(woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; and by the members of Prairie Public.

Welcome to "Prairie Mosaic," a patchwork of stories about the art, culture, and history in our region.

Hi, I'm Matt Olien.

And I'm Barb Gravel.

On this edition of "Prairie Mosaic," we'll watch the final segment of "Black Histories of the Northern Plains," learn about the Easter traditions of a European culture, and listen to a band from Bismarck.

♪ Fractured system failing ♪ Kent Estey is a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe who considers himself a contemporary artist.

His inspiration comes from the natural beauty surrounding him in Northern Minnesota.

[piano plays in bright rhythm] Although I've been painting for 40, almost 50 years, I consider myself an emerging artist.

If you grew up in my family you probably were some type of artist.

That being beading, we learned loom work, and we also learned a lot about basket making.

I was different in the family though, and I knew it when I was very young.

I wanted to paint.

I remember at 6 years old, I mixed dirt, gravel, sand, whatever I could find, lots of water, and I took that to our barn, and I remember putting my brush in there and stirring that and started to paint on the side of our barn.

This is green, this is blue, this is red, and I know I could see those colors.

I remember thinking even then, wouldn't it be wonderful to see real art?

Let's jump ahead some 50 years or so.

And now I'm going to galleries to see my work.

I've been painting many years secretly.

[laughs] And I used to just paint with oils.

Primarily they were landscapes and very, very traditional landscapes.

And I was painting all the time.

So I started to give away my paintings, and then I started running out of family and friends.

[laughs] So I started to throw away my paintings.

I just couldn't store them anymore.

And my sister found them, and she said some homes that I'm in, they may not have a lot of artwork.

Would it be okay if I gave them your work?

From that I got a call from the Miikanan Gallery at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji.

Please consider submitting some of your artwork to the opening of our gallery.

I'm going to submit something that I feel is different.

And that's what they selected.

Prior to that, I would get the comment often "You're Native American, so your painting has to look Native American."

And that's what I was hearing, but it wasn't what I was feeling.

So my response to that was to quit painting.

If you know artists, you know that they don't do very well if they're not creating.

And after awhile, I spoke with my wife, and I said let's travel, let's start looking at art.

I was introduced to a lot of native artists that I didn't know existed.

Many of them didn't look like there was something Indian in it.

They were different.

And I found the work of George Morrison.

I remember walking into the museum, I think it was the Whitney museum, and seeing his work.

My heart fluttered because I was seeing something that I had seen in my head.

If I just had this freedom to paint what I wanted to paint, this is what I would paint!

And I looked and there's George Morrison, Ojibwe Artist.

One of the statements that I'll never forget was that he said, "I'm not a Native American artist, I'm an artist who happens to be Native American."

The best way to honor your heritage is to paint what you feel.

Then my work started to get more abstract and contemporary in nature, lots of color, lots of movement, and I went back to my landscapes, but they started to look a lot different.

When I start a new piece, there's not a lot of preplanning beyond the colors I know I'm going to feature and the size of the canvas.

I just start putting down paint.

I like nice shades of brown and reds.

I like to paint with the brightest colors I can possibly find.

I like to use fluorescent paints in my work.

Since I'm exclusively acrylic, I use the color right from the tube.

Most of the time you'll see me, and I'll have a tube in my hand or a jar in my hand and I'm dipping my brush directly in that color and applying that on canvas.

My preference is to mix the colors on the canvas.

That's fun for me!

There's pieces of the painting that I'll really like, then that'll change the whole piece.

Sometimes I'm still that 6-year-old boy painting on the side of my barn and wondering, you know, are people going to like this?

Are they going to see the color?

Are they going to appreciate the color?

It's pretty awesome to think that where I grew up and where I'm going with my artistry has surpassed even my imagination.

Though small in number within the United States, traditional Ukrainian Catholic churches still exist.

One parish has churches in Belfield and Fairfield, North Dakota, and their Easter celebrations are a wonder to behold.

(male cantor) ♪ Let us pray to the Lord.

♪ (congregation) ♪ Lord now have mercy.

