Caught My Eye: Minnesota Collections at the American Folklife Center

From time to time, the Library of Congress’ Congressional Relations Office (CRO) asks the American Folklife Center to share our collections with members of Congress. One such request came in December 2024, when CRO staff asked the AFC to create a display of Minnesota collections for Representative Betty McCollum and her staff. McCollum, who represents the 4^th district of Minnesota, was interested in materials from the North Star State and, more specifically, collections related to Native American communities in Minnesota. In this post, I share items selected for the Minnesota display. For AFC staff, these requests are great opportunities to explore our archives, to learn more about collection materials, and, often, to expand our expertise. For readers, I hope these items will illuminate the cultural diversity of Minnesota and underscore the richness of the state’s cultural heritage.

SPAM

SPAM is a canned, pork and ham product, made by Hormel Foods. The company created SPAM in 1937, primarily for US consumers. During and following World War II, however, SPAM’s popularity grew across the globe. According to Hormel Foods, over six billion cans of SPAM were sold between the product’s conception and 2002. SPAM is not only a food product, but has become ingrained in various cultures. SPAM was featured in the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, has had several festivals created in its namesake, and is the slang used in American English for disruptive (and often promotional) emails—“watch out for spam messages.”

Hormel Foods is headquartered in Austin, a southern Minnesota city of approximately 26,000 people. In the 2000s, the American Folklife Center asked state representatives to submit items related to their states’ cultural heritage to the Library of Congress. This initiative was coined as the Local Legacies project. Rep. Gil Gutknecht of Minnesota responded to the Local Legacies call by submitting a treasure trove of items related to the history and culture of SPAM.

One of the shining items in this Local Legacies collection is SPAM: An Authorized Biography. The book, written and published by Hormel Foods, traces the history of Spam from the 1920s to the early 2000s. Filled with color photographs, the book is divided into ten chapters, highlighting, among other topics, the SPAM fan club and the SPAM Museum. The publication also features multiple quotes from political and national leaders about the importance of Spam in different parts of the world. For example, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, is quoted from his book, Khrushchev Remembers, as having said, “There were many jokes going around in the army, some of them off-color, about American SPAM; it tasted good nonetheless. Without SPAM, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Photos of Hormel Foods’ former president, R.L. Knowlton, with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin illustrate the long-standing relationship between Spam, the USSR, and Russia.

Also included in the autobiography are various recipes using SPAM. Below, find the recipe for “Spicy SPAM Party Dip.”

Contemporary Indigenous Poetry

Several tribal nations and indigenous communities reside in Minnesota. Seven Anishinaabe (Chippewa, Ojibwe) reservations and four Dakota (Sioux) communities are found in the state, while members of the Ho-Chunk, Cheyenne, Oto, Iowa, and the Sac and Fox tribes acknowledge Minnesota as important to their histories. Even the word “Minnesota” is derived from the Dakota name for the land, “Mni Sota Makoce,” meaning, “Land Where the Waters Reflect the Sky.” Today, there are 11 federally recognized tribes in urban and rural areas across the state.

In 2020, Poet Laureate Joy Harjo created a collection of contemporary Native American poetry at the Library of Congress, as part of her “Living Nations, Living Words” initiative. The collection, which is housed at the American Folklife Center, features work from four poets with indigenous roots in Minnesota: Kimberly Blaeser, Gordon Henry, Jr., Heid E. Erdrich, and Marcie Rendon.

For the December 2024 display, the American Folklife Center selected materials from Kimberly Blaeser (Anishinaabe, born 1955), who grew up on White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Blaeser is the author of five poetry collections, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe. For “Living Nations, Living Words,” Blaeser submitted a poem titled, “Poem on Disappearance.” She describes her inspiration for the poem: “In the popular imagination, Native peoples appear primarily after the so-called discovery of this continent. In this poem, I wanted to suggest the reality that precedes invasion and colonization: the autonomy of Indigenous tribes, their place-making, embedded relationships, their lifeways. And I wanted to underscore the consequences of settler colonialism, the losses, swathes of disappearances—not just the claiming of land ownership by imperial forces, but the results that ensued from a mindset of exploitation—losses of natural spaces, yes, but also the disruption of longstanding traditions, losses of resources and species. Finally, I wanted to suggest the way the stance of capitalism renders even the bodies of Indigenous women as objects of commerce.” Blaeser continues, “Yes, the poem is a lament, but I hope it allows a re-vision of the ‘idea of Indian,’ which then may make possible another understanding of place and history.” Below, listen to Blaeser read the poem and see the poem’s text.

