Minnesota Now

Wednesday brought sunshine to parts of the region after a few days of clouds and a dose of rainfall. While it is officially fall, temperatures could soon take a turn to something more like summer.

MPR News Chief Meteorologist Paul Huttner joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to break down the week’s forecast.

To stay up to date with the latest Minnesota weather news, follow the Updraft.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

School resource officers (SROs) are set to return to two districts in Blue Earth County.

This comes about a week after Attorney General Keith Ellison released a second opinion meant to clarify when officers are allowed to use force, including certain kinds of restraints, under a new law.

A number of law enforcement agencies across the state have recently pulled officers from schools, saying they needed more clarity. And they called for a special session to revise the law.

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  'We're all clear' Ellison says latest moves should end questions over police in schools
  
  

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association sent a letter to its members agreeing to Ellison's updated guidance. Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal told MPR News reporter Tim Nelson he is following that advice.

“Every case is different, every case is unique. So as long as the deputy can articulate the need for force — once POST [Board] weighed in and MPPOA weighed in — I felt comfortable putting them back in,” he said. “I still feel, though, that it needs to be looked at by the legislature.”

The Blue Earth County Sheriff’s office oversees the deputies that work in St. Clair and Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial School District, which have about 760 and 960 students respectively. Mankato Area Public Schools is by far the largest district in Blue Earth County, and that city’s Public Safety Department also pulled its SROs over the law.

A school district spokesperson told MPR News the city is waiting for guidance from the League of Minnesota Cities, expected sometime this week.

St. Clair Superintendent Tim Collins and Lake Crystal Superintendent Mark Westerburg joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about the decision to reinstate SROs.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The country is less than five days away from a government shutdown, if members of Congress can't reach a spending agreement.

But political infighting, next year's presidential election, impeachment inquiries into the sitting president, and many more factors are complicating talks.

Former Republican Congressman for Minnesota Vin Weber has dealt with similar circumstances in Washington. Weber joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to share his thoughts.

FX’s hit show “Reservation Dogs” is coming to a close this week but in its three seasons it has been a breakthrough for Native representation in mainstream media.

That’s thanks, in part, to creatives who are members of Indigenous communities in Minnesota. Dallas Goldtooth, Migizi Pensoneau and Bobby Wilson, who are actors, writers and producers on the show, all hail from Dakota and Ojibwe communities in Minnesota, urban and rural. They’re also all close friends and collaborators who have performed together for more than decade in the comedy group The 1491s.

They spoke to Minnesota Now host Cathy Wurzer.

Fans can see Wilson on Oct. 2 at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, where he will host an artist talk at 6 p.m. in the Great Hall.

For the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or read the transcript below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Note: This interview took place during the writer’s strike, so the three did not talk about the show specifically.

Migizi Pensoneau: I think it’s just humor. Indian humor is just people’s humor. Bobby and I were just talking about this earlier today — because Indian country is so wide and vast, our experiences growing up in Minnesota are very different than the experiences we have written in “Reservation Dogs.”

A part of that though, the reason why there is a connection all across Indian country is really we all have a similar relationship to white America … we have a lot of shared experiences with colonization in this country.

So a lot of that is kind of, sardonic, Black humor, laughing in the face of genocide — that whole thing.

Bobby Wilson: I shouldn't call it always in opposition to, but it is often critical of the interactions with non-Indigenous people, as Migizi said, in colonization and things around that.

Dallas Goldtooth: I claim that I grew up both on the south side of Minneapolis during the summers with my dad and Migizi and everything, but in the school year, I lived down in southwest Minnesota. A lot of our comedy is heavily influenced by how we interact with the greater settler society.

I grew up around farm kids. It was a bunch of Indians surrounded by a bunch of white farm kids in southwest Minnesota and the constant interaction with “Minnesota Nice” and how uncomfortable white folks get in Minnesota about certain issues is hilarious to me.

I think that it has influenced me and has encouraged me to always be willing to push the buttons because I imagine what would make a white Lutheran in central Minnesota uncomfortable and let's go for that.

Dallas Goldtooth: Having grown up in Minnesota, I feel like there’s a certain expectation about what can be talked about in the public space and what shouldn't be talked about. We as Native people in Minnesota are on the fringes as it is. Whether we're invisible or we're the tourist icons that people like to go visit up north for their summer cottages, either way, we're not seen as a part of that mainstream and so I feel like I have greater liberties to critique, make fun or tease the culture that I'm surrounded by.

