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Morning Edition
Cathy Wurzer

Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center receives $500,000 grant

A woman sits at a desk with two computer screens.
Patina Park, CEO of Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center sits at a desk. The nonprofit organization will receive a $500,000 no-strings-attached grant for their work from the Bush Foundation.
Courtesy of Passenger Productions

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The Bush Foundation announced more than $2 million in grants to five nonprofits in Minnesota and the Dakotas on Tuesday. One of them is the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, which provides housing and other services for Native American women experiencing addiction, sexual trauma and mental health issues.

The Minneapolis-based organization will receive a $500,000 no-string-attached grant. President and CEO Patina Park says there’s one thing she definitely knows she’ll buy: new boilers for their aging building.

“Which is going to take about $100,000 of that prize, but then we’ll have heat for years to come, so it’ll be a good investment” Park said.

Park says she’d like to use the rest to perhaps build additional 20-40 units of housing on their property for people transitioning from homelessness into permanent housing.

“There’s a lot of work around apartments and development, but it’s missing that arc between truly being homeless or really unstable in your housing . . . and getting support and help and healing before you’re really able to maintain long-term housing,” Park said.

The prize is called the Bush Prize for Community Innovation, but Park says what they’re doing isn’t innovative at all. It’s traditional and grounded in Indigenous cultures and teachings.

“Our innovation really is that the agency follows ancient, grounding values that really are universal,” Park said. “Values like humility, wisdom, compassion, and gratitude.”

The Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center was also a leader in responding to a large homeless encampment along Hiawatha avenue last year. Park says their outreach efforts have only increased since people were moved out of the encampment and the area fenced off. Park says the Bush prize will support continuing that outreach work.

The other 2019 Bush Prize winners in Minnesota are the Hmong American Partnership in St. Paul and the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance in Backus.