(upbeat music) - [Narrator] On this episode of "Postcards".

- Somebody some day's going to be looking at my work and they're going to be asking the same questions I ask of the past.

- Our band name is Beautiful Kingdom.

And I guess we'd like to bring heaven onto earth.

We'd like to make it the most beautiful place possible where love takes the lead a lot more.

Sometimes does in this world - As far as I can remember back, I knew I would write a novel.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackeel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The lake Region Arts Councils, Arts Calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage Funded Digital Calendar, showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota on the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits 96.7 KRAM, online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music) - For me as an artist, when I start any project it really comes from prayer and prayer just like as an acknowledgement of the energies and the relatives around me.

So I start usually my day by rolling up sage and just cleansing the air around me or the energies and just puts me in a mind frame to be able to think clearly.

In Dakota, there's a word called the "Sichun" which is the spiritual essence or the essence of whatever you do.

And we believe that that essence is embedded to the work that you make.

(upbeat music) The full name is Tacahpi Tokaheya Inkpa Mani.

That Tacahpi Tokaheya there's not a great Dakota to English translation, but it really gets to the point of, thinks before he does or thinks first.

And then the second part Inkpa Mani, Inkpa literally means like the pointer or tip of something and Mani means to walk but it's getting at he walks with an arrow and that kind of means that I walk with the ability to provide, an arrow could represent going hunting and providing for your family, but it can also represent defending.

(upbeat gentle music) My mom is Aztec or we call it Mexica.

Originally we came from Tenochtitlán in Mexico, in Mexico city.

Eventually we ended up in Northern Mexico and eventually it became part of the United States.

So from the 1500 up until World War II our family was living in Arizona and in World War II the United States government had the internment camps or the concentration camps for the Asian Americans or the Japanese.

Somehow our family was kind of rounded up into the mix and so we were relocated or exiled from the United States and we were placed in Jalisco Mexico, at a place called Jalostotitlán.

I am pretty proud of my lineage from that side 'cause they were doing for some pretty cool things.

They had long hair, they were practicing ceremonies in a time that all of those things were outlined in the United States and then Mexico, those were very looked down upon but my family had as kind of a history of we've always continued on our traditions.

So I grew up in Wheaton but I also grew up in Sisseton South Dakota on Lake Traverse and my dad was from Sisseton.

He raised us to be Dakota.

That's where the native culture of here in South Dakota and Minnesota really started to take on more of a president in my life.

We'd go to Pow Wows, we'd go to Sweat, we'd go to ceremonies.

And yeah, everybody on my dad's side really just encouraged us to continue learning.

I never really embraced it of the the things that I make, being able to learn and speak Dakota now, that's really what I want and now having a baby, that's what I want to carry on.

So my partners are from Standing Rock, she's Standing Rock Sioux.

So yeah, those are the things that we want for our kids, is that to learn the Dakota way of life.

(upbeat music) So this is a choke cherry pounder and it's probably one of my favorite artifacts or cultural pieces that I own.

One of the reasons for that is that it always reminds me of where people were, the types of things that they were using at the time.

And this would've been like primarily a woman's tool where they would've constantly pounded choke cherries and buffalo meat, roots.

It's a tool that lets me know and reminds me of the hard work that they did at the time and just taking care of the family, these are the tools that are required for it.

And in my artwork, that's one of the things I'm always trying to remember is who are the people that I'm depicting?

Why am I depicting them?

What are their stories that are being remembered and shared with the things that I use.

Historically, this whole region has been actively used for over 8,000 years.

So that's like the human remains that has been found is about 8,000 years, and that was the Browns Valley Man.

And on Lake Traverse, there's does dozens of, or there used to be dozens of burial mounds.

There's a story about a farmer I was talking to that talked about that in Browns Valley a farmer had found a skull that was peaking above the earth and somebody had told him, we'll just plow it under.

So they did that and that's a pretty common story of a lot of the burial mounds around he here.

