Coming up on Morning Edition: If political polarization has destroyed an important relationship in your life, you may be wondering if it's even possible to discuss topics like policing, abortion or climate change with family or friends who differ from you. MPR News is rolling out a new project that walks through the steps of having difficult political conversations. Catharine Richert joins us to introduce Talking Sense.
Coming up at 9 a.m.: Policing in America is polarizing. Minneapolis police officers and Black community members are working on repairing their relationship — by learning the history and legacy of slavery. At 9 a.m., MPR News host Angela Davis talks with a longtime police officer and a community organizer involved in the effort.
The northern Minnesota town has long been the epicenter of the state’s conflict around mining and the environment. Now, though, there’s a renewed effort in Ely to restart a civil discussion around long-standing divisions.
MPR News is launching a new reporting initiative called Talking Sense, an online and in-person platform to help people have difficult conversations, despite political differences. This story is the first in an ongoing series of weekly reports on Morning Edition about efforts to depolarize conversations.
On Jan. 12 updated NAGPRA regulations went into effect that streamlined and strengthened the process for the repatriation and display of Native ancestral human remains and objects. NAGPRA-qualifying objects include those of funerary, sacred or cultural patrimony significance, as defined by the tribes.
The new regulations will affect countless Minnesota tribes. NAGPRA now prioritizes the authority and knowledge of tribes and lineal descendants.
It also impacts how Minnesota museums, universities, federal sites and other institutions that receive federal funding. They must now comply with updated rules about how they can display, provide research access to or repatriate Native human remains and objects in their collections.
What else we're watching:
Feeding our Future case expands, 10 more charged, at least 70 took part in conspiracy. Prosecutors split the sprawling case into 20 separate indictments, complaints, and criminal information filings. Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel that they would like to try the first of the major cases in April.
Listen: New exhibit documents Black Minnesotans' struggle for full rights in the Jim Crow era. Minnesota historian and author Bill Green recently spoke at the opening of a new exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society that was created to further the state’s conversation about reconstruction and the many decades of discriminatory laws and practices that followed.
