Spillway Stories 2024

SPILLWAY STORIES 2024

SPILLWAY STORIES #

/

SPILLWAY STORIES

We welcome together artists, culture-bearers, and storytellers to share the history, experiences, and visions for the future that animate community in the Winona region.

INTRODUCTION by Marcia Ratliff

1

FEATURED STORIES GLORIA ALATORRE by Joy Davis Ripley ANGELA BOOZHOO by Beth Oness FATHER PAUL BREZA by Jerome Christenson NICKY BUCK by Marcia Ratliff AMBER BUYSMAN by Jerome Christenson DR. MAURELLA CUNNINGHAM by Tesla Mitchell ALEXIS HAYES by Mai’a Williams NICKI HENNESSY by Tesla Mitchell CHALYMAR MARTINEZ by Joy Davis Ripley LASHARA MORGAN by Sarah Johnson MIKE MUNSON by Mai’a Williams ALMA ONATE by Tesla Mitchell PAUL KISHO STERN by Marcia Ratliff KATHY SUBLETT by Sarah Johnson LA VONTE THOMPSON by Sharon Mansur

3 6 9 13 16 19 23 26 29 33 36 39 42 47 49

CONTRIBUTORS

55

Spillway Stories are brought to you by Engage Winona and Art of the Rural, with support from the Chicago Community Foundation. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Cover photo & interspersed photos of the Winona spillway are by Cloey Jo Walsh. This magazine was designed

by Hannah Almon Matangos.

VISIT US & READ ONLINE: spillway.xyz

artoftherural.org

engagewinona.org

cct.org

arts.state.mn.us

AN INTRODUCTION TO SPILLWAY STORIES Words by Marcia Ratliff, photograph by Mai’a Williams

Spillway is a place we go to bear witness.

Folks in Winona know it as a low concrete wall, a stairstep on the horizon, visible from the boat launch at Prairie Island campground. The water moves over the dam, and in the spring flood the wall appears as barely a ripple on the surface, dangerous currents swirling underneath. In the summer, the spillway is part balance beam, part fishing dock, magnet for those of us who seek proximity to a boundary.

This project combines artists and community leaders who, in ways both formal and informal, are making change in the Winona area—change that is rooted in their lived experience, their culture, their way of being and moving in this river town. The project explores memory, what is shared across

1

differences, what is on the cusp of transformation.

Spillway is curated by Marcia Ratliff and Mai’a Williams of Engage Winona, in collaboration with Matthew Fluharty of Art of the Rural. These fifteen stories are a beginning of what we hope will be an ongoing project, and also a continuation of the gathering and storytelling work that is central to Engage Winona’s community practice. There’s an element of storytelling in everything we do, from bingo games to community conversations—an invitation to deepen our understanding of each other, to expand our narrative of what Winona is and can be.

At the same time, a current of interdependence and community flows through these stories. Consider Kiesha Morgan’s relationship building through food, Gloria Alatorre’s coaching that is rooted in

“There’s no part of our region that isn’t shaped by the big river. And there’s no part of our region that hasn’t been shaped by the humans who live here.”

In Winona, there are aspects of our shared geography that are inescapable. In the summertime, we watch the weather roll into the river valley, swirl around, and lift away. We know the shape and density of the fog that hunkers over the lake and river in the shoulder seasons, carrying with it a riverine musk. We seek the river’s edges, many of us with a special place we go that feels secret, even sacred, known only to ourselves.

the plants and water of the region, the way Maurella Cunningham nurtures social change in community groups, the embodied storytelling of Fr. Paul Breza.

Woven in are references to our cultural memory and shared geography, our collective understanding of where we came from and where we are. We hear calls to create a place that feels like home for more of us, newcomers and lifelong residents, and calls to deeper compassion.

There’s no part of our region that isn’t shaped by the big river. And there’s no part of our region that hasn’t been shaped by the humans who live here.

The spillway itself is evidence of the way we have altered our environment. It’s a buckle in the fabric of the river, a fault line that reveals the decades of sculpting that transformed the river into a 9-foot channel. Yet it remains a place we cherish.

Our task now is to pay attention, to observe how the present informs our intersecting future.

The same goes for the sandbar that Winona sits on, Dakota homeland that was once an expanse of tall grass criss crossed with horse trails. The Dakota people living here managed this place as an abundant game reserve teeming with birds, deer, and antelope, the families living on the prairie in the summer and moving to the tree cover of the river islands in the winter. When European settlers took this land through predatory treaties and violence, they broke up the prairie, planted trees, dismantled mounds, desecrated graves, and imposed a street grid on what was once grass that rippled in the wind like the surface of water. The land of Winona tells the story of genocide and taking. Dakota people continue to tend it, persisting in a process toward greater understanding and healing.

This project weaves a diverse range of artworks, photographs, written features, and oral histories in a community where past and future are, as one community member put it, as close together as East End houses. There’s a richness in the individual personalities and practices of each maker and changemaker featured here, reflecting deep differences in the way we experience this place depending on our identity.

SPILLWAY STORIES 2

GLORIA ALATORRE LEARNING TO FEARLESSLY BE Words and photographs by Joy Davis Ripley. This piece was first published in 2022.

As an alternative and holistic healing practitioner, Gloria Alatorre is a bold leader who has a profound relationship with the natural world. She is connected deeply to Winona through both the soil, which nourishes the wild herbs she uses, and the water that surrounds the large sandbar we call home.

“I grew up near the ocean,” Gloria says. “I started with salt water and wound up with sweet water.” As she recounts her journey northward, to a small river town where the Mississippi flows west to east, she links the river to the way she views the world.

“Water is life. We’re all made up of so much water, and yet it’s also alien to us. Water is a great teacher and tells us, Be like me. Be shapeless and formless. Learn to adapt.”

She pauses, deep in thought. “Water always brings me back to my original shape, who I am.”

I have met Gloria here, in this wild spot, to photograph and interview her. We pick our way to a trail, avoiding both the instability of the loose rocks and the dry seed-pod burs that dot the landscape here. Just like the Mississippi on its west-east divergence, Gloria is deviating from society’s expectations in order to find her truest self and calling.

3

I have known Gloria for years, as a Human Rights Commission member, deeply passionate about social justice issues; as an interpreter for WAPS, dedicated to ensuring that every child’s voice is heard and understood; and as a mother, determined to raise a human who will help make this world a better place. Today I’ll discover the heartfelt devotion that drives her, as a coach and guide, to help make her community stronger and more resilient.

an owl outside her bedroom window crying, whoooo whoooo. “I knew that was a sign that I needed to question myself,” she says. “I had to ask myself who I was and what I really believe in.”

“I recently had an existential crisis,” she shares with me, explaining that a romantic break-up led her down a path she had not envisioned. “I had to ask myself, What do I believe in? I followed someone who could not be there for me, and my break-up led to me losing myself. I lost myself completely before I finally found myself again.”

As we step off the path, a wild tangle of side-oats grama and sandy loam slows our steps to a dry wetland. Gloria sees tall spears of mullein in the distance. She walks straight to a patch, as though it calls to her, and gently touches the tip of a mullein spike. “This is one of the first herbs I took the time to know,” she says. Just like the mullein, Gloria too had her dormant period; and just as the spike she caresses will soon burst into a yellow flowering to attract bees, Gloria is cracking open and bursting into her calling.

On the narrow path, we wander past river bulrush and sugarberry trees to trace the edges of a pond while Gloria explains further. “When my relationship ended, I broke open. Breaking open has been my greatest teacher in my darkest moments. We need to break open to let the light in. Patience and transformation are the name of the game in this life.”

Gloria knows brokenness. She knows that our culture has resulted in exploitative relationships and a dehumanization of untold millions of people. She knows that the deep divisions in our society have resulted in rage and aching loneliness, the proliferation of mental illnesses and abject despair. She knows there is a much better way to live, and she is forging ahead, creating her own deeply spiritual path as she discovers it, and inviting her community to join her on her journey.

“I am unapologetically fierce in who I am,” Gloria says.

“It’s okay to accept who you truly are. You must be okay with losing yourself, and finding yourself, and losing yourself, again and again. We must be willing to change.”

“I allow myself to be who I am,” she clarifies. “I have embraced who I am, and I hope to help others embrace who they truly are. Again and again, I put myself in the beginner’s mind, in the learner’s mind. I become childlike.” She shows me a quote on a little piece of paper that she has carried with her for over a decade, and I read the words “to learn from, and with, one another.”

To find our truest nature, Gloria believes, we must pay close attention to Nature as she changes around us, and take our cues from her willingness to be diverse in her being.

Gloria helps individuals in and around Winona to “find balance in relationships and in life decisions.” She does this through Japanese energy work called reiki, herbal medicine, and cartomancy. Akin to psychiatrists using inkblots to plumb the psyches of their patients, Gloria uses cards to help others discover what may be inhibiting their joy and obstructing their growth and resilience. “I provide guidance,” she explains. “My coaching, which is a dynamic, interactive practice, involves bringing awareness to the fragmented parts of people’s beings while learning from self-love and the wisdom of the natural world.” In short, she holds “light for others. I know how to hold my own light, and I help support others as they learn to hold their own light.”

“It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the expectations of society,” she continues. “It’s easy to be overwhelmed by an inability to know how to connect with my spirit, and the insecurity of not knowing if I’m doing it right. The rebel in me wants to say, Fuck society and its norms.

But we need each other. We need our community, our support. We really need to be connected and engaged with each other.”

“This is what true community is,” she declares. “I get rid of my ego to learn from my community, even as they learn from me.”

Just after her break-up, Gloria awoke one morning to

“Breaking open has been my greatest teacher in my darkest moments. We need to break open to let the light in. Patience and transformation are the name of the game in this life.”

SPILLWAY STORIES 4

So true is this poem for Gloria that she has dedicated it to memory. “Nature has been my greatest teacher,” she declares. Her willingness to allow nature to teach her what she needs to learn is radical. “Nature is cyclical and chaotic, resilient and nourishing. She lives, dies, revives, dies again, lives again. Nature pulls me closer, and I am someone who is willing to go through very deep introspection to give voice to the alternative.”

As she stops to gaze at the darkening canopy of nearby swamp trees, Gloria explains, “Everyone has darkness, which may be a spiritual heaviness or density.” In our society, we’re encouraged not to heal, not to grow our minds, not to explore how we can help others, but to compete with others for ever-shrinking economic resources, and to accept our own commodification, and to spend money on the next thing that will bring us but fleeting feelings of happiness and wholeness.

“We’re fragmented,” Gloria says, explaining that cultural demands tear us away from who we really are. “I want to tell people to go through their darkness,” she says, “but it’s so hard to be with one’s darkness. When we practice being with it and giving it a voice, we become more resilient.” She watches the trees sway in the breeze. “A heaviness, a density, in your soul may weigh you down, but we can learn to embody stillness with it, and then learn to set it free.”

“We have such beauty and such polarity in ourselves,” Gloria continues. “I am guided by what is said and what is left unsaid, and I can see the good and the less-thangood.”

It’s easy to assume that we’re more connected than ever, but Gloria knows how much of this is an illusion.

Technology allows us to travel the world through our fingertips, to remain always in contact with friends and strangers, to broadcast our day’s choices of food or fashion on social media platforms. But we must learn to make the choice, again and again, to intentionally slow down and not let a fear of missing out cause us to always seek something out there, outside of ourselves. Gloria understands this, and to make a positive impact on her community, she mindfully turned inward. “There’s so much pressure,” she says, “to be someone. I hesitate to use the word authenticity because it’s overused. But it’s okay to be unapologetically who you are. When I say, Be true to yourself, what I mean is, Fearlessly be.”

Gloria has learned how to fearlessly be from the natural world. “Nature slows you down, if you pay attention,” she says. She quotes a poem by John O’Donohue, the Irish poet-philosopher: “If you go out into a place that is wild, your mind begins to slow down, down, down.

What happens is that the clay of your body retrieves its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.”

5

With patience, she works through this comprehensive dialectic to help others reach something higher, an integrated synthesis in which her gentle, wise guidance helps others to fearlessly be.

Find out more about Gloria and all she has to offer at www.lunaxi3.com

ANGELA BOOZHOO TAKING CARE OF COMMUNITY Words by Beth Oness, photographs by Mary Farrell

At the end of February, we sat in Angela Boozhoo’s sunny living room in a rare moment of quiet in a busy season. Due to the warm winter, the sap in the silver maples has been running for almost a month, and Angela, with the help of Jamie Schell, Anne Conway, and many others, has spent days at Prairie Island, gathering sap, boiling it down, and sharing wild rice treats and warm drinks. Many people think of “making maple syrup” as a New England or Vermont industry. Certainly it’s marketed that way––with the crystalized syrup stamped into tidy maple leaf shaped candies––but gathering sap, boiling it down, stoking the fires, and participating in a sugarbush has been a traditional rite for Indigenous peoples for aeons.

Because the trees are located in a Mississippi River backwater called Crooked Slough, at the edge of Prairie Island Campground, the Crooked Slough Sugarbush is simply called

SPILLWAY STORIES 6

Sap to Syrup. It is a collaboration between the Boozhoo family, Prairie Island Campground, and Winona Parks and Recreation, and it’s just one of the projects that Angela has been working on recently.

