For the first time in decades, here is an in-depth look at Minnesota government and politics, providing a useful overview of the history, structure, and distinctive characteristics of the political system in the North Star State. Minnesota?s government is often held up as a role model for other states. Drawing on survey research, electoral analysis, interview data, and political experience, the authors examine contemporary politics in Minnesota, emphasizing in particular its long-standing moralistic dimension. Attention is given to the major components of the state?s political system: the constitution, legislature, courts, relationship to both the federal system and local governments, lobbying, elections, campaign finance, and public attitudes toward taxes and services. Equally important, the authors assess various enduring myths and views about Minnesota politics, including its legendary liberalism and citizen involvement in the political scene, and even consider how its new governor, former wrestler Jesse Ventura, fits into Minnesota?s traditions.

... An 8 year plan to preserve Lowell's historic and cultural resources in order to tell the story of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century; included in the plan are mills, institutions, residences, commercial buildings and canals; describes the areas covered; discusses preservation standards, public improvements, financing, related programs, etc.; provides architectural information, dates of construction, history, plans for building reuse, etc. of specific structures in the Lowell National Historic Park and Lowell Heritage State Park ...

In 1862, four years after Minnesota was ratified as the thirty-second state in the Union, simmering tensions between indigenous Dakota and white settlers culminated in the violent, six-week-long U.S.-Dakota War. Hundreds of lives were lost on both sides, and the war ended with the execution of thirty-eight Dakotas on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota--the largest mass execution in American history. The following April, after suffering a long internment at Fort Snelling, the Dakota and Winnebago peoples were forcefully removed to South Dakota, precipitating the near destruction of the area's native communities while simultaneously laying the foundation for what we know and recognize today as Minnesota. In North Country: The Making of Minnesota, Mary Lethert Wingerd unlocks the complex origins of the state--origins that have often been ignored in favor of legend and a far more benign narrative of immigration, settlement, and cultural exchange. Moving from the earliest years of contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the western Great Lakes region to the era of French and British influence during the fur trade and beyond, Wingerd charts how for two centuries prior to official statehood Native people and Europeans in the region maintained a hesitant, largely cobeneficial relationship. Founded on intermarriage, kinship, and trade between the two parties, this racially hybridized society was a meeting point for cultural and economic exchange until the western expansion of American capitalism and violation of treaties by the U.S. government during the 1850s wore sharply at this tremulous bond, ultimately leading to what Wingerd calls Minnesota's Civil War. A cornerstone text in the chronicle of Minnesota's history, Wingerd's narrative is augmented by more than 170 illustrations chosen and described by Kirsten Delegard in comprehensive captions that depict the fascinating, often haunting representations of the region and its inhabitants over two and a half centuries. North Country is the unflinching account of how the land the Dakota named Mini Sota Makoce became the State of Minnesota and of the people who have called it, at one time or another, home.

In the spring of 1868, people from several Ojibwe villages located along the upper Mississippi River were relocated to a new reservation at White Earth, more than 100 miles to the west. In many public declarations that accompanied their forced migration, these people appeared to embrace the move, as well as their conversion to Christianity and the new agrarian lifestyle imposed on them. Beneath this surface piety and apparent acceptance of change, however, lay deep and bitter political divisions that were to define fundamental struggles that shaped Ojibwe society for several generations. In order to reveal the nature and extent of this struggle for legitimacy and authority, To Be The Main Leaders of Our People reconstructs the political and social history of these Minnesota Ojibwe communities between the years 1825 and 1898. Ojibwe political concerns, the thoughts and actions of Ojibwe political leaders, and the operation of the Ojibwe political system define the work's focus. Kugel examines this particular period of time because of its significance to contemporary Ojibwe history. The year 1825, for instance, marked the beginning of a formal alliance with the United States; 1898 represented not an end, but a striking point of continuity, defying the easy categorizations of Native peoples made by non-Indians, especially in the closing years of the nineteenth century. In this volume, the Ojibwe "speak for themselves," as their words were recorded by government officials, Christian missionaries, fur traders, soldiers, lumbermen, homesteaders, and journalists. While they were nearly always recorded in English translation, Ojibwe thoughts, perceptions, concerns, and even humor, clearly emerge. To Be The Main Leaders of Our People expands the parameters of how oral traditions can be used in historical writing and sheds new light on a complex, but critical, series of events in ongoing relations between Native and non-Native people.