♪ >> Yeah, this is it.

♪ This is my family crest.

I don't know what I think about this -- O'Davoren.

It comes from I believe some time in late medieval times.

These family crests got created, and everybody was very proud to have one, and it says "nunquam non paratus."

It means "never unprepared."

♪ My name is Rita Davern, and I live in St. Paul.

My family at one time owned Pike Island in the Mississippi River near Fort Snelling.

And the more I learn about the history of that land and what happened there and how sacred it is to Dakota people, I have been very, very interested in the concept of restorative justice and restoration of land rights and land.

>> Sure.

>> I thought I'd just start by stopping by and saying hello.

Bye-bye.

>> Bye.

>> Wow.

People are eager to talk.

That's good.

♪ So, it's June 29th.

My family's coming over.

[ Laughs ] >> Hi, Rita.

>> Hi, Colleen.

>> Together: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ Happy birthday ♪ >> We all know that family reunions can be wonderful but also awkward, especially when I've decided to bring up some information about my family history that might make some relatives uncomfortable.

But first, a look at who's here.

That's my oldest brother, Bill.

He's one of five generations of William Daverns.

There's my sister Margaret.

She looked out for me when I was young.

We're close.

And there are my grandnieces, who I adore.

>> Kind of just like a family reunion kind of thing.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Well, you just get to see your family you don't usually get to see very often.

>> And you eat food.

>> [ Chuckles ] I like to do this.

>> Yes.

Okay, you got to teach me how.

>> So, do you know where you're from, like where your ancestors are from?

>> I'm pretty sure Ireland.

>> Yeah, and maybe some here too.

>> I'm assuming they're somehow related to us 'cause they probably wouldn't just hang up a picture of someone random.

>> And they're a lot older now, so I can never tell who it is 'cause old people tend to look alike.

>> What?

>> Yeah.

>> And my husband, Bob, is also here.

He and my brothers like to rib each other about their golf games.

Bob likes hanging around my large Catholic family.

Most of them live within miles of this house, which is close to where I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Sometimes family members will talk about my son, Chris, who died 10 years ago.

We all still miss him terribly.

There's a wall in my living room with a 1,200-year timeline of our family history.

I guess you could say I'm passionate about my roots.

But for a long time, I didn't know much about my heritage.

All I knew growing up is that I was Irish, but I didn't know what that really meant.

When I was young, my bedtime prayers always ended, "God bless Grandma Anne and Grandpa Bill, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Pat."

But they were just names without stories.

>> Whoever came here first changed their name, as most people who immigrated do, from O'Davoren to Davern.

That's what my understanding is.

I know they came from Ireland, and I could probably point out on a map where it is, but I probably couldn't -- I don't know exactly where it is.

I'm actually kind of excited to learn some stuff.

It doesn't define me individually, but it is interesting stuff, and I mean, it's not gonna hurt me by knowing.

>> My f-- greatest wish for today is that this is just a beginning of a new conversation about our family and our history and what it means now.

It turns out in my own mind what's been going on a lot lately is a wondering about how our people could come from Ireland and have their land taken away over centuries there, you know?

Oppression from the British Empire and famine and all that.

And they came here and here, they kind of did the same thing to the native people here, you know?

Like, they took land that was Dakota land.

They forced the Dakota out.

Not our family in particular.

They were just part of a big movement.

But it kind of bothers me.

And so I've been sort of processing that and trying to figure out what the hell I want to do about this now that I know.

Do you ever think about this?

Do you ever...you know?

Wonder why we never, ever heard that there was a native person in Minnesota?

I never heard anything growing up, that there were Indians on the land Great Grandpa settled on, you know?

Nothing.

♪ >> My path was art.

And when I got my bachelor's in Dakota art and culture, I was able to get a job in Indian education.

My kids were bigger.

They were in school.

I was an at-home mom.

So I took this job, and it was teaching culture, art and culture.

The mission of my work is to enhance the cultural identity of the native child.

And then, as I learned more about our education system, how Minnesota is -- it ranks 49 in 50, always, unsuccessfully educating black, brown, and indigenous kids.

