Minnesota Context

Ethnic studies is always local. The course framework comes from national scholarship, but the content is grounded in Minnesota — specifically in the communities that Global Academy's students and families come from and belong to.

Research is consistent on this point: when students do not see their communities reflected in curriculum, it creates a cognitive burden that competes with learning. When students see their own histories treated with academic rigor, that burden is lifted — and deeper engagement becomes possible. Representation in curriculum is not about comfort. It is about access to learning.

Minnesota is the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. Eleven federally recognized tribal nations are located within the state's current borders. Standard curriculum treats Indigenous history as past-tense — as something that happened before the present. This course treats Dakota and Ojibwe sovereignty as a present-tense reality.

The nations exist. They govern. They resist. They maintain relationships to land, water, and community that predate and outlast every state boundary drawn around them. Students in this course study not just the history of colonization but the contemporary reality of sovereignty — including land rights, treaty obligations, and tribal governance today.

Minnesota has one of the oldest African American communities in the Upper Midwest. The Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul — a thriving, self-sufficient Black community — was deliberately destroyed to build Interstate 94 in the 1950s and 60s. More than 600 homes and 300 businesses were demolished. Thousands of residents were displaced.

Rondo is not just history. Rondo residents are alive. Their grandchildren are in Minnesota schools. The decision to route I-94 through Rondo rather than through white neighborhoods was not an accident of geography — it was a policy decision. Students study Rondo as a case study in how infrastructure decisions are also racial decisions, and how communities organize to document and reclaim what was taken.

Minnesota is home to the largest urban Somali diaspora in the United States. Beginning with refugee resettlement in the 1990s, the community has built institutions — schools, mosques, businesses, cultural organizations — that make it one of the most significant Somali communities outside East Africa.

This course treats the Somali diaspora as a subject of rigorous study: history, culture, community institutions, and the experience of navigating between multiple knowledge frameworks simultaneously. In partnership with the Somali Museum of Minnesota, units developed from this community's own archives and perspectives ensure the content reflects community voice, not outside interpretation.

Minnesota's Hmong and Karen communities have stories of displacement, resettlement, and community-building that belong in the curriculum. The Hmong community — one of the largest in the United States — arrived primarily as refugees following the Secret War in Laos and has built deep roots in the Twin Cities over five decades. Karen communities, many from Burma, have similarly built institutions and cultural life in Minnesota.

Both communities bring knowledge systems, artistic traditions, and histories of resistance that enrich students' understanding of migration, identity, and what it means to maintain culture across displacement.

The Minnesota-specific content in this course is developed in active collaboration with two institutional partners: the Somali Museum of Minnesota and the Minnesota History Center. These are not endorsements or decorative affiliations — they are working relationships that shape what gets taught and how.