Star Tribune
From medicine garden to language classes, Native education is growing in Rochester schools
ROCHESTER – Coen Wagner was a digging machine outside Dakota Middle School last Friday. And it was welcomed.
The 8-year-old helped plant in the school’s medicine garden last fall — crops that included tobacco, sage, wild strawberry, skunk cabbage and more, all of which the Dakota people used long before white settlers took over the land. Coen was just as excited to dig through the garden last week, adding even more plants this time around.
“It’s just really interesting to know more about stuff like powwows and Native Americans,” said Coen, a Navajo student at Rochester Public Schools.
Native students in Rochester are getting more opportunities to learn about and share their cultures thanks to a renewed district initiative. Over the past few years, district officials have created more Native events, more supports for Native students and more Native lessons to share throughout the district.
There’s the medicine garden, which gives students a sense of history and ecology all in one. There’s ongoing Native events, from “decolonize the diet” cooking courses to more family nights to learn about each Native culture in the district. And Rochester’s Native education staffers have even more planned for next school year.
“There’s representation and visibility not just for students but for Rochester as a whole,” said Amelia Cordell, the district’s Native education coordinator. “It definitely has a long way to go, but it’s starting, which is exciting.”
Native education programs have been in public schools throughout Minnesota since the 1970s, but those programs often aren’t very big. When Native educator Tucker Quetone came to Rochester in the 1990s, the district had a small grant to run education programming.
“We have kids that represent almost 50 different tribes just in Rochester,” Quetone said. “It was important to form our own community and try to support each other wherever we come from.”
The program ebbed over the years, but it took a concerted effort among residents in the district to restart Native education opportunities about a decade ago. Native communities across the state have since boosted funding for more Native curriculum, including a recent $5 million campaign from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community.
Rochester schools got serious about Native education when they hired Cordell in 2022, while Quetone works as a part-time education liaison. Since then, they’ve massively expanded the program.
Native students from across the district met together a few times over the last school year. Cordell is planning a Native student council starting this fall to deepen those ties. More medicine gardens are getting set up at other schools in Rochester. This fall, Century High School will pilot a Dakota culture and language course that will likely become a Dakota language program within the next few years.
It’s good news for parents like Coen’s mom, Corinna Sabaque, who routinely takes Coen to powwows across the state so he can showcase his grass-dancing skills.
He brought his powwow regalia — the clothes he wears while dancing — to class last fall to show his friends the traditional dances he does. While Coen is learning how to dance the Dakota way, Sabaque said she was happy her son could still connect with his Native roots even if they were far from other Navajo families where she grew up in New Mexico.
“We still have that sense of community by being connected to other Native families,” she said.
Laura Fisher has two students in Rochester schools (a third just graduated high school). Fisher’s Cherokee grandmother often hid her Native culture, though she made sure to pass down lessons to Fisher. Fisher’s children now have more opportunities to learn not only about Dakota traditions but their own heritage.
“It’s something that makes them proud,” Fisher said. “These programs go across nations.”
Star Tribune
Man sentenced to more than 30 years in murder of fellow resident at West St. Paul group home
A 43-year-old man was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison Friday for stabbing to death a fellow resident at a state-operated mental health group home in West St. Paul.
John C. Adams II was found guilty in September in Dakota County District Court of intentional second-degree murder in the death of David Rahn, 68, in 2020. Adams will get credit for 1,777 days already served on his 367-month sentence, and was ordered to pay $2,088 in restitution.
According to the criminal complaint, Adams stabbed Rahn dozens of times in the early morning of Feb. 17, 2020, at the home in the 1500 block of Christensen Avenue. After a staff member heard Rahn scream for help and called 911, police found Rahn unresponsive on the floor of his bedroom with stab wounds to his face, neck and back. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and his death was ruled a homicide.
Adams at first claimed self-defense and later said Rahn had stabbed himself. But the medical examiner found evidence that the victim had tried to fend off the attack. Police found a bloody kitchen knife and a pair of blood-soaked gloves inside bags left at a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses across the street.
Adams was convicted of third-degree assault in 2001 in Hennepin County for smashing a glass in a woman’s face in downtown Minneapolis. The court found him to be “a clear danger to the safety of others” and mentally incompetent to stand trial. His sentence was set aside in exchange for him being put under Security Hospital supervision for at least three years.
In October 2018, Adams was granted provisional discharge from the Security Hospital to the home on Christensen Avenue, but that discharge was revoked less than nine months later for violations of the discharge conditions.
The home of one of three group home operated by the state Department of Human Services for people civilly committed for a mental illness and then discharged from a DHS treatment facility.
Staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this story.
Health insurer UCare has reached an agreement with HealthPartners clinics, which will allow thousands of patients to continue seeing the same doctors without switching health plans next year.
The two companies announced the agreement Friday evening. The terms are effective immediately.
“As mission-driven organizations, UCare and HealthPartners share a commitment to improving health outcomes for our community, and the organizations’ ongoing collaboration reflects that shared goal,” a joint statement said.
The clinics had been out of network for several years, but UCare had waived rules that would have blocked patients from making appointments. UCare said it would start enforcing the network rules Jan. 1.
Star Tribune
Man charged in Brooklyn Park homicide had connection to 2022 Mall of America fatal shooting
A 19-year-old Coon Rapids man, who played a role in a 2022 fatal shooting at the Mall of America, is facing murder charges in connection with an apparent targeted shooting earlier this month in Brooklyn Park.
Citing witnesses, surveillance footage and cell phone data, prosecutors say that Marquan D. Tucker waited in a parking lot Dec. 7 before opening fire on two people when they exited a business in the 8000 block of Brooklyn Boulevard.
The two victims returned fire, though one was wounded and the other, Ramone R. Blue, 23, of Stewartville, Minn., was killed. The complaint, filed Friday, offers no motive for the shooting.
The shooting happened about seven months after Tucker was discharged from court monitoring related to the 2022 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Johntae Hudson in a department store at the Mall of America, according to court records.
Tucker was charged with third-degree riot in the case and was adjudicated as delinquent, or found guilty, court records said. He was one of three teens who confronted or chased Hudson into the store where the shooting happened. The two teens who carried guns received long prison sentences.
Tucker was being held Friday at the Hennepin County jail. It wasn’t clear if he yet had an attorney.
According to the criminal complaint:
Surveillance video shows a black BMW pull into the parking lot in Brooklyn Park around 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. As the two victims exit a business, a man leaves the passenger seat of the BMW, hides behind another car and fires about 16 shots. The gunman then flees in the BMW.
