(calm music) - Hello and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll learn about Blair Treuer, a textile artist from Bemidji, Minnesota.

But first joining me now is the executive director of The Study ND, Brenna Gerhardt.

Brenna, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me, John, I appreciate it.

- As we get started, well tell the folks a little bit about yourself, your background maybe.

- Yeah, so I'm a native of Center North Dakota.

I went to Concordia College for my undergraduate.

I went to Harvard Divinity School for my master's degree, moved back.

Now I'm a proud Rotarian, active member of my PEO group and just, I love being back in North Dakota.

It's such an honor.

- Well we're here today to talk about The Study ND.

What is the The Study ND?

- It is a nonprofit dedicated to making lifelong learning affordable, accessible, and meaningful through classes and events.

- Okay, that's a lot.

And so what your role as exec executive director, what does that mean, what all do you do?

- Yeah, just overseeing all of the programs.

We do lectures, we have book talks, we have a brave conversation program.

We have a number of classes that people can take.

We've done think and drink programs in the past.

We have a civics education program for high school students and a teacher institute in the summer.

We do a lot of living history performances.

So we kind of do a little bit of everything.

We just want people to be able to engage with lifelong learning that kind of meets their interests.

- Now, okay, you've done some of that.

So can you gimme the mission of the study?

- Yeah, it's just to make lifelong learning in the humanities affordable, accessible, and meaningful.

Just to give people access, especially people in the rural parts of the state that don't always have access to learning opportunities because we need thoughtful and informed citizens to keep this democracy going.

- That may be the first time you said humanities because I think maybe we should clarify this.

Folks listening and watching, you were Humanities North Dakota.

- [Brenna] We were, yeah.

- So why did Humanities North Dakota decide to rebrand as The Study ND?

- Yeah, so that was a really hard decision for us.

But we'd been looking at our name and I asked our marketing director, what's the hardest part of your job?

And she's like constantly having to explain what the humanities are to people before I can do any marketing, I can't get people to walk through that door.

So we did some market research and people associated the word with human resources, primarily, humane society.

We've gotten some calls about cats, which I can't help with.

And they also just thought liberal think tank.

Those were the top three if people even kind of were familiar with the term.

But the vast majority of people had no idea what that term meant, which made me really sad because you know how much I love the humanities, I love history, philosophy, literature, ethics, civics, education, all of those things, which is what the humanities are.

So we really had to think about it and I think we made a really brave decision after a year of really talking about úit.

And if our name is getting in the way of our mission, if we can't serve people, if they're not coming through the door 'cause they think that's elitist, that's not for me or that's human resources.

I don't need those things, we just decided, you know what?

We need to rethink our strategy.

If we can get people through the door, we can show them what the humanities are and we can educate them after that.

But if they're not even coming to us or they're just looking past us, that was a huge problem.

So we put our mission before our name, which was hard, which is hard for us because we love the humanities and we loved it being Humanities North Dakota.

But we felt we need to serve our people.

That was our primary focus.

- So maybe a little bit more on why the decision of the name, The Study, why?

- Yeah, we came like how did we describe what we do?

We really came down to that like how do we get people to walk the door?

What is warm, what's inviting?

We thought a study in a home, it's a place that people curate their own study practice.

And that's what we wanna be.

We wanna be warm, we wanna inviting and we want people to know that they can curate their own study how they want to do it.

Like do you wanna come to an online program?

Do you wanna come to an in-person program?

Are you more interested in history?

Is it philosophy that you're interested?

Is it writing classes, do you want to watch a recording?

Do you want it to have be there live in person?

So really we want it to be as flexible as we could possibly be and put the person, our constituent in the driver's seat of that experience.

- So what's the target demographic of The Study?

- Yeah, so we exist to serve the out of school adult population.

So once you're done with school, we don't think you should be done learning.

We think that life keeps teaching so you should just keep engaging with that.

So it's the adult public.

However, we do work with teachers on our civics education 'cause that's our next generation of citizens and we believe that that is important.

- Now you said out of school adult, is there an age limit or is it lifelong learning?

- Lifelong learning, the whole way, yeah.

And some people who do homeschooling will engage with our online classes.

And so if there's an adult with with a child that wants to be part of that, we're not gonna turn them away either.

- Yeah, so when it comes to resources for classes, for events for a nonprofit like The Study, how do you obtain them?

- Yeah, so it's been a struggle this year John.

So we used to receive a major grant every year from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Doge came in and cut that and that was 80% of our funding.

So during this name change and rebranding, we are really struggling with financial stability.

So we've really pivoted to fundraising.

We pivoted to writing more grants, bigger grants, looking at bigger foundations.

