How to Move Mountains

Understand the past, Understand the past, meet the moment, meet the moment, embrace the future embrace the future

Getting to know American Indian studies The oldest of its kind, CLA’s American Indian studies department is uniquely positioned to lead on issues facing the world today, from climate change to environmental justice to white supremacy and structural racism. Since 1969, department scholars have helped preserve the Ojibwe and Dakota languages, uplift Native heritages, histories, and cultures—and challenge the colonizing ways that have created and perpetuated these urgent problems.

Yet today, the program is something of a well-kept secret, says Brendan Kishketon, associate professor of American Indian studies. Kishketon, a world-renowned Ojibwe language scholar, is determined to change that through the American Indian Summer Institute (AISI).

“Not enough Native students know about us and the programs we have to serve them. And reservation kids are

especially underrepresented: our message has not been getting in front of them.” So Kishketon reached into his own past—as a teen, he attended a summer bridge program in Utah—to imagine The work of CLA scholars has never been more urgent or relevant. Examples of our faculty and students engaged in being their best reveal the changing that. He envisioned a week for Indigenous high school students to explore Native languages, meet Native faculty, write, hone study skills, connect with each other—and to see themselves at UMN. transformative power of the In 2018, the American Indian Summer liberal arts in a rapidly Institute was born. changing world. AISI is “putting a face to our programs,” Kishketon says. “There’s this perception BY SUSAN MAAS that the University is a big, scary, cold institution. Students need to know a human here.” Throughout the camp, participants learn about the department’s offerings and get a taste of life on campus…dipping their toes in Dakota and Ojibwe language lessons, playing games, living in residence halls, and building community. Current Native students serve as their counselors. Dustin Morrow, who just graduated with a degree in Ojibwe language and linguistics and is beginning his master’s in linguistics at UMN this fall, served as an AISI counselor in 2019. “It was a blast,” he says. “I’m a nontraditional student.

How to Move Mountains Getting to know American Indian studies

I was already an adult when I started at the U, and [campus] was even intimidating for me. I grew up on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation; a lot of [AISI participants] are straight from the reservation. Coming from a very rural setting to this huge institution in an urban setting, it’s a big adjustment.”

At AISI, “everyone’s got that shyness, that uncertainty at first. It’s awesome to see them open up and start to feel acclimated. By the end, everyone’s laughing and having a great time together,” Morrow says.

“The idea is for them to really get to know us,” Kishketon says. “We want them to know there are real people here behind these awesome programs, and there are ways for them to get here. Research shows that students who do these summer-bridge programs tend to matriculate into the host university. My thinking is, if they end up coming to the U, great—and really, if they end up going to any university, great.”

Kishketon works with high school counselors to encourage Native students to attend. It’s free, and students simply have to demonstrate interest: “If you want to come, we want you here.” AISI takes place for one week of the summer, typically serving around 20 students. The COVID-19 pandemic forced its

Associate Professor Brendan Kishketon (American Indian studies)

cancellation in 2020 and this year—but Kishketon sees the hiatus as a chance to enhance and expand the program.

“I want to create defining moments! I want to get local [Native] celebrities to come in. And I want to coordinate more with Chicano students; maybe host an American Indian and Chicano dance, a night for everyone to have fun.…Next year is going to be awesome,” Kishketon says.

“Our program is really rigorous— our students get fluent. We’re moving mountains over here, and that’s what I want people to know.”

Stuttering doesn't Stuttering doesn't define you define you

Joshua Hebeisen first attended the Sioris Family University of Minnesota Kids Who Stutter Camp as a third-grader over a decade ago. He quickly felt right at home.

“As a kid who stutters, it means so much on the first day of camp to sit around a table with a bunch of other kids your age who also stutter. Being able to see, ‘Okay, I’m not the only one,’” says Hebeisen, now a 20-year-old UMN sophomore. The experience was so affirming that he went back every year until aging out of the camp after eighth grade.

Hebeisen was invited back to be the camp’s first junior counselor in 2016; this summer was his fifth year in that role (COVID-19 caused its cancellation in 2020). He finds the work gratifying. “I’m pretty open about my stuttering— I think a lot of kids aren’t used to being so open about it. Once you start talking to others who are in the same boat, it’s really freeing.”

Founded in 2009, the camp is the brainchild of Erin Bodner—then a UMN grad student in speech-language pathology, now a clinical supervisor in speechlanguage pathology and camp director. Just as Bodner and her clinical supervisor, Linda Hinderscheit, were mulling over the idea of a day camp, Professor Leo Sioris of the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and his wife Cheryl were approaching the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences expressing interest in helping children who stutter. A partnership was born.