And knowing that and knowing that this is a systemic problem, I went back and got my master's in education.

And certainly not to know more about our system but to know enough to interrupt it.

Good morning, my relatives.

It was awesome to hear your introductions.

I like to make mine in the Dakota language.

That is the language of Minnesota for over 12,000 years.

So, here we are at historic Fort Snelling.

This is a place that is a really popular spot for teachers to bring students.

A really important counter story to this up here and the westward expansion is "What about where we're standing?"

In 1862, our grandmothers and women and children were rounded up in Lower Sioux Morton, Minnesota, at the Lower Sioux Agency.

And there were over 2,000 women and children and elders who were rounded up and force-marched here to Fort Snelling to a concentration camp.

Some had no shoes.

Many had no food to eat.

It was no blankets or any way to keep warm.

And they were brought here to a concentration camp, right down the hill here.

There's many pictures of that camp.

And every time I see them, I think about my own great-great-grandmother, Pazahiyayewin, who, on the evening before they started that walk, had a baby.

Her name was Wanske.

She walked with that baby and her children here to Fort Snelling.

♪ Who are my people?

Where do I come from?

And what is my dream?

When we begin that lesson with our indigenous kids, I say, "You already know the answer to that, don't you?

How many of you already know?"

And they all know.

♪ My people are the Dakota.

I come right here from the Bdote in the Minnesota River Valley.

But what they don't realize when they answer that question is if you go to the rest of your teachers in your community or people who are not native, they do not know the answers to those questions.

They don't know "Who are my people and where do I come from?"

And knowing the answers to those questions creates such a solid foundation for identity.

>> How am I supposed to grow up and have a picture of who I am if I don't know who I come from?

I don't care what is in my history.

I don't care what's good about it.

I don't care what's hard about it.

I don't care what secrets are there that I wouldn't want anybody kn-- I don't care.

I want it all.

♪ I grew up with a lot of blank in my past, a lot of unknowns, a lot of secrets.

There were people that they wouldn't talk about.

There were questions they wouldn't answer.

I had 19 years of education and not one day of Irish history.

♪ ♪ Thank you for coming.

It's a great honor for me.

Like some of you in this room, I've had this bug I think that came from growing up and knowing nothing about Ireland or the Burren or my family.

We just -- None of it got passed down, and it was like being given a puzzle with maybe two pieces, and you didn't even have enough pieces to see what the picture looked like.

And it just didn't work for me, and I sort of set out with my dad and his cousin and my siblings and we set out in the 1960s and '70s and on to reconnect with this place and people and the stories and the family.

>> Hi.

Finally you're here.

>> This is my grandmother Anne Davern's house that she was born in, in 1868.

And I was there last night.

We've stayed connected.

There's been actually letters going back from that farm to my house in St. Paul for 130 years.

And they're still going back and forth, and we're connected to the people who live there now, even though they're not relatives.

Like many Americans, my ancestors crossed oceans to escape difficult living conditions.

Their land had been taken away by the British Empire.

They were forbidden to speak their native language, own property, or vote in elections.

So, these are my son's baseball hats.

He wore them constantly.

Minnesota Twins.

Ooh, this is a record of transplant events.

In 1993, my son had a heart transplant, and this is a record of day to day, what we were up to and what we did.

One day before they were going to intubate him, put him into a coma to save the last bit of his heart, we got -- the beeper went off and we got the call that, um, a little girl lost her life, ran out into the street and got killed in Minneapolis, and her family decided to donate her heart.

And, um, that little girl's heart ended up in my son.

And because of it, he had 17 more years of life.

And the most amazing thing is that that child and that family was a native family from Minneapolis, and we wrote to them later, and, um... they said that their 5-year-old daughter was the most generous human being you've ever met, and so to them it just made huge sense that they donate her organs so that other young people could live, and those organs saved seven lives.

♪ Yep.

Chris was just four months old when we adopted him.

He was a bundle of joy.

But it wasn't easy adapting to a brand-new life in Minnesota.

And then, when he was just five years old, he was diagnosed with cancer.

There was just so many unknowns.

That was the hard part.

