About

The blog’s main author is Scott Russell of Minneapolis, a volunteer with Healing Minnesota Stories. He can be reached at scottrussell@usfamily.net

Healing Minnesota Stories was created to promote dialogue, understanding and healing between Native American and non-Native peoples, particularly those in various faith communities. We are an initiative of the Minnesota Council of Churches. Our starting point is an understanding that Native people have suffered deep trauma over many years, losing their land, language and culture, and all who call Minnesota home are the lesser for it. While many people and institutions contributed to that trauma, it happened with the full participation of Christian churches. We all still need healing, healing is doable, and churches have a role to play. We are calling ourselves Healing Minnesota Stories because we believe in the healing power of stories. Stories heal because they make invisible pain visible. The healing goes two ways, from the listener to the storyteller, and from the storyteller to the listener. HMS believes that churches and all faith communities can play a key role in promoting and experiencing healing by opening ourselves to our own history and listening to the stories of Native people. We hope through the sharing and retelling of stories, we can create new more positive ones.