Star Tribune
After five generations, a family gave back the Native American treasures in its closet
The Newells’ suitcase is part of an untold number of Native artifacts kept in attics and closets across America, their origin stories often clouded by decades-long games of intergenerational telephone.
A 1990 federal law set up a protocol for museums and other institutions to repatriate Native human remains, funerary objects and other cultural items in consultation with tribes and descendants. But that law doesn’t cover the artifacts found in your grandfather’s basement or your aunt’s cupboard.
As younger generations inherit these possessions, they’re more likely to have an impulse toward giving them back, repatriation experts say. Some are motivated by a sense of ethical responsibility, some by practical considerations, and some because they have less interest in the “cabinet of curiosities” traditions of earlier times.
“Priority No. 1 was to get it into the hands of somebody who is going to take care of it and maintain it,” said Eric Newell, 46, who noted that it had been his “great-great-great-grandfather” who had the original connection to it.
A headdress made of eagle feathers is among the heirlooms passed down through generations of the Newell family, at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre, S.D., Oct. 4, 2024. The descendants of a 19th-century federal official decided to return a prized collection of heirlooms to a descendant of a Lakota leader, Chief Spotted Tail. (TARA WESTON)
So his father started doing research on the old suitcase in the closet, starting with the man who had asked that it be passed down to the firstborn son of each generation. (It had gone to James Newell, a second son, because his older brother had been wary of keeping the heirlooms in his trailer in the mountains, where he had worked as a logger.)
As with many family stories, the exact circumstances of how Cicero Newell came into possession of the heirlooms are somewhat ambiguous, so the Newells relied on what they had been told by previous generations and what they could find online.
Minnesota’s law enforcement agencies have new guidance ensuring schools see more uniformity in how on-campus officers do their jobs.
Think of them not just as enforcers, but as mentors, too.
Training, too, is being standardized under a recently approved model policy that will help govern the work of the state’s school resource officers, or SROs.
The blueprint was crafted over the summer and fall by a group of educators, student advocates and law enforcement officials, among them Golden Valley Assistant Police Chief Rudy Perez, a former Los Angeles police officer and past president of the National Association of School Resource Officers.
“This is a great opportunity — now that I’m a Minnesotan — to move forward in a great collaborative way,” he said in a recent meeting of the state Board of Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST), which was charged by the state Legislature with coming up with the model guidelines.
Officers are expected to build positive relationships with kids and find alternatives, when possible, to placing students in the courts system. They are to be trained, too, in crisis intervention and ways to de-escalate disruptive and potentially violent behavior.
They still have the authority, however, under state law, to restrain students facedown in a prone position, if circumstances dictate. And that remains a concern among students and activist groups such as Solutions Not Suspensions, a coalition supporting anti-racist education.
Star Tribune
Find comfort in your food. Tips from a chef about how to keep holiday stress out the kitchen
Mullen, for one, loves these holiday meals. And even more, loves the stock she’ll make from the leftovers; a base for comforting soups to warm the December chill.
The same stress-saving tips that saved Thanksgiving can save December. A delicious pumpkin pie can start with a can. You don’t have to lug home an entire pumpkin and start from scratch unless that sounds like a fun and tasty thing to do.
“You don’t have to go buy a pie pumpkin and bake it and puree. Just buy canned pumpkin. It’s perfectly fine,” she said with a laugh. “Even buy a pie crust if you want. Although you can relieve a lot of stress if you’re in the kitchen, kneading dough.”
The kitchen can be a source of solace and joy, as well as comfort food. If the world feels overwhelming right now, look to the makers and bakers as they focus on the little corner of the world under their control — the work in their hands.
“Cooking is such a creative way to use your hands, which we don’t do anymore — we use our thumbs,” Mullen said, holding up her hands and miming someone scrolling through their phone. “I think there’s something about really being able to use your hands, feeling the food. Just take a couple of breaths, put your feet flat on the floor and put your gratitude into the food.”
For the first time since 1883, when Catholic nuns were summoned from France to care for elderly St. Paul residents in poverty, the Little Sisters of the Poor will no longer call the Capital City home.
While officials say they will not leave St. Paul until after they have secured a buyer for their Holy Family Residence near Irvine Park, that doesn’t mean there isn’t sadness over the loss — among the order’s seven local nuns or the families of its 60 residents.
On a recent Saturday, the residence’s parking lot and surrounding streets were filled with the cars of visitors to the Little Sisters’ annual Christmas Boutique fundraiser. Inside, hundreds meandered through rooms, corridors and communal areas to buy crafts, jewelry, glassware and the sisters’ famous French Market Bean Soup.
Bishop Kevin Kenney stopped to share his family’s appreciation for the feeling of home that the sisters provided. Kenney, a Minneapolis native, said his mother was a resident for several years of the apartments, and then the residence, before her death.
“They’re hands-on, that’s for sure,” he said. “They care about every resident who is here, and the special moment is in the process of dying. They never leave the person alone. There’s always a sister at the bedside, just encouraging the person, so that’s beautiful.”
Little Sisters of the Poor began when Jeanne Jugan, a young woman born during the French Revolution, left home to work in a local hospital. One night in the winter of 1839, she saw a blind, paralyzed old woman out in the cold and carried her to her own small apartment. Soon, she was caring for others. Then, she was joined by other pious young women. Ten years later, the group of caregivers adopted the name Little Sisters of the Poor. Jugan, who died in 1879, was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
The Little Sisters’ mission in Minnesota began when bishops Thomas Grace and John Ireland petitioned the motherhouse in France to send six Little Sisters to come to St. Paul to establish a home for the needy elderly, officials said.
In 1889, a larger home was needed to accommodate 200 people, and a second home was established in northeast Minneapolis. In 1977, the two Homes were consolidated and the current facility in the West Seventh neighborhood was built.