When you know what it is, at least, you know, you can get a handle on the fear, but not knowing was real hard.

Later, he had more health struggles, including a heart transplant, but he lived large, making many friends, enjoying nature in the Northwoods, and traveling.

After he graduated from college, I invited him to Ireland, hoping he might feel the connection I felt to my homeland.

And he agreed.

He walked in.

It's like he was at home.

[ Both laugh ] Yep, swinging on the swings.

>> Aww, he was amazing.

He was a lovely young fellow, wasn't he?

>> Yeah.

>> And the patience he had with the kids at that stage.

They just felt they died and went to heaven because he did everything they wanted him to do.

On the swings with them and everything.

Oh, my God, outside our kitchen window.

>> Sometimes I go on a walk late at night, and I talk to him.

[ Laughs ] >> Of course you do, yeah.

>> I do.

>> Yeah, of course.

>> Yeah, yeah.

And isn't the Irish who believe the dead aren't really gone?

They're just on a different plane.

>> They're in the next realm.

[ Both laugh ] >> Is that what they say?

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> My goodness.

♪ ♪ >> But, yeah.

This sound is being like stamp and hip-hop right now.

And I'm, like, finding my place within it.

♪ Truly unpleasant ♪ ♪ It's 'cause we're brown boys ♪ ♪ Always had dreams ♪ ♪ Rather see me chained up, not in school to learn ♪ ♪ They continue to segregate ♪ >> Reuben -- Yeah, he's got education.

He can make a difference, and he can stop -- he can stop passing that trauma.

>> We have this, like, super-huge Internet decolonization movement.

I made this CD called "Know the Name."

Being native, I always thought that there was an expectation of what kind of artist I was gonna be, and I bucked so hard from that idea because being a native artist, our own people put us in boxes, and it's not intentional, but undeniably, being a Dakota in 2020, walking in wasicun world, the white man's world, being an American, and my experience is different than a lot of native people and a lot of other native rappers.

Native rappers come out of Indian reservations.

And I'm a native rapper coming out of the urban, like, metropolitan of Minneapolis.

♪ Many of our people are goin' uneducated ♪ ♪ Many of our people are gettin' incarcerated ♪ ♪ Alcohol addiction ♪ ♪ They make us intoxicated ♪ So, I have this song called "Dear My Future Son."

It's something I worked on for more than a year.

It took actually about two years to fully compose the lyrics, and I even kept the lyrics for a long time, knowing that whatever I did with this, it's gonna have to be perfect.

It's almost like an organic conversation with me and the next generation of my family, the next generation of my people.

♪ People like a novelty ♪ ♪ But they'll keep us in their cycle of poverty ♪ ♪ Not my president ♪ ♪ Agenda doesn't benefit my people or my future kids ♪ Yes, trauma is in our DNA, but so is strength.

And so, like, this is us and this is our people.

Like, I think that this song, to me, is like -- is like let's walk forward together.

Like, let's heal together.

Like, this song, to me, is, like, motivating our people to heal.

♪ 'Cause I ain't even a father but I got to change the world before I bring you in it ♪ ♪ I will never rest until my work is finished ♪ ♪ Love your world and all of the people in it 'cause the sky may be the view but I promise it ain't the limit ♪ >> Today is my birthday.

It's my 70th birthday, and I am spending a few hours making contact with an organization that I heard is doing good work in the world related to returning land to native people.

Could we give Pike Island back?

Could we give it back?

There's no reason.

It's part of a state park.

It's not being used for anything but people going and hiking.

Could it be given back?

I don't know.

But I'd like to find out.

150 years ago, this island in the Mississippi River was bought and then sold by my great-grandfather.

That was not good.

If it's possible to put something right about that piece of land, I will do it.

I can't tell you why, but why not today?

[ Laughs ] I'm sort of like excited about it.

It's like why not today?

Might as well be today.

[ Keyboard clacking ] ♪ I want to call the Land Tenure Foundation.

>> Okay.

>> And find out when their next meeting is so I can go to it.

Does it ever happen that a body like the state of Minnesota would consider turning over public land back to a tribe?

Is there precedent for that?