But that can be a struggle in North Dakota, we don't have a lot of large foundations and very few that really are dedicated to education, especially for the adult out of school audience that we serve.

So we've been working to restore that federal funding just as foundationally.

And one of the reasons why that federal funding is so important is because we want to be able to do the program that we need to do.

We want that academic freedom because funding often comes with strings attached and funders wanna see a change in the world and they're giving you money to make that change.

And we are non-partisan.

We believe in the search for the truth.

We believe that all viewpoints should be entertained, listened to, heard.

Everything we do is based on scholarship.

We're not telling people what to think.

We're not pushing an ideology.

We really just want people to be lifelong learners and we believe the truth will will come out of that.

So we've had to turn some money away and say, no, we have to stay true to our mission.

We are nonpartisan, we are not doing that.

So that federal funding allowed us that space and that opportunity for citizens, you know, to think for themselves, which is what we want.

And we want to present different viewpoints and different scholars.

So that I think has been the biggest challenge of losing that federal funding is that we have to hold on to that autonomy, which you know, is tough.

- Well, Brenna, you correct me if I'm wrong, you just said the NEH was 80% of your funding.

- Correct.

- If an organization loses 80%, I mean it's pretty traumatic, well I mean.

- Are you familiar?

(laughs) - I can be.

And so I mean, but you were able to come out on the other side with still a program and still things.

So how are you doing that?

Can you expand on that a little bit more?

- Absolutely.

- I mean, where did you make your cuts?

'Cause obviously you had to do something, you had to reorganize or restructure something.

- Yeah, yeah, well we lost one staff member, which was really hard for us.

We're staff of four now.

Pretty small, people stepped up, the Mellon Foundation stepped up and gave us a large one time grant.

I went to coffee one day with a long time member and constituents and I just thought she was just gonna, you know, commiserate with me like this is hard.

Something we love isn't being valued.

Something we believe is vital to our democracy and the health of our society is being lost.

But she slid a check across the table for a hundred thousand dollars and she said, I was gonna give this to you after I was gone, but I want you to be around for a long time as long as I'm around.

So I want you to have this now.

So our members have stepped up 'cause they believe in what we're doing.

We've looked at grants, we haven't been able to pay our scholars.

So all the scholars we're working with are donating their time and expertise 'cause they believe so much in what we do.

So it's just really been a community effort.

- So do you also partner with similar organizations around the state?

Have you expanded that since these cuts?

- Yeah, I mean we've really, we've been a long partner of yours, the libraries, Library Association, the state library, libraries are just vital third places where people gather and a lot of our programming happens.

We also really actually reached out to national partners.

So we're working with a nonprofit called More Perfect.

And they have a series called In Pursuit and it is on presidential history.

So they have a series of articles that they're gonna be released.

The first one happens on President's Day.

It's written by George W. Bush on George Washington and it's leadership lessons of all the presidents and some of the first ladies.

And then it's run by the former archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan.

And she's gonna do a series of webinars with some of these writers.

So some of 'em are former presidents, but most of 'em are solid historians.

Some of our best, our country's best historians.

And they're gonna sit down and talk what are the leadership lessons that we need to learn from presidential history?

And that's great 'cause that's not costing us anything.

What they really wanted to do was distribute these articles and have a grassroots engagement with it.

And they saw us as a distribution for that.

So we're gonna distribute the articles and other state councils are taking part in that.

So even though this crisis has been hard, it has opened up some new avenues and opportunities and made us think more creatively.

- Well, do most of your events and classes take place in person or online?

- Yeah, it's a mix, it's a mix.

As you know, during COVID we kind of had to recalibrate and rethink what we are doing.

And so we really started pushing online programs 'cause we'd primarily been a re-grant agency, giving out grants, but there weren't people doing programming during that time.

So we just started kind of filling that gap 'cause we're like, people are at home, they're learning how to use Zoom, they got free time now how do we help fill that?

So that's when we started doing our online classes, which is really a core piece of what we do.

Our four to six week courses taught by reputable scholars from around the nation.

And then we started bringing in book talks.

We really, for a while, for I'd say for two solid years, we were primarily just an online portal for programming and education.

And now we're trying to balance that back out to bring some of those programs back.

We have a number of living history programs that we're gonna try to start doing.

Some of 'em are hybrid, we'll be recording the in-person and allowing people to come online.

But we just really had to kind of pivot and make that decision.

But it's been hard to balance those with just limited staffing 'cause it's easier to do an online program 'cause I can have a scholar in California, one of our scholars coming up is in Germany.

You can just coordinate those things but in person takes a little bit more.