Camp is one week, open to students from third through eighth grade. Usually, 10-12 kids attend—many as return campers. Fees are minimal; no student has ever been turned away. “The generosity, commitment, and genuine care shown by the Sioris family to kids who stutter are so greatly appreciated,” says Bodner, also a person who stutters.

Besides Bodner and Hinderscheit, there are three additional co-leaders—all adults who stutter—and a few graduate student clinicians. It’s evolved based on students’ feedback. “We started incorporating therapy activities around dealing with bullying and teasing,” Bodner says. “A lot of camp is focused on the social, emotional, and attitudinal issues related to being a person who stutters.”

Art activities are big; campers get to draw their stutter. “That’s powerful, using creativity and other means of expressing themselves,” Bodner says. Campers enjoy games that often begin with vulnerability and build camaraderie and trust. “We have one that we call the Silly Stutter Game. When you play games with your stutter and make it something not so scary, and you’re in control of it, it can be really liberating.”

Campers take outings around campus, to places like the Weisman Art Museum and the Raptor Center. A newer addition is a panel discussion with teens who stutter. Panelists are former campers, like 19-yearold Justin Haag, who enjoys answering questions from kids and helping build their confidence. “It’s fun to come back.…I get to see the counselors again, and see how the community is still growing.”

Among Haag’s favorite memories is the annual end-of-camp outing to a campus fast-food restaurant. Campers—many for the first time—place their own orders. “It seems like a small, insignificant thing, but as a kid it’s really cool to go there and order like an adult. It’s fulfilling; you use some of the skills you learned at camp. It makes you feel like you really made progress.”

Ultimately, camp is about acceptance, Bodner says. “And really opening up the campers’ idea of what being a good communicator is.” The message is “it’s okay to stutter, and what you have to say is important, regardless of fluency.”

Hebeisen agrees, adding that the election of a US president who stutters underscores that. “Here’s a guy in literally the most powerful and influential position in the whole world, and he’s a person who stutters. It shows that you can do whatever you want: stuttering doesn’t define you.”

The message is “it’s okay to stutter, and what you have to say is important, regardless of fluency.”

Goldy engages with children at the Sioris Family University of Minnesota Kids Who Stutter summer camp (pictured 2017)

Deep, structural, deep, structural. lasting change lasting change

Philando Castile. The Flint water crisis. Charlottesville. Standing Rock. Family separations. COVID-19. Rising anti-Asian violence. Rising anti-trans violence. George Floyd. The turbulent six years since the Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality (RIGS) Initiative was formed have made the strongest possible case for its existence—and for its transition to a permanent center.

“Now more than ever” could be its motto, says outgoing director Kat Hayes.

RIGS was formed in 2015 to “support innovative research, teaching, and community-building for scholars engaged with issues of race, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality.” From fostering crossdepartmental collaboration to nurturing public discourse on urgent questions of the day, the initiative has played a crucial role helping Americans understand intersectional struggles for justice through history, and as they’re happening. Now it’s leveling up as the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender and Sexuality Studies (RIDGS).

It was originally established with funding from the Office of the Provost and includes: the Asian American Studies Program; the Departments of African American & African Studies; American Studies; American Indian Studies; Chicano & Latino Studies; and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies. Formerly

Diversity, equity, and inclusion tend to get put in this neat little package of, ‘do this training, then you can check a box.’ We’re more concerned with deep, structural change at the University and in society.

the RIGS Initiative, Critical Disability Studies Collective joined RIGS when it reconstituted as the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality (RIDGS).

Engaging the public is key. RIDGS scholars dwell in the community and the wider world. Recent RIDGS projects include Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor Keith Mayes’ research on disability rights and Black special education, and Vicente Diaz’s research on indigenous canoe traditions, construction, and navigation.

An interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in critical indigenous studies in North America and the Pacific Ocean region, Diaz has built relationships in the town of Milan, Minnesota, which has a sizable Micronesian population. “He brings members of that community to campus and also connects them with Ojibwe and Dakota communities for conversations around canoe culture. A lot of these amazing [endeavors] don’t look like typical research programs and it can be hard to find traditional funding sources for them,” Hayes says.

Hayes became director in 2019: “My term has been largely dominated by George Floyd and COVID.” Both underlined the deadly nature of structural racism in the US—and the urgent need for the work of RIDGS scholars. “Our scholarship has been about these kinds of systemic oppressions and injustices all along,” and in 2020, “we were inundated with requests for emergency teach-ins, events, media [interviews].

“There’s a need for continuous support and amplification of the very careful scholarship our faculty and our grad students have been doing since long before George Floyd’s murder,” Hayes says.

