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Photo of Juliana Hu Pegues

Alaska and Settler Feminism
Juliana Hu Pegues received the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship for her research into the history of Asian immigrants and Alaska Natives. Her work seeks to understand the complex history of manifest destiny and inform the greater public about how settler colonialism shapes modern America.
Cones on a jingle dress

The Jingle Dress
The jingle dress dance is a spiritual healing practice dating back to 1918. Guided by the research efforts of Brenda Child—professor and current chair of the Department of American Studies—an exhibit featuring the evolution of the dress will launch in April 2019. How did this tradition emerge from a story, a dream, and the worst pandemic that the modern world has seen?
Woman wearing "Day of the Dead" make-up

Dia de los Muertos: An Indigenous celebration
Gabriela Spears-Rico and Jessica Lopez Lyman discuss Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, which comes from the Aztec celebration of loved ones who’ve walked on. It’s now a Mexican holiday with customs and traditions that are catching on in the US—but the American version is often more about sugar skull imagery and less about the original intent. What is the holiday is really about and how do you avoid cultural appropriation?
Five students stand around a large traditional ocean fishing boat.

On Purpose: Portrait of American Indian Studies
We call upon our neighbors in the University community and the good people of the state of Minnesota to acknowledge and reflect upon the fact that the University of Minnesota stands on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the homelands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. We call upon our neighbors to acknowledge that the river that winds through campus links us to the sacred site of the Dakhóta people’s origin at Bdote, where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi.
Four faculty standing in front of a photo gallery of previous presidents of the University.

On Purpose: Portrait of Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies
The Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative (RIGS) was established in 2015 to support innovative research, teaching, community-building, and engagement for scholars and students addressing issues on these topics. RIGS is dedicated to bringing faculty and students together to pursue lines of inquiry that challenge systems of power and inequality, assert human dignity, and imagine social transformation.
Portrait of Katherine Beane.

Colonialism to Sovereignty: The Restoration of Bde Maka Ska
In 1829, Dakota leader Mahpiya Wicasta (Cloud Man) led a group of Dakota men on a hunt. The group became trapped in a blizzard for three days, buried under the snow. He later founded an agricultural community on the site, which he called Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, on the shores of a lake that Dakota people today call Bde Maka Ska. Nearly two centuries later, Cloud Man’s great-great grandchildren led the charge to reclaim the lake’s Dakota name, after having long been named after white secessionist John Caldwell Calhoun.” We don’t call it a change, we call it a restoration,” descendant Katherine Beane says when asked about the renaming of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska.

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