Angela Boozhoo has large, clear blue eyes, and when I ask her a question, I can see a wealth of consideration behind those eyes. Soft-spoken, she chooses what she wants to reveal. Her cats play with the end of my pen as I take notes, and I tell her about a satirical meme I’ve seen about land acknowledgments. In a light voice, she says, “My land acknowledgment is fierce!” And she smiles.

Angela is the recipient of a grant from the NDN Collective, “an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power.” Their mission: “Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.” Based in Rapid City, South Dakota, this non-profit organization works throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Their Collective Abundance Fund helps Native and Indigenous communities, peoples and nations, in the quest for bimadisiwin – “living a good life.”

Their grants help participants enrich their families, not only in a material sense, but in a sense of community abundance.

If you attend an event hosted by an Indigenous person, you may notice it often opens with: “Welcome relatives.”

This greeting in English emphasizes that family can be broadly defined; it presumes inclusivity and asserts our interrelatedness.

NDN grants allow participants time to learn about traditional skills, such as harvesting wild rice. The grants

7

also support learning about traditional medicine, traditional celebration, and ceremonies and rituals such as sugar bush or sugar camp. The grants also allow recipients time to consider questions such as: “How can we learn as a community?” “What are the traumatic effects of living in a capitalistic society?” The skills and knowledge that participants develop are useful for more than one person or their immediate families––they extend to the larger community. For instance, community members and local students have been participating in the Sap to Syrup program, and Angela’s hope is that the program can be worked into local school curricula, so it’s an ongoing learning process.

Angela Boozhoo grew up in Winona, and aside from living in Wisconsin for fifteen years, she has lived here for most of her life. She has two school age children, four grown children, and four grandchildren, so she understands the cultural fabric of the town.

For Angela, an important part of her grant work is honoring her Ojibway heritage, and “re-educating my family about this part of our heritage, which we’ve been dissociated from– we didn’t grow up knowing any of this.”

This is a common problem for many Indigenous people – a history of erasure.

As Angela and I talk about families, I tell her about my Irish Catholic background and how little I knew about certain parts of my family, simply because of a tight-lipped moralistic austerity, and Angela smiles, clearly understanding that. Living in the Upper Midwest, we sometimes hear jokes about Norwegian reticence, but the gaps in Indigenous

understanding are different–they are the result of forced displacement, genocide, and racism, and trying to find ways to fill those gaps, to “re-educate my family about traditional ways,” isn’t simply a matter of doing small things, it’s a matter of reclaiming a birthright, which, in many ways, systemic racism is still trying to erase.

Angela reads to me from a three-ring binder of material, gathered by one of her cousins, about her great grandmother. Victoria Beane was born in 1911, and literally didn’t know where she was from. Her mother died when she was a year and half old and she was brought to an orphanage in Owatonna. As Angela reads from the paperwork and correspondence, her voice drops.

She doesn’t need to explain the moralistic tone of the letters––it’s self-evident. Apparently young Victoria was “disobedient,” and her adopted family wanted to return her. The complaints from the adoptive family, and the admonitions from the orphanage suggest that this was not an unusual occurrence. I ask Angela if she ever met, or remembered her great-grandmother, and she laughs, “Oh yes, I did. She was feisty!”

Through research, Angela has found that Victoria’s grandfather is buried in Red Cliff, Wisconsin. Red Cliff is called Gaa-Miskwaabikaang in Ojibwe, which means, “The place where there are red rock cliffs.”

“I’d like to be a positive part of our community for Native youth and other children. This is what I would like to see for myself, my kids, and my community.” to develop the skills for a decision-making process: how to narrow possibilities, and how to implement those decisions.

While a rubric for a decision-making process might sound bureaucratic, as anyone who has sat in a meeting knows: strong personalities often dominate, so outlining a process for decision-making is important. Part of the grant is mentoring younger students in the project, and some of the ideas that have been introduced are simple but healthy, for instance: erecting swings that a middle-schooler could use.

Many schools have swing sets for small children with “safety basket seats,” but a fourteen year-old student can’t sit on those, and swinging has been researched and found to be self-soothing, not only for neuro-diverse students, but for all of us.

The grant has allowed Angela to take family members up to Red Cliff Reservation to visit with elders and cousins.

I ask Angela about her aims, and she says, “I’d like to be a positive part of our community for Native youth and other children. This is what I would like to see for myself, my kids, and my community.”

While it might seem a small matter to go to a winter powwow in Red Cliff, it is more costly and involved than it may seem. Attending a pow-wow means taking time off work and staying in a hotel, which can be expensive because Red Cliff is near Bayfield, WI. Lodging there is expensive due to the tourist industry, again a capitalistic or colonial enterprise that makes it harder to attend a traditional gathering in cold weather, when camping isn’t easy.

Right now, Angela serves as the Chair of the American Indian Parent Advisory Council in Winona, where she advocates for Native children. Funds have been provided from the state of Minnesota to school districts to help Native students, who it’s been proven have been affected by intergenerational trauma and the effects of forced removal over generations. It’s important that those funds are used effectively to be helpful.

Although some of the elements of a pow-wow might sound familiar: vendors, dancing, socializing, the most important element is allowing people to connect with their own history.

In addition, Angela would like to do more with Indigenous people from Prairie Island, outside of Red Wing. Inviting them down to sugarbush, and pursuing other projects, is a way of honoring the Dakota piece as well.

Angela has been taking care of a drum, which she would like to know more about. She speaks about it with reverence. She believes the drum could be from the 1800s, a ceremonial drum. Unlike many cultures where family heirlooms are thought to be handed down from one individual to another, a drum, especially a ceremonial drum, is not considered as “belonging” to a family or individual – it’s more that a family might be the caretaker for a drum. It belongs to the Native community, and caretaking it is not just a polite circumlocution. A drum can be used for many things, but perhaps most importantly for healing for the community, for bringing people together.

I asked Angela if Winona seems different from when she grew up here, and she says: “Yes! There are all different make-ups, much more diversity and other elements of culture. There’s so much more to do – so much art and culture compared to when I was growing up: Polish eggs at History Center, egg roll and samosas classes at the food coop. Initially, I didn’t quite get what Peter’s Biergarten would be like, but it has a real community feel. And Norvary! I love Norvary!” She smiles, a lightness about her.

Angela has also received a grant from the Children’s Network Abundance Fund for an afterschool program for 7-8th Graders. The grant is a laying-the-groundwork sort of grant, which provides for mentoring and food for students after school. The grant is designed partly for research on matching funds, but most importantly, the grant is to create a student-led process, so it encourages students

It’s clear there’s a lot to do on the horizon. Angela looks out the window at the sunny afternoon. “I’ve got to find canoes for harvesting wild rice, manoomin. People are already asking about it!”

Towards the end of our talk, I ask Angela how she would describe herself. She is quiet for a moment. “I consider myself an anishinaabekwe; it’s an Ojibwe word that means “Indian woman.” And that seems an essential and fitting place to arrive.

SPILLWAY STORIES 8

FATHER PAUL BREZA 84 YEARS ON THE EAST END AND COUNTING … IN POLISH As told to Jerome Christenson, photographs by Chuck Miller. This piece was first published in 2022.

One day my sister called me to her house, we were sitting in the basement and she said, “I want you to change the Polish people’s attitude toward themselves. They believe that we’re dumb Polacks. They believe all the stuff that people say about them, that you can’t do this, you can’t do that. It’s the wrong side of town, you don’t want to visit there. All this…you’ve got to change that attitude.”

“You’re talking about a lifetime occupation,” I said. “That’s not one weekend.”

“I know, I’ll help you with it. Just do it. I want you to do something to involve the city of Winona so you can change their attitude. I want them to know they’re good for something, that they’re great people, they’ve got good ability.”

I said, “Well, we’ll start.”

So that’s when we first put together the Polish Heritage Dinner – for Polish Constitution Day in 1976.

I talked St. Mary’s College into doing the dinner because all the people on the maintenance staff out there were Polish – all the cleaning ladies, all the men who

9

work in the boiler room, they’re all Polish people. I said, “You do stuff for rich people, for your donors, why don’t you do something for the donors who don’t give you money, but give you their time?”

When he heard what we were going to do, Roy Literski said, “You won’t sell 50 tickets, or something like that.

Who’s going to go to that?”

Well, we wound up selling over 300 tickets the first day they were on the market, then we had to call the sale off or we wouldn’t have room for the guest speaker and the choir. That’s what started it. The next year we sold almost 400 tickets in 15 minutes, and we were on our way.

“...[Y]ou grow up with this idea of a backward East End. You can’t go to the East End, they’re all ruffians, y’know…garbage piled all over, the hog line… all these things that are contrary to what we’re trying to say now. We’d like to change that attitude, and it’s already happening.”

— We started having meetings and kept going. After the second year we had all this stuff and, people said we don’t want it back because we’re getting old and old dresses, kid’s clothes, Polish prayer books…who’s going to use that stuff ? Why don’t you keep it?

So I kept it in storage, but then it got bigger and they said you’ve gotta go look for a place, and that’s when I picked this up. It was called the Polish Cultural Institute.

I had a guy come in today, he said this is one of the highlights, one of the hidden gems of Winona. It draws people to Winona. You wouldn’t believe how many people…people from out of town think it’s fantastic.

When people come in the summertime, if they’re from Poland they’ll remark about the saints’ books that are written in Polish, the books the grandmas used to read to the kids on Sundays. You weren’t allowed to work on Sunday so they would sit in the living room and grandma would read stories about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the ark and the big flood, and all the great things that were written about – they’re all in these big saints’ books. A pilot from Poland said, “You don’t realize how valuable these would be back home. These are worth hundreds of dollars.”

Well, I’ve got them here because they were going to the dump. Nobody here spoke Polish.

That caused a little difficulty with the museum. We are from the northern part of Poland, that’s Kashubian Poland and Kashubian isn’t spoken in the rest of Poland.

We fight with other Polish people about whether we’re using the right words. When people come down here from the Twin Cities they tell us, you guys don’t speak Polish. That sign on your door is a mistake. I say, no it’s bad Polish, but very good Kashubian.

— Back there we have a letter found in a silverware drawer.

It said, all in Polish, “We have sold our farm. We are coming to live in Winona. We don’t know what to do with the three orphans of your family that we were raising. We can’t afford to bring them – they cost 50 thalers apiece.” I don’t know what a thaler is, but it might be a dollar. Any way, they were writing to see if they could find somebody already here – making the big money over here, to send back to have the kids sent over.

I never found the answer to it, but at the very bottom it said, “Please say hello to Anton Pehler,” and that happens to be my great grandfather.

— I had two sets of grandparents on Second Street, one just four blocks from here, the other lived next to the knitting mills. One, Anton, my great grandfather, was in the Civil War. Now he never worked for the sawmill, but he could play the sweet potato – you know what that was? Ocarina.

Three of his girls were in vaudeville, one of the girls was first secretary to the man who engineered the Panama Canal. But, who knows this stuff ? We were obviously important, but who knows anything about it? It’s because they couldn’t communicate.

They had clubs and they had organizations that nobody knows about. My mom talked about a club where the women would meet – I have pictures of them – all with the same hairdo, big bouffant hair. We had bands, Polish bands…but where are they? All those pictures I have on

SPILLWAY STORIES 10

— There were little things we were trying to work at, and they’re starting to come to life. People got together and they came up with the Sobieski Park Lodge. We started giving out our door knockers as an award for home beautification. We started that 10 years ago and it inspired people to do little things. You can have the smallest house and turn it into a mansion with the right kind of flowers. So that was the concept, and that’s what we started working at.

the wall is all that’s left.

The guy who wrote Winona history out at St. Mary’s College would say, “Nah, they were all workers, laborers, there wasn’t any talent among ‘em…”

I said no, they just couldn’t practice their talents. You couldn’t be a herbologist, which we had living next door.

You couldn’t be a druggist, couldn’t be a school teacher, because they didn’t speak English. So you had to survive, you had to do something to live, and so you would cut wood. There were three sawmills in Winona, they hire 2,000 guys to work there. By 1910 we were out of trees and 2,000 men were out of work. Man that was a tremendous loss, 2,000 jobs gone?

— I was born in 1937. Went to school at St. Stan’s. Went to Cotter High School, went to St. Mary’s College, everything local. Because I was also supposed to be a down-trodden Polack, y’know – and technically, I still am.

When I was a kid, the playground was just dirt, the rec center was mostly closed, but it was a place to meet.

The kids from grade school would get picked up by Mr. Langowski, who would take them out to pick strawberries at his farm – 5 cents or 10 cents a quart.

The newspaper boys were all Polish, and they’d go right from St. Stan’s School to the back of the rec to pick up their papers that were dropped off in bundles, and they’d deliver them to the whole East End. We had ice skating in the winter time, Palbicki could show off on skates, the Bambeneks would be down there skating. We had Winter Carnivals that were just fantastic.

Still, you grow up with this idea of a backward East End. You can’t go to the East End, they’re all ruffians, y’know…garbage piled all over, the hog line… all these things that are contrary to what we’re trying to say now.

We’d like to change that attitude, and it’s already happening.

11

Now we’re trying some artwork. I’ve offered the city, anyone who’d give me the names of their neighbors who’d allow me to paint their alley with traditional Polish designs. There’s a whole city in Poland that’s done this.

