Alongside a plot of dirt where Migizi's home once stood, Kelly Drummer saw hope and renewal Friday.
She and others commemorated the Minneapolis nonprofit's headquarters, which burned down one year ago in the unrest after George Floyd's murder, as they celebrated the start of building anew.
"I think we're really blessed," said Drummer, president of Migizi Communications, which works with Native American youth. "It's about the future — where are we going to go now."
Work will begin in September to renovate and expand a brick building on E. Lake Street as a new home for Migizi, expected to open in 2022. A crowd of supporters, staffers and students on Friday walked less than a mile from the site of the former building to the new site, blessing the space with burning sage and a prayer.
"The perseverance and resilience of our Native community has been an inspiration to our entire city," Mayor Jacob Frey said. "What made Migizi was not a building, it was not brick and mortar, but it was the people."
Melissa Wallace, a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a Migizi board member, passed the charred remains of the Minneapolis police's Third Precinct headquarters two blocks from Migizi's former offices.
"This is a representation of leaving the old and walking into the new. It's very symbolic," she said. "There's so much kind of negative stuff happening in the neighborhood. This is a shining light."
Migizi — the Ojibwe word for bald eagle — works with about 250 Native American students each year, providing them with cultural resources, tutoring and training in media skills, and renewable-energy careers. Its offices on S. 27th Avenue just off Lake Street, for which Drummer helped raise $2 million, had been open for only a few months when Floyd's death in May 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests locally and across the country.
