Host Leah Lemm (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe) explores how Indian Country in MN is responding and adapting to the current pandemic health crisis.

Today on the show, Host Leah Lemm hears what’s on the minds of Native youth in Minnesota.

Leah chats with Caley Coyne (Athabaskan and Yup’ik) a 10th grader from Saint Paul.  Caley shares her reflections on distance learning, missing powwows, racial justice, and new hobbies. 

Reporter Melissa Townsend talks with 13-year-old Rizal Agaton Howes (Anishinaabe), who lives on the Fond du Lac reservation with his family. Rizal and his family are participating in unschooling, and he shares how that is going and what he misses most, since COVID came to Minnesota. 

It was back in March, when Governor Tim Walz announced that schools would close.  Since then, school officials, teachers, and parents have grappled with so many considerations like IEP plans, mental health support and nutrition services, and basic instructional materials. We have talked quite a bit on those topics on this program. Today we turn to young people to find out what is most important to them during this time.