Articles

Column: To learn from children’s stories

As I write this, it is almost the end of spring semester at the University of Minnesota Duluth. This time of year is always very busy for college students, who know that in a short time their class performances will be graded and become part of their academic record.

• Linda LeGarde Grover

Four-year-old’s evening with the ‘big girls’ continues warmth of long family tradition

Children learn a great deal by watching the people around them.

• Linda Grover

Native American Barbie professors

LINDA LEGARDE GROVER: Perhaps the Barbies were a little nervous. This was, after all, their first experience teaching in a university. Next to them were a Land-O-Lakes butter package and a tourist souvenir doll from the 1950s.

• Linda LeGarde Grover

Linda Grover column: Moccasins for Oshkii-Abinoojiiyens

Linda Grover: Make the holidays memorable with ‘Christmas Moccasins’

The story is about a boy and his grandmother who on one Christmas Eve encountered three drunken men who pushed them down and treated them roughly and disrespectfully. But "revenge" is theirs in the end.

Linda Grover: Life seasons of an Ojibwe woman

Grover will be a featured writer at Sister Nations, a free celebration of Native American women writers, which will take place at 7 p.m. Monday at the Fond du Lac Amphitheater in Cloquet (2101 14th St.).

Linda Grover: Trying to make lugalette like my grandmother’s

The first time I tried to make lugalette it was not good at all. I have experimented, and learned to keep a tender hand with the dough. I don’t believe they make a pan the size that my grandma used.

‘How much of an Indian are you?’ a personal question

Like every American Indian I know, I have been asked “How much Indian are you?” many times. I am never ready for it.

Linda Grover: Grandchildren’s visit to Tweed at UMD becomes work of art itself

On hot summer afternoons, when the air in the American Indian Studies offices at UMD gets very warm and steamy, I sometimes take a break to visit the nearby Tweed Museum of Art.

Linda Grover: Teaching Ojibwe language beneficial to Duluth students

Ojibwe language, like all Native languages, has as its foundation the truths, values and spiritual ways of our people.

Columns

The beet lovers of Onigamiising

2012 Vegetable of the Year selection for the “One Vegetable, One Community” gardening and food preservation activity is: The Beet. The beet was chosen for this honor sometime during the fall (succeeding kale, the 2011 choice), but the selection was kept under wraps until the official New Year announcement.

• 2012 Vegetable of the Year
• Grover

Dance steps to the future

Last week the annual “Steps to the Future” career fair and powwow was held in the Nettleton-Grant school gymnasium and was hosted by the students of the combined Nettleton-Grant elementary schools. The event was very well-attended by school community and friends from all over the Duluth area as well as all ages from tiny infants to Elders, and the spirit was celebratory. That was, of course, not unexpected, in light of the traditional Ojibwe values of thankfulness, humility, generosity and the awareness that we are all created with gifts and abilities that determine our place in the cosmos.

How we came to be here

This weekend UMD’s Diversity Commission will present “Land of Plenty: How Did You Come to Be Here?” on Friday, Nov. 11 and Saturday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in the Marshall Performing Arts Center. The collaborative show was written by local musician Sara Thomsen and features theater, voice and instrumental performances by artists from UMD as well as from across Minnesota and Wisconsin. Before the show, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. each night, the exhibition of UMD faculty and student artworks “Mosaic: How Did We Come to be here?” will be featured in the MPAC lobby.

• Columnist

Old traditions for a new Duluth school year

Here in Onigamiising , the place of the small portage (Duluth), we are at the time of year when we start to see signs that dagwaagin, autumn, will arrive before long. Although the calendar says that the official first day of fall is still weeks away, just a week ago one of my daughters told me that just north of here she saw a tree beginning to turn color, a small mountain ash.

• Linda Grover

Linda Grover: Searching for the good life in a fast food world

On hot summer afternoons many of us quench our thirst and cool off with a soft drink. That carbonated deliciousness goes down easily, soothing the mouth and throat; the cola, lemon-lime and root beer flavors please the palate, and our thirst is satisfied. But only temporarily: within ten minutes the ingredients in soda pop can actually make us feel thirstier than before we drank it.

• Linda Grover

Gawboy film uses painting, drawing and photos to depict Ojibwe and Finnish American life of Northeast Minnesota

The documentary is about Carl Gawboy’s life and work, his thoughts as an historian and artist, and the experiences, both historical and current, of the people of northeastern Minnesota. Viewers get to see much of his art, his studio, and how he paints his watercolors. I was especially intrigued by his description of the unpredictability of watercolor painting and the satisfaction he clearly feels in his interactions with the emerging path of the paint and the forms it takes. From now on I will look at watercolors in a new way.

Linda Grover: Tying on protection, confidence and some history

When I put an apron on, I feel a satisfactory sense of responsibility and, I admit, a certain decision-making empowerment.

Linda Grover: There is beauty, meaning in the many names of native people

Here in Onigamiising, from time to time, I am asked what is the appropriate name to call the indigenous people of North America.