- [Narrator] Funding for "Intersections" is brought to you by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat music) - I think when you really care about a community, you wanna see it be the best version of itself.

- I want people to know that indigenous art, can come from any kind of facet of an indigenous person's life.

(upbeat music) - My name is Laura Johnson.

I work at the College of St. Scholastica and I am the Associate Director of Communications.

The college is the only private independent institution of higher ed in Northeastern Minnesota.

I'm a lifelong Duluthian.

My sister-in-law had attended St. Scholastica and it was on my radar.

So, I enrolled there in 2002.

I found out that I really liked to read and I really liked to write.

And so communications was a natural fit for me.

And I think I knew that I wanted to end back up in higher education, but I wasn't so sure that my path would lead me back to St. Scholastica and it did.

I've been a part of the college for a very long time.

And I worn a lot of different hats there.

I spent eight years working in traditional undergraduate admissions.

I worked for four years in alumni engagement.

And then in February of 2021, I transitioned from alumni engagement, into marketing and communications.

I get to do a lot of collaboration with a lot of different departments on our campus.

I'm also collaborating very closely with our chief diversity officer, Dr. Amy Bergstrom and looking at some of the concerted communications that are coming out from her office and really making sure that when we are telling the St. Scholastica story, that we're doing it, through a lens of diversity and inclusion.

We're a predominantly White campus.

And so a lot of our messages have always been geared, towards a predominantly White audience.

And I'm excited to look at what some of those messages have been, through the lens of equity and make sure that we're telling everybody's story and not just a certain demographic story.

(crowd noise) I think there were a lot of people search and seeking for advocacy and activism, following the murder of George Floyd and thinking, reflecting on what can we do here in our community?

Joining the Duluth NAACP just seemed like, such the natural step to join a group of folks who had a similar commitment to justice and equity in our community.

The Education Equity Committee, I gravitated towards as someone who is a product of public schools, as someone who's a product of Duluth public schools, as someone who's a parent, raising two multiracial kids in this district, deeply invested in their experiences as students of color.

And so I really appreciated the work that was already going on with the Education Equity Committee, about let's identify what these issues are and let's figure out ways that we can tackle them.

It's something that I'm incredibly passionate about.

And it's something that I feel like in a city that's as small as ours, but as divided as ours is always gonna be an issue.

We have a high school on the east side of town and we have a high school on the west side of town.

And we have a lot of disparity between the two.

I think that this is something that it's important for parents to be involved in, but for community members too who care about Duluth, who care about and love this city.

And I think when you really care about a community, you wanna see it be the best version of itself.

And I think considering equity at the heart of all the decisions that we make as educators is where a lot of that begins.

(upbeat music) My home town is Duluth.

I've lived here my whole life.

My parents had two boys and they found out that they couldn't have anymore kids, but they really wanted a girl.

My parents started the process to adopt me.

I never felt different.

I never felt othered.

I never felt like I didn't belong in my family.

I think in a lot of ways, I was kind of, I maybe had blinders on.

I can remember a handful of experiences in fourth grade, somebody was singing "Born in the USA" and they told me that I couldn't sing it.

And I remember kind of, I've never forgotten it, but recoiling a little bit, because I didn't think of myself as someone who didn't belong or someone who couldn't sing a song that everyone else was singing.

I remember another incident in elementary school, someone asking why I didn't look like my mom and it was such a foreign concept to me.

And I thought, "Well, it's because I look like my dad," but I of course knew that I was adopted, but I really, I wasn't confronted with a lot of that.

And then I came to college, I came to St. Scholastica and I think that I had a little bit of an identity crisis, because I think people were seeing me as a person of color.

I was still struggling with that identity.

I didn't see myself as a person of color.

I really distanced myself from a lot of other Asian students because I didn't feel, I didn't want to be lumped into an other group.

And I grappled with that a lot.

And where I think there was a big switch, an aha moment for me was when I was pregnant with my daughter.

So, I think about this journey that I've been on and it's really only been the past decade or so, my daughter is nine.