So I'd like to say that Dakota people within Wheaton, Minnesota, and South Dakota have been here for over 20,000 maybe 40,000 years, that we know of just the way that our stories line up with the stars and different formation talking about like the woolly mammoths and a time even before the woolly mammoth had come, I believe that we've been here considerably longer than people believe or even know.

(gentle music) Ledger art is a Plains Indian style of drawing.

And it comes from a tradition of Plains Indian pictographic drawings, which were men's exploits they call it, so men would put on their war shirts or on their tipi, their deeds whether it was, bravery or values that are core to the Dakota people, they would depict those on hides.

And eventually when were placed onto reservations, it's really hard to come by a buffalo hide or even a deer hide.

So they started putting it on paper.

And the paper that was available was ledgers from the Indian agents and the soldiers that had them available at the forts.

So there's a couple things that I typically look for when looking at ledger paper specifically, it's the size, the quality of writing, the darkness of the writing.

For some projects you want the writing to really come forward.

And for some things you want it to kind of fade more back, Painting is kind of what I love, like of all things if I could do anything in the world, I'd just be painting every day.

It's really so simple, like you just take a flat surface and you're just mixing a little bit of water, a little bit of medium and basically dirt.

And you're just pushing around mud on a canvas.

And somehow that can transform into a portrait of somebody.

(upbeat music) And the type of paintings that I'm working on now, really is on identity and representation.

So for a long time native people were again misrepresented or somebody dictated what the native image was.

So they posed them.

They dictated how they would sit, what they would have on them, and native people just didn't have the availability to dictate what that image was or what are the stories that are being shared through that image.

So my portraits really are trying to make sure that it's native people of today just as they are.

They don't have to add anything extra for them to be indigenous or to be native.

They are just who they are by their own experiences, by their own blood, by their own ancestry.

(upbeat music) So when I was in high school, one of the things that I told everybody was that someday I want to be in the Smithsonian and I wanted to be better than Michelangelo.

Now I've kind of I've experienced a lot of things and I've learned a lot of different art forms from traditional art forms like quill work, bead work then there's painting ledger art, storytelling, but I never lost that site that I wanted to be a sculptor.

I wanted to work with stone.

And part of that comes from, yeah, I've seen all of these Roman and Renaissance sculptures, but I also grew up learning about the Aztec sculptures of the sun and the moon or the stone carvings from there even as far back as the Olmcec and their stone carvings.

And those have always been in my mind that within my blood, there's a lineage of working with stone.

(upbeat music) Being able to go to the Jeffers Petroglyphs and there's a hand print there where when I placed my hand it fit perfectly and feeling like I truly belong somewhere that somebody 6,000 years ago placed their hand print there.

And now I get to be there and touch the same hand is pretty amazing to me.

And that really changed my perspective of how I look at public art, how I look at sculpture and the legacy that I leave behind with my own work.

So there's a responsibility when working with stone because it's going to outlast me, it's going to live on for multiple generations.

Somebody some day is gonna be looking at my work and they're gonna be asking the same questions I ask of the past.

When a people has lasted 40,000 years and continuously done something, if you imagine it as a chain or a rope I don't wanna be the person that stops doing something like that.

(upbeat music) - I am so delighted to introduce our band to you tonight.

All of them sing, all of them write, all of them play multiple instruments and they are here this evening to introduce their music to you, please welcome to the stage, Beautiful Kingdom.

(crowd cheering) ♪ Keep me baby ♪ ♪ Not trying to but keep me baby ♪ ♪ Not trying to but keep me baby ♪ ♪ Not trying to but keep me baby ♪ ♪ Let's get it baby, keep me baby ♪ ♪ Keep me baby ♪ ♪ Keep me baby ♪ ♪ Keep me baby ♪ ♪ Keep me baby ♪ (crowd cheering) (upbeat music) - Yeah, I was literally born in Rock County.

I was born in a farmhouse bathroom, on the border with South Dakota.

It's a really wonderful supportive community, there's a lot of really supportive community people.

