"I believe if you have a sense of place, you have a better sense of direction," says Lemoine LaPointe, who directs the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. "A sense of place was already created here hundreds of years ago."
Reinvigorating that sense of place for Indian people on Minneapolis' Franklin Avenue is the purpose of an effort called the American Indian Cultural Corridor, started last year by the
Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI).
LaPointe made his comments for a
video NACDI produced to promote the cultural corridor concept, a vision of economic vitality and Native identity along a street that has been, for going on a century, a major focal point of American Indian urban life.
NACDI has taken that vision high-tech via an
animated video that swoops down Franklin, starting at Cedar Avenue, current site of the American Indian OIC (AIOIC).
But the organization has taken a very concrete step as well, purchasing a headquarters building at the eastern end of the corridor, at Bloomington and Franklin avenues, with the AIOIC. Meanwhile, New Native Theatre has formed, offering reading series and planning a full production in 2011.
In some ways the vision is a throwback to what Franklin Avenue was like in the early decades following the federal government's relocation of Indian people to cities, when a full spectrum of goods and services was available to serve the immediate community. Now NACDI wants to see that richness return, this time fueled by Indian ownership and entrepreneurship.
Source: Lemoine LaPointe
Writer: Chris Steller