October 21, 2016 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao reports on the meaning behind the Diwali Festival. Local Indian Americans gather at the Minneapolis convention center for annual event. The ancient celebration is one of the biggest and most important holidays in Hindu tradition.
October 3, 2016 - MPR’s John Enger interviews Ojibwe storyteller Anne Dunn, who reflects on a lifetime of storytelling on northern Minnesota reservations. Enger spoke with Dunn in a cabin on Drewery Lake.
September 9, 2016 - MPR’s Dan Kraker investigates the warming waters of Lake Superior. In late August 2016, the average surface water temperature for the entire lake hit 68 and a half degrees (the second highest ever recorded). In Lake Superior, researchers at the University of Minnesota Duluth have found that summer surface water temperatures have increased by 5 degrees over the past 30 years.
September 2, 2016 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao reports on Hmong Day at the Minnesota State Fair. The schedule offers a kaleidoscope of events, from honoring military veterans and registering voters in the morning to Hmong dancers and rappers in the afternoon.
September 2, 2016 - One of the most popular attractions at the Minnesota State Fair is the CHS Miracle of Birth Center. It takes hundreds of people to organize the live exhibit where you can see farm animals give birth. MPR’s Max Nesterak interviews veterinarian Florian Ledermann…and witnesses both a live birth and lost children.
August 26, 2016 - MPR News producer Max Nesterak set out to meet some of those people that make the Minnesota State Fair, including one of the fair's mainstays...the bright pink haunted house. If you've ever walked by, you may have been heralded by its veteran promoter, Eric James.
August 11, 2016 - MPR’s Solvejg Wastvedt joins St. Paul middle-schoolers who took on a different kind of summer challenge recently, learning about leadership and racial equity as they got an up-close look at history.
August 9, 2016 - MPR’s Euen Kerr reports on poet, novelist and academic Gerald Vizenor’s new novel “Treaty Shirts.” Book is a satirical novel examining the impact of the document in the future, blending Ojibwe history, tradition, and dream narratives with popular culture and science technology to create a surreal but pointed view of modern native life. Report includes interview and reading from Vizenor.
August 5, 2016 - MPR’s Dan Kraker profiles Duluth's five lift bridge operators and their very unique work window view. The Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge span goes up and down about 4,500 times every year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the Great Lakes shipping season that runs from March to January.
July 14, 2016 - People in our community are expressing their feelings about the death of Philando Castile in many ways. 15 local poets gathered at the Penumbra Theater in St. Paul for a community reading. It was part of Black Poets Speak Out, a poetry-driven protest that began after the death of Michael Brown in 2014. Report includes an excerpt of Michael Kleber Diggs reading his poem "St. Paul Morning."