I know the Grand Portage National Monument was turned over, but I don't know if that's ownership or just running it.

>> Administration.

>> Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Hmm.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg keeps me going.

She's an elder.

She's a powerful female.

She started when nobody knew that there was a problem with women needing laws that protected their rights.

Nobody believed that, and she just said, "Forget your anger.

Forget your --" you know, "Just build a case."

♪ The key to everything is you just don't give up.

You keep at it, and sooner or later, you get it.

We're on North 35-E headed toward the Indian Land Tenure Foundation.

They're an extraordinarily effective organization, all about Indian lands in Indian hands.

That's their motto.

I just want to build connections.

That's all.

Who knows where it'll go?

They get to decide.

I'm not in charge here.

They get to decide, but I have options and ideas, so we'll see.

>> Our mission is to recover all the land inside the reservation boundaries that was lost to Indian ownership and through treaties and executive orders that had been guaranteed to exclusive use and occupation by Indian people.

So the mission is to get back the 90 million acres that we lost inside the reservation boundaries and those places outside the reservation that are important to Indian people culturally and religious purposes.

To know who you are and to know the land history that goes with it is important for all non-Indians to get some grasp on.

They stole our land fair and square and they don't want to give it back.

[ Laughs ] You know, that pretty much sums it up.

But we see more and more, at least some, conversations around places that are important to Indian people.

We helped a small tribe in Oregon recover their original village, which, in fact, had been taken over by the Coast Guard for a lighthouse station.

And they got their original village back.

We had a young guy come in who does artwork for us.

And so he was asking if we had any art for him to do, and the night before, I had done a presentation to a group and showed them the picture of manifest destiny.

And I said to him, "You know what I'd really like is for you to paint the reverse of manifest destiny."

So what you'll see at the top of the stairs is the picture he painted, which just kind of reverses the whole thing, and it's become actually quite a popular picture for folks to rally around.

If we could get all non-Indians to recognize who was there, you know?

Who got this place for you to be there?

If we could get people just to understand the history of their land, that would be a remarkable accomplishment because most people never stop to think about it.

A pleasure to meet you.

>> Yeah.

>> Yes, same here, really, really.

♪ It was a really fun, interesting way to understand what the Indian Land Tenure Foundation is about and who they have working there and what they're up to in the world, from video games to [Laughs] to multimillion-dollar land purchases.

It's a really, really amazing organization.

Always the welcome, the welcome.

It's just like in Ireland.

It's like that's the number-one thing that happens, is welcoming, and that's bottom line, and it makes such a difference.

I felt very welcomed and like I had something to share and like I had something to learn both.

Yeah.

♪ We're in the Highland Park area of St. Paul, which used to be called the town of Reserve.

It was land claimed by Fort Snelling.

We're very close to where my great-grandfather's farm was.

Well, there's two rivers -- the Minnesota River and the Mississippi River.

The two rivers come together right here, and that's where Wita Tanka, or the Big Island, or later known as Pike Island, is right there in the middle of the river.

And my great-grandpa's farm was right up in here.

Right here, actually.

♪ I invited Ramona here because I want to know things about this place that she knows that I don't, and she's very graciously willing to share.

At this place, treaties were signed, settlers came, and the government removed native people, and my great-grandpa was here during it all.

He was here during the 1862 Dakota War.

We don't know what we did, what he was part of, but I'm sure the settlers were all terrified and the native people were terrified and starving and had been pushed beyond survival.

So it was desperate times.

I feel like something bad happened here that I'm sorry about.

[ Laughs ] >> Hello, my dear.

>> Hello.

Very good to see you.

>> Lovely to see you too.

>> How was your drive up?

>> Lovely, lovely.

>> [ Laughs ] [ Birds chirping ] >> The entire Mississippi and Minnesota rivers contained villages of Dakota people.

And so we called that area Bdote.

It's not a spot on the map.

It's a large area of land that spanned miles and miles of these rivers, but they were the waterways, and they were the highways of the Dakota.

This spot is the confluence of the Mississippi and the Minnesota River.

So we call this area Bdote 'cause it means that place where things are coming together, where things are crossing, where the energy is.

