that I’m hoping we can do next year,” Gerezgiher said.

EriSA founding members plan to connect Eritrean high school students with college students across the metro area and eventually offer tutoring services to Eritrean high schoolers and middle schoolers.

“EriSA is a student group for Eritreans at all of the universities in the greater Twin cities, not just our University,” Gerezgiher said.

The founding members’ decision for EriSA to be open to Eritrean students outside of the University is representative of their connection to the local Eritrean community.

“I feel like the Eritrean diaspora in Minneapolis and St. Paul is very connected as a whole,” Adams said.

Milena Yishak, a first-year student majoring in developmental psychology, serves as EriSA’s vice president and its third co-founder.

Yishak, Gerezgiher and Adam cited their deep roots in the Eritrean community as a central motivation for their launching this group.

“Attending soccer club or just going to events in the community or celebrating Independence Day, that’s always been a prominent part of my life,” Yishak said. “So that definitely is the reason why I feel like I’m still in touch with my culture … That’s a driving force of why I wanted to start this group.”

The three co-founders recently gave their first EriSA presentation at the Eritrean Community Center’s annual International Women’s Day celebration. There, they were met with a strong show of support from their community.

After the three founders introduced themselves and their roles on EriSA, “There was a roar, a whole round of applause,” Gerezgiher said. “The whole crowd was just cheering us on.”

In the late 1930s, Black students at the University of Minnesota were denied access to University housing.

In response to inequitable and segregated conditions, they founded the Council of Negro Students. Decades later, a new generation of Black students continued their legacy by forming a new Black affinity group. The University’s present-day Black Student Union can loosely trace its history back almost 85 years ago.

The Council of Negro Students

In 1924, University President Lotus D. Coffman tasked a committee with addressing issues related to the University’s growing student body. Though the committee championed certain egalitarian measures, it did not uphold the equality of Black and Jewish students, instead viewing them as “problems,” according to “A Campus Divided,” an archival project that discusses the University’s history of segregation and political surveillance.

Lotus himself played a central role in crafting University segregation policies. He passionately believed that students of different races should not live or socialize together.

“The law of the land, of course,” Riv-Ellen Prell said, “was separate but equal, but there was no housing for African Americans, so they were actually in violation of the law.”

Prell is a Professor Emeritus at the University, and she curated “A Campus Divided” alongside Sara Atwood, a PhD candidate.

“One of the most despicable things that they did, which is so common politically in this era, was not take a stand on whether or not there was a policy on segregated housing and this is something that Charlotte Crump went right for,” Prell said.

Charlotte Crump was a Black woman who attended the University in the late 1930s. She was a prominent student activist on campus, and in 1937, she wrote a semi-fictional story titled This Free North.

“I feel miserable,” Crump wrote. “Nearly froze my legs coming home. It’s such a long ride on the trolley from the campus to the south side of town. And if I could live in the dormitory — but that’s ridiculous. The idea of a colored girl living in a dormitory at the University!”

The story is told through a series of letters written from the main character to her sister. The story showcases the trying experiences faced by Black students on campus, like being rejected by White friends because of their race, being barred from University housing via the de-facto segregation policies, and hearing White people demeaning African-American Vernacular English.

The story ends with the Black students on campus coming together to form the Council of Negro Students.

“It gives us a kind of timid pride to know that now we are the Council of Negro Students of the University, and not just a handful of socially suppressed cliques with no common interest except our mutual exclusion from what some call the ‘brighter side of college life,’” Crump wrote.

Reflecting on the story, Prell said “what an incredible writer she was. I mean this is a vivid, beautifully-written story … We should give her credit as a writer because it’s imaginative, and it’s vivid.”

The story was first published in a University literary magazine and was then reprinted in the National Journal of the Urban League.

Outside of the story, Crump herself went on to found the Council of Negro Students, the University’s first Black racial affinity group.

In honor of Charlotte Crump, the University now has established “Charlotte’s Home for Black Women.” The LLC housing space helps first- and second-year students build community.

After its formation, the group was offered a partnership with a political organization called American Student Union, a prominent anti-war student movement in the 1930s that mobilized the nation’s young people against fascism, war, and racial inequity.

“They asked over and over again,” Prell said “but [the Council of Negro Students] would not join … It’s so interesting that the Council of Negro Students says, ‘We are not willing to join your movement.’ They are very acutely aware that they need their own movement where their voices are primary, where their leadership is primary.”