Keith Mayes, incoming director of RIDGS, echoes that. “The units comprising RIDGS haven’t always enjoyed a level of support matching the relevance of their work,” he says.

RIDGS helped “create a community of like-minded faculty who often found

Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor Keith Mayes, incoming director of RIDGS themselves isolated or marginalized,” Mayes says. “And it’s transcended our individual units, in terms of visibility and [resources], allowing us to create work that we couldn’t create on our own. I want to grow that visibility and influence.”

RIDGS faculty and students strive to embody the equity their research seeks to promote, Hayes says. When COVID exploded last year, “our critical race and ethnic studies graduate student group collected signatures voicing their concerns about support for the most vulnerable graduate students across the University. Faculty too; when it came to pay cuts, we explored ‘how can we do this in the most equitable way possible?’”

They’re excited about the new Ruby Pernell Fund for Faculty Retention, funded through a grant from the Tides Foundation, which aims to support faculty of color in CLA.

“Faculty of color are radically underrepresented; many end up leaving because they don’t feel supported,” Hayes says. It’s not necessarily about salary or individual research funding. “What’s the campus climate? Are there supportive spaces and opportunities? Diversity, equity, and inclusion tend to get put in this neat little package of, ‘do this training, then you can check this box.’ We’re more concerned with deep, structural change at the University and in society. A lot of what gets celebrated is outward-facing, but much of the work we’re doing is inward-facing, as well.”

Humanities on the humanities on the front line, community front line, community at the center at the center

No scholar, or scholarly work, lives in a vacuum. Yet for centuries, much of Western academia has functioned as if that were the case. AK Wright, a PhD candidate in gender, women, & sexuality studies, is eager to help change that.

“When you’re taking classes, and you have your head down because you’re trying to write or publish, you can become isolated from the community you live in,” Wright says. “But we’re still living in communities; we’re still being impacted” by what other community members are experiencing.

Wright is embarking on a research journey that doesn’t just include community, but centers it. Wright’s project, a podcast series based at Pillsbury House Theatre, is focused on conversations with Black performers involved in the Call to Remember collaboration. The conversations will take place over food, a central part of cultural identity and a powerful form of community care and healing. The podcast Call to Remember seeks to “prioritize Blackness and explore remembrance as a means to cultivate community” through Black improvisation and Black art, Wright says.

That is just one of many projects made possible through Minnesota Transform, a $5 million public humanities initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Higher Learning Program whose mission is to “collaborate with Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee communities to amplify historical interpretations, create new narratives and dialogues, foster community well-being, and inform policy responses.” As Tracey Deutsch, associate professor of history and one of six faculty team members who secured the Mellon grant, says, “We want to put the humanities on the front lines of the struggle for justice.”

Minnesota Transform is sweeping in scope, striving to “hold the University accountable for its complicities…to pave the way for redress, and build [its] capacity to be a site of racial justice.” The endeavor challenges traditional academic hierarchies and processes, placing community at the center. That’s both a matter of justice and of improving the quality and richness of research, says faculty team leader Professor Jigna Desai, gender, women, & sexuality studies, who is among those who envisioned the effort.

Minnesota Transform outcomes include undergraduate and graduate internships, podcasts, documentaries, archival reports, museum exhibits, and public histories of the COVID pandemic and racial justice responses. Projects include a push for Indigenous language revitalization, specifically Dakota and Ojibwe; an exhibit on the history of mutual aid in Minneapolis; and an archival exploration, as the AIDS epidemic turns 40, of the Aliveness Project and its work.

Relationship-building with community partners is key. Minnesota Transform aims to change the very nature of public humanities research and how it’s conducted— for the benefit of all. “We’re creating opportunities to address the fact that the University has mostly had extractive relationships with its BIPOC [and other marginalized] communities,” Desai says. “We want to transform that through relationships that are mutually beneficial, in which we redistribute resources that support the communities we’re working with.”

Mellon announced the grant as the nation reeled from an exploding pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. Desai and her colleagues moved quickly to create their proposal, while mindful that the work with community must be done “at the speed of trust.” Though some efforts under the Minnesota Transform umbrella had begun before the grant, it enabled the launch of many more. And while COVID presented challenges, it also offered a silver lining: embracing video to transcend geography and partner with faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Although the approach that Minnesota Transform scholars are taking is time- and labor-intensive, Desai and Deutsch hope it can serve as a model for other researchers and the University as a whole. “We want to change the processes, relationships, and therefore the outcomes,” Desai says. “How we do the work: that’s a big part of racial justice.”

Professor Jigna Desai (gender, women & sexuality studies), one of the six faculty members who brought Minnesota Transform to life