Community
Creating a Home Base for White Earth Nation Artists
Creating a Home Base for White Earth Nation Artists. Originally published by Arts Midwest.
By Angela Zonunpari · 2026-09-17T14:35:21.895Z
Everyone helps each other, however they can. And they do it creatively. That’s the mission of the Manoomin Arts Initiative. The small collective grew from a partnership between the City of Mahnomen and White Earth Nation. That cooperation remains at its center. “The biggest thing that we’re trying to do is collaborative, community work,” says Manoomin Arts executive director Joe Allen. “We really do just want to work together.” What that looks like varies. Since 2021, Manoomin Arts has offered artist workshops, studio space, creative clubs, and pop up sales. There’s a coworking and classroom space, photographer and print studio, and gallery in the town of just over 1,000. It runs an arts incubator mentorship program and is starting a publication. And it’s even got an artist majority board of directors to help organize and inform it all. Manoomin Arts works with local artists and youth. Together, they create public art projects, collaborate with community organizations on artist residencies, organize arts festivals, and support art workshops. Manoomin Arts started with a public mural project downtown, Allen says. But city residents—half of whom are Native—needed more than that. White Earth Nation, where the city of Mahnomen sits, stretches 36 by 36 miles and can take an hour to drive across. Manoomin Arts is growing the creative landscape. “This space here is the only space dedicated solely to art, other than a few classrooms,” Allen says. “Usually, the only way you’re going to learn traditional art forms is from a community member in a community space.” Manoomin Arts offers a coworking and classroom space, photographer and print studio, and gallery. It also runs an arts incubator mentorship program and is starting a publication. Manoomin Arts Initiative grew from a multi year collaboration between the White Earth Nation, the City of Mahnomen, Minnesota, and the Mahnomen County Economic Development Authority. For Manoonmin Arts, it’s all about working together and collaboratively. And with the right model, art is a vehicle for access and creative community development. Through the Gizhiigin Arts Incubator, Manoonim Arts Initiative hosted blanket maker Rick Kagigebi Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe , left, in the gallery as well as a mentor to local artist Eliza Klarer not pictured . Kagigebi shared Ceremony Blankets, his 2024 McKnight Fiber Artist Fellowship exhibition at Manoomin Arts. Creative support has traditionally been limited here: People couldn’t publicly show work in the reservation. Going to—or hosting—art classes was piecemeal. “ Manoomin is holding space and helping artists activate more spaces,” says Allen, a Lakota and Ojibwe photographer. “We show the model and the collective . . . How do we empower everybody else, our whole community, to be able to do what they need to do?” In Ojibwe, White Earth translates to “an abundance of white clay.” The organization’s name comes from the Ojibwe origin story: moving from the East Coast to where food grows on the water, or wild rice, Allen says. History is important to Manoomin Arts’ mission. “One of the reasons why we’re trying to do what we do is as Native people, it’s hard to have collateral,” Allen says. Housing laws and discrimination make developing capital difficult, he says. With the right model, art offers an alternative. Manoomin Arts is helping people figure it out, together. “How do I get this young beadwork person that’s doing gorgeous stuff to raise her prices a little more, and get her into some other markets?” operations director Rebecca Dallinger says. “And have her connect up with other beadwork folks, and they start a class and they get hosted here. How do we do that?” To Dallinger, the answer lies in reciprocity: Art advocacy becomes collective mentoring, which develops community. “We look at things in circles. We look at evaluating ripples. We look at how we go forward as cooperatives. We just keep trying to find ways to just kind of rage against the nonprofit form,” Dallinger says. Intergenerational artistry is key to this, she says. Many Native families have overflowing skills and talents in the arts. “It’s such a depth of traditions,” Dallinger says. Manoomin Arts helps connect them to creative futures—with regard to the past.