♪ (male cantor) ♪ May we be delivered from all affliction, wrath, and need.

♪ ♪ Let us pray to the Lord.

♪ (congregation) ♪ Lord now have mercy.

♪ (Deacon Leonard Kardonowy) When he rises from the dead, he is there again amongst us.

What greater joy can we have than knowing Jesus is really alive?

[cantor sings] ♪ Mary mother of God, the Virgin Mary ♪ ♪ With all the Saints.

♪ ♪ Let us commend ourselves with one another our whole lives ♪ ♪ To Christ our God.

♪ (Father Marty Nagy) This is an unusual community.

We don't have too many places in the U.S. where you have 5 generations of Ukrainians.

Per capita this is the 2nd densest population of Ukrainians in the country.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church officially as we know it started in 988 during the reign of Volodymyr.

He had decided that his country should be religious so he sent delegates to the nations around him, and the ones that came back from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, they said when the liturgy started there we didn't know if we were in heaven or on earth.

So he said, okay, we'll be Christian.

The Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church are complimentary.

We don't have anything that contradicts our theology or their theology, but we emphasize different things.

We have the beauty of the church, the icons, everything is chanted.

We also emphasize the mystery of God in our churches.

(male cantor) ♪ For those who lost their loved ones ♪ A deacon is a servant first and foremost.

The deacon is the servant of the people.

The deacon is the transition point between the alter and the people which is why I'm out on the solea leading the prayers.

Part of the function of that is so that everyone else can be at prayer.

The deacon is always directing with the orarion, the stole that's in my hand so that everyone can just get lost in prayer.

(Deacon Leonard Kardonowy) I'm kind of an MC.

I tell the people what's going to happen.

I tell them to be attentive to what's going to be taking place, and the priest follows, does his part all the way through.

When we chant, we sing to God.

Every song is sung.

As you are at church you understand where we're at.

♪ Over hills and run over dales to the place you have chosen.

♪ Cantoring is assisting the priest with the music and the tone of the liturgy.

We sing the Tropars and Kondaks and we answer the petitions, the Ektenias.

We're assisting the priest with the liturgy.

(Christian Rodakowski) It's a spiritual environment.

As we experience Easter, we're all going to experience the joy with the words and the different melodies.

We'll experience the light turning on when we sing "O Joyful Light."

And everything if a person really tries to hone in and tune in to the words in the tradition, it all has a meaning.

and it's all helping the prayer.

Easter which we will oftentimes refer to it as Paska, we have lots of services during Holy Week.

A couple of services a day, each one different, each one rich in the meaning of what's going on in the day.

We begin on Saturday before Palm Sunday where we celebrate the resurrection of Lazarus.

Then we end on Easter Sunday with the resurrection.

The Ukrainian traditions are very much alive.

The Pysanky egg tradition goes way back.

Here you have an egg with a shell, so it represents the tomb.

The shell, the white, and the yolk, it represents the trinity.

A lot of the ways that they decorate the Pysanky have these symbols of new life on them.

It takes anywhere probably from 6 to 10 hours to do one Pysanky.

Every egg is extremely special.

You cannot make 2 eggs identical.

(Deacon Tony Holt) Among the various traditions that we have in the Byzantine tradition are the blessing of the baskets, and the foods that are associated there, wonderful things that God created that we put aside for those 40 days of lent so that we can reflect on all of that sacrifice that our Lord went through for us, and now we're going to feast with great joy.

(Father Marty Nagy) Then our procession around the church symbolically followed the myrrh bearing women's footsteps who defied danger, death, and despair to seek Jesus' body.

We have not varied much in our church.

We have not made a lot of changes in our church.

Changes were made, but we're coming back to where it was.

(Father Marty Nagy) Each church probably has about 100 parishioners.

Not only have they maintained this for a lot of time, because of the great faith of the people that are here, but I really see energy really happening to grow the parish.

We have young families.

So I really see a lot of life blossoming, as well as we have strong elders here that have maintained the faith that are pillars to the community.

