MINNEAPOLIS — The Red Lake Nation recently celebrated opening an urban site for the Red Lake Nation College in downtown Minneapolis.
The $16 million project involved renovating an old brick building that was a former manufacturing business. While not quite a campus, the new site will offer a full-service counseling center and nursing courses for Indigenous students in the metro area.
Nearly half of Red Lake's 15,000 members live off the reservation, and the seven-county Twin Cities metro alone has more than 15,000 residents who identify as American Indian.
Red Lake Nation College offers in-person, virtual and hybrid courses that combine Ojibwe language and culture with accredited coursework.
In 2021, Red Lake purchased three buildings in downtown Minneapolis for the development of the Minneapolis distance education site — one of the only federally recognized tribal college sites in a major U.S. City.
Red Lake Nation College has served students in the metro since 2022, and it has been operating since 2001 on the Red Lake Nation.