Minnesota

The Prairie Island Indian Community has filed a claim with the Minnesota Historical Society, requesting repatriation rights to the "Mankato Hanging Rope," the noose used to hang Dakota relative Wicanhpi Wastedanpi (Good Little Stars), known also as Chaske.

"This sacred item was stolen from Wicanhpi Wastedanpi's grave and kept as a trophy before being donated to the Historical Society," a statement from the Prairie Island Tribal Historic Preservation Office said. "It should be repatriated immediately to the Dakota people and the Prairie Island Indian Community as the lead claimant."

The Minnesota Historical Society said it had received a claim under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) on Feb. 29 from the Prairie Island Indian Community requesting repatriation of the "Mankato Hanging Rope." The rope was used in the Dec. 26, 1862 execution in Mankato of 38 Dakota men who were convicted of "murder and other outrages" against settlers during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, a bloody, six-week event. It was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

On the outskirts of Two Harbors just north of Duluth artist Carl Gawboy sits in an overstuffed leather chair inside his light-filled studio. He’s sharing his space with a rack of young plants his wife Cindy has started in anticipation of spring planting. Half a dozen of Gawboy’s watercolor paintings line the walls.

For the past two years, Gawboy has been creating hundreds of pen and ink drawings for “Fur Trade Nation: an Ojibwe’s Graphic History.”

Gawboy has used his thirty years of experience teaching the history of fur trade relations on Turtle Island, also known as North America, to create hundreds of illustrations depicting stories Ojibwe people and lifeways centered on entrepreneurship and freedom.

A citizen of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe and Finnish descent, Gawboy has been working as an artist even longer than he’s been teaching history.

Italy's Culture Ministry officially has suspended art loans to the Minneapolis Institute of Art following disputes over the 1st century Roman sculpture "Doryphoros."

Italian authorities believe the statue, which originated in the south of Naples, was illegally excavated in the 1970s. Mia said it purchased it for $2.5 million in 1986 from art dealer Elie Borowski.

Italy first requested return of the statue in March 2022, after an Italian court ruled that Mia needed to give back the ancient sculpture that had long been displayed in the museum's second-floor rotunda near the Target Wing. The "Doryphoros" is one of a number of Roman copies based on original works by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos, and the one that Mia owns, made in the 1st century B.C.E., is one of the best preserved.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency will be testing water quality along the entirety of the Mississippi River within the state’s borders in 2024, the agency announced this week.

The MPCA typically only tests portions of the river in any given year, and this year’s effort to sample over 50 locations from Bemidji to the Iowa border represents a first for the agency in what could be read as increasing concern about emerging threats to water quality, including 3M-manufactured chemical compounds known as PFAS.

Water quality within Minnesota’s stretch of the river has improved dramatically over the past four decades, according to a fact sheet from the Metropolitan Council. But levels of some contaminants — including nitrogen from excessive fertilizer use and chloride from road salt — are rising.

Walz announced the appointments of Theodora Gaïtas and Sarah Hennesy — both judges on lower courts — to replace retiring justices Margaret H. Chutich and G. Barry Anderson.

The appointments will again give the court a female majority. And all seven members will have been selected by DFL governors. Hennesy is set to replace Anderson, who will retire on May 10. Gaïtas will replace Chutich, who is set to retire at the end of July.

In deep-red western Minnesota, a group of conservative activists have spent years crusading against their main political foe — other Republicans.

Calling themselves the Otter Tail County Grassroots, the activists have consistently clashed with the local party over endorsements, alleging fraud when one of their preferred candidates lost and casting protest votes against GOP nominees. The bitter feud escalated earlier this year when the grassroots activists took over the Otter Tail GOP party's precinct caucuses that drew hundreds of people in two cities, kicking out the people who led the proceedings so they could run things their own way and pick delegates who will endorse candidates.

This month, they defied the party again by hosting their own unsanctioned political convention.

The state Republican Party has had to step in and act as a referee, further angering activists who have enlisted GOP legislators from the region and beyond to aid their cause.

The Minnesota House voted Thursday to speed up the process for getting cannabis dispensaries lined up by giving them a route to preapproval of operating licenses.

On a 69-62 vote, lawmakers voted to allow the office to start issuing license preapprovals as early as this summer. Supporters say that would allow them to secure funding, rent real estate and take other steps to get up and running. They still wouldn’t be allowed to commercially grow or sell the marijuana itself.

“A number of provisions in this bill are designed to expedite the process of setting up a good legitimate marketplace for cannabis to displace that illicit marketplace that’s out there,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids.