Bobby Wilson: This is why I love the creative consortium that the three of us have — additionally with some of our other friends who aren't from Minnesota — is the differences in the spaces we grew up in. For me, I grew up around the Twin Cities, bounced around a lot of shelters, lived in a lot of people's basements on some air mattresses, you know.

My interactions with white settler society across the Twin Cities has predominantly been systemic. I was sentenced to a boy's home for a couple of years and I had the privilege of writing about it for “Reservation Dogs” season two. That Minnesota nice thing is always a — I hate it. I hate it so very much because I always associate it with a state trooper beating my face in and then kind of blaming me for it and being like, well, you know, “I'm not the bad guy here.”

And simultaneously also just as an artist working within a lot of the art spaces around the Twin Cities, Juxtaposition Arts, COMPAS arts, over most of my youth — it really influenced sort of the way that I can interact with it.

Dallas Goldtooth: I never realized this, but between the three of us we have a commonality of having lived in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities area and we have family who lives there. I predominantly grew up in southwest Minnesota, Migizi is northern Minnesota, Bobby is in the Twin Cities. We all pull from many different references, right? So it's I think that's the advantage of all of us. Like we really do represent Minnesota. You guys are welcome. You're welcome, Minnesota.

Migizi Pensoneau: We've done it together as a group and that's one of the interesting things. So we have the two that aren't from Minnesota in our group, they are from Oklahoma … but we've managed to stick together as friends and so far … we'll see what happens, talk to us in a couple of years.

But we've managed to continue to work together in a way that's incredibly positive. And a lot of that, especially as we're getting into like our “Reservation Dogs” stuff these last few years, a lot of this was led by our friend Sterlin Harjo.

We did it all the time with like, you know, prayers in the morning, prayers before we started songs, like we did everything in the ways that we were sort of taught and some of those things that sort of bring us together as Indian people are some of these traditions, like walking forward in the work that we do in a thoughtful and spiritual way.

I don't know that anybody else is doing the same thing, at least to that sort of level. What I'm saying is that we are spiritually better than everybody else. And we've broken that barrier pretty hard. But no, I mean, we’ve tried to maintain spiritual and cultural integrity in everything that we do.

We joke around all the time, but we are absolutely serious about making sure that the work that we put out in the world is thoughtful and is not flippant, even though, you know, the stuff we say off the cuff definitely is. But the things that we deal with, both in our sketches and in the work that we do on “Reservation Dogs,” is very heavy and there are people that are, you know, some of the subject matter is really intense and we don't go into that lightly.

So having that sort of cultural and spiritual grounding to make sure that carries across through all of what we do, I don't know anybody else that does that … we’ve maintained our integrity in the work that we do.

Dallas Goldtooth: Yes, I do. I think that maybe one other aspect is that through the process of writing “Reservation Dogs” and also working on other projects now, we've broken that barrier of, like, we've been told that one, in many ways, whether it's direct or indirect, that our stories as Native people don't matter.

I think that we as writers are breaking that barrier, saying, no, Native stories told by Native people, acted by Native actors and actresses not only have impact for us as community, but are meaningful to everybody. People really can enjoy them and that they are worthy of investment and worthy of support.

Growing up in a dominant culture, we're often taught that, hey, you have to change your ways to fit to the mold that is the mainstream, that is colonization. What we're trying to do is say, I was gonna use a four-letter word, a sacred four-letter word, and I'm not gonna say it, but F that, you know, we are gonna be doing it on our own, in our own terms. And has maybe even, it has a greater impact than anything that could else be said.

Bobby Wilson: I've heard a lot of really fantastic positive reception, all the stuff that we've been doing … I think it is really quality work. And putting it on like a larger platform, really an international platform. I mean, I've got a homie in Germany that texted me that he was watching “Reservation Dogs” with his family and I was like, God dang, you know? Like, that's wild, it's really fantastic.

I also love hearing folks who haven't watched the show at all and just tell me that, you know, it's on the list. I get that a lot. ‘Ah, I heard really good things about that.’ So people are hearing good things.

