For Native nonprofit off Lake Street, resilience after heartbreak of destruction

Kelly Drummer watched her organization's building go up in flames on the third night of unrest along Lake Street in Minneapolis.

The executive director of Migizi, an American Indian nonprofit providing media arts training, had spent the previous two years fundraising, renovating and settling into the new building, only to see it destroyed months after opening.

Already wearied by a global pandemic — with her children navigating virtual school and Migizi adapting its programs for Native youth to suit COVID-19 health restrictions — Drummer now faced a seemingly impossible task.

"With the pandemic, having to deal with distance learning and then when we lost our building to the fire, I just wanted to quit life because it felt so overwhelming," Drummer said. "I just always felt like I would be two steps ahead and end up 20 steps behind."

The pandemic exacerbated stressors that many women have long harbored: anxiety over their children's futures, the health of their families, their communities and their own careers. Pew Research suggests the pandemic didn't create these challenges but made them unmanageable for many, leading to a decline in labor force participation rates among women.

But for women who lived or worked at the heart of last summer's protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul, there was an additional, acute stress: rebuilding businesses, organizations and their neighborhood while addressing the racial and ethnic inequities exposed by the killing of George Floyd and subsequent social reckoning.

"It intersected every part of my life. Not just my job and the people I work with. It's my own very personal life that I have to deal with my own children," Drummer said.

She had the Native American community looking to her for guidance while her five children, ages 12 to 27, also struggled with the weight of this moment in their own ways. The Drummer family are members of the Black, white and American Indian communities.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd — a death captured on footage seen around the world — Drummer recalls her youngest son, then 11, saying, Floyd "looks just like daddy."

Her son, not knowing how to fully express himself, just kept repeating, "it is bad," Drummer said, in reference to the unrest, Floyd's death and the burning of Migizi's building.

Drummer's teenage daughter, now a senior in high school, watched alongside her mother as the building caught fire from flames started at the post office and Third Precinct police station a block away.

"She was just very angry. Angry about what happened [to Migizi], but then also as a young girl of color, she understood where people were coming from," Drummer said.

Her husband, Samuel Drummer, said he will never forget the sound of his wife's voice as she tried to protect the building, calling for help that didn't come. "It was horrifying to see my wife in that level of despair," he said.

In the immediate aftermath, Drummer wasn't sure she had the fortitude to rebuild, she said. "Immediately, I was like, 'I don't want to do it and I can't,' " she said. "I didn't even know how to move. I felt stuck."

Then, donations began pouring in. Friends, colleagues and the community all helped. A group of Native American construction crews taught her how to clear the site and get bids for demolition. Others offered pro bono legal aid.

"Money is great, but you need the human and social capital," she said. "It's a heavy lift and we wouldn't have been able to do it without all these relationships."

Meanwhile, Drummer patched together temporary locations for Migizi's youth programs to meet, from people's homes to the Minneapolis American Indian Center. Drummer was working in makeshift spots around her house, struggling to find an end time to her workday.

Her husband said he will remember this year for the constant juggling his wife did, donning a baseball cap as she hustled out the door to catch one of the kids' games before plugging back in late at night to write another grant application.

"It was really, really hard. My son at the end of the summer said, 'You weren't even here,' and what he meant was I wasn't emotionally and spiritually there," Drummer said. "And looking back, I really wasn't."

Finally, this last February, Migizi bought a new building 10 blocks west on Lake Street that it plans to renovate and reopen next year.

"In the end, we've come through the ashes to a really good place," Drummer said, "but not without challenges."

Kristen Leigh Painter • 612-673-4767