Paintings on the doghouse, the back of the house, a well.

It’s already on the back of the building next door. We’ve done the whole garage door. I said we’ll do dog houses, garbage cans. We don’t want to do it in your front yard because that’s too ostentatious – Polish people do not like to show off.

Who drives through alleys? Nobody. But if it became something you’d want to see, you’d go out of your way.

If there was a whole alley, one end to the other, you’d drive all the way across town.

— And speaking of driving…I’ve been after them for years to see if we can’t change street names.

We looked in the phone book, looked up every name, but there’s only one Polish name for a street. Twenty percent of Winona is Polish, and only one street? I went to the city engineer, city council, and talked about these street names. We’ve got over 30 streets that are named after contractors. We’ve got another 30 streets named after their girlfriends and wives. We’ve got 25 streets named after trees and flowers, birch and elm and all those. But only one street named after a Polish person? I can’t believe that.

We have First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth streets … they’re just numbers, right? So what do you have to change to change a name? Nothing. So Front Street could be Kosciusko, Second Street could be Derdowski – we have all his newspapers here at the museum. Third Street could be Pulaski. Fourth Street could be Pacholski – he was the pastor at St. Stan’s.

The same thing with the homes. There are books at the Historical Society saying these are the famous homes in Winona and there isn’t a half-lot in them. Well they were famous homes too, y’know. I point that out to people.

A fire recently took out a half-lot house on Mankato Avenue. Somebody planted tomatoes in it…but the empty lot is there. We have to get these photographed or something just to have people remember what it was like.

— There’s another thing we would like to do. We’d like to imprint the sidewalks. Why couldn’t we put a little

imprint in the sidewalk saying this is where Heronim Derdowski lived? Derdowski is the poet who had a newspaper, he wrote entire books of Polish poetry. He lived in Palblocki’s house on Fourth Street just east of St. Stan’s. You don’t need a sign, it’s not about signs, too ostentatious, but something like that. Those are the things we’d kind of like to do.

If we travel we can bring home ideas. One of the butcher shops I stopped at in Poland featured just smoked meats and it was in the back of a truck in parked somebody’s yard. Another butcher shop I went to wouldn’t be as big as this room we’re in, it was the inside of a cooler. Well, you don’t need a lot of space to do this, but some of the things they serve are impossible to get here. They have a sausage with a piece of ham in the middle. Man, I went in that shop and thought, let me stay here.

We could have little businesses like that in Winona. If we could get Polish people to cooperate a little with each other, you could have a couple places that sold crafts.

Or you could have a little library. You could have music, a diner, a little barbershop, a lawyer. We could go back to thinking about people strolling the East End. Instead of a place you’re afraid of, it would be a place you’d love – “Look at this art in the back yards. Did you ever see a dog house that cute?”

But it takes a little cooperation between neighbors. The neighbors would have to go along for something like that to be built. But I could see that happening very easily. My old neighborhood – that’s why I had no problem putting the museum in here – this is zoned light industrial, this could be a foundry. Mankato Avenue, kitty-corner from the club, they opened a car lot – that’s legal. It’s a residential area, but it’s legal in Winona.

Polish people are pretty creative, and I could imagine something that would … look how the Hot Fish Shop went from being nothing, you know, one dollar meal for walleye, to being the nicest place in three counties. Just think if the younger generation got involved like that.

I can see that it’s waiting to burst out of the East End. The East End could be a destination, we could do that easily.

I’d hope in 10 years we’d have a Polish restaurant. I should say that louder…

To learn more about Father Paul Breza’s work, visit the Polish Cultural Institute and Museum (102 Liberty Street, Winona, MN 55987, polishmuseumwinona.org, 507-454-3431).

SPILLWAY STORIES 12

NICKY BUCK TALKING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE Words by Marcia Ratliff, photographs by Cloey Jo Walsh

Sustain the conversation. Stay with discomfort.

For Nicky Buck, that’s the grind-it-out reality of creating a better future for her community, her land, and the entire region.

On a Tuesday in January, Nicky stepped out of her SUV at the Edwin Buck Jr. Memorial Buffalo Project at the Prairie Island Indian Community, just outside of Red Wing, Minn.

The bison were visible in the distance, dark brown against the patchy snow.

Trumpeter swans called out from the lake and flew low over the road, their wings clicking against the gray sky.

Nicky pulled a ribbon skirt over her pants and pointed at the sign marking the entrance to the farm. Edwin Buck Jr. is her father, who passed away in 1994. Edwin was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he was a renowned paratrooper. His legs were severed in a blast, and when he came home, he carried more than just the physical wounds. He drank, and he didn’t talk about what happened, Nicky said, and his baggage stayed with her and her family.

13

The buffalo project sits on a wooded hill that slopes down to a small lake, with a wide pasture next to the shore. The herd, which began with a single buffalo gifted to the Prairie Island Indian Community in 1992, now has nearly 300 buffalo, and was the Tribe’s first initiative toward food sovereignty. Every month it supplies each member of the community with 10 pounds of burger meat and occasionally a roast. In the winter, the buffalo stay in smaller fenced areas, with extra hay brought in from the nearby grazing fields.

Nicky traces her work as an advocate back to her parents.

“My mother was a social justice warrior, and my dad was a people protector,” she said.

From her dad, she learned resilience. From her mom, it was persistence like taking 25 years to learn to use a sewing machine, she said with a laugh.

“I was totally okay with hand sewing until ribbon skirts came out,” she said, gesturing to her skirt. The skirt is made of bright ribbons, woven and stitched together, and carries deep cultural significance. “These are like the spirits of people, and we weave together. That’s community – when people weave together. It’s like braiding too, which we do with sweetgrass – one strand is real weak by itself, but when you braid it together it’s real strong.”

Persistence manifests in Nicky’s community work.

“We for the first time have a place at the table, a safe space for Dakota people to talk about issues and share the beauty of our culture.”

She has never shied away from getting involved in institutional or government processes, and she wants to create a future where everyone is welcome at the table, instead of having to bust doors down to get there.

Prairie Island Indian Community is adjacent to the City of Red Wing, and for decades the relationship between the two entities has been strained. Nicky is Dakota, a 7thgeneration descendant of Chief Wabasha II. Her greatgreat grandmother had to hide in the Lake Pepin area before the family could come home to Prairie Island.

The memory of being forced away from their homeland remains, along with a pattern of racial discrimination and a deeply felt sense that Dakota people were unwelcome in Red Wing.

But some recent changes in the community have created openings and new pathways for connection. One important shift concerned He Mni Caŋ, pronounced Heh-Meh-NEE-Cha, or Barn Bluff, which is a sacred hill to Dakota people. Its name means Hill Water Wood in

Dakota.

In 2016, Nicky’s uncle Arthur Owen led an effort to enforce the graffiti ban on He Mni Caŋ, advocating for its right to exist peacefully as a sacred place, as a relative that is more than human. City leaders created a plan to do so, and worked with the Tribe on a restoration project completed in 2021. The process sparked an important conversation about the spiritual significance of the bluff to the Dakota.

Another big step forward is called the Honoring Dakota Project. A partnership launched in fall 2022, this project brought a Dakota-themed mural to a prominent downtown location in Red Wing, and launched an ongoing series of community learning exchanges, cultural events, crafting circles, and more.

The message coming out of that project was “We see you, we honor you. It was a beautiful gesture,” Nicky said.

For Nicky, the Honoring Dakota Project functioned as a filtration system – a way to purify the long-lasting pollutants that are the legacy of colonialism. For many white people in Minnesota, there’s not a high level of awareness of the residential schools Native children were forced to attend, or the ways that Dakota people survived genocide and attempts to exterminate their culture over the past 200 years. Part of the difficulty now is people needing to admit what happened, and feel bad about it, and be able to move through that feeling into action.

The Honoring Dakota Project brought a new reciprocity to the relationship of the neighboring communities. “We for the first time have a place at the table, a safe space for Dakota people to talk about issues and share the beauty of our culture,” and do that in a way where the narrative belongs to the Dakota and isn’t appropriated, Nicky said.

That relationship-building work now brings Nicky to the Winona area. Nicky started getting connected in 2023 with Winona County Historical Society and Art of the Rural, which is based in Winona. In 2024, she will be one of several Spillway fellows, visiting culture bearers focused on building pathways for community change

SPILLWAY STORIES 14

through art, stories, and more.

For Dakota people, there is a connection between He Mni Caŋ in Red Wing and Wapáha Ša Pahá, or Sugarloaf in Winona. They’re spoken of as twin sisters, or in some stories as husband and wife. The story is that there was fighting within the Dakota, so the Creator made it all dark and shook the earth three times, splitting the two hills from each other. The distance is a reminder of the pain and how we’re not supposed to fight with our relatives, Nicky said.

As the Honoring Dakota Project got underway, Nicky was visiting He Mni Caŋ. “I was on He Mni Caŋ, and she cried, she missed her sister.” The message was clear: as humans, we have to get along, and we have to clear the baggage that hasn’t been addressed. “Heal through this, and then bring it down the river to my sister.”

Prairie Island Indian Community once had relationships with Winona, but somewhere along the line, those relationships faltered, and folks from Prairie Island stopped coming to Winona.

Nicky said her work now is about building new relationships, and making Winona a safe place for all people of diverse backgrounds – and for Prairie Island, a place where their kids can go to college and not be too far from home.

Right now, Nicky’s work in Winona is in a stage of deepening the conversation, of getting people excited about the opportunity instead of putting up barriers.

What Nicky hopes to see is something tangible that Winona can give to Prairie Island, as a way to say We want and need you at the table.

15

AMBER BUYSMAN A MATTER OF URGENT NECESSITY Words by Jerome Christenson, photographs by Cloey Jo Walsh

Sometimes life makes quiet heroes.

Student. Mom. Caregiver. Advocate. Just an ordinary day for Amber Buysman.

“I have so much left to do in life,” Amber said, “I still have hopes that one day I’ll be able to do the Peace Corps…” Meanwhile, she is more than keeping busy. In addition to being her seven-year-old disabled son’s primary caregiver, she has a parttime job and is working toward a nursing degree, a program she hopes to complete

by December 2024. As if that’s not enough, she graduated from Engage Winona’s Lived Experience Leaders program in 2022 and made a run for the 4th Ward Winona City Council seat.

A life is never really ordinary. We just call it that when a person’s circumstances, experiences, and choices don’t step away too far from those of the people around them. And from that perspective, born in 1984, one of two children in a single parent home, growing up in St. James, a village of about 5,000 people a few miles off Interstate 90 in south central Minnesota Amber could well have anticipated a reasonably ordinary American life.

SPILLWAY STORIES 16

Reflecting on those years, she recalls days spent with grandparents on their family dairy farm, a place on the high school tennis team and other school activities, earning the highest honor in Girl Scouting – the Gold Award, high school graduation in 2002 and moving on to college and experiences far beyond a small town…events of personal significance, but not all that unusual for the time and place and circumstance.

But with them came an insight and awareness of how life’s playing field is rarely level and how income and disability limit access to opportunity. Family circumstances made them eligible for a Habitat for the Humanity home they moved into when she was twelve and she recalls the special arrangements made by her tennis coach to assure that every student, regardless of family income, could have an opportunity to play. It was an awareness reflected in her commitment to Habitat for Humanity as a junior board member and active volunteer and fundraiser and in her Gold Award project – helping construct a handicap-access ramp to the local movie theater.

These commitments she carried with her as she left St. James behind. As a student at South Dakota State University, she served as a volunteer and Spanish translator for the Brookings, South Dakota, Habitat chapter. For four years in Brookings she worked as a care-giver for people with all levels of disability. “Little did I know this would come full circle when I became an actual adult,” she said.

College graduation and degrees in teaching took her to a job in Ohio teaching an adaptive phy-ed start-up program for children with severe emotional disturbances in grades 1 to 12. “I started school with zero equipment,” she said, but with the help of a $500 grant developed a successful program. “When I told the kids I was leaving, one of them hugged me and said, ‘Miss B, what are we going to do without you?”

Other teaching jobs followed, but in the fall of 2010, budget cuts left her with no position and no immediate prospects. “A friend was teaching in South Korea,”

“I’ve always wanted to have a positive influence and be a voice for the underserved. Winona’s a great community. I feel there’s a great opportunity for change.” she said, “and I’d always dreamed of joining the Peace Corps…”

It wasn’t the Peace Corps, but a private company that she applied to, and in short order she was teaching English in Daegu, South Korea, with transportation and housing provided, along with Korean national health insurance.

“It was a one-year adventure that turned into six years,” she said. “Other than missing my family, there was not a lot of motivation to come back to the U.S.” In time, there came marriage and the birth of a daughter; then two years after Sofia arrived, Amber was expecting their second child. Prenatal examinations indicated the newborn would require the services of a neonatal intensive care unit, requiring the child be born in Seoul.

“Erick would spend 41 days in the NICU,” Amber said.

A snippet of DNA missing from a single chromosome resulted in multiple developmental abnormalities that necessitate a lifetime of 24-hour care. A particular medication needed to treat Erick’s condition was not available in Korea, sending Amber and her young family, scrambling to get themselves and a critically medically fragile Erick to the United States.

“I had to ask my family if we could live with them,” Amber said. “Coming back to the United States I would have no job, no car, and not knowing what Erick’s future looked like.”