The most important thing for me is if we're all satisfied with the work. I think probably every artist feels that way, though. People keep telling us it's really great and I love that, I love to hear it. But, you know, we're always trying to hold ourselves to as high a standard as possible.

Migizi Pensoneau: Here's what I know, here's how I know that I've probably made it enough, is that my own community up in Red Lake hasn't asked me to come be a part of anything yet. And I think if they ever ask me to come be a part of everything and to like come and speak to the youth up there, I will know then that I've peaked and I'm past my prime, that I'm obsolete. Your own community should not be asking you to do anything. Right now I'm hated enough and that's fine.

Bobby Wilson: I mean, for me, I was worried about it before it even started, you know? I hate to break the momentum but it took like 150 damn years since the invention of the camera to give Indians a TV show.

I'm always worried about it but I think we have to be. There's still stuff coming out that's written by non-Native people, that's acted by non-Native people, that's supposedly about us. There's always a space for it and for us to go in there and to do our own work together and also collaborate with all the other amazing, phenomenal Indigenous talent. There’s some really amazing people working on stuff.

Dallas Goldtooth: No matter what, we're still part of a colonial project. We gotta remain vigilant at all times. Minnesota may change the name of Sibley Park, but they're still going to do some racist stuff. And so we're always going to be on the edge.

I have a worry that the studios are gonna say “hey, we don't have enough money as much as we did before because we got to pay you guys a living wage now,” and oftentimes it's those on the margins, right, the Indigenous folks, Black folks, other communities of color who end up getting the cut first. So that's the worry I got. But I believe that we've proven that we can tell good stories that people are invested in and I have a lot of faith in them.

The U.S. Congress has less than five days to reaching a spending deal and avert a government shutdown. We talk to a former Republican Minnesota Congressman who experienced similar standoffs.

We pass the mic to two people who have worked for years to increase policymakers’ understanding of homelessness in Minnesota ahead of a statewide survey kicking off next month.

Retiring MPR News editor Mike Mulcahy shares what’s changed on Minnesota’s political beat over his long career.

We meet three comedians behind the sketch troupe The 1491s who write and act for the hit TV Show, “Reservation Dogs”.

While half of the homeless population in Minnesota is under the age of 24, the fastest growing population of homeless are seniors.

Legislators keep up with these numbers and demographics to make policies and programs to support the health of homeless people, to get them housed, and to prevent people from losing housing in the first place.

That is where the Minnesota Homeless Study comes in. Every three years in October, volunteers across the state survey 10,000 people without homes over 24 hours.

Michelle Decker Gerrard leads this huge endeavor as a senior research manager at Wilder Foundation with the help of volunteers like Dave Schultz, who dedicated his life before retirement to shaping the social system in Minnesota for unhoused people. He worked with the Minnesota Department of Human Services and taught about homelessness at Metropolitan State University.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer passed the mic to Decker Gerrard and Schultz for a deep dive on the study, which is scheduled to happen Oct. 26 for the first time since 2018 after being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Correction (Sept. 26, 2023): An earlier version of this story misspelled Dave Schultz’s name.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

MPR News Senior Politics Editor Mike Mulcahy is retiring after nearly four decades covering news and politics in Minnesota for radio and TV.

The longtime host of “Politics Friday” will step down Sept. 29 after 38 years with MPR News.

He joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer for a walk down memory lane in the studio, one last time.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

The University of Minnesota plans to email 2 million former students, applicants, staff and more people whose information may have been leaked in a data breach it discovered in July of this year. A hacker claims to have accessed more than seven million Social Security numbers, according to the tech news site The Cyber Express.

Cybersecurity specialist Ian Coldwater joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to talk about what steps those whose information may have been leaked can take to protect against identity theft.

For the full conversation, click play on the audio player above or read the transcript below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Well, it could happen in any number of ways. The hacker in this case said that they accessed the database of student records from the time that the U of M started digitizing them in 1989. And there’s various ways that a hacker could get into a database like this, but basically, I think from the back end, it happens because there weren’t sufficient security measures to keep the hackers out.

You know, it’s hard to say, I don’t have the statistics on that. But, it has been happening a lot. An exhibit got put in recently in a lawsuit, regarding the MOVEit vulnerability that listed over 900 schools and organizations that were affected by this particular software. This included a list of schools in Minnesota, as well as Harvard, Stanford and various organizations and schools that we’ve all heard of.

