Red Lake Nation College

This blog post was written by Katie Bolander, a second year nursing major.

This past Wednesday morning, we had the privilege of touring Red Lake Nation College with Whitney Spears, the Director of Admissions. Red Lake Nation College (RLNC) is a two-year tribal college located in Red Lake, MN, just off the coast of the beautiful Lower Red Lake. RLNC serves a wide range of students of many different ages and they offer many different classes, such as *Ojibwe language classes and behavioral science courses. Red Lake Nation College is open to anyone to apply and their credits are transferable to most universities in the US. They offer individual classes, as well as Associates degree programs.

On the same campus grounds, in the old college building, there is also a business center called 4 Directions. 4 Directions is a non-profit that gives space to local citizens who would like to start a business or rent a space for their business. The businesses pay about $40 to rent the space, but they can keep whatever they make from their sales that day. 4 Directions houses a small thrift shop, a clothing boutique, and a hair salon. They also offer entrepreneurial classes and assistance in developing business plans for Red Lake residents. Red Lake Nation is one of only two closed reservations in the United States, which means they hold the land in common and they do not allow non-native businesses into the nation.

While we were touring the business center, we happened to run into Cherilyn Spears, the Director of Agriculture for the Red Lake Nation, as well as the Manager of the Buffalo Farm we would tour later in the day. She shared her vision for locally sourcing fresh produce and buffalo meat for the entire Nation. She brought us into her office and gave us homeopathic ointment for sore muscle rubs and “fire cidar” for allergies and congestion that she makes in the commercial kitchen at the center and gives away to Red Lake residents. Her and her staff were washing wild onion leaves they had just harvested to make an onion butter. 

*The Ojibwe Language was the main language spoken by the Ojibwe people, but there are fewer and fewer people who know it in this day and age. The nation wanted to fix this before the language completely disappeared and there was no one to teach it, so they started making it a requirement for all school-age children to learn it and offered classes through the college for adults to learn the language too.