Prell said that the group was at the center of the University’s political activism. “The organization honestly didn’t last that long. It was pretty much done by the early 40s, but it was very powerful.”

The Black Student Union

“In 1963, there wasn’t a functioning Black student organization,” Professor Emeritus John Wright said. “Things had kind of fallen away, so we organized a group.”

Wright’s time at the University began nearly 60 years ago. During his undergraduate and graduate years at the University, he was a student activist who worked on behalf of the African-American community.

He also comes from a family who similarly devoted themselves to racial justice on the UMN campus. His aunt and father served alongside Charlotte Crump in the Council of Negro Students, and his aunt became the group’s President.

As Wright explained, the Black student organization that was formed in 1963 was first called Students for Racial Progress (STRAP). In 1967 under new leadership, it was renamed the Afro-American Action Committee (AAAC).

Though an independent African Student Association was also established during those years, the AAAC was unique in its attempt to unify all Black students on campus.

Speaking about his time on the group, Wright said “Those years between 1963 and 1968 were years of tremendous turmoil in this country, achievement and setbacks.”

In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination rocked both the nation as a whole and those actively working for Civil Rights.

Amidst the uproar, the AAAC presented a list of seven demands to the University President Malcolm Moos. The demands were written by Wright, and they included a call to establish an educational curriculum that included the contributions of Black people.

The student activists were unsatisfied with Moos’ initial response to their demands, so they occupied Morrill Hall, preventing outsiders from entering the hall while only allowing those already within the building to leave.

These actions came to be known as the Morrill Hall Takeover, and they resulted in the University creating the Department of African American and African Studies.

“[The AAAC’s] name was changed to the Black Student Union (BSU) in part to accommodate some of the growing numbers of students from other parts of the African world coming to campus,” Wright said.

Reflecting on Black affinity groups, Chair of the Department of African American & African Studies at the University Yuichiro Onishi said, “I don’t want to talk about Black student experience solely in terms of isolation or solely in terms of experiencing microaggressions or sorely in the language of trauma.”

Though he affirmed the reality of these things, he said “I want to shift the conversation to say ‘I think Black students need to have beyond representation. They need to have the right to remain and participate.”

Samiat Ajibola served as the BSU’s President last year, and is currently the Minnesota Student Association’s vice president

“It’s a really insane history to think about how the BSU was created,” she said. “I think it’s just powerful to know that a campus that once didn’t even want Black students to learn there, live there is now a centerpiece of where a lot of Black students grow and find themselves.”

Today, the University’s Black Student Union cites the Morrill Hall Takeover as its origin, saying on their website, “The Black Student Union was birthed in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 … The Black Student Union’s beginnings stemmed from the need to voice concerns facing students of color on a predominantly-Caucasian campus and we still live this truth, to this day.”

Clarification: A previous version of this story did not include Sara Atwood. Atwood curated “A Campus Divided” alongside Riv-Ellen Prell.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to avoid speculation regarding the cause of death.

Tobiloba Taiwo, an eighteen-year-old in the University of Minnesota’s class of 2025, died Feb. 21 at the University Recreation and Wellness Center.

Taiwo passed out while playing basketball at the University Recreation and Wellness Center with friends. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

On Feb. 25, a candlelight vigil in honor of Taiwo was held at the University Rec Well. On Mar. 1, Taiwo’s funeral service will take place in Woodbury, Minn.

This is a breaking news report. More information will be added as it becomes available.

The University of Minnesota’s Office for Equity and Diversity announced the departure of Associate Vice Provost Virajita Singh on Feb 8.

Singh recently accepted a position as the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s (MIA) first chief diversity and inclusion officer. Her work as Associate Vice Provost included securing the University’s designation as an Asian American & Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution and supported the University’s Women’s Center and the Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life.

In addition, Singh is widely recognized for her work in the Diversity Community of Practice (DCoP), a group of University faculty and staff that aims “to share innovative strategies that ensure successful implementation of equity and diversity goals at the University of Minnesota,” according to their website.

This year, the DCoP will host its ninth annual Diversity Data Deep Dive symposia. In these conferences, participants “utilize qualitative and quantitative data to advance institutional equity and diversity goals,” according to the website.

Before serving as associate vice provost, Singh’s work centered around architecture and design. Singh earned her degree in Mumbai and first practiced architecture in rural communities in India. After coming to the University, she founded the Design for Community Resilience Program which serves communities in Minnesota, specifically rural areas.