So I grew up around a lot of people who were like, yeah, come play your music at church, come join in this church band.

There's a lot of church bands.

- I was born in Southern California.

And being here is really different but in a great way, there's a lot of craziness in the world and this compared to all that, this is a safe Haven, people here are so to flipping nice.

- I'm from Montreal, Canada.

Though, I miss the forests around there, I really love it here.

I've always wanted to live more in the country.

Yeah, it definitely feels like a little paradise.

It feels like there aren't distractions.

We can focus on what we're about, what we wanna bring.

And Yeah, it's been very, very much like a cocoon in a way.

♪ Oh the moment that I came to realize ♪ ♪ That we are all made of love ♪ Our band name is Beautiful kingdom.

I guess we'd like to bring heaven onto earth.

We'd like to make it the most beautiful place possible where love takes the lead a lot more, and it sometimes does in this world.

(gentle music) - We all play everything and we all sing.

We all take turns singing lead and backing each other up.

- We all take turns supporting each other 'cause we all write songs.

We're just not afraid to jump on different instruments even if they're not our main instrument.

(drums beating) (saxophone blowing) (Nadia laughing) (both chanting) - We get asked this question all the time.

Are you guys like a religious band or are you like a Christian band?

The short answer is no, we don't play like religious, like worship music.

That's not what we do, but I mean faith and God and love and all those themes are in our music.

- Whether you wanna call that God or universal love, I'm not going to judge on the words you use, it's whether you believe in something greater than yourself.

and we certainly do.

It's not just about us.

- But there's definitely a mix in our shows of a lot of fun, a lot of high energy and also a lot of heart centered emotional songs that I think anybody can relate to.

♪ I am filled with a joy without end ♪ ♪ With a love that's without end ♪ ♪ So let's cook a little something good ♪ ♪ Yeah, you that there we would ♪ ♪ It just makes me wanna go back to my family ♪ ♪ And show them my love of what it is to be free ♪ - I've been playing me music since I was young, but it took on a very different meaning as I got older because I dealt with a lot of years of really poor health.

Bad enough that for a few years, I wasn't really getting out of bed.

Staircases were a huge thing that I only did very occasionally on good days.

And so there was a time when music was it.

I know that sounds cliche, but that was it.

I was not leaving the house.

I couldn't do anything.

I really just watched TV, slept and some days dragged myself to my piano or laid on my back with a Baritone Ukulele and wrote songs.

When I was very sick, there was a period where Nadia was the one taking care of me 'cause I hadn't come back home yet.

I didn't have any family out there.

Nadia was the one helping me, cooking for me.

And during that time I didn't really see much of Tyler because he was elsewhere, but he was one of the only friends I had who hadn't just kind of gotten tired of me being sick or every time I talked to him, probably be something like, I'd say, "Dude, I really want to play with you "but I don't know, it's probably never going to happen."

And he's like, "No, you're gonna get well."

And he just didn't quit believing.

- I could not accept that we will not be in a band together.

I refused.

- No.

- Now I remember sometime you too being like, "I just wanna be well otherwise, "this is just too much, this life."

"I'd be like, but the mission "but the music we're gonna do it.

"I know we're gonna do the music."

♪ There's a light in the window ♪ ♪ Secret song in the air ♪ ♪ Walking back through the snow ♪ ♪ You promised to hold me ♪ ♪ But you never told me ♪ ♪ That I would be doing this on my own ♪ ♪ You promised to heal me ♪ ♪ But you are nowhere near me ♪ ♪ It's time that I made this heart my own ♪ - I can't exactly put my finger on what each of us brings necessarily.

I can point to it in certain ways.

Like if it's only two of us in a room sometimes we'll end up making... Well, we have a term, gumby like when something's like kind of not so great or not as good as it can be- - Gumby gives us something to rise above.

That's what gumby means.

- And if there's only two of us in a room sometimes we end up making a gumby decision because the third one offers that additional perspective that makes it completely whole.