(Cantor Gerry Grosulak) ♪ Now and forever and ever ♪ The Ukrainian Catholic religion is really important to my family, especially the tradition part of it.

The Pysanky eggs, they're bright, colorful, they're really fun to make.

It's fun when we get to go home and eat all of this food in this basket.

That's part of our tradition.

(Lilly Steiner) Our family, we've been taking Eucharist on the tongue.

We've always been interested in the Byzantine Catholic Church.

So when we saw how the Ukrainian Catholic receives it in the mouth, that was kind of the push we needed to try our first mass and our liturgy, and after we went the first time we really liked it so we kept coming back.

It's really homey.

We're all so closely knit together, we all know each other, and during the Easter celebrations it's really joyful.

(man) ♪ Christ is risen ♪ ♪ From the dead ♪ ♪ Trampling death by death ♪ ♪ As is all in the tomb ♪ ♪ Giving life.

♪ (Christian Rodakowski) I really experience a connection to my heritage.

There's been hundreds of people here for generations.

So as I'm in the church I do feel my ancestors, which is encouraging, and it's really a present to think how many people have contributed spiritually and physically within the church.

(Deacon) Christ is risen!

(congregation) He is risen!

(Deacon Leonard Kardonowy) We have a lot of young people that have left because of jobs.

But when they come back, they always come back to this church.

I feel that we are going to grow.

Our churches never die.

God won't let it die.

It's up to us to keep it going.

This is a place where heaven comes and touches earth.

So when we come through these doors, when we come into this place we get to touch heaven in a way, and it's a very special and a unique way.

(Deacon) Christ has risen!

(congregation) Indeed he has risen!

[repeated in Ukrainian] Episode 4 of "Black Histories of the Northern Plains" tells the story of William Thornton Montgomery, a slave who ended up in the Red River Valley where he became a successful farmer and founded a small town.

(Matt Olien, narrator) Following the Civil War, the Montgomery family of freed men and women operated an early Mississippi farm co-op out of the family plantation of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

As the federal government abandoned southern institutions and Reconstruction came to an end, Davis was freed from prison and pardoned for his crimes.

He resumed control of the home through southern courts.

Facing eviction, some of the Montgomerys and their neighbors tried lands elsewhere in the Mississippi.

Others took part in the Great Exodus to Kansas.

One, William Thornton Montgomery, migrated to the Red River Valley in Dakota Territory and turned a successful wheat farm and elevator into a small town named after his mother.

In a May 1967 interview with NBC News, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected on what he viewed as a disparity of opportunity on the new frontier following the Civil War...

In this episode, we'll explore how freed men and women set their sights for the northern plains and took part in the agricultural revolution that reshaped the landscape in the 19th century.

I'm Troy Jackson II with Prairie Public.

Our narrator is Matt Olien.

And this is "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

[guitar & mandolin play in bright folk rhythm] (Matt Olien) After the violence of the Civil War had calmed, the final decades of the 19th century on the northern plains were still marked by tumultuous change.

The Indian Wars had moved into Dakota Territory, opening the region to further American settlement.

However, this wave of immigrants had been set in motion years earlier by several key legislative acts.

When the slaveholding conservatives among the southern Democrats seceded from the Union in 1861, the radical Republican elements of the northern states consolidated their power in Congress and passed legislation like the Pacific Railway Act and the Homestead Act.

The first of these acts created railroad charters, providing corporations huge swaths of federal lands to help fund the construction of transcontinental railroads that would connect America's East and West.

The Union Pacific was the first railroad chartered by this legislation.

The second was the Northern Pacific, which broke ground in Duluth in 1870 and began carrying settlers into Dakota Territory two summers later.

Many of these settlers purchased their land directly from the railroad or federal government.

But a significant minority made use of the 1862 Homestead Act, a revolutionary piece of legislation that created federal subsidies for agricultural settlements in the West.

Though some historians have criticized the program, citing failure rates, fraudulent claims, and other abuses, the Homestead Act succeeded in expediting America's westward expansion and provided new paths of economic mobility for the nation's growing working class.

Unfortunately, as civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. later argued, the program failed to address standing racial inequities and other barriers of entry, and few African Americans ever took part.