 

Norwegian Heritage in the Twin Cities

Minnesota has one of the largest communities of Scandinavian heritage in the United States. Cultural and social ties to Norway remain especially strong. The strength of these connections is due, in part, to the large number of Minnesotans who claim Norwegian heritage and to contemporary efforts to sustain the social and cultural connections between Minnesotans and Norwegians. Ethnic Event in the Capital of Norwegian America, a Local Legacies collection submitted by Professor David Mauk, illustrates such efforts.

The collection includes photos and documentation from 1998 and 1999 celebrations of Syttende Mai—Norway’s Constitution Day and National Day—in Minneapolis. The two-day festival included breakfast at the Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church (which still holds services in the Norwegian language), an afternoon parade where attendees were encouraged to wear bunad (a traditional Norwegian costume for women), a concert by Norwegian musician Hanne Krogh, and a banquet featuring Arne Fliflet, the Norwegian Parliamentary Ombudsman.

The collection also includes documentation of visits by the Norwegian royal family to Minnesota. In 1999, Crown Prince Haakon Magnus, the heir apparent to the Norwegian throne, visited Minneapolis. Pictures from the visit show Crown Prince Haakon at a fundraiser for four organizations—the Norwegian-American Historical Association, the Sons of Norway Cultural Foundation, the Memorial Church, and Vesterheim (the national Norwegian-American museum) on June 7, 1999, at the Radisson South Hotel in Bloomington, Minnesota. Attendees included the then-Norwegian Consul General, the Speaker of the Minnesota State Senate, and local business leaders. During Crown Prince Haakon’s visit, he also met with then-Minnesota governor (and former professional wrestler) Jesse Ventura, Congressman Martin Sabo, and members of Congress from North and South Dakota. The collection also suggests that visits by the Norwegian royal family were relatively frequent—it includes an article from a 1942 edition of the Minneapolis Star Journal, detailing the visit of King Olaf—Haakon’s grandfather—to Minneapolis during the Nazi occupation of Norway. [Editor’s note: The current Queen of Norway, Sonja, also visited Minnesota in 2022, to meet with state leaders, to visit St. Olaf College, and to attend a celebration of the expansion of the Norway House in Minneapolis.]

During Crown Prince Haakon’s 1999 visit, he also engaged with local Minnesota residents. Norwegian-American foodways specialist, Hilde Kringstad, created a traditional Norwegian kranskeke (tower cake) in preparation for the Prince’s visit. On June 6^th, Kringstad shared the cake with Crown Prince Haakon at the Sons of Norway headquarters.

Folk Songs from Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946

The upper Midwest of the United States is, and has been, home to a diversity of cultures, nationalities, and communities. However, the region is often overlooked, when discussing folk music that is “authentic” to the American experience. Folksongs from Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946 (Dust-to-Digital, 2015)—a five-CD/book—shows, with vivid detail, the incredible diversity of musical cultures in the Upper Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s. Folklorist Jim Leary (Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison) compiled and annotated the project. Leary used collections from the American Folklife Center archives—including the Sidney Robertson Cowell collection, the Alan Lomax collection, and the Helene Stratman-Thomas collection—to create the project. Folksongs from Another America was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Liner Notes in 2015.

Minnesota features prominently in the project’s first CD and second chapter, titled “Pigtown Fling.” In it, Leary explores the Minnesota-based work of Sidney Robertson, an ethnographer and musicologist, undertaken in 1937. [Editor’s note: Sidney Robertson is referred to as Sidney Robertson Cowell in other collections, but the former is used by Leary with respect to her 1937 recordings.] Robertson’s work in Minnesota went beyond the preoccupation with white and African American folk musics, prevalent among recordists during the time, to include songs from Scottish Gaelic speakers in Duluth, Serbian communities in Eveleth, and Finnish singers in Cloquet.

In 2013, Jim Leary lectured at the Library of Congress about Folk Songs of Another America, as part of the American Folklife Center’s Benjamin A. Botkin Lecture Series. Below, view a webcast of Leary’s lecture.

Conclusion

Part of the fun of collection displays is hearing attendees’ feedback on the collection materials. Rep. McCollum’s staff was no different. They shared many colorful stories related to the collection items and to individuals featured in the display. Indeed, McCollum’s staff identified many familiar faces and places in our collection materials. Their comments not only made us laugh, but helped American Folklife Center staff better understand the regional differences and historical specificities of the state.

This selection of Minnesota collections from the American Folklife Center archives is, by no means, comprehensive. Nor is the contextualization of these items exhaustive. Rather, this post offers a snapshot of the materials related to Minnesota history, cultural heritage, and folklife at the American Folklife Center. To see additional materials from Minnesota, explore the AFC’s Research Guide to Minnesota. Here, you can learn about other collections and how to search for Minnesota collections in the catalogue of the Library of Congress. You are also welcomed to visit the American Folklife Center to research these collections onsite at the Library of Congress. Visit loc.gov/folklife to book a research visit.