- It's like a triangle.

If you take away one corner of the triangle it's not a triangle anymore.

- So I think today we're gonna do Heart Shaped House.

We're gonna do a guide track because that's how we get an awesome live field to finish recording things.

♪ The memory of this place ♪ ♪ You and I would both smile and look down ♪ ♪ We'd be safe like two birds in a nest ♪ ♪ In our heart shaped house ♪ (upbeat music) - I'm incredibly grateful to be playing music with these two.

They're very special people and they're my best friends.

- [Matthew] We're family.

- Yeah, we're family.

We're like a family band.

- Yeah, like a family band.

But we really do see ourselves... We'd all love to make an impact in the world, help open people's hearts and help people remember how beautiful life is and precious and help people to be freer as well.

We want to spread the love, essentially.

♪ If my heart was a house ♪ ♪ You'd be invited and I'd be delighted ♪ ♪ To sing you to sleep ♪ ♪ Inside and I keep you so warm ♪ ♪ We could sit by the fire ♪ ♪ And tell all our secrets ♪ ♪ Sleep on until the dawn ♪ ♪ So where would your heart be now.

♪ ♪ Would it be in my house ♪ ♪ Where would your heart be now ♪ ♪ Would it be in my house ♪ ♪ Where would your heart be now ♪ ♪ Would it be in my house ♪ - Thank you very much.

(crowd cheering) (gentle music) - As far as I can remember back, I knew I would write a novel.

I just absolutely knew I would write a novel.

(gentle music) I grew up on a home which is now the (indistinct) of Stony Creek Golf Course.

It was a big, beautiful three story home.

It had an attic where I would spend a lot of my time.

There was a window overlooking to the south where I could look out over and see the countryside.

And I called that my writer studio.

In the main floor was a screen porch where my sister and I would put on plays.

I would write play and then we would present plays to our parents.

Earlier one of my greatest joys is to... One is to autograph books and the second is just to talk to people about their response.

So I'm wondering if, just to start off with, if you- I've really thought that the power of the written word was something that was important that it preserved our history and gave us voice in our lifetimes.

Over the years I developed an interest in writing human interest stories for the local newspapers.

And then I embarked on the lifelong dream of writing a novel.

(gentle music) The novel that I wrote and titled, "Locked Up In Frost" is the parallel journeys of a man who struggles with some of the ghosts of his childhood as well as the ghosts of the war that he's been involved in.

And the challenges of living in a community that is filled with conflict.

And so the two of them work their way through the challenges of their personal life and of their community.

(upbeat music) The crowd wrestled in it.

Conversation is Robert Jensen stood before the assembly.

As he spread his notes on the podium, several in the audience turned to the next person with a look that in some cases appeared to be admiration and in other cases was clearly disdain.

With his notes in order, he calmly looked out over the crowd and began, "Ladies and gentlemen, "we have heard it said that freedom is not free.

"It is not free and it is not inexpensive, "but just as important, "freedom is not a right to be enjoyed by few "while denied to others."

(gentle music) My inspiration to write the book was the desire to incorporate some of the thoughts and ideas I had about conflict and about life.

(upbeat music) When I write columns, I often think of people like Ken Burns.

I think of Cervantes whose story, "Don Quixote" and was turned into "Man of La Mancha", tells us how to treat other people and that the way we treat other people, enhances them and ourselves in the same way.

Those storytellers have helped me find voice in the work that I do.

And those way of telling a story, whether it's in a column, whether it's in a front page article, or whether it's in a book, that manner of storytelling, that manner of getting a message across, is a very effective one.

(upbeat music) I cannot say that storytelling has been a journey from one point to another, it's been just a process of taking my experiences and understanding of life and sharing it with readers.

(upbeat music) And so it's been an ongoing desire to tell a story.

(upbeat music) - "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackeel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria Minnesota, a year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's, Arts Calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage Funded Digital Calendar, showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central, Minnesota.

On the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 KRAM, online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music)