At the Falls: An Urban Ojibwe Story of Minneapolis Placemaking

May 18, 2022.Reading time 23 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth entry in this month’s theme at The Metropole, Urban Indigeniety. Additional entries in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Sasha Maria Suarez Ignatia Broker (White Earth Ojibwe) remembered that to get a “toe-hold” in mid-twentieth century Minneapolis, newly arrived Indigenous peoples had to […]

Toward a Global Urban Indigenous History: One Trajectory

May 11, 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the third entry in this month’s theme at The Metropole, Urban Indigeniety. Additional posts in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Coll Thrush I came to history through a bit of a side door, but it was an urban one. I had always been interested […]

Commemorating Indigenous Urbanism in the Early Modern Atlantic World

May 5, 2022.Reading time 20 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the second post in The Metropole’s May theme on Urban Indigeniety. Additional entries in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Nathaniel F. Holly On a rainy November afternoon in 1972, a number of South Carolina’s most prominent citizens huddled together in a Charleston park to […]

Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism

May 3, 2022.Reading time 31 minutes.

Editor’s note: The Metropole theme for May is Urban Indigeniety. This is our first post of the month, an overview of the field. Additional posts in the series can be found at the conclusion of the article. By Kent Blansett, Cathleen D. Cahill & Andrew Needham Today, 70 percent of Indigenous peoples in the United […]

The Carceral Landscape of Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote: An Interview with Katherine Hayes

November 2, 2020.Reading time 26 minutes.

By Avigail Oren The recent work of historical anthropologist Katherine Hayes has focused on decolonizing the narratives interpreted at public heritage sites, including St. Paul’s Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote. The United States military constructed Fort Snelling in 1819-20 to protect the area’s fur trade, a role it served until Minnesota gained statehood in 1858 […]

“Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds”: Examining Minnesota’s Indigenous History

October 13, 2020.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Katrina Phillips Minnesota has always been a Native place. The state takes its name from a Dakota phrase, Mni Sota Makoce, which translates to “land where the waters reflect the clouds.” While the state’s capital is the other Twin City (St. Paul), Minneapolis is the largest city in the state. Its English name also […]

Where the Waters Meet the People: A Bibliography of the Twin cities

October 7, 2020.Reading time 41 minutes.

By Avigail Oren In This Tender Land (2019), William Kent Kreuger’s loose update of Huck Finn, the O’Banion brothers and their compatriots Emmy and Mose end up in St. Paul, Minnesota, after escaping from the Lincoln Indian Training School—and its despicable, abusive, headmaster Mrs. Brinkman—and sailing down the Minnesota River in a canoe. After passing […]

Member of the Week: Nathaniel Holly

May 1, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

Nathaniel Holly PhD Candidate Lyon G. Tyler Department of History College of William & Mary Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? At the moment I am neck deep in my dissertation, which examines the urban experiences of Cherokees in the long eighteenth century. While early American historians have long noted the […]