Minnesota Unraveled: Pulling on the Threads of Minnesota History

Silence was once a form of survival for many in the LGBTQIA+ community. But in Minnesota, a group called Telling Queer History set out to change that, by creating spaces where people across generations could share their stories openly, often for the first time.

So how did Telling Queer History transform silence into language and action? What made those spaces feel safe, welcoming, and worth the risk of vulnerability? And why is intergenerational storytelling vital to LGBTQIA+ history?

In this episode, host Chantel Rodríguez and her guests – TQH founder RJ Lawrence, and members Harry Waters, Jr., José Maria Herrera Tamayo, and Jayce Wepplo – dig into those questions, and explore how storytelling is an act of making history.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠: https://mnhs.info/podcastsurvey

Between 1880 and 1930, St. Anthony Falls helped establish Minneapolis as the flour milling capital of the world. But the story of the falls is about more than the economy and hydropower. People from many backgrounds have also been drawn to the falls for its cultural and spiritual power. To the Dakota people, it is known as Owámniyomni, a place of spirit, story, and connection. To Reiko Weston, founder of Fuji Ya Restaurant, it became a way to bridge cultural divides between Japan and Minnesota.

In this episode of Minnesota Unraveled, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests–Deacon DeBoer, Carol Weston Hanson, and Shelley Buck–pull on the threads of two seemingly unrelated stories that are, in fact, deeply woven together in the rich tapestry of St. Anthony Falls’ history as a site of cultural, spiritual, and economic power.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey. https://mnhs.info/podcastsurvey

In the summer of 1860, Eliza Winston fought for her freedom in a Minneapolis courthouse. Eliza made history as the first enslaved person to do so in the state of Minnesota. But Eliza herself is noticeably absent from the story. She left behind almost no paper trail. In this episode of Minnesota Unraveled, host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests search for answers–who was Eliza Winston? Why was she in Minnesota, and what did her fight for freedom look like? Through the powerful words of poet Mary Moore Easter, the historical research of Dr. Christopher Lehman, and the curiosity of Jason Benjamin’s fourth grade class, Eliza is here now, finally taking center stage in her own story.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

Stargazing is a timeless, shared activity that connects us across cultures and generations. But have you ever considered that when you look up at the night sky, you’re actually looking at history? Because light takes time to travel across the vastness of space, the starlight reaching your eyes is coming from the past.

Host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez speaks with three keepers of star knowledge to explore how communities have connected to the cosmos. Ron Schmit and Dr. Cindy Blaha talk about western astronomy and the role of observatories in stargazing and time-keeping. Jim Rock shares Dakota cosmology and the science of Indigenous sky observation. Join us as we look up, get curious, and ask big questions: Why do we look to the stars? What is our role in the cosmos? And how has star knowledge been passed down through generations? 

For more information on Dakota star knowledge, please watch this video from Jim Rock and Dakota artist Marlena Myles.

At the southeast corner of Lexington Parkway and Interstate 94 in St. Paul sits the Oxford Community Center, bustling with a water park, playground, and gyms. But behind its walls and athletic fields lies a deep history of community resilience that has remained untold – until now. A group of Rondo community members and elders has teamed up with an oral historian to preserve the story of Oxford through an oral history project.

To learn more about Rondo’s connection to Oxford and the project itself, host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez sits down with members of the Oxford team. Two are Rondo community legends: Lisa Lissimore, a trailblazing Oxford athlete, and Frank White Jr., an Oxford coach and Rondo historian. Chantel also speaks with Kim Heikkila, the project convener and a professional oral historian. They are joined by voices from the Oxford Oral History Project, including Bill Peterson, the formidable coach and director of Oxford.

Together, they honor the Rondo community’s resilience in transforming Oxford from a rocky playground into a sports powerhouse and a cornerstone of the community.

We'd love to hear your thoughts about Minnesota Unraveled! Please fill out our survey ⁠here⁠

The 3 P’s–pasties, porketta, and potica–are beloved dishes on Minnesota’s iron range. How did they become quintessential iron range cuisine and why are they so important to ranger identity? 

To find out, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez speaks with guests deeply connected to the Range’s culinary history. Cookbook author BJ Carpenter explains how families prepared signature range dishes. Documentarian Mary Lou Nemanic traces the early immigrant waves that brought diverse ethnic foodways to the region. Chef Bryan Morcom shows how local ingredients like wild rice, walleye, and cabbage can be reimagined in Range food today. And restaurateur Tom Forti reflects on how his family’s century-old Sunrise Bakery continues to influence the flavors served at the Iron Ranger. Together, they reveal why preserving these traditions is becoming increasingly important as economic landscapes shift and tastes evolve.

Minnesota Unraveled will return with more episodes starting February 19, 2026.

At the Bell Museum of Natural History in Saint Paul, the lives of beavers across 2 million years are captured in two scenes. One is set in the Ice Age and showcases a giant beaver, an animal the size of a small black bear. The other is set in the early 1900s at Lake Itasca and captures the more familiar modern beaver chomping on wood and building a dam. Together, these scenes spark big questions: Why have beavers been important to Minnesota’s history since the Ice Age? How have they shaped the landscape and human activity? And how did we get from the giant beaver to the beaver we know today?

To explore these questions, Dr. Chantel Rodríguez draws on multiple ways of knowing. Fossils, archival records, ecological science, and Indigenous storytelling reveal a complex narrative of megafauna, community relationships, environmental change, and global trade. Through conversations with paleontologist Nicole Dzenowski, environmental historian Hayden Nelson, and traditional ecological knowledge expert Michael Waasegiizhig Price, this episode examines not just what happened, but how we come to understand it.

According to the history books, boxing faded from the spotlight decades ago. But in Minnesota, the gloves never came off.  Host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez talks with longtime friends Sankara Frazier and Harry Davis Jr., who carry forward the legacy of their fathers – legendary coach Harry Davis Sr. and boxer Stanley Frazier – through their work at Circle of Discipline. And she speaks with Lisa Bauch, a trainer and entrepreneur whose Uppercut Gym helped open the sport to women and newcomers alike. Historian Gerald Gems helps trace the roots of the sport and its arrival in Minnesota. Together, they reflect on how boxing endures in Minnesota, not just as a sport, but as a way to build confidence, discipline, and community.

Walk into almost any bookstore in October and you’ll see displays stacked with books on witchcraft, ghostly encounters and the paranormal. Look a little closer, and you’ll notice a familiar name on many of their spines: Llewellyn Worldwide. But did you know the world’s largest New Age publisher calls Minnesota home? In this episode, host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez and her guests Sandra Weschcke and Dr. Murphy Pizza explore how a Minnesota visionary turned a fascination with New Age spirituality into a global publishing powerhouse, and how that journey sparked the growth of New Age Religous Movements in the Twin Cities.

Chicago and New York usually get the spotlight when it comes to Puerto Rican communities. But Minnesota? That might surprise you. Puerto Ricans are actually the state’s second-largest Latinx community, with more than 20,000 people calling it home. And for these Puerto Rican Minnesotans, music is a powerful way to stay connected to their heritage.

 In our opening episode of season two, historian and host Dr. Chantel Rodríguez explores this link with her guests. José Antonio Zayas Cabán is a multiple Grammy®-nominated saxophonist, whose latest work interweaves the voices of Puerto Rican storytellers and music. She also speaks with Tearra Oso, a bomba artist and culture protector who teaches and enhances one of Puerto Rico’s oldest musical traditions. Together, they reflect on how Puerto Rican Minnesotans have told their history through music, cultivating ties to both Minnesota and Puerto Rico, and finding harmony in that complexity.