Special thanks to our student leaders, Thai Jackson, Shelby Pomani, Wakan Austin, Kaylee Protuck, Dakota Austin, Kaliah Conie, Kayara Kegg, and Monica Cadotte, for their hard work planning the week's celebration events and thanks to our families for joining us to support our community.

Read the insightful comments of Edison Junior Wakan Austin in the Star Tribune article covering American Indian Awareness Week at Minneapolis schools.

Sarah Vinueza, parent of Edison Junior Nico Vinueza, was kind enough to share some stories and photos from their family history.

Reverend Henry Whipple St Clair (1870 -1958) Dakota Sioux

Henry was born on a small Indian Reservation near Faribault. His mother Esther (her Dakota name was Red Bird) gave birth to him alone on a stand 10 feet high, where she kept watch over the corn field from pigeons while the others in the community had gone ricing. He become a Episcopal Minister. During the Spanish flu pandemic he Ministered to four churches in South Dakota. He had 13 children.

This is Nico's 3rd Great Grandfather.

Rueben St Clair (1904-1985) - Dakota Sioux

Rueben was a code talker during WW2 and a talented Artist. In 2009 our family was invited by the Minnesota History Center to honor him and another Dakota man in a ceremony to honor their service as code talkers during WW2.

Our Great Uncle. I still remember him from when I was a little girl. A photo from the Star Tribune article in 2009 & one of his paintings. That hung for many years in a building in Redwood Falls, MN

John Bluestone

December 26, 1862: thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in US history.

John was on the original list of 322, before the President shorten the list.

John Bluestone in the middle surrounded by his Grandchildren. My Great Grandfather Tom Bluestone is 3rd from the right on the bottom, who would not have been born had his Grandfather been hung. We are also the descendants of one of the 38 hung that day.

Here is an article on making canoes. One of many things he would go on to do.

It is of my Great Uncle Rueban, My grandmother in regalia, my childhood regalia, my daughter's shawl, & other items.

Nico's great grandmother Dottie Whipple. A counselor and a nurse who worked in the twin cities Native community. She taught on historical traumas, volunteer hearse driver to bring those who passed away back to their reservations, & so much more.