So it does happen, it’s been happening a lot this year, because there have been a couple of particularly high-profile vulnerabilities that have been affecting schools a lot.

It’s very difficult to entirely prevent the possibility of being hacked, because there’s just so many things that can go wrong. But some things that institutions can do in situations like this to try to prevent the scale of the breach from becoming bigger is limit who can access sensitive information and to segregate information on networks.

This way, if somebody does get into the network, they can’t see absolutely everything and also encrypt the data on those databases and on those networks.

It’s a lot of people, I mean, honestly, myself included. Some of the risks that people are facing in a breach like this include identity theft, because there’s a lot of personal identifiable information that can come out in a breach like this.

Some things that people can do to try to protect themselves in this situation can be found on identitytheft.gov. People need to keep an eye out for their financial information, for their internet accounts, stuff like that.

People’s threat models can kind of vary depending on their personal situation. For example, for people who have tried to escape from domestic abuse, having their personal information out there might carry a different kind of threat.

Know what kind of risks you are facing personally. And if you’re facing that kind of threat, maybe take different kinds of safety measures. But for most folks, it’s mostly an identity and potentially fraud risk.

Here’s the thing — a lot of people are not going to get an email from this breach because the only people who are getting emails about it are people who the U of M has on file already. So I wouldn’t assume necessarily that if you don’t see an email from this, that you haven’t been affected if you are on this list of people.

Such as people who have applied as a student, former students, former employees, contractors, people who have volunteered anyone who’s been affiliated or involved with the U.

If you are one of those people, I would assume that you have been affected, whether or not you receive that email. You don’t have to wait for the email in order to start taking measures to protect yourself, you can start doing that now.

To protect against identity theft, there’s a really good practical list of steps listed on identitytheft.gov that people can check. For protecting your internet accounts, one thing you can do is change your passwords. Although it doesn’t really say that passwords have been breached here, as far as I know.

But a couple of good things to do generally to protect your internet accounts are to not reuse passwords. Don’t use the same passwords on different accounts and use a password manager such as 1Password or Bitdefender.

Another thing that you can do that’s very useful is use multifactor authentication so that if somebody gets into your accounts, if they try to log into your account, then it has to make you prove that you’re you in order to log in.

And so if a hacker gets in, and then needs to have that extra step, it prevents them from being able to get in further.

It’s prospective students, students, employees and then it says others — individuals with unpaid university appointments, those who performed work for the university, those who received taxable payments from the university and university volunteers or spouses or partners of certain university administrators.

If you’re any of those people, expect that it’s possible that you might have been affected by this.

It’s hard to say because there are, frankly, just so many data breaches. It does happen. I don’t know if it happens universally, but as more data breaches happen it would not shock me if you started seeing more of that kind of thing happen.

You had asked a second ago if it is just a matter of identity theft, rather than financial fraud and, well, it’s a little hard to say because identity theft can lead to financial fraud. Like if somebody has enough of your identity information to be able to open up an account on your behalf with your name and info, that can be a financial issue too.

I would just say keep an eye out on your financial accounts, on your credit reports and if anything funny happens, if there are any transactions you didn’t make accounts, logins that weren’t you — don’t wait, jump on that, report it, try to shut it down because you want to nip it in the bud while you can.

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We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Ballet is growing in popularity. And it’s not just for the young or especially limber anymore. Interest is especially soaring among older adults.

Since 2017, the Royal Academy of Dance, in London, has certified over one thousand instructors to teach ballet to adults fifty-five and older. That’s according to a recent New York Times article.

MPR News host Cathy Wurzer talked with Jill Lile about the benefits of ballet for older folks. Lile teaches ballet at Macalester College and the St. Paul Ballet — and recently started a program for folks 55 and older: “Boomer Ballet.”

The University of Minnesota is reaching out to millions of former students and workers after a massive data breach exposed social security numbers and other personal information. Here’s what we know about the breach and how to protect yourself.

About 1,000 Ukrainian refugees have settled in Minnesota since the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022. We'll talk with one Ukrainian refugee eagerly awaiting the arrival of his family members.

Plus, September is sickle cell awareness month, but some doctors still don't take the disease seriously. More on that.

And we're talking ballet. It's growing in popularity. And it’s not just for the young or especially limber anymore. We'll learn more about the benefits.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.