Initially they stayed with an aunt in Northfield while Erick was evaluated and treated at children’s hospital in Minneapolis. “In August, 2017, we moved in with my brother in Minnesota City,” she said, and care was established for Erick at Gunderson in LaCrosse.

The ensuing years have been ongoing challenges interspersed with medical crises. “I’m a single parent,” Amber said, “COVID was a difficult time for us. Erick being medically fragile meant we were very limited in our social space.” She said that Erick’s condition leaves him with “a shortened life expectancy, but no one can say exactly what that means.”

In the meantime, “life revolves around Erick,” Amber said. “We try to get him out in public as much as possible to give him new experiences. We go camping. We go on trips. We go to the Marine Art Museum. We go to the beach…but he doesn’t like cold water…he only likes hot tubs.”

Erick’s multiple disabilities pose a number of challenges when he leaves the house, but one in particular has

17

moved Amber beyond personal frustration to public advocacy. She says that while the Americans with Disabilities Act has sparked changes that vastly improved public access for people with disabilities, adult toileting needs have not yet been fully addressed.

Erick is incontinent. “He wears briefs,” she said. But while many public restrooms provide infant changing tables, there are no comparable provisions made for larger children and adults who require similar assistance in dealing with toileting needs. “I change him in the back of my van in the summer,” she said, but this is not an option in cold weather. When no other option is available, she said, she has to lay him on the restroom floor to take care of his needs. “People walk on the floor with dog poop on their shoes,” she said.

life.

“Personally, I have a changing table we no longer utilize, and my goal is to get it out into the community somewhere. I just haven’t figured out the place that would be accessible to the most people,” she said, “but my ultimate goal is to get Kwik Trip on board…Kwik Trips are everywhere.”

“Maybe we can get the ball rolling.”

“I’ve always wanted to have a positive influence and be a voice for the underserved,” she said. “Winona’s a great community. I feel there’s a great opportunity for change.”

That lack of dignified access to meet a basic human need motivated her to adopt toileting access as her Lived Experience Leader Community Change project.

“No one wants to talk about toileting,” she said, “But the need is real.”

Equipping public restrooms with adult-sized changing tables would not be a prohibitive expense, she said, and would serve the needs and preserve the dignity of a growing population for whom incontinence is a fact of

SPILLWAY STORIES 18

DR. MAURELLA CUNNINGHAM LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER IN MAKING EQUITABLE CHANGE Words by Tesla Mitchell, hand drawn digital painting by StuffStudio. This piece was first published in 2022.

As a kid, Dr. Maurella Cunningham would sit down next to her mother, open her book, and start to read.

But it wasn’t at home that she would do this. It was during school board meetings, Parent Teacher Association meetings, and civil rights committee meetings.

Maurella’s mom has been a life-long activist in social justice – even continuing at 83 years old – and Maurella has followed those footsteps, trailblazing a path for change in her own way.

In the Winona area, and now La Crosse, if there’s a committee involving social justice, Maurella is likely on it or has a tie to it. If there’s an event, she likely knows

19

about it. And if there’s an organization related to it, she likely has a connection to it.

With about 16 hours – not including prep time – of committee meetings a month, Maurella puts passion, time, and most of all mental energy into social justice and equity.

“I want to contribute to making my community a better place so people who have traditionally been marginalized have access to resources, skill development, and making connections, so they can live the lives they want,” she said.

But it wasn’t always that way.

“Until I became confident in who I was, I felt like I was embarrassed to be a person of color,” she said. “But the only reason I felt that way was the messages coming from society.”

Her friends, family and inner circle encouraged her to embrace who she was and be proud.

“I was also embarrassed to feel that way because I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with being a person of color,” she said.

It wasn’t until she got out of college and took her first teaching job in Arizona, that something changed. A group of kids in need asked her to advocate for them.

“In Arizona there was a group of Black kids, Native kids, Latino kids, as well as White kids, who asked me if I would be the sponsor for their Shades of Color Multicultural Club for kids wanting to create safe spaces and a sense of belonging,” Maurella said.

It sparked the fire inside that had been building since she was a kid sitting in on activism meetings.

“That was the first time I saw myself as someone who others went to for support or for helping create positive environments,” Maurella said. “That was the first time I realized I could be that person.”

With the fire inside gaining the fuel she needed, nothing could put it out.

As a teacher she reviewed curriculum, joined committees that addressed equity in education, and intentionally brought different perspectives into her class to teach through an equity lens.

“In Arizona, the students were 90 percent Mexican American, but there were only 2 pages of Latino American history in the textbooks,” Maurella said.

“Knowing that it’s important to see yourself in the historical (and modern) accounts of the place that you live and generations before you have lived, I knew that I had to supplement the material the school used.”

She would even incorporate her students’ experiences by encouraging them to share their truth, like when they were discussing the Bracero program – a government agreement that allowed Mexican citizens to temporarily

“Until I became confident in who I was, I felt like I was embarrassed to be a person of color. But the only reason I felt that way was the messages coming from society.” work in U.S. agriculture – and students shared about their parents and families working in lettuce fields.

Inspiring others to share their lived experiences is a skill that dates all the way back to grade school, her mother, Phyllis Cunningham said.

“One of her teachers told me how Maurella would speak up and would help the kids speak up about what they thought and how they felt,” Phyllis said. “She would ask the kids how they would solve a problem and get them to share what they’re thinking.”

Maurella continued to put equity at the forefront all the way through her 13 years as a high school teacher, as an assistant professor at Minnesota State University Mankato, St. Olaf College, Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, as well as the Director of Learning and Teaching within the Winona Area Public Schools.

Maurella’s belief in and passion for equity and social justice continue to impact the work she does. Maurella is now the Executive Director of Runaway Homeless Youth Mediation and Emergency Services, Inc. or RHYMES, in La Crosse, Wis. In her current role, Maurella oversees a range of vital services including crisis response, a drop-in center, and emergency shelter.

Outside of her full time job, Maurella organizes and volunteers at events and serves on committees that focus on social justice and equitable practices.

When asked how many committees she’s been on, Maurella could only shrug her shoulders and guess.

“At least 20,” she said with a smile.

Most recently she’s started a chapter of Residents Organizing Against Racism (ROAR) – a grassroots organization combating racism in Minnesota schools and communities by pursuing action and accountability. She started the chapter last year as part of her project for Engage Winona’s Lived Experience Leaders first cohort.

“It’s getting people in the Winona community together to talk about important issues, share resources, and take action.” Maurella said. “It’s bringing community members together and that helps make Winona a more understanding, inclusive, and welcoming place.”

Not only is it making a difference for the community, it’s making her mom proud.

Phyllis said she feels a deep sense of joy in seeing

SPILLWAY STORIES 20

the impact her daughter is making – especially in her hometown of Winona.

“I’m very proud of her,” Phyllis said.

Her only wish is that Maurella would occasionally slow down, she said with a laugh.

“I have to take a nap after she tells me all the things she’s doing,” Phyllis said. “I keep telling her, you gotta slow down.”

Maurella said when she starts feeling exhausted, down, or spread too thinly, she surrounds herself with family and friends to energize her.

“It’s the people I’m engaging with,” she said. “They fill my cup up.”

It’s the people who work on the same projects as her, as well as those who see the possibilities of the future and take action to make it happen.

“Those who really believe in people,” she said. “People like my mom.”

The road to change is hard, and full of twists and turns.

But for Maurella, she’s along for the ride and is proud to walk alongside others who are committed to improving conditions for traditionally marginalized communities and contributing to improved relationships among all community members.

“I try to make sure that social justice is in practice and in full force in whatever arenas I’m working and living in,” she said.

21

Hand drawn digital painting of Alexis Hayes by StuffStudio.

23

ALEXIS HAYES BUILDING COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS In conversation with Mai’a Williams. This piece was first published in 2022.

In April, I sat down in Acoustic Cafe with the curator, artist, and changemaker, Alexis Hayes. She is 26 years old and has lived in Winona her whole life. She recently curated the Women & NonBinary Art Show at No Name Bar for Women’s History Month.

We talked about what it means to make Winona a place that feels like home and not just a place where you live – a place where you take care of your mental health and the people you love This interview with her is edited for clarity and brevity.

Hi! How would you introduce yourself?

My name is Alexis Hayes. I am 26 years old.

How long have you lived in Winona?

My whole life.

What do you see as your vision for how you’d like to see Winona and the changes you’d like to see in it? And how does your work fit into that vision?

Mostly I’d like to see a stronger sense of community.

I’ve lived in Winona for my whole life and haven’t really felt a sense of community for the majority of my time here – outside of my family and friends. I’m trying to seek community out, cultivate it for myself and hopefully assist other people who are trying to find community as well. I want Winona to be a place where people can rely on their community. I am focusing on building stronger bonds. Winona is home to a lot of different people. I don’t want it to be a place where only the needs of those who are privileged are tended to, I want it to be a place where marginalized folks are tended to, because this is our home too and it should feel like a home to us.

It sounds to me like you are talking about shifting Winona from a place where you just live, to a place where you can call home. What other kinds of community bonding projects have you worked on?

My mom is the founder of Our Voices, so I’ve been helping with that. She founded the group in 2017 and they plan a lot of events around Black History Month and Juneteenth. It’s a group for Black and Brown teens, so it’s about showcasing their voices, their talents.

In May of 2020, after George Floyd was murdered by the police, I was talking with some friends and we were talking about how we were angry about police violence and had been angry a long time and we wanted to figure out what we could do. At that moment all we could think about was planning a march in Windom Park. Combined with COVID and the quarantine – I saw that people needed a sense of community now more than ever. That

was when I met quite a few people who were also angry, also fed up, trying to figure out what the next steps were.

That was when I met people who helped me cultivate a sense of community and I have kind of been going from there.

I, along with friends, attempted to start an organization to start to address police violence, and what we could do to help people in the community. It didn’t work out, because we jumped into it too quickly without having the proper tools and knowledge to do it. Since then, I’ve stepped back, because I realize I still have to learn.

I collaborate with organizations, but I’ve taken a step back and focused on where my strengths lie, which is to organize events to build community connections.

As of right now, I am just trying to see what other people are doing in the community, listening, and figure out what I don’t know. I have a collection of books. I started reading Women, Race and Class (by Angela Davis), I also read Mutual Aid by Dean Spade. I work with other organizations when I can actually help, but other than that I am watching, listening and learning the best I can – and also taking walks.

What are some of the obstacles and challenges you face in making connections in the community?

The biggest obstacles for me have been my lack of structure and my lack of tools. I have a tendency to feel strongly about something, so I just jump in and then I realize that I don’t know what I am actually doing. And then it causes burnout and that causes me to not do anything for a while, which also doesn’t help anybody else and doesn’t help me either. That is why I realize I have to take a step back so that when I try to (find solutions) I actually know what I am doing.

Where do you get those tools and strategies from?

For one, getting more involved with my mom’s group, Our Voices, figuring out how to create safe spaces for people where we can get to know one another, cry and laugh together. When it comes to police violence and addressing that – you can’t just jump in and not know anything. That is why I’m reading books like Mutual Aid

“I want Winona to be a place where people can rely on their community.”

SPILLWAY STORIES 24

and figuring out what the community needs and how the community can help each other.

And I’m trying to figure out what I can learn more about abolition. I recognize that reform doesn’t work. Giving cops body cams and more training doesn’t work. Because it never has. Abolition – we have never tried and it seems as though it would work, but I can’t really be helpful until I know what I am doing and how to help.

What have you learned from working with your mother in Our Voices?

She works tirelessly and selflessly. She opens up her home to these kids. She gives them what they need, within her means, and she feeds them. If I don’t know how to help someone, I give them food. I feel like I do a fraction of what she does and I get so burnt out. I don’t know how she does what she does. I think I’ve learned how to care for people from my mom. The yearning to create spaces for people to just be with each other, try to create that sense of community.

How would you describe Winona?

Honestly, I don’t have an answer. I’ve lived here my whole life, but I feel like I am still trying to get to know the town. I don’t know if it is because I haven’t felt included or if I excluded myself or if it is a combination.

It feels really white - not just that it is, but you feel it.

All I’d really be able to tell people is try some Bloedow’s doughnuts, stop at Zesto’s. That is why, especially in the past few years, I’ve been seeking out community. I’m still getting to know Winona.

If I arrived today, as a person of color, where would you suggest I go to start looking for community?

No Name Bar is a good place to go. I like coming to Acoustic Cafe, it’s a place I’ve been coming to since I was a kid. Community Not Cages and Residents Organizing Against Racism are two organizations that are working to address issues in the community. I am still trying to do my own work so that I can show up as best I can for different groups. Just seeking out organizations like this that are trying to address structural issues in the community and building bridges, things that can make Winona feel like more of a home.

25

NICKI HENNESSY CONTINUING SOBRIETY BY HELPING OTHERS START THEIRS Words by Tesla Mitchell, painting by Brianne Daniels

Nicki Hennessy knows how hard it is to stay sober.

Since 2011 she’s been on a recovery journey, each day making the conscious decision to stay clean.

It takes willpower, tenacity, and a whole lot of community.

That last part is especially important and that’s why Nicki and her husband have opened the Winona Recovery Center – to give those struggling with addiction a community to support them.

