Minnesota Unraveled: Pulling on the Threads of Minnesota History
Minnesota history is a rich tapestry, weaving together the diverse experiences, cultures, and events that tell the story of our state. It’s a story that affects—and includes—all of us. Minnesota Unraveled, a podcast by the Minnesota Historical Society, pulls on the threads of the past to reveal new perspectives and expand our knowledge of the history we share. Host Dr. Chantel Rodriguez and her guests invite listeners to think like historians and recognize that learning about other people’s lives in the past can be a powerful way to reveal our place in the present. Join us on a journey across...
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Beaver Tales: From Minnesota’s Ice Age to Today
At the Bell Museum of Natural History in Saint Paul, the lives of beavers across 2 million years are captured in two scenes. One is set in the Ice Age and showcases a giant beaver, an animal the size of a small black bear. The other is set in the early 1900s at Lake Itasca and captures the more familiar modern beaver chomping on wood and building a dam. Together, these scenes spark big questions: Why have beavers been important to Minnesota’s history since the Ice Age? How have they shaped the landscape and human activity? And how did we get from the giant beaver to the beaver we know today? To explore these questions, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez draws on multiple ways of knowing. Fossils, archival records, ecological science, and Indigenous storytelling reveal a complex narrative of megafauna, community relationships, environmental change, and global trade. Through conversations with paleontologist Nicole Dzenowski, environmental historian Hayden Nelson, and traditional ecological knowledge expert Michael Waasegiizhig Price, this episode examines not just what happened, but how we come to understand it.
We Live On: Telling Queer History and the Transformation of Silence
Silence was once a form of survival for many in the LGBTQIA+ community. But in Minnesota, a group called Telling Queer History set out to change that, by creating spaces where people across generations could share their stories openly, often for the first time. So how did Telling Queer History transform silence into language and action? What made those spaces feel safe, welcoming, and worth the risk of vulnerability? And why is intergenerational storytelling vital to LGBTQIA+ history? In this episode, host Chantel Rodríguez and her guests — TQH founder RJ Lawrence, and members Harry Waters, Jr., José Maria Herrera Tamayo, and Jayce Wepplo — dig into those questions, and explore how storytelling is an act of making history.
The Power of a Waterfall: A History of Owámniyomni and Fuji-Ya Restaurant
Between 1880 and 1930, St. Anthony Falls helped establish Minneapolis as the flour milling capital of the world. But the story of the falls is about more than the economy and hydropower. People from many backgrounds have also been drawn to the falls for its cultural and spiritual power. To the Dakota people, it is known as Owámniyomni, a place of spirit, story, and connection. To Reiko Weston, founder of Fuji-Ya Restaurant, it became a way to bridge cultural divides between Japan and Minnesota. In this episode of Minnesota Unraveled, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests–Deacon DeBoer, Carol Weston Hanson, and Shelley Buck–pull on the threads of two seemingly unrelated stories that are, in fact, deeply woven together in the rich tapestry of St. Anthony Falls’ history as a site of cultural, spiritual, and economic power.
She is Here Now: Eliza Winston and Slavery in Minnesota
In the summer of 1860, Eliza Winston fought for her freedom in a Minneapolis courthouse. Eliza made history as the first enslaved person to do so in the state of Minnesota. But Eliza herself is noticeably absent from the story. She left behind almost no paper trail. In this episode of Minnesota Unraveled, host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests search for answers–who was Eliza Winston? Why was she in Minnesota, and what did her fight for freedom look like? Through the powerful words of poet Mary Moore Easter, the historical research of Dr. Christopher Lehman, and the curiosity of Jason Benjamin’s fourth grade class, Eliza is here now, finally taking center stage in her own story.