I spent some time thinking when I was pregnant, "My partner is White.

"I'm Korean.

"How might she identify?

"What boxes will she check when she gets presented "with the forms that we all get presented with?"

And I thought to myself, "I really need to be able to figure this out for myself "in order to have these types of conversations with her."

(upbeat music) I went back to Korea for the first time.

I'd never been there in my life.

I was adopted when I was four months old, obviously have no recollection of it, but returned in 2013 with three other Korean adoptee women.

(upbeat music) And I spent three weeks there, that's the longest I'd ever been away from my partner.

It's the longest I'd ever been away from my daughter who was about a year and a half at the time.

(upbeat music) I loved when I was there and someone would come up to me and they would start talking Korean.

I don't speak any Korean.

It felt like I belonged.

They were seeing me as one of their own.

And just came back really proud of my heritage, really proud of my culture for the first time in my life, I wanted to embrace my Korean ethnicity, before I think it was something that I ran from and that I wasn't proud to embrace.

Coming home was incredibly isolating.

And I was really, I was almost in a funk.

I was really sad when I returned home and just kind of struggling to recreate some of that belonging and that connection that I'd experienced, during those three weeks in Korea.

I first joined some Korean adoptee Facebook groups.

There's so many of us and there's so many of us in Minnesota.

And so I was able to really find, what I would say is kind of that screen level connection with people who had a lot of my same experiences.

And then from there, I was connected to a woman in Duluth who was about to embark on the same trip that I had taken in 2013.

And so we connected and became good friends.

There are versions of Korean adoptee groups in the Twin Cities.

We knew that they existed in Chicago, but we wanted to create a group that was just for us here in Duluth.

And so she really was kind of the brain behind, bringing people together.

What's been really rewarding is being able to have my kids, be a part of some of those gatherings and be exposed to people who look like them, something that they don't always see living here.

It's really become a connector, a hub for people to find others who share this common identity in our geographic region.

Their are dozens of people in the group.

It started out, there were probably six or 10 of us and it's really mushroomed into a bigger size group.

There's experiences and there's identities that are really unique to the adoptee experience.

And I think to be able to show up and just show up authentically as yourself with a group of people who see you and get you, without any explanation, there's a lot of power in that.

But we felt like that was kind of exclusive, because there are a lot of other transracial adoptees who have very similar shared experiences, growing up in White families, coming from predominantly White communities, often being the only person of color in their school, in their classroom.

And so we felt like that was a common thread.

That was a common identity, whether or not they were from Korea or not.

We just wanted to bring those, bring other transracial adoptees into our community and into our conversation.

I'm especially proud that our Korean adoptee community here in Duluth, has gained traction and has gained some attention, it felt like such a celebration of who we were and who we were setting out to be, which was uplift one another and uplift our own voices and share our stories.

I think I really take to heart that I need to model what it means to be proud of my ethnicity and to be proud of the shape of my eyes and the color of my hair.

And I think that part of what I took away from my time in Korea, was to really be proud of that part of me and be proud of that identity, so that my kids can see that and hopefully feel the same way.

We check out books from the library that have kids on the cover who look like them.

We cook Korean food.

We go to Korean restaurants when we can, when we're traveling.

My daughter and I went to New York City and visited a Korean restaurant and were able to have Korean barbecue and she loved it.

They embrace who they are and they embrace their differences and they love that they're Korean and that they love that they are half of me and half of their dad.

And I think that's such a stark contrast to the experience that I had as a kid, where I really didn't wanna be different and I really didn't like the shape of my nose or the color of my hair or the shape of my eyes.

And so the fact that they're already kind of at this self-love, acceptance, radical self-love place is really inspiring to me as a parent.

I think, well, maybe we're doing something right.

- My name is Khayman Goodsky.

I'm from Bois Forte Band of Chippewa.

And my hometown is Virginia, Minnesota, but I lived in Duluth most of my life.

I work at AICHO, that's American Indian Community Housing Organization, located here, downtown Duluth.

I am the co-coordinator of the gift shop.

That's the Indigenous First Gift Shop.