“The best thing for recovery has been watching everyone else get sober,” Nicki said.

SPILLWAY STORIES 26

MASKING THE TRAUMA Like a lot of people with addiction, Nicki’s drug-use was masking trauma.

When Nicki was young, those around her thought she was bipolar.

“I’m glad that I have my recovery family. I can be more honest with them than I can with my own brothers and sisters.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “I was emotional.”

Little did others know, those emotions were coming from events that were happening behind closed doors.

Events like being molested at nine years old. And being beat up on a continual basis.

Her first time running away from home was when she was 12 years old.

For the next 2-3 days, Nicki did nothing else but sleep.

When she woke up, she decided to take the CPS warning seriously and within 2 weeks she had gained 30 pounds.

A while later, a guy who was 25 years old started coming over. He started molesting her too. He bought her alcohol. Let her drive his truck.

From there it was a slow climb up, focusing on one step at a time, while acknowledging the occasional steps backwards – she relapsed for 9 days in 2021.

Eventually, he went to prison for molesting little boys.

“It’s hard some days,” Nicki said.

“That bothers me more now because I never opened my mouth,” Nicki said. “I found other girls who he had done that to.”

FEELING THE IMPACT OF SUPPORT

She had her daughter at 17 years old and her son at 18 years old – which was the same year she got married.

“My husband at the time beat the crap out of me,” Nicki said. “That was for 8 years.”

By the time she turned 22, Nicki was ready for an escape from the trauma.

“I thought I was doing cocaine and it was actually plant food,” she said. “It was the worst feeling of my life but I still ended up going back.”

Next someone offered her methamphetamine.

A big step for her was leaning into faith and getting closer to God. She started listening to what her kids now call “Mommy’s Jesus music” all the time.

What made the most difference though, was the community she found to support her – one that she could be honest with and rely on to be there for her. She found support meetings, like Narcotics Anonymous and Crystal Meth Anonymous.

The meetings, in combination with support from her loving mother and with the determination to do right by her kids, got her through each day.

“I loved it,” Nicki said quietly. “My world was completely wide open.”

About 9 years into her recovery journey, she met one more person who would become part of her closer support team – her husband.

It gave her a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

In 2020, with COVID making in person meetings next to impossible – support meetings were hard to come by.

“I was happy and smiling,” she said. “And I hadn’t smiled in so long.”

“As an addict it’s just so hard not having that in person contact,” Nicki said. “Everybody was so isolated and depressed, and stuck in their homes and stuff and so I decided to start an NA meeting down by Bud King Ice Arena outside so people could have an in-person meeting.”

First it was every other weekend while the kids were away. Next it was every weekend. Then it was every day.

With her parents helping take care of her kids, Nicki started experimenting with heroin.

“It went downhill,” Nicki said.

It wasn’t until 2011 when Nicki was 98 pounds and pregnant while living on the streets, that she finally hit a breaking point. Child Protection Services (CPS) had told her she needed to get to treatment and gain weight or they were going to take her kids away.

“I was freaking out in the middle of Third Street because

27

my boyfriend was cheating on me,” she said. “But it was more that he had drugs and he was doing them with some other girl.”

It was there that she found the love of her life.

“That was where I met my husband,” Nicki said with a big smile.

A BETTER ATMOSPHERE FOR RECOVERY Nicki is thankful for all that the support groups have given her. In many ways, they’ve saved her life.

But many times, the churches or places where meetings were held weren’t made with meetings in mind. They would be filled with plastic tables and metal chairs in a circle.

“That’s what you would sit on for an hour and a half for a meeting,” Nicki said.

When Nicki and her husband Brandon had the opportunity to open a space of their own, they jumped on it.

They put in couches and comfy chairs to sit on, and carpeting to bring in the warmth.

“It’s homey and reminds me of my very first NA meeting,” she said. “It makes people want to stay.”

They even have toys for kids to play with and a memory wall of all those they’ve lost to addiction.

“I want people to feel like they’re part of a family,” she said.

She certainly counts them as such.

“I’m glad that I have my recovery family,” she said. “I can be more honest with them than I can with my own brothers and sisters.”

And like any good family, there’s fun involved too. Every Saturday the Winona Recovery Center does game night together.

“That’s super fun!” Nicki said. “We have some people who come in and they’re not really in the mindset and then they end up having so much fun.”

Nicki’s only hope for the future is that they continue to stay open. With constant fundraising they’ve been able to make ends meet, but sometimes it’s pretty difficult.

“I just want to be able to keep it open,” she said. “To still be sitting there 10 years from now watching these people grow and teach others how to stay sober. To keep coming back.”

SPILLWAY STORIES 28

CHALYMAR MARTINEZ BE THE PERSON WHO HELPS MAKE A DIFFERENCE Words and photographs by Joy Davis Ripley

On an unseasonably warm afternoon in February, I drive across Winona’s valley floor and arrive at a house with matching green shutters. Side-stepping the small piles of snow lining the driveway, I knock on the door of Chalymar Martinez’s house and wait, hearing the lively clatter of children inside. When Chalymar opens the door and invites me inside, the first things I notice are her welcoming smile and striking hazel eyes.

Chalymar wears many hats in our community. She’s a wife and the mother of four young children between the ages of 6 and 9. She’s an interpreter and teacher’s assistant at Winona Middle School. Trained as an interior designer, she’s passionate about education and willingly shares her talents in dancing and painting with our community.

And as a native of Puerto Rico, she’s a survivor of two devastating hurricanes in 2017.

A category 5, Hurricane Irma’s heavy September rains saturated the ground and badly damaged the island’s critical infrastructure. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Maria arrived, severely battering Puerto Rico once again. The effects were immediate and catastrophic. Cascading failures in all systems and sectors, including communications, transportation, and waste-water treatment, led to thousands of people losing their lives.

With no way to reach hospitals and clinics for aid, no drinking water, no electricity, and food in severely short supply, rescue operations were severely impeded. Now, 6.5 years

29

later, Puerto Rico still struggles in its recovery.

Against this unimaginable history, Chalymar opens up her home and heart to me. As I settle in at her dining room table, she explains, “This table is very important to me.

This table is where I feed my children and nourish my family.” A couple of her children wander in, curious about my presence and hungry. Chalymar instructs them to get a small snack.

Puerto Rico, Chalymar resumes, has not recovered from the devastation the hurricanes caused in 2017. Despite the fact that all Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth, there has been limited help from the U.S. government. Frequent losses of electricity, difficulty in accessing medical care, a severe shortage of doctors and other providers, and continuing shortages of food and other supplies make life on the islands extremely difficult. “If I went back today,” Chalymar explains, “I would find a grocery store that was open, but I would have to wait in a long line to go in. Only ten people are allowed in at a time, and for only twenty minutes. Each person is limited in what they can buy, such as two small bags of rice and four small packages of meat.

How can whole families be fed on that?”

When the hurricanes hit Puerto Rico, her neighborhood and her house were destroyed. Her youngest child was a 3-week old infant, her twins were nine months old, and her oldest child was three. Due to the severe restrictions on food and supplies, parents were limited to buying just 12 diapers per day. “The government’s restriction did not care that I had three children in diapers,” Chalymar says. “I still could not buy more than twelve per day.” So every single day, she had to navigate flooded roads in a landscape that had changed significantly due to landslides, and find her way to the closest operating store, stand in line, and wait to buy her 12 diapers.

“We took a huge risk in moving here the way that we did,” Chalymar explains, “with no language, no money, no opportunity. Often families migrate little by little. Maybe the father will leave home first and move to the U.S. and try to earn money before bringing the rest of his family over so that they have a place to live and food to eat.

But after the hurricane, we had nothing anyway. We lost everything: there was no running water, no electricity, there wasn’t enough food. My husband and I realized that we could start over from zero in the U.S. We had the strength and the opportunity, and we had each other.”

When Chalymar and her husband arrived in Minnesota four years ago with their four young children, they got off the plane with nothing. All they had was each other, so they began again from scratch.

As a teacher’s assistant at Winona Middle School, Chalymar works with youth from around the world: Mexican, Cuban, Hmong, African, Afghan, and Syrian children. She knows from her personal experience that moving to a new country is terrifying, and she does what she can to make them feel more comfortable in the classroom. Both Chalymar and her husband Christian (who works as a barber and as a translator for Project Fine) welcome newcomers to our town and help explain how the community here works. Chalymar realizes that

“I tell my children that they can be the person who helps to make a difference. I tell them to stand up for who they are because what they went through before does not define their future.” many parents feel fear and anxiety about U.S. schools, because the whole world has heard about the school shootings that occur with regularity in the United States.

So she offers advice to newcomers and explains how her children are doing in the Winona schools. “We always stay in touch with them and offer our friendship,” Chalymar says. “It helps them to hear our stories about our own experiences,” Chalymar says, “and that has helped them become more trusting of the school system.”

Once settled in Winona, Chalymar began noticing that jobs take up a huge part of people’s lives. “Many people here,” she says, “just go back and forth between work and home, work and home.” She saw a gap for genuine community in Winona. Chalymar decided that she wanted to help fill some of the gaps she noticed by teaching others about her Puerto Rican culture, especially traditional dances and painting. “Some people have the wrong idea about Puerto Rico,” she says. “I want to help educate people about my home country, and Project Fine has helped me find the space to hold classes.”

When I ask Chalymar what drives her, she says that family comes first. Chalymar’s idea of family is deeply rooted in her own experience as a child in Puerto Rico. Her mother abandoned her after she was born, and when her father’s neighbors and community realized that he was a single dad, they immediately stepped up and helped him raise her. It was these neighbors and other women from her community who passed on traditions, who taught her how her body works, who taught her to always help others when she sees a need. “Those women,” Chalymar says, “taught me who I am, and that’s who I remain.” She wants to make sure that her own children, and the children in her community, have the same opportunities she had.

Since moving to Minnesota, Chalymar has repeatedly experienced how someone who is not perceived as a “real” American can be treated. Because Chalymar has light skin, she said that she is often mistaken for someone from the contiguous U.S. But when others hear her accent when she speaks, she is immediately pegged as an immigrant, as someone who doesn’t “belong” here.

“Are you legal? Or are you illegal?” she asks me. “These are the questions I’m asked. But how can a human be illegal? It does not matter if I’m legal or not. It’s nobody’s business. We are all the same under our skin. We all want the same things; we all want what’s best for our children.”

The question of legality, Chalymar points out, belies a deep ignorance of the way American citizenship

SPILLWAY STORIES 30

leans against her, hugging her, Chalymar says, “I tell my children that they can be the person who helps to make a difference. I tell them to stand up for who they are because what they went through before does not define their future. There’s always an opportunity to learn and grow.”

Chalymar wraps her daughter in a hug. “I didn’t have a mother because my mother didn’t want me. After I was born, she left me with my father. But there were people close to me – neighbors, other women in my community – who wanted me more than my own mother did. This is what makes me who I am. I made what was bad in my life into something good. Now I have my own children, and I want them to know that life is hard, but we are family, and we look for the good. We help others, and we share what we can with them. You always have the opportunity to help others.”

works. Because Chalymar was born in Puerto Rico, she automatically became a U.S. citizen upon birth. But many Americans who live in the mainland U.S. do not know the rights of people who live in U.S.-held territories. “How are people who have so many opportunities so uneducated?” she asks, genuinely confused. “Why are they not being taught their own history?”

As a child, Chalymar studied the history of Puerto Rico in relation to all the countries and continents around it, including Canada, Africa, and Western Europe. That teaching strategy gave her a much better understanding of herself as a world citizen.

The way children here in the U.S. are educated in school, Chalymar points out, “continues the bubble they live in with their parents, who don’t realize that the whites in their bubble haven’t always been white.” She pauses, searching for the right words. “They think that they and their family have always been white,” Chalymar says. “Their skin may be light, and they may pass for white, but that wasn’t always the case, and they just don’t realize it because they don’t know their own history.”

“We all need each other,” Chalymar continues, “even if we don’t understand how important others are to us.” When her children struggle in school, Chalymar tells them that others are going through harder things. “Anything that is happening can be resolved,” she says. “But your lifetime happens only once. You can choose to make changes; you can choose to make a difference.” As her older daughter

31

As she helps her older daughter into a traditional Puerto Rican skirt, Chalymar tells me that the frog pictured on the skirt is called a coqui (“coh-kee”) and is native only to Puerto Rico and nowhere else in the world. With a body made from the Puerto Rican flag, the coqui pictured on the skirt is a symbol of national pride for people from the island. Chalymar explains how tourists from Hawaii have captured coqui in Puerto Rico and smuggled them back to Hawaii, where the local coqui population has exploded.

Because the frogs are vocal at night and interrupt sleep, there’s a movement in Hawaii to kill all coqui. But Puerto Ricans are trying to start a movement to trap the frogs and return them to Puerto Rico. As Chalymar speaks, I see a parallel between the plight of the coqui and her own family. The coqui in Hawaii are simply trying to survive and thrive in a new land.

While Chalymar helps her daughter with the waistband of the skirt, I ask her what keeps her moving forward. “It doesn’t matter what is going on with me,” she responds.

“I want to be the best that I can be. I look for ways to educate others and help make my community stronger and more connected.”

