Life as a Native woman in rural Minnesota was never easy for Nancy Beaulieu, but it got harder after 2016. She saw racial tensions between some white residents and Native Americans in her northern Minnesota community spill out into the open after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. In January, Beltrami County became one of the first in the nation to vote to ban refugees from resettling there. At a September rally in Bemidji, Minn., a mostly white crowd of thousands cheered when Trump looked out and praised their “good genes.”
State Sen. Jason Rarick co-sponsored a rare bipartisan energy bill this spring that sought to expand and improve Minnesota’s state energy conservation program.