(gentle music) - In the Ojibwe language.

Bam'idizo means support oneself or provide for oneself.

Wigamig is just a house or a place.

So this is a place where people can provide for themselves or support themselves.

I'm Jean Kruft, and I am the founder of Bam'idizowigamig Creator's Place.

We're in Pine Point, Minnesota, and that is a reservation village on the White Earth Reservation.

Right before the pandemic, I had started volunteering out here, and I saw the skills and the enjoyment people were having, and I thought, "Well, Pine Point needs a place to work.

They need a place to be."

But there isn't, there wasn't anything.

There wasn't any kind of employment at all.

So I thought, "Well, it would be good to have like a little center for manufacturing, arts, whatever people could do to have a place like that right here in Pine Point."

And of course, I'm a retired educator, and I thought, "Well, that's a nice idea."

However, about a week after I had that idea, my cousin Albert Kowalski had passed away and had left me $250,000.

And I thought, "Well, that's what that's for."

There just wasn't any doubt in my mind.

So I ordered the steel building, created a board of directors, created a 501C3, a nonprofit.

I don't know that anyone ever thought that I would really build this.

However, it did, and it's an amazing thing.

I mean, it's amazing to me that this has come together and actually worked.

(gentle music) There are many barriers to people here going out beyond this community to find work.

There is racial prejudice in the outer community.

People often don't have valid driver's licenses or vehicles.

There's criminal backgrounds that can look real bad on a resume, if you have the resources to make a resume, and childcare, there's no real childcare here.

So there are many barriers to going beyond this village to find work.

And the idea is this is kind of a stepping stone.

Each person here has an individual plan, an employment plan that they are working on, and we identify the barriers that they have and figuring out ways to overcome those barriers while still getting the experience and skills that they need for going on and working someplace else.

Well, we have 20 people from the Pine Point area.

We have artists, visual artists.

We have the people that are being trained in woodworking, people who are practicing the traditional arts with their beadwork and moccasin making.

The big things that we can't ship, like the picnic tables and the park benches and the patio furniture, those have gone to parks.

Different individuals have bought picnic tables.

And so the big things go in the local area, but the smaller things, anything that we can ship, we put on our Creator's Place Etsy site that is maintained by one of our trainees, Jeremy Mitchell, just been amazingly good at figuring out how to do all that between the photography and the marketing and the sales copy and all of that.

We have about 160 items on our Etsy site.

So those things, they go all over the nation.

A lot of things to the West Coast and the East Coast.

And our wild rice, it's amazing how much goes to Hawaii.

Who knew?

(bright music) - Every day is a blessing, you wake up in the morning.

My name is David Edwards.

I actually, I do artwork.

I actually draw and paint and help out around the shop whenever it's needed.

And we've grown, we've grown a lot in over a year.

A lot of this stuff wasn't here a year ago, but now I come here, and it's just, this is the best thing that could ever happen to all of us.

Me as an artist, everybody that comes in here and contributes.

This place is something else.

It's the best, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but it is a dream job.

- I see it as doing right what it's doing right now, but being an actual manufacturing center and arts center where people are practicing their art for as many hours a week as what they want to in order to sustain themselves and their families.

There's a dream that we would have land next to this that would have automotive center.

Many, many backyard mechanics that are excellent here in the community.

And so it'd be very nice to have a shop where they could have a lift for the vehicles and that kind of thing.

And of course, the real dream is that this will be totally run and operated by people from this community.

So this will be their economic venture.

I'm just amazed that this is, it's just exactly what I thought it might be, and that doesn't happen a lot in a person's life.

So yeah, I'm just amazed and thankful.

- [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.