Month: December 2021

Story from the Associated Press –
Jurors have convicted a suburban Minneapolis police officer of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Black motorist Daunte Wright. The jury deliberated for about four days before finding Kim Potter guilty of both counts on Thursday. Potter, who is white, was a Brooklyn Center police officer when she shot and killed the 20-year-old Wright during an April 11 traffic stop. Potter has said she mistook her handgun for a Taser while she and other officers were trying to arrest Wright on an outstanding warrant for a weapons possession charge. She faces about seven years in prison on the most serious count under the state’s sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors said they’d seek a longer-term.

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Highland Elementary School and Washington School once again offered their “Giving Tree” this holiday season. The Giving Tree is a tree set up inside both schools where families in need can put down items they need this holiday season, along with their children’s wish lists. From there, other families, community members, and school staff can grab one of the tags from the tree, and shop for those items, making sure the families get the things they need during Christmas.

Tara Rodriguez of Highland Elementary School said the Giving Tree has been around for as long as she has been at Highland. “The Giving Tree has been going on at Highland for as long as I can remember,” said Rodriguez. “It has just continued to grow over time. The first year we were able to bring about 30 gifts to families around the community, and it’s evolved into lots of different people contributing, and we have well over 100 gifts that we delivered this year.”

With the gifts, there are also gift cards, food baskets, and other items to help fill the need for people this holiday season. The community’s needs have grown over the years, but Rodriguez said so has the community’s generosity, and she has never had to tell a family they won’t be able to receive a gift.

Rodriguez talked about her favorite part of the Giving Tree and what makes the event unique. “You can see the joy on people’s faces,” said Rodriguez. “While it is nice to deliver gifts to families and feel that joy, I think it’s also a way to show those families that we support them and that we see them and are here to help. It’s a great message around this time of the year.”

Rodriguez noted the process begins well in advance of Christmas time. “In early November, I start to identify families to invite to be on the giving tree, and then we also get some people who ask if they can participate in it as well,” said Rodriguez. “Again, thanks to the generosity in the community, I’ve never had to tell a family that we can’t help. That is pretty incredible when you think about it.”

Rodriguez personally makes tags and children’s wish lists and places them on the trees at Highland and Washington, where people can then come, grab one, and go out to shop for the items. The gifts were all delivered earlier this week by school members and donations received from the community. A picture of a few people that helped deliver the gifts earlier this week can be found down below –

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The City of Crookston is holding the Toys for Tots drive again this year. As in the past, the Crookston Firefighters and Auxiliary, along with the City of Crookston employees, will be delivering toys to kids in Crookston who otherwise would not get anything for Christmas.

Below is the final week of donations received and the grand total listed at the bottom.

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UMC invites the community, both on-campus and off in a series of learning communities. Together, through the UMN Transdisciplinary Collaboration grant, awarded in April, members of the Crookston and surrounding communities along with UMC faculty, staff, students (undergraduate and graduate), are welcome to discuss ideas from contemporary Indigenous thinkers about how the world is arranged, and what the human place is within larger spheres of existence.

There will be 5-10 learning communities over the course of this project. Participation in these Learning Communities is free of charge. Each group will have 6-12 participants from diverse backgrounds. Books and other materials for discussion by the learning communities will be provided which will run through fall semester 2022. All meetings and talks will be held virtually.

Members of the Learning Communities will have the opportunity to:

(1) attend one-four meetings centered around discussing their work

(2) attend their public talks.

“By engaging several Indigenous knowledge experts across a range of disciplines, we intend to transform the ways we do natural science, social science, engineering, arts, and humanities work in university contexts,” says Katy Chapman, Ph.D., Math, Science, and Technology faculty and Crookston campus liaison. Chapman said the project will be an act of radical and catalytic listening. “Through constellating a Learning Community and engagements with Indigenous thinkers, we seek to move educational and disciplinary practices to embrace Indigenous knowings that are always and already present in the world,” she said.

Interested in joining one or many of our learning communities, sign up here. Contact Katy Chapman, Ph.D., at katys@crk.umn.edu. 

“We are grateful to the UMN Institute for Advanced Study and Institute on the Environment for funding this project,” says Chapman.  This research and creative collaborative is funded by the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).  IAS is a resource for scholars, artists, professionals, and students who are engaged in a wide variety of study and practice. The IAS also serves as a bridge between the University and the wider community as a place where people meet and ideas are exchanged. The Institute for Advanced Study provides funding support for faculty research, interdisciplinary collaborative research, and public programming, as well as a range of other support for faculty, staff, students, the general public, and community partners.

Four faculty, including UMC’s Katy Chapman Ph.D., Math, Science and Technology, and David Syring, PhD., Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Criminology, College of Liberal Arts, and Jennifer Liang, Ph.D., Department of Biology, Swenson College of Science and Engineering at UMN Duluth, along with Peter Murdock, Ph.D., Levin Institute on the Environment are leading these activities and discussions related to “Transdisciplinary Engagements with Contemporary Indigenous Thinkers”.

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