In the summer of 1985, hundreds of workers walked off their jobs at a Hormel food packing plant in Austin, Minnesota, when the company cut workers' hourly wage and benefits. As producer Sam Radwany reports in this MN90 segment, the strike tested the union’s limits, and put the community on a national stage.

Not every West Coast American of Japanese descent was herded into an internment camp after Pearl Harbor. Some, like Ruth Tanbara and her husband, Earl, were compelled to relocate to places like St. Paul, Minnesota. Here’s Britt Aamodt.

MN90 producer Marisa Helms describes the life of Charles Albert Bender, born on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota and later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Includes an interview with Tom Swift, author of Chief Bender's Burden, published by the University of Nebraska Press, 2010.

Jim Denomie, an Ojibwe artist in Minneapolis, had been painting for only fifteen years. Now fifty, he wanted to bring the fun back into his art by making a painting a day for a year. But that was after spending all day at his construction job. MN90’s Britt Aamodt tells the story.