On her website, Singh describes herself as “a committed artist.” She served as senior research fellow and adjunct faculty member in the College of Design.

“I am a very interdisciplinary oriented person,” Singh said. She added that her diverse professional interests mutually support one another.

Teddie Potter serves as a clinical professor for the school of nursing, and she worked with Singh in the creation of the Diversity Data Deep Dive symposia.

“When I came to the University,” Potter said, “I thought, ‘Wow, look at this. Everybody for social change is here in one place. Isn’t this cool?’ It didn’t take me long to realize they’re all here, but nobody knows each other. They’re off doing their own individual work.”

Potter praised Singh for the ways she worked to solve this problem, saying, “She networks so effectively [and] has this wonderful ability to connect dots across the University.”

About the formation of the Diversity Data Deep Dive symposia, Potter said, “We brought a design thinking lens to how we create social movements.”

Though Singh served in an administrative role at the University, her previous work and scholarship centered around design, which had a large influence in her work as associate vice provost.

Singh described design thinking as a five-step process of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing.

She said she values design thinking for its ability to help people claim agency and look toward the future.

“There’s been so many things that have been a result of historical inequities, marginalization and oppression, but we in this moment are creating the future,” Singh said. “If you’re not aware of that, and we’re only looking to the past and berating the past, then we are not putting our energy on changing the future.”

Potter described Singh as “hopeful and visionary.”

Vic Massaglia serves as the director of the Career and Professional Development Center at the School of Public Health.

He worked closely with Singh in the DCoP and said that whenever people speak about Singh they “will light up because she is an amazing person … She captures what it means to be authentic. She brings this grace, this style, this openness to her … She’s wicked smart. She’s done all these things, but then she is very authentic with people and patient and compassionate.”

Potter said she had worked with Singh for the past seven or eight years.

“Virajita is one of those unique human beings that you know wherever she goes, whatever community she works with, she’s not leaving you behind. She’ll be bringing you forward into a new space, and so I fully anticipate that the University and the MIA are going to get even closer,” Potter said. “She’s going to think of ways that our communities can work together, and so it really isn’t about goodbye as much as celebrating a new chapter in her life.”

Singh echoed similar sentiments, saying, “I am sad to leave. I’ll miss them, but I think we will also stay connected because I see this as the next chapter of my work.”

In her new role, Singh will work to increase cross-cultural museum accessibility at the MIA.

“They have just an incredible collection with 90,000 works of art that represent world cultures … but the question is how many communities actually know that they have access to that,” Singh said.

She is also interested in diversifying the museum staffing and reckoning with issues surrounding the history of museums, including colonization and artifact theft.

Patricia Izek serves as the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Consultant for the University’s Office of Human Resources and she worked with Singh on the DCoP.

“[Virajita] was very capable of establishing not only the colleague, but the friend,” Izek said. “Just to be clear, they will not be able to replace Virajita. They will fulfill the position, and we will welcome the individual, but they will not replace her.”

“Black history is just so rich, and this country was built by Black people,” said Najmo Yusuf, a University of Minnesota graduate student. “We have everything to do with American history. Just knowing that history belongs to me makes me feel really proud.”

Yusuf serves as the Student Life Advisor in the Office for Multicultural Student Engagement (MCSE), which has played a major role in promoting and hosting events in celebration of Black History Month on the University campus.

“In our department, we are always thinking of Black history,” Yusuf said.

MCSE’s curated list of Black History Month events on campus includes a Power and Privilege Series hosted by Nicole Cardoza, an exhibition featuring the artwork of alumni Mark Khan and two events hosted by the Black Student Union (BSU).

Along with BSU’s annual Unity Dinner and Cultural Showcase, BSU will host social events such as a showing of “Think Like a Man” and a yoga day at the Recreation and Wellness Center.

Zakaria Jamari, a third-year student majoring in psychology, serves as a co-cultural awareness chair on the BSU Board.

“Our main theme of Black History Month is Black excellence,” said Jamari. “Each week will have different sectors of Black excellence.”

The first week will be centered around “Black mediocrity,” the practice of honoring Black people’s value irrespective of their accomplishments. One Huffington Post writer explained the concept, saying, “When I refer to mediocrity it’s the assertion that we should all be allowed the liberty or privilege of simply existing.”

“I feel like Black students put a lot of pressure on themselves, especially college students,” Jamari said. “To be perfect, have the perfect GPA, have all these jobs and internships.”