The Minnesota Department of Education in March reported four-year graduation rates were down in 2023, renewing concerns about the direction of the state’s public schools and the lingering effects of the pandemic.

But a deeper look at the data finds the state’s published results were flawed and that graduation rates are actually rising.

APM Research Lab, a sister organization of MPR News with expertise in collecting and analyzing public data, examined the results. It found after incorporating misreported numbers from several school systems, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, two of the state’s largest districts, the state graduation rate rose slightly, from 83.6 in 2022 to 83.8 percent.

It’s a slight but important change at a time when school performance data is scrutinized intensely. From test scores to graduation rates, those numbers have an outsized influence on policy decisions and on public perceptions of school success and failure.

These "critical fire" danger warnings from NOAA are really starting to wear on me. Living in drought conditions for 2 years is killing everything. I watch the radar and there is rain falling all around me, but very few drops for this area. And living in the middle of a forest makes for uneasy sleep.

It might be our turn to burn like Canada.

Minnesota lawmakers imposed strong limits on payday lenders last session, capping interest rates at 33% for loans between $350 and $1,000, and even lower for smaller loans — but a federal law allows banks based in other states to offer short-term loans with triple-digit interest rates.

A bill in the Legislature could close the loophole by opting Minnesota out of a provision in federal law that allows state-chartered, federally insured banks to offer loans at the interest rates allowed in their home state, rather than the state where the loan is issued.

The broader election policy bill approved by the House also:

• Clarifies definitions and stiffens penalties for those violating a prohibition around campaign-related deep fake material meant to interfere with elections. That would include disqualification from violators holding appointed or elective office.

• Makes it easier for college students to register to vote when living on or near a college campus.

• Updates the state’s law around language translation of voting materials in polling places with many residents who speak something other than English as a primary language.

• Sets clearer standards around exit polling done by news media outside voting locations.

• Makes clear that any request for a recount in the presidential race be done within a day of the official canvass completion. That recount would have to happen within a week.

• It would also count people who are incarcerated at their last known address before entering state or federal prison for redistricting purposes. That varies from the current system that counts those individuals in the census block where they are incarcerated.

Republicans in the Legislature, including Senate assistant minority leader Justin Eichorn, R-Grand Rapids, have introduced legislation (HF4687/SF4630) inspired by the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory.

The bill contains a mishmash of conspiratorial pseudoscience, including references to made-up phenomena like “xenobiotic electromagnetism and fields,” with just enough parroting of actual science to give it a veneer of credibility.

It requires county sheriffs to investigate citizen complaints of “polluting atmospheric activity,” and grants the governor the authority to call up the National Guard and ground any aircraft suspected of spreading pollutants.

“I graduated on June 1, 1996. That was 10,167 days ago, and it has been 10,167 days that I have not used algebra,” Farnsworth said on the Senate floor.

Laboratory results for a helium reservoir discovered in northern Minnesota suggest concentrations of the sought-after gas are the highest the industry has ever seen.

Thinking about moving to Duluth. How is healthcare there?

After months of wondering, speculating — and writing letters to ask — why Kathy Cargill was buying up so many properties on Duluth's Park Point, the city's mayor and residents may have an answer from the apparently peeved member of the billionaire Cargill family.

She told the Wall Street Journal she was planning to beautify and modernize the neighborhood, but the pushback, including a message from Mayor Roger Reinert, has made her change her mind.

"I think an expression that we all know — don't pee in your Cheerios — well, he kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I'm not going to do anything to benefit that community," Cargill said in an interview with the publication.

Consumer Affairs' 2024 edition of "The worst roads in America" features a big Minnesota brag that, for many residents, may induce a mixture of pride and a bit of astonishment.

The consumer news platform ranks Minnesota's roads as best in the nation, describing them as "the smoothest" and "safest," according to data from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.

"An especially admirable achievement since Minnesota's cold temperatures, significant snowfall and proximity to the Great Lakes create a hazardous set of conditions that can be tough on roads and drivers," writes author Kaz Weida.

Take a seat in the Break Room, our weekly round-up of labor news in Minnesota and beyond. This week: Employers rarely penalized for misclassifying workers; Minneapolis sends Uber and Lyft packing; Workers sue manure company for wage theft; Striking workers would get unemployment benefits under state bill; state legislatures have few working-class lawmakers; St. Paul educators ratify contract; Biden says U.S. Steel should stay in American hands; and Texas judge knocks down joint-employer rule.

Dozens of Minnesota counties, including Hennepin, Ramsey and much of the rural western part of the state, shrunk in population between 2020 and 2023, according to data released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

But dozens more have grown, with the highest rates seen in the outer ring Twin Cities suburbs and parts of Minnesota’s lake country.