Chalymar encourages her daughter to strike a traditional dance pose for me, and she does, holding her skirt out at the sides and bowing slightly. “I have always believed that everything happens for a reason,” Chalymar continues.

“We lost everything we had in the hurricanes, and then we got off the plane in Minnesota, and we still had nothing.

We couldn’t accept that our own children were homeless.

We said to each other then that we will always do our best to find the positive in what has happened. If we had stayed in Puerto Rico, we would still be dealing with food shortages and the loss of electricity.”

“We have worked very hard for what we have here in Winona.” Chalymar pauses, stressing each word. “I’m not talking just about material stuff. We have worked very hard to keep our family together.”

“And we have succeeded,” she says proudly. “We are together.”

Sarah Johnson. This is Kiesha (LaShara Morgan). 2022. Acrylic & gold leaf on canvas, 24x30 in.

33

LASHARA MORGAN THIS IS KIESHA Words and painting by Sarah Johnson. This piece was first published in 2022.

LaShara Morgan has been known as Kiesha as long as she can remember. And “I’ve never not been around kids. People lways told me, ‘you were always mothering.’”

With a hearty laugh that is her signature, Kiesha remembers, “As a kindergartner I would talk about my classmates as ‘my kids.’” She smiles broadly and laughs again, shaking her head at herself.

Helping others comes naturally to Kiesha. “I can’t just see someone in need of help and not help.” An example of this was related to a stranger she often saw walking, always appearing stern and frowning. One day she spotted this stranger making his way down the sidewalk, carrying his groceries, underdressed during a bitterly cold winter storm. She recounts his surprise as she pulled over and offered him a ride. He accepted, and it was the first time she had seen him smile. The power of that moment has stayed with her.

Kiesha recognizes the importance of acknowledging and embracing all parts of life, including the impacts adversity can have on us. “A lot of people feel they would be judged or looked down upon if they share their stories of pain and suffering when, to me, those are heroes, because you don’t know who you’re helping by opening up and sharing your stories. There are a lot of people out there who are silently suffering, and I wish they knew that they didn’t have to, that they can speak up. There’s someone out there, we’re here! There’s a lot of people out there who want to help you or be that support.”

In the past several years, Kiesha has offered more than her kindness to youth of color in this community by establishing and providing a positive, consistent adult presence with the group Our Voices. She has also given her love, persistence, tenacity, advocacy, artistry, mentorship, generosity, sense of humor, accountability, time, meals, rides, funds and more to support, lift up, and “make sure (youth) don’t get stuck.” Of Our Voices, Kiesha has said: “For me, Our Voices is about family. Togetherness, a safe space. They’re young people, they have a lot to say, they have a lot to show.

I saw a very big problem. I was constantly told how negative the Black students at the high school were...I would constantly say are you all talking to these kids? Are you checking in on them to see why they are feeling this way and why they are doing the things that you’re saying they’re doing? These kids weren’t heard. They were stereotyped.”

“For me, Our Voices is about family. Togetherness, a safe space.

They’re young people, they have a lot to say, they have a lot to show.”

Kiesha points out that the consequences of youth being misunderstood and marginalized are enormous, and notes: “If you don’t reach out to get to know them, they don’t feel like they have anybody they can confide in, they don’t feel like it’s a place they can go, so they just hold all this stuff in. And yes, it starts to show on your face! I don’t think they knew they were walking around looking sad and looking angry, when all of those different feelings were just being bottled up inside of them, you know it starts to show. It wears on your health.”

So Kiesha did what Kiesha does: she saw a need and she addressed it. “It went from putting (Our Voices) together because of all of the negative sayings and things that were being said about these kids, and I wanted people to see that it’s not that at all. These are people. They matter.

They have voices. They will be heard.”

Kiesha creates opportunities for youth and young adults to explore their values, culture and ancestry, strengths and skills, and discover who they want to be. She states adamantly, “All these talents: I refuse to let you sit on those talents. I want to be a part of helping them do all that they can, and that’s a lot. ” And indeed, the youth of Our Voices have hosted numerous talent shows, events for the community such as Daddy Daughter Dance and Juneteenth celebrations, murals and art shows, organized rallies, among others.

Kiesha points out, “This is our future! We need to help them grow, help them come out of these shells, reach their potential… I’m proud that they allow me to be a part of it. All I did was give them a platform and they’ve taken it from there. This is their group, Our Voices.”

When asked what she wants the community to know, Kiesha shares, “Be there, be welcoming, be understanding, be a true listening ear and not just someone who’s there and nodding your head, like really hear these kids out. Be a true authentic person, a human.” She goes on to say, “We’re here, we’re here to stay, we have a voice, we matter. We’re not transplants, we are part of this community. You’ll be seeing a lot of us, you’ll be hearing from us a lot.”

SPILLWAY STORIES 34

ARTIST STATEMENT It has been my distinct honor and pleasure getting to know Kiesha over the past few years (Kiesha is a treasure of a human and I love her). I have shared with her many times that more than once I have been going down the street and spotted her giant vehicle packed to the gills with people she is transporting, all of whom have their heads thrown back in the midst of laughter. Each time I run across this image it makes me smile. This is Kiesha.

A powerhouse. Maker of joy. Resilient AF. It was a delight to have Kiesha’s permission to do my best to honor her beauty with this portrait for the Spillway project. After spending some intentional time continuing to get to know each other, Kiesha allowed me to take some reference photos. Unsurprisingly every last one was gorgeous, and (unsurprisingly) in most of the photos she was laughing (this is Kiesha).

And so, for this portrait, it felt right that her portrait highlight her laughing. This is Kiesha.

I chose many bright colors, iridescent & glossy varnishes and gold leaf to symbolize the light that comes from Kiesha and her endless actions to build community, resilience, and belonging. The deep matte and vines on her clothing represent her ongoing growth in spite of barbs and thorns. The words behind her are her own.

I pay tribute to fiber artist Bisa Butler as a significant artistic influence for this portrait.

35

Winona is richer because of Kiesha and Our Voices, and I am grateful to be able to walk alongside, collaborate with, and get out of the way of these forces for good.

Hear Our Voices.

— Sarah Johnson, Community Engaged Artist, 2022

MIKE MUNSON’S SPACE/TIME TRAVELING MACHINE Words by Mai’a Williams, photographs by Lydia Velishek

Mike Munson debuted Perihelion Day, a month-long photography exhibition and experimental story/music performances, at Engage Winona in January 2024. The invite said, “Perihelion Day is an exploration and celebration of the time when Earth is closest to the sun.” Officially, the perihelion of 2024 was January 2nd at 7 p.m. Central time.

Mike’s first performance of the Perihelion Day series was on January 3rd – close enough.

The exhibited photos were mainly of open vast skies, light shooting through disparate clouds, the blueness of overarching heavens, the way the sunlight breaks into a spectrum of colors as it hits the Earth’s atmosphere, the flat and rolling horizons of the North American continent.

And there was Mike standing in front of an intimate and curious audience, telling us facts about outer space. Honestly, I don’t remember the specific facts he shared with us when I attended in late January. What I do remember is Mike’s almost-nerdy enthusiasm, reading from pages in his notebook – an amateur astronomer astonished by the spooky vastness of the cosmos, by the way that time and space converges but also cleaves apart, by the way that the universe is infinite and yet deeply embedded into the cells of each of us.

SPILLWAY STORIES 36

After he talked for about 20 minutes, he sat in a chair, turned some knobs and dials, picked up his guitar and slowly started to play. The audience members leaned back in their chairs, closed their eyes, and relaxed their limbs. I too started to drift away with the music, floating on waves of sound vibrations to another time and space – beyond this room, beyond this evening, beyond beyond beyond.

— An hour after the performance, I sat down with Mike as he explained the impetus for the Perihelion Day installation.

“So, as a part of my time driving around playing music– taking pictures is a natural part of it. Most of them just go to live on my phone and then nothing happens with them.

So, originally the idea of doing a photo show was exciting to me.

Most of my photos are of landscapes or three-quarters sky with a little bit of land. And so after flipping through my photo reel and seeing that most of my photos have a feel to them or a look to them…There are so many commonalities even though the places themselves are really spread apart and really different – from Yucca Valley to Montreal, Canada to the Superior Hiking Trail to the Mississippi to Lake Superior.

So just connecting all of those (places) and we are all connected – even though it looks different and we talk different – we are all looking at the same sky.”

He went on to say that usually when he plays music, it is “music as entertainment as opposed to music as intense sharing, trust-building.”

Perihelion Day was a move in a different direction: “There is more of an element of trust here…With an arrangement like this is to say ‘I am going to make myself uncomfortable’ – even though it’s not necessarily stated. I say that by saying, ‘I am going to talk about science … I am going to move beyond my comfort zone and hopefully you will join me there by taking part in this.’ And listening to music that is made up on the spot, because that is generally not how people engage with music – here in Winona, at least.”

It was looking back at these photos on his phone that made him realize that “they told a bigger story … that we are all connected and ultimately that this place that we inhabit is

“People want to engage with something that they kind of know about but they kind of don’t, but they are willing to come and try.

And they can do that with (outer) space. And if they can do that with space then maybe they can do that with other people.”

37

small. Even though it has great diversity, we’re still just this tiny piece of the bigger picture of the solar system, the galaxy and on and on and on…that is why these are looking outwardly – sky shots.”

When I think about the music Mike is most known for, an exploration of the Mississippi blues, I think of time travel – of the ways that his work is not only about touring across the space of the United States, but also about going back and forth in time to listen to and learn from the blues greats and traditions.

“Traveling to Mississippi feels like time traveling, which isn’t traveling back in time, but is traveling to a different time… which is the same feelings I get in Yucca Valley California.

It’s another place and another time,” he said.

“But also in the context of music, a lot of the great blues music feels like it’s very old, but it’s not. A lot of it was made at the beginning of audio recorded history. But it existed plenty before that. And that is an exciting space to visit…And it made great leaps – technology and music became better. We aren’t talking computers – we are talking guitars that stayed in tune and were louder…And electric guitars being invented is an exciting time. Because everyone was just flipping out on them. So the history of music is that sort of time travel and to have the luxury to visit those times through recordings. While living in the present – you can go to 1950 in your head for a little bit and then you can reproduce it on your own and manipulate it.”

“That blues music is, in my opinion, some of the best guitar playing that ever happened. The creativity that went into developing those techniques. And to be able to supply enough musical information to get the story across and to get people to dance even though you are just one person with one instrument. That is an incredible feat of creativity.

Everything I am aiming to do is trying to match that feat of

creativity. And everything I’ve learned to do has come from those players and those people who made it up.”

And what’s next after Perihelion Day? “I have a new musical project that is called upup/OVER. It is about being able to play more contemplative music in spaces where people want to contemplate with me – instead of entertainment. And it can be both, but I don’t want it to be solely entertainment from the outside. So upup/OVER will be more contemplative music for contemplative spaces.

The name itself implies the idea of transcendence.”

I asked him about what has been the audience’s reception to Perihelion Day, considering it is different from what most people have come to expect from his musical performances.

“People want to engage with something that they kind of know about but they kind of don’t, but they are willing to come and try. And they can do that with (outer) space. And if they can do that with space then maybe they can do that with other people.”

“We’ll make it as hard as possible (for people) and if you are willing to go that far, okay then maybe …”

I chimed in, “Maybe you are willing to understand another human being?”

“We are vast, right?”

“Yes, every person is their own universe.”

“So maybe that is part of what is happening here…it’s

been heartening to see people stretch their brains. And for myself, I’m obviously stretching my brain – beyond its capacity. But I think we hit wonderful moments. So the whole thing isn’t great or polished or whatever but inside of it, there are these great moments that are super wonderful.

Like these snapshots – great moments from a horrible tour or a long weekend that was really tough but there is a beautiful moment.”

— During Mike’s improvisational, contemplative, experimental playing, I thought about Sun Ra’s film Space is the Place, and the ways that Afrofuturism has infused itself into the heartbeat of everyday small town America, the way that Mike’s installation and performance series was not only indebted to the work of bluesmen from a century ago, but also indebted to jazz experimentalists who created an entire lexicon of music as a means to communicate with other planets and temporal realities. Sun Ra also looked to the open skies and saw the potential for Black freedom through musical freedom.

After Mike finished playing the guitar and we, the audience, returned to the present evening, to the warmly-lit room on 3rd Street, he invited questions from the audience. The last question came from a child. “Do you believe in aliens?”

I couldn’t help but grin. That was the question I had wanted to ask Mike.

Mike nodded and smiled. “I think that there is more than just us in the universe.”

SPILLWAY STORIES 38

ALMA ONATE FROM MEXICO TO MINNESOTA: FINDING A BETTER FUTURE FOR HER FAMILY Words by Tesla Mitchell, photographs by Harrison McCormick

The day Alma Onate made up her mind to cross the border into the United States with her husband and four children was the day that gangs were shooting at each other in her neighborhood.

One of the bullets had flown through her house and hit a wall in between her daughters. Alma knew if she called the police, they weren’t likely to come.

Where she lived in Guanajuato Mexico, it didn’t matter if gangs were shooting up a neighborhood or if people were stealing the copper plumbing that was commonly found on the outside of houses. Either way, the police were not likely to respond.

Between that and the jobs that paid exceptionally less than a livable wage — Alma

39

and her 15 siblings had to hand make items for their mom to sell to survive — she decided enough was enough.