The BSU has partnered with The Zen Bin, a local business that will lead students in holistic yoga and breathing exercises at an upcoming BSU event for students to “have a chill night… just talking about wellness and the importance of it,” Jamari said.

The continuity of Black history

Reflecting on Black History Month, second-year BFA student Taylor Barnes said, “[It] has always just been a given and celebration in our household … There’s no way for me or anybody in my family to forget that we are Black, and for us Black History Month is every day of the year.”

Barnes said she identifies as an American descendent of slavery.

“My grandmother was a sharecropper, which is like slavery junior, and my grandfather on my mom’s side went to school in Mississippi in the 1960s when they were forced integrated. So a lot of that stuff that is a part of Black history is actually not that far away.”

Yusuf echoed similar sentiments, saying, “In a lot of ways, George Floyd’s murder amplified our history, and in some ways, it’s brought light to the fact that we’re not far removed from what’s happened 400 years ago… You can’t make change for the future without understanding your past.”

She said she hopes for the University to hire and promote more Black people and to devote more resources to the African American Studies Department.

“George Floyd’s murder amplified the need to accelerate our efforts to support Black University community members,” said Michael Goh, the University’s vice president of equity and diversity, in an email.

He provided a non-exhaustive list of notable racial justice efforts that have been undertaken by the University since George Floyd’s murder.

The efforts included implementing the Gopher Equity Project, requiring all undergraduate students on the Twin Cities campus to fulfill a Race, Power, and Justice theme, and reviewing all University administrative policies with an equity lens.

Soon after George Floyd’s murder, the University announced it would no longer utilize the Minneapolis Police Department for large events on campus or for specialized services like K-9 explosive detection units.

Some students, including Minnesota Student Association (MSA) Vice President Samiat Ajibola, have expressed a desire to see the University further minimize police presence on campus in order to protect Black students from police brutality.

MSA has worked with students on campus to explore alternative methods of public safety. These conversations have become increasingly relevant in the wake of Amir Locke’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department.

In a recent statement addressed to the University community, BSU wrote “The countless lies and misinformation delivered by the Minneapolis Police Department and Mayor is evidence of their racism and their unwillingness to change.”

BSU also hosted a discussion entitled “Police Brutality in the Black Community” to provide “a safe space to express the anger and sorrow that we are all deeply feeling at this moment,” according to a BSU Instagram post.

“I think that we are a resilient race of people,” Barnes said, concluding on a positive note in reflection of Black history.

A new University of Minnesota course offered this semester will instruct students in the practice of Indigenous mapping as a means of exploring the University’s relationship to systemic racism and settler colonialism.

“Thinking of a map in a history textbook,” Nora Livesay said, “what you don’t see is the map from the perspective of Indigenous people.” Livesay is the professor of the new course.

Students will work in small groups to create “story maps” that graphically illustrate data relating to Indigenous communities.

“A lot of times when you’re watching the news of a presidential election, [they] will have maps in the background of the anchors, and they’ll show states turning different colors,” Livesay said.

Those maps in the background are an example of a story map, and the students in her class will use similar mapping technologies to represent the experiences of Indigenous communities.

“I think that there’s a lot of potential here for Indigenous people to have a voice and to tell stories … What are the stories of Indigenous people in relationship to the University of Minnesota?” Livesay said.

Indigenous mapping as a tool to tell deeper, untold stories

One story map created by the High Country News reveals findings that answer Livesay’s question. She called this particular map one of the most wonderful she had seen recently.

The article, titled “Land-Grab Universities: How the United States funded land-grant universities with expropriated Indigenous land,” depicts the violent history of many universities in the nation, including the University of Minnesota.

In 1851, four Dakota bands were coerced to relinquish their traditional homelands “in response to the withholding of rations, the threat of violence, enforced starvation, the killing of game and the destruction of agriculture,” according to another High Country News report.

Years later, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which granted land to new colleges around the country. As a result, the University of Minnesota received 94,631 acres and raised the equivalent of $18.4 million in today’s dollars, according to a story map created by a University group.

Most of the land the University received through the Morrill Act was relinquished by the Dakota bands in 1851. The Dakota were paid only a fraction of what the land was worth.

Today, centuries after the land seizures, Indigenous people in Minnesota suffer from high rates of homelessness and poverty. Compared to non-Indigenous people, Indigenous communities have worse health outcomes and less access to healthcare.