But because of the confluence of these rivers, many of our Dakota women and families would come here to give birth to their children.

In 1859, my great-great-grandmother -- her name was Pazahiyayewin -- and her name means "She Radiates in Her Path like the Sun."

So Pazahiyayewin made her way from our village, which is about 40 miles south, she made her way in the late stages of pregnancy to have her baby, her third child, here at Wita Tanka, which is this island here.

Currently Pike Island of the last 150-some years.

He was born there, and they went back to their village.

Three years later, he came back as a prisoner of war here at the concentration camp, at the most powerful place to the Dakota to suffer for six months.

Only recently have they looked at the definitions of "concentration camp" and renamed that place.

[ Birds chirping ] This is not such an unusual place.

If we look all across America where indigenous peoples were removed from their land, it was a very systematic approach.

By the time it happened in Minnesota, it was very swift -- 53 years from start to finish.

But it happened all across the country, so there were a Trail of Tears, there was the death march, there were all kinds of ways of removing people because they knew that connection to the land was powerful and they had to get them off it.

>> My great-grandpa farmed just over there a mile or so.

And in 1873, he bought Pike Island from Franklin Steele, and he owned it for six years.

[ Speaking indistinctly ] But that island has always been part of my story, and I never knew any -- like, there was no word said about anybody being here before him.

>> Well, there pretty much still isn't, Rita.

>> [ Laughs ] It's bizarre.

>> When people learn this story, it changes them.

It helps them to think of our space in a different way.

When you think about the systematic approach to land theft and genocide, the land was sold to immigrants who gave their very last cent to get here, to escape an oppression, not knowing they -- they knew what they were told, and they were told that we were dangerous.

And when you consider that Alexander Ramsey also put a notice in the paper and it said, "For every Sioux Indian sent to purgatory, we will pay you $200."

Now, $200 in 1862 would've purchased 35 acres of land.

So what would you do?

And so the only way of healing a space like this and healing through guilt and healing through all of those things is to know the story and walk through all the ways it makes us feel because I can't change that, Rita, except by this.

And you can't either except by doing what you're doing.

And I didn't open myself up for this conversation if I weren't ready and if I didn't understand the people that come to me, why they need to have it.

And for us doing this, it is a way of...leadership and leading and saying, you know, "This is a conversation that needs to come out of your spirit," all of ours.

>> Yes.

>> And so I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful to you for that.

>> And I'm grateful to you because the disconnection is what hurts, not just from the land but from people.

And I won't live with it anymore, so whatever I have to face or figure out to do, to, you know, just... You're a beautiful human being.

>> Mmm.

Thank you, my dear.

You are too.

♪ >> I cannot wait.

♪ >> So, you see some Dakota signage here.

That's pretty cool.

>> Yep.

♪ >> Rita is one of thousands of Minnesotans that have that story, that owned land that were not for sale, that were on the backs of my relatives.

And that's a really difficult thing to acknowledge, right?

She's not different than many Minnesotans.

Except that she -- [ Both laugh ] She acknowledges it.

>> Yeah.

I mean, I knew what happened there, but I never met anyone whose great-grandma was there and lived through it, so that was really... um, humbling.

♪ ♪ ♪ >> We're still doing it.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> We have Indians in movies and they don't let the Indians play the part.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> So we're still doing it.

We're still, um... >> We're still racist.

>> Well, we're still removing them from the center part of their own stories.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> But things are getting better.

>> I don't know that our family took land from Native Americans.

I don't know that there were any Native Americans living on the Davern farm in Highland Village when our great-grandpa settled there.

>> It was Fort Snelling land, yeah.

It was reserved, a reservation.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't want the next generation to forget that, you know, there's a story here that we're sitting on and that there might be something we need to look at today and not pretend it didn't happen.

>> I fully agree, and I think it's important that we listen to these people now because we didn't listen to them at all back then.

We just pushed them away, and that's what caused most of the problems.

We need to listen to them because we didn't listen to them before and there were repercussions for it.

>> What's Pike Island doing now in the middle of a river?

>> It's pretty much -- It's a tourist site is what it is.