Together the family chose to take their chances in the U.S. “This [country] is safer,” Alma said (through the translator that assisted with this interview). “The police pay more attention to you.”

It was a perilous journey for them. Even more so for Alma, who was separated from her family while crossing.

She looks forward at some point to sharing her full story once the legal pathway she’s in is finished, but to give a short description, her journey included snakes biting at her, dogs chasing her, man made holes designed to trap immigrants if they fall in, and a lot of running and panic.

“I like to share my story with some people so they know not all us immigrants are coming to take away stuff,” Alma said. “We’re just trying to make a better future.”

Once making their way into the U.S., Alma and her husband eventually found their way to Winona — which has become a community she’s thoroughly loved being engaged with through art, building relationships, and community leadership.

“Now I try to live my life and be as happy as I can,” Alma said. “I protect my kids so much. They say I’m overprotective. I say go ahead and call 911 and say I’m overprotective of you.”

Despite that one of the main reasons for coming to the U.S. was the attention law enforcements gives the community, that attention wasn’t always wanted for Alma and her husband.

A significant challenge that they had to face was not having the ability to get a driver’s license. Previously in Minnesota, a person needed a social security card or proof of legal presence to get a driver’s license. Not only did the lack of driver’s license stop them from driving legally, it meant not being able to get insurance, qualify for jobs, and even prevented them from checking their children in and out of schools.

“I remember the first time my husband got pulled over by a police officer while my son was very young,” Alma said. “He didn’t have a driver’s license so the police officer said he couldn’t drive and sent them home walking.”

It was downpouring.

“And then the police officer, every time he saw my husband, he knew he didn’t have a license and he would pull him over,” Alma said.

When Alma found out about the Driver’s License For All initiative, which would eliminate the requirements in order to get a standard Minnesota class D driver’s license, instruction permit or standard identification card, she jumped at the opportunity to volunteer and advocate for

“We came here to be a part of your community. We share the same goals. I think at the end we make Winona bigger and better.” change.

Alma had found out about the initiative through being involved in Project FINE’s advisory group and hearing its success in other states. With Project FINE’s help, Alma and others met with law enforcement — including the Winona County Sheriff, City of Winona Mayor, and Minnesota Senator — to ask questions and give their perspective of lived experiences.

“I really enjoyed that,” Alma said. “I was right in front of the sheriff and I got to ask questions.”

In October of 2023, the Driver’s License for All law came into effect, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety website.

“I like to do things that will help the community,” Alma said. “Having a driver’s license is a huge help in getting to

SPILLWAY STORIES 40

your job and it’s even better for the law because if there’s an accident [police] have more information.”

Alma’s activism isn’t the only way she’s involved with the community. She goes to as many of Project FINE’s events as she can and especially loves to dress up for the occasion — whether that’s with wearing her traditional Mexican clothing or trying a different culture’s traditional attire.

“I like to meet more people,” Alma said. “I have been telling Project FINE that they need to have more events where they’re dressing up in their traditional clothing!”

One of her favorite events though is the Welcoming Table dinners where the Winona community comes together to have a meal and build cross-cultural relationships. Many times it involves community leaders and law enforcement who come on their own time.

“I got to learn about (police officers) and get to know them as a person,” Alma said about the Welcoming Table events. “They are very transparent people. And then when they come and sit with you and have dinner with you, they show you they are just like everybody else. To have this kind of interactions with them, it’s one of the best thing.”

Between the events that Project FINE hosts and the work the organization does to make sure immigrants understand what rights they have, Alma felt excited to open up to new friendships and connections. Now when Alma sees the sheriff out in the community, she gives

him a wave. And he waves back.

“I think if it weren’t for Project Fine I would be happy here, but I would be lonely,” Alma said. “I wouldn’t know as many people as I know.”

For the future, Alma is looking forward to teaching her crafts and artwork to the community through workshops and classes. When Alma was a child, her mother couldn’t afford dolls or toys, so Alma and her siblings learned to make their own dolls. Now she enjoys that creativity and makes dolls out of whatever she can — whether that’s out of corn husks or recycled bottle caps.

Alma has a class coming up that she’s teaching and is ready to start planning more.

“I love to live in Winona,” Alma said. “We came here to be a part of your community. We share the same goals. I think at the end we make Winona bigger and better.”

41

PAUL KISHO STERN GROWING COMMUNITY COMPASSION Words by Marcia Ratliff, photographs by Cloey Jo Walsh. This piece was first published in 2022.

On a bleak Thursday morning before sunrise, a faint glow pours out of the tall glass windows at Dharma River/Manitou Center on West Fifth Street. Inside, the space is set up for zazen, a sitting Zen style of meditation, flat cushions on the floor and the smell of incense in the air. The only sounds are the rush of air in the heat registers, the creak of the wooden floor, the breathing of the participants, and the occasional car passing on fifth street. On a laptop, a woman joins the gathering from her home in Poland.

It’s a familiar setting for Paul Kisho Stern, who runs the center with his partner Trish Baishin Johnson. He’s set up and taken down for hundreds of gatherings, configuring the room to meet the moment, whether it’s a Zen meditation, a community gathering or event, a course or training event, a martial arts class or a yoga session.

He jokes that his role in the community is that of a custodian, there to make things just right at the beginning, to keep them rolling in the middle, and there to take down, clean up, and sweep at the end. And there’s truth in the comparison, truth that speaks to the value of tending space, the work that all of our custodians, whether that’s their job title or not, do to create the conditions for meaningful gathering.

SPILLWAY STORIES 42

Dharma River/Manitou Center started in 2011 in downtown Winona and has been at its current space on West Fifth Street since 2015. Stern says he was always drawn to the west end, with its mosaic of homes and neighborhood businesses, each bearing evidence of their former – and sometimes current – role in the neighborhood. He was drawn in particular to their current space in a special and historic building on the corner of Fifth and Ewing, which for many years was the home of the Winona Yoga Center.

“I remember driving by what is now Dharma River really early on,” Stern remembers, “and as you’re driving by, there’s like this cool glow that comes out the windows in the evening in this space. And you can sort of like peek in without peeking in, to sort of see what’s going on.

You can participate in what is going on as a part of that community even in just driving by – the center seems to engage community curiosity, you know, you almost can’t help being drawn into the activity of the space as you go by.”

Stern welcomes this curiosity, this proximity to the sidewalk and the street. The big front windows still bear the letters Y O G A in the transom, but once you’re inside, the space reveals a past of a different sort: its long tenure as a neighborhood grocery store, a place of connection and a resource for the neighborhood for decades. Stern has heard stories that during the Depression, the store owner used to extend credit to help people pay for groceries until they were able to pay it back. On the wooden floor, a seam demarcates where the long grocery counter used to be, dark worn places where you can imagine the grocer used to stand.

“You sort of pick up the story, and get a sense of the space’s long history of engaged community compassion when you walk in,” Stern says, pointing to the shelves lining the walls, their uneven boards revealing years of use. “All these shelves and stuff are from the original grocery store this used to be. And the quality meats sign lets you know that the refrigerated meat section was in the back of the room.”

“I love being on the bluffs and looking on the space that Winona inhabits, the footprint of Winona, and thinking about how change happens, like what if people wanted to have another building come up, what would that look like? What part of history would have to be removed?”

43

It’s a lived-in space, one that has held several transformations over time, vestiges of each use remaining as the inhabitants change. The meat section is now an office, storage area, and kitchen. There’s a series of portraits on the wall, photos of the priests who taught Stern and Johnson, and the priests who taught them, going back to 1800s Japan.

“To me anyway, the goal for us is really providing a safe, welcoming environment to do exploration into living more fully and compassionately, to work together to ease suffering, and to amplify the awesomeness of our human potential,” Stern says. “Really giving folks welldeveloped tool sets through which to holistically develop themselves in terms of mind, body, and as part of living systems.”

Today, Dharma River/Manitou Center offers a range of classes, workshops, and services curated to do just that, from mindfulness for kids, to resilience for first responders, to movement classes, to Zen sittings. Some groups are large, some small. There are kids and older folks and everyone in between. Stern says the activity flowing through the Center brings a sense of churning, the space always turning into something different based on what’s happening.

“Coming in and having this safe space for people to do that kind of exploration – I think the building and sort of the history and the way the story comes together, lends itself to being a sort of catalyst to help allow that to feel more approachable.”

Stern grew up about 15 miles north of Bemidji as a multi-racial kid living a simple life in the woods. He continues to connect elements of his Indigenous and European ancestry as well as his broad life experience into the work he does today. From a young age he had dreams of becoming a wandering gong fu monk dedicated to helping people. Those dreams led him along a long and winding path that brought him across the US and Canada, to Europe, and to Taiwan to learn from masters in martial arts, meditation, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Now those dreams are manifested in the community he and Johnson have created at Dharma River.

Their path to Winona followed a season of traveling, a life of moving and recreating themselves in each new space while serving the same mission. Before they moved to Winona, they’d been living in the Twin Cities. For years they’d been going at a fast pace – Stern teaching and case managing for the public schools and Johnson working for a farm-to-table initiative as part of the Minnesota Project.

“I love hearing the stories, you know, like the bar on the corner and stories of it being the oldest, consistently operating bar in Minnesota, the theater across the street that in its transformation, some folks were telling stories about it being a laser tag area at one point in time before it became this. That element of Winona change has been very interesting, to hear the smaller stories and the way they interweave into rich tapestries of life,” Stern says.

But when their son Nico was a baby, they’d come down to Winona to stay at the Trempealeau Hotel, spreading out a blanket so Nico could watch the trains go by.

“On a larger scale … I love being on the bluffs and looking on the space that Winona inhabits, the footprint of Winona, and thinking about how change happens, like what if people wanted to have another building come up, what would that look like? What part of history would have to be removed? How do we change, you know, in order to accommodate different ways of transportation, more equitable access to housing?”

“We were pretty broke then, so it was like a vacation to get out of the city, and super cheap by comparison, and beautiful, so for us it was this small miracle world, tucked between bluffs, with the river carving its way through it.

So we checked it out and kept coming back.”

Stern says it was an interesting transition at first, figuring out the dynamics of a smaller city. Since then, they’ve found a sense of community here, one that’s rooted in the natural environment of Winona, the way the bluffs and river hold the town and give it boundaries, the way thunderstorms swirl over Winona and then re-form on the other side of the river.

“It has sort of like this feeling of being held in that way, being here. That it’s a really safe, generative, and sometimes challenging space, where people are there for each other. There’s a sense of community reliance. It’s an island, so you get that sort of island sense of – you see many of the same people in different combinations in sort of the same circles moving around. And there’s a sense of comfort that comes with that, and there’s a sense of sort of natural life flow that comes with that as well.”

Stern doesn’t take for granted the significance of physical space, the rich intersection of past and present that happens in a moment, accompanied perhaps by a slant in the light, or the first day of sun after weeks of rain.

From the original Wapasha’s Prairie, to a rail and lumber hub, to a manufacturing center, the city wears vestiges of these past forms in ways that speak to present questions of how the community will hold change.

What remains for us to do as a community is to cultivate the capacity to be curious, to step into a space and not have the story already written, and to include a broader bandwidth of voices, Stern says. This is what we need to do as a community, to bear witness to spaces together, to learn from that endeavor and engage in action to help these spaces as they grow and transform into something new, or a new interpretation of something old.

“Life, for me, as it goes on, seems to appear more and more as a story. The facts tend to exist contextually and from interdependent perspectives in the stories they flow through. … How do we open up spaces that allow more voices to come in and share pieces of that story that we need in order to really come to a broader understanding of the contexts that we’ve created together? All of us living here now benefit from being able to inherit pieces of the history as it’s understood coming forward, but in the decision-making capacity, we really need to open up that space to allow for broader interpretations.”

For Stern, all of Winona is steeped in a series of historical layers like the ones at the Dharma River/ Manitou Center space, sometimes invisible, sometimes obvious, the way floodwaters leave driftwood behind them as they recede.

SPILLWAY STORIES 44

Sarah Johnson, Miss Kathy. 2024.

47

KATHY SUBLETT MISS KATHY Words by Kathy Sublett, as told to Sarah Johnson

Woman of God, Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, Volunteer, Trailblazer, and Advocate for the Underserved Communities.

Either I was going to let the shame of my abuse destroy me or I was going to trust God to show me my purpose.

I forgave myself.

Every morning I wake up, I’m thankful. I try to make the best of each day. I want to be known for my kindness and always showing up.

I liken myself to the philodendron plant. You can neglect it, not water it, but it somehow survives. The moment you give it some attention by watering it, it springs back to life. It grows through adversity; that’s me!

I share my story so that people sitting in jail or being released from jail/prison can know, if you make a mistake, fix it, and move on. We never know what the person sitting next to us is going through . . . And not knowing, a smile might change their whole day.

I feel there is something to be learned from everybody yet people are so judgmental. Don’t judge a book by its cover because you’ll miss the beauty of what’s on the inside. There are walking flowers, walking encyclopedias, walking history, walking books, and many walking testimonials. If people could sit down and give the person who doesn’t look like them, act like them, or dress like them 10 minutes of their time, you’d be amazed at what you might learn.

