Star Tribune
Hundreds of Minnesotans march for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives
As Ana Negrete read the names of Indigenous relatives missing and murdered in Minnesota, a deep silence fell over a room dressed in vibrant red at the East Phillips Community Center.
Due to gaps in data and reporting the list was not comprehensive, Negrete said Wednesday at a memorial and march meant to honor those lost. As she neared the end of the long list, audience members, overcome by emotion in the overflowing gym, began to shout out names of their own, the air filling with ceremonial smoke and loss.
“There’s so many.” Negrete said. “Today we remember you. Today we call out your name. today my hands have been removed from my mouth … it is my responsibility to speak for those who cannot. I will not stay still and do nothing.”
Hundreds of families, organizers and supporters of efforts to end an epidemic of murdered and missing people in the Indigenous community gathered this Feb. 14, known as a day of remembrance for those lost.
Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited people disproportionately face violence in Minnesota. Though Indigenous people make up just 1% of the state’s population, 9% of all murdered girls and women from 2010-2019 were American Indian, according to a 2019 report from the Minnesota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Task Force.
Senator Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, a Standing Rock Lakota descendant, sponsored legislation to address the violence faced by Indigenous community members. That led to the establishment of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office in 2021, the first of its kind in the U.S.
“We’re meeting to address this historic pandemic of violence, of missing and murdered relatives across this nation and across any nation that was colonized by non-Indigenous people,” Kunesh said.
Kunesh announced that the office has a special license plate, available Wednesday through the Department of Vehicle Services, bearing a red handprint and ribbon skirt. Proceeds from the plates will go toward the Gaagige-Mikwendaagoziwag fund, which translates to “they will be remembered forever” in Ojibwe. Funds collected will support local investigations and community efforts to find the missing and murdered.
Supporters packed the streets of the Little Earth neighborhood in Minneapolis, donned in their own ribbon skirts and red-t-shirts, with matching scarlet palms painted over their mouths. People held signs reading ‘Not One More,’ and ‘no more stolen relatives’ with photos of their loved ones. Other carried small empty red dresses for girls no longer with their families.
Busloads of children from local schools marched as well, also dressed in red, some tossing a football.
Binesikwe Means attended the event along with students she works with at Migizi, an educational support group for Indigenous students. The day hit close to home for Means as well: in 2015, her aunt Sheila St. Clair went missing in Duluth. St. Clair has not been seen since, Means said as she marched.
“I believe walks like this bring a sense of peace our family doesn’t get otherwise,” Means said. “Because there’s been no justice and no end to how our family has suffered the loss of our aunt.”
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