In northern plains communities, African American populations remained low, usually constituting less than 1% of the population, and most of these men and women came north with few resources to work in service industries and general labor.

However, a few hundred Black settlers and families still staked their claim on homesteads in the northern plains, including William Thornton Montgomery, perhaps the most successful to do so.

Montgomery came north from Davis Bend, Mississippi, where his family had been enslaved by brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis, wealthy plantation owners influenced by the utopian ideals of Robert Owen.

On the Davis plantation, enslaved men and women were allowed greater freedoms than was typical within the confines of their bondage.

They were educated, relatively well-fed and compensated, and William's father Benjamin was trusted to manage plantation business.

He also developed a reputation as a machinist and engineer.

Yet when the Union Army marched through Davis Bend in 1862, the Montgomerys joined their ranks to fight against their former owner's Confederacy forces.

After the war, the Montgomerys purchased the Davis plantation for $300,000.

William also served in public office, one of the first in the Reconstruction South.

By 1881, cotton prices had fallen and Jefferson Davis regained ownership of the plantation, so William moved north to grow wheat as a bonanza farmer.

He arrived in the north with considerably more money, education, and experience than most of his Red River Valley peers, and as a result his years in the region were marked by relative wealth, comfort, and social standing.

William landed on 640 acres in Richland County, two miles from the Red River.

The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul rail line connecting Fargo and Breckenridge ran through his land.

The additions of a general store and grain elevator in 1888 soon gave form to a small village of Montgomery's neighbors and laborers called Lithia.

His later land purchases and Homestead and Timber Culture Act claims added to a thriving operation of more than 1000 acres.

At the turn of the 20th century, nearing 60 years of age, William returned to his family in Mississippi.

He died in 1909 having taken one of the most impressive journeys to the north and back.

Some of Montgomery's successes were shared among the other few Black settlers in the northern plains who found community at the end of the 19th century.

However, his return to Mississippi also foreshadowed a steady outmigration of the region's Black population that would continue until the 1960s.

New histories will tell their stories.

Thank you for joining us for a look at the early years of the Black experience in the northern plains.

We hope you'll continue to explore, learn, and even share the many threads of our unique histories.

As Sojourner Truth once said, "Truth is powerful and will prevail."

I'm Troy Jackson II with Prairie Public, and this has been "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

Wildly Appropriate is a band from Bismarck who describe their music as groovy garage rock.

Their energy is unbridled and their original tunes come from personal experiences and emotion.

[guitar intro] [playing in rock rhythm] ♪ ♪ ♪ Last night I ♪ ♪ Got so drunk I couldn't breathe ♪ ♪ Junebug greets you in the morning ♪ ♪ Sounds rolling over the hills and prairie ♪ ♪ Lights flashin' ♪ ♪ Cool dancin' ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ But I didn't see a thing ♪ ♪ I was staring at a single light ♪ ♪ Intensively ♪ ♪ Fractured ♪ ♪ System failing ♪ Whoo!

[guitar solo] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Last night I ♪ ♪ Felt so low but so inspired ♪ ♪ That creativity ♪ ♪ Was chained down by a tired feeling ♪ ♪ With the sounds rolling over hills and prairie ♪ ♪ Lights flashin' ♪ ♪ Cool dancin' ♪ ♪ Yeah but I didn't see thing ♪ ♪ Or an empty ambulance lights on wailing ♪ ♪ Fractured system ♪ ♪ Failing oh ♪ [guitar solo] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If you know of an artist, a topic or an organization in our region that you think would make for an interesting segment please contact us at... (Matt) You can watch this and other episodes of "Prairie Mosaic" on Prairie Public's YouTube channel and follow Prairie Public on social media as well.

I'm Matt Olien.

And I'm Barb Gravel, thank you for joining us for another edition of "Prairie Mosaic."

[guitar, bass, & drums play in bright country rhythm] (woman) "Prairie Mosaic" is funded by-- the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4th, 2008; the North Dakota Council on the Arts; and by the members of Prairie Public.