>> It's, you know, not populated by anything.

Why couldn't we give that back?

>> We have really cool conversations about a lot of different things.

And Emma always remembers my son who died and always asks me, you know, about him.

>> He was actually my cousin.

>> That's right.

>> Adopted from Korea who died in Hawaii from a heart attack.

>> Yes.

Yep.

So what did you like about today?

>> I liked, like, all of the family talked in one room, talking about the family history and we're always unraveling the mystery.

>> Isn't that great?

[ Laughs ] >> When my mom and I were talking out front... >> Yeah?

>> ...she brought up a similar thing that I heard you brought up of maybe seeing if there was some way to give the Native Americans some sort of property ownership of Pike Island.

>> Uh-huh, right.

>> You're a very empathetic person, and I see why you wanted to do something about this, and I heard you were a bit hesitant, but I don't think it would be disrespectful to go and talk to a leader and say, "Is there anything that we could do?

Is there any -- Could we set up something for at least awareness?

Because this is something that's important and something that not many people have thought of doing, not many people have done."

>> Awesome.

>> And I think it's a beautiful idea.

I hate to say it and I hate that it's even a thing, but because of our racist society, we do end up having more of a voice, which is very unfortunate because so many white people are so ignorant, including myself, about a lot of things.

I'm not gonna pretend like I'm any better than anyone else.

>> But that doesn't mean you can't do something.

>> Yeah.

>> I think about these things all by myself.

[ Laughs ] In my head.

[ Laughs ] And sometimes I try to bring them up and they don't necessarily go anywhere.

So in a setting like this, where there's a lot of people, there's new stuff being talked about, I think there's more... Maybe it's more attention, more opening for people to feel safer to talk to each other about their own thinking, about my thinking instead of having to just listen to my opinion and have something to say about it, you know?

It's better.

It's really better.

>> What is this, now?

>> It's a Navajo poem about stories and the power that they hold and how important it is to pass them down through generations.

I've had this since 1976 when I was in my 20s.

I didn't know then that I had stories, that I have stories I didn't know that I needed to learn.

But something resonated with me.

You know, at this stage of life, you got to get rid of things you don't -- that don't matter and keep the things that do.

And this matters.

What jumped out is that as I tell my own stories... it's like a sacred trust.

These stories are really important and I want to do well by them and by my ancestors.

That's what I want.

It says, "For long years, I have kept this beauty within me.

It has been my life.

It is sacred.

I give it now that coming generations may know the truth about my people."

We have a lot to learn from Native Americans.

I want to do something.

But where do I start?

I'm gonna start by speaking to my brother Bill.

He was so angry with me after the family reunion that I didn't speak to him for several days.

He thought I was blaming our family for stealing Dakota land, and I was terrified that this would ruin our relationship.

♪ I'm heading west.

[ Laughs ] Summit Avenue to go see my brother.

I invited him into a conversation which we've been -- we've been working at for the last few weeks, and we're learning from each other, and I want to keep that going 'cause it seems to me like that's the best outcome of everything that happens in looking at your family history is that you get closer to people, and that's what I want, so we're gonna do that today.

♪ >> You also mentioned that our great-grandfather sold it for a lot of money.

If he owned it for six years -- and I didn't know how long he owned it -- I wouldn't think he made a huge profit on it, but I don't know.

>> We're trying to find out how much he bought it for from Franklin Steele, and there's no record so far that we've found.

If you look at the trajectory of what happened because we had the benefit of coming here and, you know, buying land and settling and using all the resources here, how do you make sense of that dichotomy that we came here, we didn't have anything, we got things, and then we got to do well because of it and they didn't?

And so it's more in my own mind that I'm trying to come to some...some peace with that.

>> Well, that happened, but I -- you know, I don't feel bad about it, but it's history, so...

I know some things happened that were wrong, you know, and happened all over the world.

>> Right.

>> Continues to happen.

>> Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In that moment, I knew if I started arguing with Bill, we might never be able to talk about this subject again.

So I listened.

The day after our conversation, he called me and said, "You know, Rita?

I want you to know that I understand terrible things happened to native people, and that was not right."

He's never said anything like that before.