However, I really believe people need to come together and we've seen such a breakdown of that just across the spectrum.

So one thing that we're starting our study clubs and so we're encouraging people to come together maybe in their local library, maybe in their living room and take part in our online programming 'cause we have such good content.

But I can't always, you know, get a scholar to drive to Crosby.

It can be really hard, especially for those rural communities.

But they have all this access.

But what I don't want them to lose out on that is just the sense of community.

That third place, the people coming together to debate and discuss ideas.

And with The Study's programming, you don't have to prepare anything, unlike a book club, you don't have to read the book.

You just show up and watch a video and then have the discussion.

But we really wanna push that grassroots network of study clubs to come together so people are still engaging with each other 'cause they just think that is just so important to have that community, especially now.

- That's I say probably the only silver or one of the only silver linings of COVID was people learned technology and were able to connect.

- Yeah, absolutely.

It gave me faith when I saw my parents on their iPad on Zoom and it was funny for a while 'cause they were like, well how does this, you know, and we were just like laughing.

But I was like, okay, they can do it, anyone can do it.

Okay 'cause I was really reticent to do online programming to be honest 'cause I just believe people need to be together in community.

But then once we started it, then people kept telling us, you're my lifeline.

Like I want this, I need this.

And I don't have access to it where I live.

So I think it's just a vital resource.

- Well, I understand you have an event coming up February the 15th, 2026.

Can you give us an overview of what that will be?

- Yeah, so this is our Marilyn Hudson Brave Conversation project event.

It's named in honor of tribal elder Marilyn Hudson, who is a historian who just believed that everyone should have a seat at the table.

It's kind of built around her kitchen table.

And this one is on the moral foundations of political thought.

And I'm really excited, so again, like this is that independent funding we're bringing in someone from the left and someone from the right to have a conversation to model civil discourse.

And what I like about this one is they're each gonna critique their own side of the aisle first.

And like where do they think their own, not, I won't wanna say parties because they're not part of political parties, but where the right and left have gone wrong.

Where do they think they went astray?

How do they think they can go forward?

And we're also gonna model that people can disagree and still be kind to each other.

And that's what I'm really excited about.

And it's gonna be moderated by Justice Jerod Tufte of the North Dakota Supreme Court.

And I just, we just had a run through the other day and I was just so excited to see them engaging with each other and just delighting in the fact like, you're totally gonna disagree with me on this, but this is what I believe and this is what this looks like.

And just, and I do, you're wrong.

You're never convinced me that capitalism isn't good, you know, 'cause one's a socialist, one's a capitalist, like they really just have profound differences.

But seeing them engage and just delight in that conversation just gave me hope.

Like, we can do this and we should be doing this.

- So how did you come up with that topic or how do topics come up for you?

- Yeah, well it's called a brave conversation.

So we try to pick topics like what are conversations that we think our country needs to be happening?

Or maybe it's a state level, what are conversations that need to be happening but aren't?

And how do we put guardrails on those by we bringing in really thoughtful and important informed people.

So it's grounded because there's so much misinformation and disinformation out there that people are really looking for good sources, good reliable sources.

And then just opening a space to have that conversation.

An important piece of the brave conversations are that the audiences are sitting at tables and having discussions.

So while it's a live stream, we have satellite events in five communities across the state, and we're encouraging people to have dinner parties, invite your friends over.

This gives you content to have a really, we hope, fulsome conversation.

So this topic just came from necessity.

Like we're not civil to each other, everyone's angry at each other.

We don't see people sitting down having, you know, spirited debate and conversation.

And we really wanted to have that and we really wanted to ground things in just, what are the moral issues?

What are the moral foundations?

And are we living up to those expectations for ourselves?

- Fortunately, I think you're answering this question right now.

Why do you think it's so important to discuss topics like civics, history and culture?

- Yeah, because like that's our shared narrative.

Like we have to live together and we have a lot of problems we're gonna need to solve from AI to just like climate change, all of these issues.

Like how do we solve them, if we can't talk to each other, how can we solve them if we're not looking to scholars, to experts.

Like I think there's also been this distrust of expertise and we're trying to bring that back.

Like people have done extensive research into these topics and they're smart people and we want them to tell us what they're thinking.

They're thinking deeply about these issues and they're inviting us to think deeply with them, not necessarily to agree with them because we do, we want people to think for themselves, but we just need to have these conversations because otherwise we're hiding a behind a keyboard.

I know you just had the governor on and he just told our students at our civics education thing, if you won't say it to someone's face, don't say it with your thumbs.

And I thought we all need to hear that because I think we've just, we've coarsened our language, we're not talking to each other, we're talking past each other.

