Native Lights is a weekly, half-hour radio program hosted by Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe members and siblings, Leah Lemm and Cole Premo. Native Lights is a space for people in Native communities around Mni Sota Mkoce — a.k.a. Minnesota — to tell their stories about finding their gifts and sharing them with the community.
Today Leah and Cole chat with Rita Walaszek Arndt (White Earth Nation). Rita is the program and outreach manager of the Native American Initiatives department at the Minnesota Historical Society. She’s also the curator of the Our Home: Native Minnesota exhibit at the historical society.
Through her work, Rita is focused on Indigenous representation in the historical society and encourages people to think differently about the land now known as Minnesota. She tells Leah and Cole about the challenges of cataloging MHS’s Indigenous object archive, examining the history of this land beyond statehood, and how Indigenous art is inseparable from culture and Indigenous ways of living.
Chi Miigwech to Rita for sharing her story and work with us today!
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Native Lights: Where Indigenous Voices Shine is produced by Minnesota Native News and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. Online at https://minnesotanativenews.org/
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Today, we’re speaking with language revitalization leader and cultural educator Alex Kmett. Alex is a citizen of the Red Lake Nation and a descendant of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. He’s a 2026 Bush Fellow and a co-founder of a charter school in Red Lake Nation. - Ryan Dixon: Making Friends with the Dakota Language
Today, we’re speaking with Ryan Dixon. Ryan is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe from Pine Ridge in South Dakota and has spent over two decades immersed in the Lower Sioux community in southern Minnesota. He trained under First Language Dakota speakers, and he now teaches Dakota. An educator and Indigenous language activist, he co-founded a Dakota Immersion Head Start programming and works to keep the language alive for future generations. - Michael Kurtz: Tales of a Wildlife Photographer
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