Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month. Check out the events, businesses, and restaurants where you can celebrate, support and remember the histories of those indigenous to this country.

Current Events & Exhibits

"Our Home: Native Minnesota" Exhibit

Minnesota Historical Center

Explore the exhibit and learn about Minnesota's Native communities, including stories of survival, resistance, and resilience that offer hope for the future. Visitors can enjoy acoustic music with Mitch Walking Elk, hoop dance performances by the Sampson Brothers, demonstrations of birch-bark biting artwork with Denise Lajimodiere, and traditional games like kansu kutepi (dice game), tasiha (ring and pin) and cankawacipi (spinning tops) with Jeremy Red Eagle.

Opening Weekend activities for Our Home: Native Minnesota is supported by major sponsor, U.S. Bank, and associate sponsors 3M and Ecolab.

Learn More

Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance

Starting November 19, 2020
All My Relations Gallery

Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance will showcase contemporary expressions of indigenous resistance in response to the colonial foundations of the MMIW epidemic. This exhibit is intended to give voice to those most affected by this structural violence, which is why the majority of the work will be created by indigenous womxn, trans, two-spirit, and gender non-conforming artists. These artists have the unique and powerful ability to share personal narrative as a means to create counter dialogues in response to the colonial roots of this crisis. The work in this exhibit will have the capacity to build upon the ways in which we talk about the MMIW epidemic, while empowering our communities and honoring the long-standing tradition of indigenous resistance.

Learn More

Food & Drink

Sioux Chef

Founded by Sean Sherman, CEO Chef, Sioux Chef is an indigenous kitchen with a restaurant coming soon! They are a team currently made up of Anishinaabe, Mdewakanton Dakota, Navajo, Northern Cheyenne, Oglala Lakota and Wahpeton-Sisseton Dakota. Their commitment to revitalizing Native American cuisine goes hand-in-hand with re-identifying North American cuisine and reclaiming an important culinary culture long buried and often inaccessible.

*Currently closed for catering and are instead putting efforts towards making and donating healthy, Indigenous meals to residents currently affected by the uprisings following the killing of George Floyd. To help volunteer, please sign up here.

Gatherings Café

Gatherings Café serves fresh, locally grown foods that are Indigenous and prepared in healthy ways. In the heart of the urban Native American community, their goal is to educate the greater community through ancestral knowledge and to promote decolonized diets to improve the health of the Native population that has been severely impacted by colonization and the resulting historical trauma. Menu hours are from 8:00am-3:00pm.

Located at: 1530 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis in the Minneapolis American Indian Center

*Currently closed to the public due to COVID-19 and focusing on Feeding Our Elders, an initiative that provides healthy lunches five days a week for the Indigenous elders in the Twin Cities Area. See how you can help. 

Pow Wow Grounds

Pow Wow Grounds, located next to All My Relations Gallery, offers specialty coffee drinks, baked goods, smoothies, sandwiches and signature wild rice products. 

Located at: 1414 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis 

*Currently Open

Native Food Perspectives

Native Food Perspectives utilizes traditional and seasonal flavors and recipes to prepare dishes with fresh ingredients and an emphasis on nutrition.

Retail, Arts & Galleries

Birchbark Books

Good books, Native arts, jewelry, and community events. Owned by author Louise Erdrich, Birchbark Books is operated by a spirited collection of people who believe in the power of good writing, the beauty of handmade art, the strength of Native culture, and the importance of small and intimate bookstores.

Located at: 2115 W 21st St, Minneapolis

*Currently only accepting online and phone sales.

Turtle Theater Collective

A new collective of professional Twin Cities-based theater artists, the Turtle Theater Collective is committed to producing high-quality, contemporary work that explores Native experiences and subverts expectations about how and when Native artists can create theater. In addition to producing Indigenous plays, they center Native bodies and voices by situating them within the broader theatrical canon, providing opportunities for Native artists to grow and play.

Two Rivers Gallery

Two Rivers Gallery is an active space for the community to build relationships and to collaborate strengthening Native art and artistic voices within the Twin Cities. Their mission is to expose local emerging Native artists by providing a space to exhibit work, nurture creativity and provide professional development. Open Monday-Thursday, 10:00am-4:00pm.

Located at: 1530 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis in the Minneapolis American Indian Center

*Gallery is currently open. Please wear a mask and practice social distancing rules.

Woodland Indian Crafts

Browse a unique selection of handmade gifts by local artists at Woodland Indian Crafts. Find beadwork of all types, jewelry, native music and DVD movies, beading supplies, t-shirts, greeting cards and more.

Located at: 1530 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis in the Minneapolis American Indian Center

*Currently Open

Northland Visions: Native American Art and Fine Gifts

What began as Northland Native American Products has grown from a home-based, mail-order business into a gallery and retail space where one can find treasures of the land. Explore original items made by Native peoples from the Woodland and Plains tribes of the upper Midwest in what is now Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Canada and other northern states stretching from Montana to the east coast. Find dream catchers, earthen candles, books, sculptures, dance sticks, drums and blankets among a wide array of other products. 

Located at: 861 E Hennepin Ave #130, Minneapolis

*Currently Open

All My Relations Gallery

All My Relations Arts honors and strengthens relationships between contemporary American Indian artists and the living influence of preceding generations, between artists and audiences of all ethnic backgrounds, and between art and the vitality of the Minneapolis American Indian Cultural Corridor.

Located at: 1414 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis

Centers, Tours & Resources

American Indian Cultural Corridor

The only urban Native American corridor in the country, the American Indian Cultural Corridor is located along Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, which exists in the traditional homelands of the Dakota people. This is an area that is welcoming the whole region to share in American Indian culture and commerce, as well as the other anchor businesses that are located in the Corridor, many of which are listed above and below.

Minneapolis American Indian Center

Home to the Two Rivers Gallery, Gatherings Café and Woodland Indian Crafts, the Minneapolis American Indian Center is one of the first urban American Indian Centers in the country, providing services otherwise often unavailable for urban American Indians. The Minneapolis American Indian Center was initially formed by community members and continues its roots today with majority American Indian leadership and staffing.

Located at: 1530 E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis

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