I have some power here.

I have some agency.

I have got some privilege I'm sitting on that could be put to good use, and why not?

♪ ♪ I also want to confront my own racism.

I took a child out of a culture, paid a lot of money [Laughs] to get the right to adopt this child from out of his culture and brought him here and then tried to raise him, and it was so obvious from day one what was wrong about that because I could see it on him.

And I could see it on me when I tried to make connections in the Korean community and learn enough to be able to be smart about him, and it was all fraught with uncomfortable, awkward things that mostly didn't work.

[ Laughs ] And I learned, and I learned over years, and then I feel so blessed that I got to have conversations with him about all this.

He loved going out to eat, so once a week or so, we'd figure out a time and we'd go out to eat, even when he was in college.

And I would always suggest, "Let's go to some restaurant on University Avenue.

There's such fabulous Asian restaurants and there's Korean restaurants and --" He loved Korean food, and I would suggest this, and every time he would say no, and finally -- this is about being white and clueless -- so finally one day I said to him, "Chris, would you tell me what this is about?

Why don't you want to go to the Korean restaurant with me?

You love the food.

We love going there.

Why is it?"

He said, "Mom, what do you think it's like for me..." [ Laughs ] I don't know if I can do this without crying.

"...to walk into a Korean restaurant with Korean people all over with my white parents?

What do you think that's like for me?"

And I went, "Oh, my God, of course."

Of course.

It's terrible, you know?

It's hard.

So that's the kind of conversations we had.

I was so clueless.

But I learned.

Later, when Chris was 26, he went back to Hawaii, where he was the happiest.

>> Hawaii is my connection.

He looked like he was from Hawaii.

I know he loved it.

He felt comfortable there.

He dressed like a Hawaiian.

He looked like a Hawaiian.

And then, in the end, that's where he ended up, and it was just like -- so that was like a connection I had with him that I'll always remember him in that way, and when I'm there, I always think of him too.

>> He died among friends.

>> When he passed away and you guys let us take stuff from his room, I took a pair of his shoes that were really worn.

And I know he had traveled all over the world I think wearing those shoes, so I would see him every day.

>> After Chris died, I went to South Korea to bring his ashes home.

I also hoped to connect with his birth mother.

After several days of searching, I was not able to find her.

I often wonder how that early separation from his mom and his culture affected Chris later in life.

What did I learn?

It's hard on any human being to be taken away from home.

Identity is important.

Having that taken away is traumatic, even if intentions are good.

♪ ♪ >> Hello, my dear.

>> Hello!

>> Welcome!

>> We found you.

>> Welcome.

How are you?

Good to see you.

>> It's very good to be here.

>> Come on in.

>> Oh, what a lovely place.

Ooh!

>> Thank you.

>> So beautiful.

I guess they were given this trade-off.

They were promised, "Okay, we'll give you land.

We'll give you whatever if you just be with us and forget all that you came with and don't notice too much about what's going on here, and we'll give you your 80 acres," you know?

And so that's what I'm like, "Okay, so, given all that, I can't change it.

Now what?"

>> Yeah.

>> Now what?

>> And we have to consider too when we ask those questions is everyone is here for a different reason.

To escape.

Some were forced here.

>> Yeah.

>> Some people don't know the answers to those questions because they were stolen and brought here, you know?

>> Yes.

>> But the answers to those questions, I think, are integral to our humanity.

Understanding the strength and the foundation of the place that you come from is very important.

>> One thing I've learned is this.

Finding and sharing our stories, not just of pain but also beauty and strength, is an important part of healing from trauma.

>> If you are parented by a person who has trauma, then it passes to the next generation.

We weren't allowed to speak our language.

It is not just a communication.

It is a way of knowing and understanding the world.

By denying that, it creates, like, a lack of coping.

You don't know how to cope.

And so when that happens generation to generation, there has to be a time that you stop that.

I feel like our boarding school kids, they probably had to just suffer and get through it.

My ex-husband is a boarding school.

He's my age, right?

Him and his four siblings all went to boarding school.

They all suffered those atrocities that I'm talking about that happened there.