AICHO was founded here in 93, my family and I used to come here for a lot of cultural events.

I've had some family members who worked here and then they asked me to work in the gift shop, about a couple years ago and so I did.

(upbeat music) The gift shop is a part of AICHO, because it helps support indigenous artists.

We just have a lot of different canvas by different artists.

And this is kind of my favorite room, 'cause you walk in and there's so many different artists, such a variety.

(upbeat music) We've helped a lot of artists get exposure, but it's all about really being there and providing that support for our indigenous artists.

I think it's important, because you can't find a lot of indigenous artwork, made by actual indigenous people and to find such a huge collective is huge because it shows not only other artists that they can make a living off of their art, it shows the youth like that they can also do that.

And hopefully it opens up their doors to art and culture and music and like seeing how that in turn feeds our own society as indigenous people.

(upbeat music) I feel like I bring to this job my own individuality.

So as an Ojibwe person, just as a queer person, as a two-spirit person, I bring in my own thoughts and my own kind of personality traits to it.

So, I am an artist.

I do my own DIY filming.

I am a fabric artist.

I do bead work.

And I do a little bit of writing.

And I feel like that really helps in understanding other artists and how they're bringing in new artwork and really just trying to form that bond and that relationship with them.

I mostly do film.

I got started because I was working as an intern for Jonathan Thunder, a local Ojibwe artist.

And he was having me kind of mix around the sound bits to of his animations.

And at that time I was like, I had played around with filmmaking before, but nothing serious.

So, he just said, "Why don't you write a film and we can make a film."

And so I made my first ever short film.

It's 20 minutes long and it's all done by an indigenous cast, indigenous actors, indigenous musicians and indigenous artists.

It's called "It's Genetic, Baby."

It's about a young Ojibwe woman who's struggling between her art life and how to make a living.

And she doesn't really know where to go.

So, she asks for help from certain characters.

(upbeat music) And the thing about this film that I love is that we all wear these giant masks, made out of melted down records.

And they all represent each actor's own personal plan, which I really appreciate.

Everyone's first film is not that good, but I'm really proud of it.

Most of my films are shot in Duluth.

They are personal to me.

They are pretty small, intimate, emotional.

I think they have to do with whatever I was dealing with at the time.

My films have to do with dreams, what to do with one self.

I use a lot of traditional colors and a lot of traditional ideas in my films.

When non-indigenous people are telling our stories, they often don't get things right and they misrepresent us, which is the biggest like slap in the face.

Indigenous people can endure.

And sometimes the way they represent us is purely based on like racist ideas.

A lot of misconceptions are is that we still all live on res', we're still very broke, we're still dealing with alcoholism and abusive homes, which is a big factor.

I'm not trying to discount that for any anybody's personal stories.

But that's not all who we are.

We are very strong, very resilient people.

We have endured a lot of things and I think there's just so much more than we come from, other than just pain.

So, when my first short film was played, it was actually played here at AICHO, during one of the film festivals.

This little girl said to me, "I don't think I've ever seen, "like a whole indigenous cast, "written by like actual Indian people."

And I looked at her and I was like, "Whoa," but it really important to have that, to show that we are here, we are ready to step into these roles of acting, of creating, of directing, of making music.

And the artists, they're out there.

But I got to make a sequel to one of my favorite films, "Dream Wanderer."

It was my first ever grant and I was surprised that I got it.

The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council gave me the grant and I'm really grateful.

So chi-miigwech.

And this one is called "The Crow Dreams," which is honestly one of my biggest accomplishments.

I'm really proud of it.

(suspenseful music) We had some people come back from the original film to shoot it.

And we're dealing with brand new characters and brand new ideas and just really kind of expanding on what "Dream Wanderer" began.

I did pay the actors.

We had to fly in some people in, but it was a very small crew.

It was a very small cast.

And I was just lucky to have this opportunity given to me by them.

I do wanna do a feature, but I don't think I'm quite there yet.

So, I'll keep working at it.

I was the indigenous programmer for the Duluth Superior Film Festival.