I want to motivate! I want to be a power surge of, “You can do whatever you put your mind and energy into.”

QUOTE ON MS. KATHY’S PORTRAIT: “One thing I would say I wish people could comprehend is, every choice you make, whether good or bad has a consequence. At this point you will either live a life filled with joy, or a life filled with chaos and pain.

Life is short and sweet. But life truly is what you make it. Life begins outside of our comfort zones. Invite a stranger for a cup of coffee. Show an act of kindness.

Extend a good deed. My greatest joy is to pay it forward.

The joy is in giving. We are all God’s children. Know your worth. Grow yourself to the next level!!”

FUTURE MISS KATHY’S MESSAGE TO PRESENT MISS KATHY: “Number one, I can’t believe that you are who you are. I cannot believe, like pinch me, you know? And I’m just so proud of the work that you have done. You worked your program and now your program is working for you. You planted your fate. You were not a jailhouse Christian, which is what I fear. You got out and you walked the walk and you talk the talk. And now I know that there’s nobody that can judge me. I’m proud that you don’t let people judge you. Because that’s where the people pleasing came in. Yes, we all care what people think, but I don’t. And for those that I care what they think, it’s worth a conversation to me. And so I’m very proud that you even made it this far because really I was spiritually dead. I was emotionally dead. I was everything but physically dead, and God resurrected me and saved me from myself. So I would definitely tell this Kathy, ‘I’m proud of you.’”

ARTIST STATEMENT I had the honor of sitting with Miss Kathy over the course of a few hours around her 65th birthday, and of painting her portrait from a beautiful photo taken of her at her birthday party by Kris Hipps. Thank you to Miss Kathy–a radiant light of a human–for sharing your story, wisdom and time with me, and for all you do in this world.

— Sarah Johnson, Community Engaged Artist

SPILLWAY STORIES 48

La Vonte Thompson, Loverboy, 2023.

49

LA VONTE THOMPSON AN EMERGING [SELF] PORTRAIT Reflected by Sharon Mansur, in conversation with La Vonte Thompson

ON SELF [Description of the portrait Loverboy (2023) La Vonte is looking at the camera, with a white gloved hand gently resting on his chin over his beard.]

Sharon: “When you see your self-portraits, what do you see?”

[His right eye is highlighted by an orange heart bordered by clear rhinestones. His left eyelid is purple.]

La Vonte: “Sometimes I affectionately refer to myself as a brute…this is a gentler side.”

[He’s wearing a purple scarf, with delicate hoop earrings dangling from his ears and a smaller double hoop from his nose.]

“A lot of my life I had to protect myself and so my default – I come off as ‘Don’t come around me.’”

[The word ‘BRUTE’ peeks out from where his hair meets his forehead.]

“Over the years I’ve taken steps to be more intentional…I wasn’t allowed a lot of my life to be that way.”

[Three larger butterflies approach the duo. And two doves hover in the lower left corner, conspiring between themselves. A row of numbers frame the bottom and along the right side.] “…I do love the community here that I’ve created and found. And I think it would be really hard to replicate, so I’m not in a rush to get out of here. There are negatives and positives everywhere.”

[There are rumpled vertical and horizontal lines running through it, as though it has been folded and stored in someone’s back pocket for safekeeping. Perhaps for nostalgia, a memory to cherish. Or perhaps a future to imagine.]

ON HOW PHOTOGRAPHY STARTED

“I always use white gloves when I do photography. It’s kind of another gentle thing, being particular about what you do.”

[Description: Portrait from the Taking a Walk series (2021) Rays of waning sun streaming from the right highlight and obscure her face as she turns to look back at the camera.]

ON HOME/COMMUNITY

“I took a picture, I think it was of my dog. Alexis [Hayes] and I had just started dating, in that early impress your partner phase. She said ‘You took a really nice picture.

You should get a camera.’ And I just went and bought a camera. And that actually worked out!”

“I’ve moved a lot. I moved 29 times as a kid. Most of that in middle school. A home isn’t something I fully get.”

[Description: Mutual Butterflies collage (2023) Vivid rows of magenta, pink, white and yellow flowers streaming towards the foreground as an urban landscape delineates the back edge. Two figures walking hand in hand, encircled by a ring of butterflies, encircled by a ring of flowers overhead.]

“I’m from Wisconsin. I came here [Winona] in middle school. I stayed from 4th or 5th to 8th grade. I then got incarcerated as a teen for acting out and whatever, and I moved to Rochester when I came home. Alexis [Hayes] and I started dating in 2016 and an opportunity came up to move here just to make it easier on both of us.”

La Vonte describes creating small daily intentional rituals in his life more recently that create a sense of home, such as making coffee and caring for his pet frogs.

Honoring himself and his home environment.

[Her right hand rests against her right cheek and her gaze advances forward. The walking path recedes into a soft blur of green and concrete. Yellow flowers sprout from her shirt. Eyes meet eyes.]

“It’s not a matter of whether or not I’ve done it. I kind of can feel whether or not I can get something done.

I’ve thought about it, I can see it in my head, which is the most important thing.”

ON PORTRAITS “I don’t know all the terms, because I’m self-taught. But the main picture of the project, as long as we get that, and we will, that’s all that matters to me. The rest will come together and make sense.”

[Description: New Era 90s (2017-2018) He raises his

SPILLWAY STORIES 50

La Vonte Thompson, Mutual Butterflies. 2023. Collage.

La Vonte Thompson, from Taking a Walk series. 2021.

51

Website description: “Give Me My Flowers is meant to shine light on Black people and everything beautiful, compelling, and powerful about us.”

Supported by a Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council Individual Emerging Artist grant in 2022, these images

by La Vonte of Asiah and Ahniya were first shared at No Name Bar in Winona in 2023, and are now on his website: www.moptopshots.com. “[The series title is] tying in the theme of giving someone their flowers, which is just appreciating them for who they are, what they do, what they offer.”

[Description: Her clear gaze, eyes centered, drawing me in. Hands resting on her head, palms down. Elbows wide.]

“I don’t always feel like Black women are appreciated.”

[A circle of light frames her torso as she frames herself.]

“For example for Asiah’s photoshoot … I took notes in an interview I had with her. She said something about feeling like she’s not in the spotlight a lot … And I was like: Oh … just put a spotlight on her and see what happens. And it looked great–on the nose.”

[A hint of shadow, framed by light, framed by shadow.]

La Vonte Thompson, New Era 90s, 2017-2018.

“Everyone has something about them.”

[Fingers poised. Bright eyes. Inner light revealed.

Framing a life force.]

left hand to the camera, palm up, slightly blurred. He’s wearing a red sweater with white horizontal stripes along with a bit more color. Is that blue? Small bright colorful orbs dot his palm and spread across the scene. We’re glancing up at him from below. His gaze is serious and direct.]

“It all came together so it was really meaningful for me, and it was fun, too.”

“When I do photoshoots with people they might expect this big grandiose thing. But I’m like ‘This is just quick and dirty. It doesn’t need to look great out here. We just need a small space to do it.’”

“Luckily we [Alexis and La Vonte] got wrangled into the group of Mary Jo Klinker and her associates in Winona.

I call it the No Name Community, for No Name Bar. Really good people.”

[Sharon on viewing La Vonte’s portraits: “I can feel your gaze on the subject, and the sense of honoring.

And there’s such a clear eye…you’re really asking me to see clearly, and you’re making it so possible to really see so many layers. The honesty and depth of what you’re looking at feels like an invitation to me to also see that.”]

“While being here, I’ve been a part of helping out, [for example] getting the cops out of Winona Senior High School. Unfortunately I was in the newspaper on an air horn. I did not like it.”

“We can take twenty not great pictures. We just need one, and we get the one every time.”

“Everyone is pretty. Everyone has something about them.”

ON THE GIVE ME MY FLOWERS PHOTO SERIES Give Me My Flowers: Exalting Black Women & Girls (2023)

ON ENGAGEMENT

He laughed.

[Description: La Vonte’s laugh starts deep, with a surprising lightness towards the end.]

“I’ve been involved with Juneteenth, getting Juneteenth set up. It was really hard the first Juneteenth, it was a lot of work. But it was really cool to see that many people show up.”

“One thing I can say I appreciate and I found with Juneteenth here in Winona, whether people are there because it’s Juneteenth, it kinda doesn’t matter to me. It’s more about trying to show some sense of community.”

“I’ll help out with Our Voices, Community Not Cages …

SPILLWAY STORIES 52

But I don’t necessarily say that I’m an activist. I’m just a voice … I’ve got a loud voice, so I’m useful at times.”

We both laugh.

[Sharon to La Vonte: “I’m struck that [this is] similar to hearing you talk about your creative photo portraits and a portrait of yourself living your life. The layers and depth that you allow people to see, and what you have choice over, as you’re more aware. Can you choose something else, and with who? And creating relationships to different layers of identity, to race, gender, sexuality, to conversations and topics.”]

La Vonte’s creations: www.moptopshots.com Sharon Mansur is a Winona based dance and interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, community mover & shaker. www. mansurdance.com, www.cedartreeproject.com

“Sometimes people legitimately don’t know why they feel that way. Or maybe they haven’t thought about something. There’s a lot of things that I’ve learned that I’ve never thought of. So give someone a shot maybe…”

[Sharon: “You’re like a freelance activist!”]

“People call on me to do something specifically that they know I can do. And that’s been rewarding.”

ON BEING [Description: La Vonte is.]

“I was raised by all Black women, my mom, my grandma.

And them being in my life made me, for better or for worse, who I am.

[La Vonte is. La Vonte is a man.]

“As a Black man specifically, [I’m] trying to be a better person and trying to understand people and be more empathic. I know sometimes being a Black man is to be very manly at times.”

[La Vonte is. La Vonte is a man. La Vonte is Black.]

“As I’ve grown into who I am, I understand myself and other people.”

[La Vonte is. La Vonte is a man. La Vonte is Black. La Vonte is a Black man.]

“Trying to work together to find out, looking into things…with another Black man and having that layer of vulnerability is good and it’s different.”

[La Vonte is himself.]

“I like the community you can make here. You can create your own little slice. Others might not be aware of your slice, [but] you can have your little part, and that’s really rewarding and it’s honestly appreciated.”

“I’d like to see more of the Black community acknowledged in more ways than negative. And also I’d like to engage more with my community in the ways I can offer.”

La Vonte Thompson, from Give Me My Flowers series. 2023.

53

Matt Wagner, Portrait of La Vonte Thompson, 2024. Based on La Vonte Thompson, Loverboy, 2023.

SPILLWAY STORIES 54

CONTRIBUTORS FEATURED GLORIA ALATORRE

Learn more about Gloria at lunaxi3.com

ANGELA BOOZHOO FATHER PAUL BREZA

Visit the Polish Cultural Institute and Museum (102 Liberty Street, Winona, MN 55987, polishmuseumwinona.org, 507-454-3431).

NICKY BUCK

Learn more about the Honoring Dakota project at www.honoringdakota.org

AMBER BUYSMAN

Learn more about the need, advocacy and available resources for Universal Changing Tables in public restrooms at www.changingspacescampaign.com

DR. MAURELLA CUNNINGHAM

Learn more about Winona ROAR at facebook.com/RoarWinona

ALEXIS HAYES NICKI HENNESSY

Learn more about Winona Recovery Center at facebook.com/groups/591399542538846

CHALYMAR MARTINEZ LASHARA MORGAN

Learn more about Our Voices at facebook.com/OurVoicesWinona

MIKE MUNSON

Learn more about Mike at www.mikemunson.net

ALMA ONATE

55

PAUL KISHO STERN

Learn more about Dharma River at dharmariver.org

KATHY SUBLETT

Learn more about Let’s Erase the Stigma at facebook.com/profile. php?id=100076904545900

LA VONTE THOMPSON

La Vonte’s creations: www.moptopshots.com

WRITERS JEROME CHRISTENSON SARAH JOHNSON

Learn more about Sarah at www.thejoylabs.com

SHARON MANSUR

Learn more about Sharon at www. mansurdance.com, www.cedartreeproject.com

TESLA MITCHELL

Tesla (Rodriquez) Mitchell is a digital storyteller, journalist, and social media content creator. Learn more about Tesla and her passions for fitness, motherhood, and art at: instagram.com/frazzled_fitness_mom

BETH ONESS MARCIA RATLIFF

Read Marcia’s poetry at www.tornpaperpoems. com

JOY DAVIS RIPLEY

Learn more about Joy’s work at facebook.com/ JoyDavisRipleyPhotographyAndArtWear

MAI’A WILLIAMS

Learn more about Mai’a at www.maiawilliams.net

ARTISTS BRIANNE DANIELS MARY FARRELL

Find out more about Mary at riverartsalliance. org/members/photographers/mary-farrell/

HARRISON MCCORMICK CHUCK MILLER STUFFSTUDIO

Learn more at facebook.com/ValuableArt

LYDIA VELISHEK

Learn more about Lydia at lyvedesign.myportfolio.com/photography

MATT WAGNER CLOEY JO WALSH

Learn more about Cloey at www.clomotionpictures.com SPILLWAY STORIES 56

We welcome together artists, culture-bearers, and storytellers to share the history, experiences, and visions for the future that animate community in the Winona region.

COVER PHOTO of the Winona Spillway by Cloey Jo Walsh