So it's not like something that happened a long time ago.

It's people my age that it happened to.

And what do they do?

Mostly they don't rock the boat.

[ Ringing ] >> Good morning.

Grand Portage Tribal Council.

>> Hi, yes.

My name is Rita Davern, and I'm from St. Paul.

And I'm doing some work around the concept of reparations, and I've been talking to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, and I'm a settler descendant trying to sort out a piece of land down here called Pike Island, and I know a bit of... My grandpa was interviewed in the early '40s.

He was maybe almost 80 years old.

And they interviewed him about his early life in pioneer days 'cause he was born in 1863.

He was born the same winter that the concentration camp was happening, and he was right across the river.

He was a baby then.

If my grandfather didn't get interviewed and if he didn't pass on the story of Pike Island and how that's connected to our family, I never would've been interested in all this.

It wouldn't have registered as something that important, what happened in 1862.

It just wouldn't have -- you know, I'm just not that connected to here, but because we have this family story and place and land that we're deeply connected to and have passed on these stories for -- it's the fourth generation now.

When I learned what happened at Pike Island, it meant something.

It really hit me.

It hit me hard.

And so I think the lesson for me is how important talking to our family members is about who we are and our history and those things the Irish passed down orally for thousands of years, and they still have some of that.

♪ I keep hearing something from my fellow European Americans.

Every once in a while I hear this, and it's sort of stopped me in my tracks for a while, and what I heard was, "Well, this happened everywhere -- conquest, take-over of land, people being moved, displaced.

It's been all throughout history, so..." As if that was a justification.

[ Laughs ] And I'm trying to figure that out in my head, and... to me, it's like it would be fine to just let that be and say, "It's history.

Why are you worried about it today?"

Except for the fact that trauma happened, and when trauma happened, it got passed down, so it's not over.

It's not a dead, done issue.

It's not in the past.

I need healing as much as the people who experienced it.

I need healing on "Why do I feel like I deserve things that aren't mine?

Why do I think I deserve the resources that are here when other people don't have them?"

What is that?

It's a fallacy in my own mind that I need healing from too.

And we're all gonna live different lives if we figure this out.

It's a change that's coming, and I want to be part of it.

♪ >> I think anytime we have the opportunity in Indian country to have non-natives step up and say, "This needs to go back to the tribes," I think that's a good thing.

>> America doesn't own up to land theft and genocide in any way, and the only way to raise the consciousness of America, Americans, is to remember who you are.

>> So what do you think we can do about it?

>> I think we need to support her in learning more about it.

Also just to speak to other people about this sort of thing and try and plant the idea that maybe, as a society, we could do something to help.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> When people talk about our history, boom, first thing -- boom, trauma.

Boom, like, the U.S.-Dakota War, boom, them taking the land, them doing this and that.

What we can't do is hypersensationalize, like, a small part of our history.

Being Dakota is humongous.

This is our history and this is where we are right now.

Let's claim it and own all of ourselves, not own just this piece that we can't get over.

♪ >> So, you know, I've had this idea in my head for a long time about somehow turning our house or cabin, something, giving it back to the original peoples here, you know, like, the Grand Portage Band.

>> You've talked about that for a long time.

>> So I'm still thinking about it, but I'm getting serious.

>> Yeah, I think it's entirely possible 'cause, you know, you have that connection too.

My great-grandfather, my grandfather homesteaded 160 acres too.

>> Native land?

>> Native land.

So we both have some connection there.

Some start... >> Right.

>> ...came off of native land for both our families.

>> Right.

♪ ♪ >> We live in a society that really has a value about showing weakness.

We don't admit that we don't know something.

It's about humility, you know, of "Hey, you know what?

I don't know this and I need to know it."

It's gonna create a different way of thinking from here on out.

>> So, the farm that my grandpa grew up on would've been straight that way, across the river a couple miles and across the river from Fort Snelling.

And I can probably see the trees from here from that piece of land.

And it is my home.

It's not my homeland, but it is home.

That really matters to me, and it really matters that I know as much as I do now about it.

It's gonna change my life and the way I live it because I feel more connected to this place and the story that I didn't know before.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