And that's something we really need to recapture just for our communities, let alone our democracy.

- So what are the future plans for The Study?

You know, what can people expect next from this organization?

- Yeah, well we're hoping to scale up.

So right now we're hoping to maintain our operations to be able to keep offering the services that we are offering, but then hopefully we can start growing.

I'd really love to see hundreds of study clubs happening across North Dakota because we want to know what people are interested in learning.

We wanna know what they're thinking, we wanna engage with them.

We don't want this all to be top down.

We think you should know this or learn this.

We really want like what's keeping you up at night?

What conversations do you think we need to be having?

What do you wanna learn about?

Or what are misconceptions you might have about American history or civics or how the government works or what your rights and responsibilities are as a citizen.

So I just think just fostering a grassroots effort to bring back that sense of community around education is something we're really focused on.

So keeping up those partnerships with libraries, keeping up some national partnerships.

I'm hoping that we can kind of scale up and tap into resources of bigger nonprofits, bigger organizations, universities that are looking to serve people in more rural communities.

- Okay, well if people want more information or maybe they can volunteer, where can they go, who do they contact?

- Yeah, so they can visit the tudynd.org or they could just email me at brenna@thestudynd.org because I love conversation, so I encourage that.

- Brenna, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me, John.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) Blair Treuer never considered herself a storyteller until she started to work with fabric.

Now she uses textiles to tell tales through unique fabric portraits.

Blair weaves stories of family, spirituality and change all inspired by her life experiences and her Native American family.

(water flowing) - For some reason it just came naturally to me to be a storyteller, even though I never would've described myself as that.

I am creating pieces that don't look like anything anybody's ever seen.

They were like reading tea leaves for me and how they captured the essence of my child and what that meant.

And I quickly realized that I was a storyteller.

My name is Blair Treuer and I call myself a textile artist.

I make portraits out of fabric.

I've been engaged in this process of making artwork professionally for about five years now, and I really wanna be clear to not call myself a quilter.

I feel like that is a different skillset.

Being a master quilter means that you've mastered a lot of specific quilting techniques, and I have not.

I instead approach my work more like a painting and they don't look anything like your typical quilt.

All of my children and my husband are Native American and we have a ceremony that is the pinnacle experience of my children's spiritual life.

For that ceremony, I'm required to make blankets as part of their offering.

So it is the only contribution that I could make to this incredibly important spiritual journey that my children are on.

And so after all of that production for ceremony was over, I decided to see what I was really made of with this work.

It didn't take me too long to realize I actually love exploring art through fabric.

So to practice this craft, I did a portrait of each of my nine children and my husband and myself, and that was my very first solo show.

I usually have a vision in my head of what the piece should be, and the first thing that I do is I create the face.

All of my pieces are portraits.

So the face is the most critical area for me.

I prefer to just feel it out in real time with my fabric as I go.

And the way that I work.

I cut small pieces and then I attach it with just a little bit of glue from a glue stick so I can change my mind really easily.

And so I can be really playful that way with my work in a way that I couldn't be if I were painting or drawing.

They're all a labor of love.

They take days to sew, after I've created the image.

Up until recently, the longest I had worked on the same piece was about four months.

And right now I've been working on this same piece for about a year.

So I've taken a lot of time to just explore new techniques, to try new things, to hate it and rip it up and start over.

One of the greatest joys about working with fabric is I am not creating anything that has to be functional so I can pair fabrics together that do not belong.

They have velvet, they have upholstery, they have my kids' old Halloween costumes cut up in there.

Fabric brings out so much in me as I'm working that I don't think I would be able to connect to as readily with paint.

A lot of my work ended up being a reflection on what life has been like for me as a white woman in a Native American family.

What that has done is it has really made me analyze my worldview.

Being confronted with a belief system that is not what I was raised in, has forced me to ask myself questions about life and about how I see the world.

My second body of work was essentially about my daughter getting her period.

And one friend was like, are you sure your daughter's gonna be okay with you doing a show about her period?

Isn't she gonna find that horribly embarrassing?

And I asked her and she was like, why would I be embarrassed?

Embarrassment was not an emotion that she had ever attached to that experience.

The reason I wanted to express that story through art is because she had an incredibly beautiful experience.

There was a beautiful ceremony for her.

She was completely empowered.

All of the men in the room were crying, it was so beautiful.

I want people to understand the story.

I would love for my work to be interesting enough that they will see what that piece is actually about.

Helping people think differently about our interconnectedness, about our relationships to each other.

That greater narrative is really important to me.

My hope would be that people who see my work have the opportunity to lean into that narrative.

(calm music) - Well, that's all we have for Prairie Pulse this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(calm music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.