Daniel Modesto

Daniel Modesto is an American Studies Ph.D student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. As a Mixteco scholar from New York, Daniel’s personal and academic interests lie in the visibility and presence of Indigenous communities in urban centers. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2024 with a major in Native American and Indigenous Studies, modified with Latin American Studies. His senior thesis, titled “Urban Native Visibility within the Settler-Colonial Landscape of Minneapolis,” explored the production of Dakota geographies through murals and street art in the Twin Cities. Daniel’s future research wishes to consider how Minneapolis and St. Paul’s urban landscape can be seen as an extension of Bdote — or the confluence of the Mni Sota Wakpa (Minnesota River) and Ḣaḣa Wakpa (Mississippi River). He hopes to consider Native-owned businesses and other examples of Indigenous placemaking in the city that reflect the continued presence of Dakota homelands. In doing so, he is ultimately interested in how Indigenous people establish communities in urban centers, which involves grappling with the continued legacies of settler colonialism.