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MNHS Press Newsletter: January 23, 2024

Jaired Johnson Jan 23, 2024 1:15:00 PM

Publisher's Note

Bill Quackenbush, Robert Pilot, and Amy Lonetree present Cathy Coats with the Great Seal of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

If your New Year’s resolution is to read more books, MNHS Press can help! Our Spring 2024 catalog hit mailboxes at the start of this year and will soon be available for download online on our homepage. Our first title, To Banish Forever by Cathy Coats, launched on January 17 at All My Relations Arts on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis.

New Releases

More than eighty people filled All My Relations Arts to hear Ho-Chunk citizens Amy Lonetree, Robert Pilot, and Bill Quackenbush discuss the often erased and excluded Minnesota history of the Ho-Chunk Nation, followed by a reading and Q and A with To Banish Forever author Cathy Coats.

Amy Lonetree is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz; Robert Pilot is a Ho-Chunk Nation Representative for District 4 and host of Native Roots Radio in St. Paul. Bill Quackenbush is the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation. An award-winning researcher who received her master of arts in public history from St. Cloud State University, Cathy Coats is a metadata specialist for the University of Minnesota Libraries in the Twin Cities.

MNHS Press was thrilled to collaborate with All My Relations Arts on this book launch. Watch for more events for To Banish Forever in the coming weeks. We look forward to launching each of our new books throughout the season.

To Banish Forever: A Secret Society, the Ho-Chunk, and Ethnic Cleansing in Minnesota

COATS_9781681342559_newsletter

Cathy Coats

The largely untold story of the Ho-Chunk exile from Minnesota, in which local white residents sought to expel all indigenous people from the region and deny Native claims to some of the richest farmland in the world.

Events

Twin Cities Metro

1/28/2024, 12:30 PM, Peg Meier, Bring Warm Clothes, Subtext Books, St. Paul

2/13/2024, 6:30 PM, "A Love Letter to Minneapolis" with Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl and Heid E. Erdrich, The Essential Dear Dara and Original Local, Birchbark Bizhiw, Minneapolis

2/15/2024, 1:00 PM (virtual event), David C. Mauk, The Heart of the Heartland, Ramsey County Historical Society, St. Paul

2/21/2014, 7:00 PM, Cathy Coats, To Banish Forever, Magers & Quinn, Minneapolis

Greater Minnesota

2/2/2024, 4:00 to 6:00 PM, Travis Novitsky, Spirits Dancing, the Bookstore at Fitger’s, Duluth

2/5/2024, 5:30 PM, Sam Zimmerman, Following My Spirit Home, Duluth Public Library

National

2/21/2024, 6:30 PM, Patty Wetterling with Joy Baker, Dear Jacob, Changing Hands, Phoenix

In the Media

The Magic of Rose McGee’s Sweet Potato Comfort Pie Comes to a Children’s Book, All Things Considered, MPR, Tom Crann and Ngoc Bui, January 18, 2024

Peter Jesperson: Euphoric Recall: A Half Century as a Music Fan, Producer, DJ, Record Executive, and Tastemaker, All About Jazz, Doug Collette, December 31, 2023

Noteworthy

The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation has honored Rose McGee, author of MNHS Press children’s book Can’t Nobody Make a Sweet Potato Pie Like Our Mama!, with a Facing Race Award, which recognizes “anti-racism advocates in Minnesota who challenge absent and harmful narratives on race, build solutions that unite instead of divide, and push for justice and equity.”

New in MNopedia

Rolvaag, Karl Fritjof (1913–1990)

In his youth a hobo, a radical, a soldier, and a scholar, Karl Rolvaag became an adroit politician—a key builder of the Democratic Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party. He served eight years as lieutenant governor and four years, 1963–1967, as Minnesota’s thirty-first governor.

Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA)

In 1985, Minnesota state legislators passed the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA) to address shortcomings in the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. The federal law had been enacted in 1978 in response to the alarming number of Native American children being removed from their families and placed in non-Native foster and adoptive homes. MIFPA gave Minnesota tribes more authority in all child custody decisions involving Native children.