About the exhibit

Our Global Reach

The people of Minnesota have played an outsized role in the international human rights movement, known globally for innovative organizations, resources, and work to promote and protect human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948.

The global consciousness of rights-based claims led Minnesota-based organizations to fight for human rights here and abroad. Minnesotans are highly engaged in “transnational advocacy networks” -- a concept coined by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink --to hold states to account for their human rights promises.

Minnesota Human Rights Archive

The materials in this exhibit are from the Minnesota Human Rights Archive (MHRA) – a repository that collects and preserves materials about human rights activism. These collections enable us to examine the successes and challenges of human rights work. The MHRA signals how we value the knowledge, experience, and visions that are generated in this work.

Key Issues: Torture, Racism, and Domestic Violence

This inaugural exhibition, curated with the assistance of students, highlights activism on three human rights
issues: the struggles against torture, racism, and domestic violence. Our MHRA sources document how, working
with global partners, Minnesota-based activists made lasting legal, scholarly, and institutional contributions to
prevent torture and heal survivors, to promote a global conversation on racial inequality and to end racial
violence by law enforcement, and to stop violence against women and hold perpetrators accountable.

Minnesota’s Human Rights Paradox

Minnesota is a paradox in human rights terms: It is the site of grave violations targeting its indigenous peoples;
of antisemitic and anti-Muslim exclusion and stigma; of unremitting racial discrimination. It is also the site of
refugee resettlement; of the Duluth Model to prevent domestic violence; of the American Indian Movement;
of healing for torture victims.

With this paradox in mind, we launch the inaugural exhibition of this growing archive: the Global Reach of Local Activism.

Curated by:

Barbara Frey, Patrick Finnegan, Carrie Booth Walling, Meyer Weinshel, Exhibit Design: Darren Terpstra