Amplifying Solidarity: A Northrop Plaza Series | Why Canoes? Featuring the Milanesians

Spend the last four Thursdays of summer lounging or lunching on Northrop Plaza while listening to music by spectacular Minnesota artists! A collaboration between Northrop, Radio K, Welcome Week, Multicultural Student Engagement, and the School of Music, Amplifying Solidarity is a program of free outdoor concerts with the intent to use music to lift the voices of people who have been marginalized and to welcome our community back to campus after more than a year of physical distancing and social unrest. These free concerts featuring Black and Indigenous artists will take place on Northrop’s Plaza Stage.

In an extension of the Why Canoes? exhibit on Northrop's fourth floor Gallery, Northrop Plaza will reverberate with Micronesian harmonies when The Milanesians—the Micronesian community in Milan, Minnesota, take to the stage. Known as an oral society, Micronesians convey information in their music, their traditional chants tell of past events and changing cultural patterns. Get a close-up look at the canoes themselves, on display in Northrop Plaza for this special event!

Why Canoes? Capacious Vessels and Indigenous Futures of Minnesota's Peoples and Places, is an exhibit that honors the interconnectedness between the Native Canoe Program, University of Minnesota students, faculty, staff, and members of three Indigenous communities around Mni Sota Makoce (Minnesota). It also celebrates relationships with Dakota, Ojibwe, and Micronesian communities that have come together and found a common passion for sharing water traditions, while broadening the understanding of the waters that surround us through the resurgence and revitalization of canoe communities. The exhibit is presented by Northrop, Heritage Studies & Public History Program, Institute for Advanced Study, and University Honors Program.