BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
White men may have physically built Franklin Avenue, but it was, to a large degree, Native Americans, since the 1960s, who made it what it is today. The unique paradox of the Avenue is that it attracts immigrants, whatever the newest, most vulnerable wave is, and yet since the rise of urban populations of Native Americans, it has also been a focal point for them, recognized as a hub nationally. And it has been the Native American community that has most significantly imprinted the Avenue and its surrounding neighborhoods with its iconography, communal enterprises and public art.
It was probably the establishment of Little Earth of the United Tribes (“It’s not Little Earth, it’s ‘the Projects.’ ”) in 1973, followed by the founding of the American Indian Center in 1975, that drew ever larger numbers of American Indians to the Avenue. The MAIC, as the American Indian Center is also called, is centrally located on the Avenue; the Projects are a few blocks south of Franklin on Cedar Avenue. In between and around them are a string of Native-owned businesses, social service and wellness organizations, and churches, art galleries and other institutions, often in collaboration. One of the foremost, and the oldest, is the Franklin Library.
Before the Franklin Library, the Minneapolis library system had a branch on Franklin Avenue called the Southside Branch. It did not have a building, but operated out of second floor rooms above the Avenue near 17th Avenue. Opened in August 1914, built with a grant of money from Andrew Carnegie and a gift of land from three McKnight siblings, the library was the first of four Carnegie-financed Minneapolis libraries brought into existence under the directorship of the famous Gratia Countryman. The Franklin Library is a historic-registry listed building that is very up-to-date inside, while preserving its graceful early-20th-century exterior and some original features. For instance, in the largest upstairs room, dominated by the ubiquitous rows of computer stations, shelves of audio-books and DVDs and modern novels, there are two built-in pew-like window seats of age-darkened hardwood, with obvious 1914-era fancy wooden air-return grates in the deep windowsills behind the bench back. The modern furniture and artwork on the walls is of a style that blends quite well with soaring institutional architecture.
You enter the building from Franklin Avenue between 13th and 14th Avenues, and after a short and utilitarian foyer, you may go down or up half a level. The downstairs level has a comfortable but large community meeting room to the right, set up by the Friends of the Franklin Library. It houses the very busy and popular Teen Center, which, outside the hours of that program, can be reserved for use by community groups like other libraries’ meeting rooms. This room also contains the Phillips Technology Center, established in 1997. To the left of the stairway is the Franklin Learning Center. Established with a federal grant in 1988 and upgraded several times, this center is for adult learning, and specifically caters to immigrant populations seeking to learn or improve English, get qualifications, or study for citizenship exams. The center’s numerous dedicated computer stations are always busy. Up the stairs from the street is the main library. Even though the space within the building is quite large, the actual shelf space dedicated to books and periodicals appears to me smaller than what a lot of much smaller libraries have. Instead of that, there is a lot of open space, comfy chairs and more computer stations than I could count. Over the fireplace in the main room is a piece of public art that epitomizes the Avenue and its Native heritage. Here is the description from Hennepin County Library’s “Art in the Library” page:
“One of two companion pieces created for the library in 2005, ‘Red Lake’ sits next to the library’s American Indian collection and connects deeply to Native heritage and communities. (The name itself memorializes the 2005 deaths at Red Lake reservation.) Artist Robert DesJarlait is an activist, writer and artist, as well as the son of well-known Ojibwa artist Patrick DesJarlait Sr. Like his father, the younger DesJarlait uses art to honor his heritage. Here, he does so with pictographs that create a vibrant tale of the Anishinaabe people’s origin story. The storyteller holds a sacred shell in his hand, through which life-giving force flows out, and the seven animals symbolize the seven original Anishinaabe clans. The image also honors the Four Orders of Life: the star world, plant world, animal world and humans, offering powerful imagery to anchor the library’s American Indian collection.”
The original Southside Branch that preceded Franklin Library became a home to a large collection of Scandinavian language books and periodicals. In those days, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area around the Avenue was largely populated by recent Scandinavian immigrants, and later Eastern Europeans and European Jews. In the new Franklin library, the Scandinavian collection grew and was supplemented by materials in German, Hebrew and Yiddish. As time went on, those populations moved away and newer immigrants came to the neighborhood: Asian, African, Mexican. In the 1940s, the U.S. government made a disastrous and misguided effort to “terminate” Native American tribes and “encourage” American Indians to assimilate and move to urban areas. Some did, and the Native population of the Avenue also grew. In the 1960s, the Scandinavian language collection moved to the Central Library, and the Franklin Library began building other foreign language collections instead. By 1995, for instance, according to Cassie Warholm-Wohlenhaus, a Franklin librarian who has written a history of the library and is considered an expert, the largest single language group patronizing the library was Somali. Today the languages in the collection include Ojibwe and Lakota, Spanish, Oromo, Arabic and Amharic, with the Somali collection being the system’s largest and the Native American collection the only one in the county.
The library has many interesting programs that are open to all: The Memoir Writing Group is ongoing and the next meeting will be Monday, June 20, from 1 to 3 p.m. A one-time workshop in the Teen Tech Workshop series, Music Production, will happen on Wednesday, June 15, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. And the first in a summer series, Puzzlemania, kicks off Thursday, June 16 at 2 p.m.
A couple of blocks east of the Franklin Library stands the Minneapolis American Indian Center. This imposing building of low-profile concrete and cedar and smoked glass houses offices and meeting spaces, a gymnasium, a coffee shop, a gift shop and an art gallery. Two Rivers Art Gallery, as one might expect, displays solely Native American art. It and nearby All My Relations gallery serve as important outlets for getting Native art displayed for the public. (Pow Wow Grounds Coffee shop is also a near neighbor, and one of the long-standing Native-owned businesses along the Avenue.)
Several commercial hubs along this stretch of Franklin include Ancient Traders at 1113 Franklin Ave., a small “strip mall” that holds only Native-owned businesses. One of the most popular is Northland Visions, which sells an amazing array of products. Perhaps even more popular, although you can’t really compare delicious apples to delicious oranges, is Maria’s Café, owned and operated by Colombian transplant Maria Hoyos, who has brought her signature, cooked-from-scratch meals to an adoring public.