So, it was interesting to step in and see how many indigenous artists there are, really producing and how many non-indigenous people, try to get their films out represented as indigenous films.

I did face a couple of films that were written by non-indigenous people, directed by non-indigenous people, kind of misrepresenting us.

And that was really interesting to have to say, we cannot play this film, because it does not speak truth to our values.

I want people to know that indigenous art, can come from any kind of facet of an indigenous person's life and it doesn't have to be stereotypical.

It doesn't have to be the same old, same old to get noticed in mainstream media.

So, I'm two-spirit, which means I identify as both genders and two-spirit is very broad term for indigenous people to use.

We don't like it when non-indigenous people try to coin that phrase, my pronouns are she, her, he, his, I'm also pansexual.

So, I'm on different levels of the queer community.

So, if you're two-spirit, you're supposed to be there as like kind of a caregiver.

So, you take in kids who, they might be orphaned, they might be forgotten about, you're supposed to be there as the peacemaker.

So, people are having troubles or conflicts.

They were supposed to come to you and you're supposed to help them with that.

Our history as a two-spirit person it got lost in translation along with colonization and some of our roles.

We're just now trying to step back into and really take our place back in the community.

You literally have two spirits in you and you can see both sides.

You can marry people.

So, two-spirit people were regarded as very high, important medicine people.

And so those are just a few of the roles and it differs from tribe to tribe.

Like each two-spirit means something to each tribe and we don't all share the same languages, but we share the same importance.

I try to help the youth in any way I can.

I try to be a peacemaker, even though I'm myself am a very angry person.

I try to help our community in any way that I can.

I work primarily through Together for Youth, which is a queer support group for kids ages 14 to 21.

We meet over at the Center for Changing Lives.

(upbeat music) When Together first started, it was like in the basement of a church.

That church eventually burned down.

We were over at the Ordean building downtown and now we have a brand new building, we've been here for about three or four years now.

This is the first floor.

We have unisex bathrooms that we fought really hard to get.

If we're gonna have a lot of kids who identify in a lot of different ways, the best way to provide a safe place was to have a unisex bathroom.

So, everyone would have a safe place to do their business.

And then we come into the Together for Youth room.

(upbeat music) So, this is where we gather.

We have a lot of bean-bags.

We usually put out COVID-safe snacks.

We do coloring.

Sometimes we do pumpkin carving.

Before COVID we used to have holiday parties, Valentine Day parties, pajama parties.

And this is generally where we just hang out and have a safe place.

I like working for Together for Youth, because I get to interact with kids and these kids are the future and why not fight to provide a safe place for the generation that's gonna take over after us?

It's important to take care of our kids and that's what I'm trying to do.

We meet every Wednesday, it's completely free.

We meet from four to six.

(upbeat music) We're just there to support kids, like however, they may need it.

Whether it's just a safe place where people go to actually call their true names and their true pronouns.

If they want clothes that best represent how they represent, they want to represent or present, we try to support that for them.

And then we also do care packages for our youth.

So, we run them out.

We make sure that their COVID safe and some of our youth just live in really, really awful home situations where they're not respected in any little bit.

So, if they come to group once a week, two hours like that in itself can make a huge difference.

I went to Together for Youth when I was 19 and I was first coming out, after hearing my friend had committed suicide.

So, Together for Youth has quite literally saved my life and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Together for Youth and for everyone who supported me during that time.

It's kind of important to step back and kind of do good in the world when people have also done good.

My role as a two-spirit person, I'm supposed to be there to help people and to make sure that they're feeling supported and loved.

And some of these youth I've known for about four or five years.

And it's so interesting to see them grow, into these young adults, because I've known them since they were like 13 and just providing them with the thought of like, you can do good, you are good, you are loved.

I feel like that in itself can really change a person's day and change a person's life.

Every step that I've taken so far, there have been challenges, there have been difficulties, but I would not be here if it was not for the love of my community, my family, my friends, my children and I'm just really happy to be here.

And I just wanna step up in any way that I can.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Intersections" is brought to you by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.