Indigenous students experience the lowest high school graduation rate of any racial or ethnic group in Minnesota.

“It can be really difficult to look at some of these stories,” Livesay said.

Indigenous mapping’s importance at the University

Fa’aumu Kaimana is a first-year PhD student studying anthropology. She has experience in the practice of Indigenous mapping and assisted Livesay in the creation of the new course.

“It’s a very existential question,” she said, reflecting on the work. “The implications that come out of this … When we put this mapping out into the community, it really does unsettle their notions of what the University is.”

She added that the University leaders need to ask themselves, “What would it look like for me to be in good relations with Indigenous peoples here?”

A colleague of Kaimana and Livesay, Kevin Murphy, said that universities have “a tendency often to just think in present terms and to not think broadly, politically about the meaning of the campus and where it’s located in the work that it does.”

Murphy serves as a faculty coordinator at Minnesota Transform, a higher education initiative that engages in anti-colonial and racial justice work at the University. He was part of the conversation that inspired the Indigenous mapping course.

He stated that himself, his student collaborators and individuals in the University’s American Indian Studies Department hoped for the class to explore “the history of the University as a settler colonial institution … what Native students and faculty and staff have done on campus over time, the contributions they’ve made, their activism.”

He added, “I think taking action depends on sort of really understanding the past and the University’s complicity in … systemic racism and colonialism.”

University efforts to support Indigenous causes

Both Livesay and Murphy expressed that the hiring of Karen Diver signaled an increased University commitment to Indigenous causes.

In May 2021, Diver became the University’s first Senior Advisor to the President for Native American Affairs. She is a member of the Fond du Lac Band, and she was previously appointed by former President Barack Obama to be a Special Assistant to the President on Native American Affairs.

Since Diver’s tenure, the University has launched the Native American Promise Tuition Program which grants free and reduced tuition to financially-qualifying students registered with one of the 11 federally recognized Minnesota Native American tribes.

The University has called the program “among the nation’s most comprehensive free and reduced tuition programs for Native American students.”

Additionally, the University’s Institute of Advanced Study partnered with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council to create a project working Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH).

Through it, Indigenous scholars will be financially supported as they “write what the history of University-tribal relations is, from their own perspective, using their own words and using their own methodologies.”

Chris Pexa is of Bdewákaŋtuŋwaŋ Dakhóta and Polish-Irish ancestry, and he serves as an associate professor in the American Indian Studies Department.

Reflecting on the University’s support for Indigenous causes through efforts like the TRUTH project, Pexa said, “The other universities that have benefited from the Morrill Act are not here yet … What the U of M is doing, I think what’s unique about this opportunity is that it’s outward facing … I think that’s a really big and a good step, and I’m glad for it.”

He considered the Native American Promise Tuition Program a good, though imperfect step.

“It has certain problems, the most glaring being that it re-enshrines the borders of the state as the borders of historical reparation when, in fact, the Dakota people were all exiled with very small exceptions,” Pexa said.

Since the Dakota people were forcibly removed from the state of Minnesota after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, many Dakota people reside outside of Minnesota. Pexa argues the program’s limitation to Minnesota’s 11 recognized tribes wrongfully excludes many Dakota students.

“The more radical step would be something like what the Morris campus has already done, which is to give free tuition to any Indigenous descendant,” Pexa said.

As for additional steps, Pexa said he would like to see the University revisit the language of its land acknowledgment, create signage and exhibitions that show this land’s history of dispossession and increase funding for the American Indian Studies department.

Pexa said he would also like to see Morrill Hall renamed. The campus building’s name is the same as the legislation that expropriated Dakota land.

Laughing, he added, “change it to Land-Grab Hall.”

Reflections on the new course

Thom Sandberg, a fourth-year student studying history and urban studies, is currently taking the new course.

“I think one of the great things about this class is how it is an awareness class as much as anything else,” Sandberg said.

Sandberg added that he was interested in learning more about the appropriation of the land as the semester progresses.

“I’m really glad that students are now really getting the opportunity to understand the institution that they’re part of … and envision a different kind of future for the university,” Murphy said.

The new course will develop and uncover new findings about the University that will help pave a more equitable future and reckon with its past.

“People of color often don’t have the power to tell their stories to everybody else. Usually they’re told about,” Livesay said. “I see this [course] as a way for Indigenous people’s perspective to be centered, for their stories to be in the position of power.”