The Voices of the 2025 Badass Minnesotans

 

At the 2025 Minnesota Women’s Press 40th anniversary celebration, we honored three Badass winners as chosen by our membership. You can find the stories below that led to their nominations.

 

Excerpted Transcript of Comments

Cherilyn Spears

One of the leaders asked me to start something near and dear to my heart: a buffalo ranch. I got so excited. Our first buffalo herd included seven of them. We got them from Wind Cave National Park.

I couldn’t see just doing the buffalo. I knew we could resurrect this farm. We put up a 10-acre fence and started planting. We thought, let’s grow hemp fiber for our houses so we can insulate them. Then that wasn’t enough either. We started making medicine, medicinal oils out of our own plants. We gather our own plants and are trying to stop this opiate crisis. I want to help stop it in Red Lake, so we make this oil and it works. We may put it into a cream. I’d like my staff to stand up. I couldn’t do this without these people. They’re in the back: our farm manager, our buffalo manager, our organic farmer training, our produce production manager, our social media specialist. All of these people help us keep this going. If you can’t feed your own people, you’re not sovereign. This is our way of doing it.

 

Introduction of Jessica Stabenow Magers

We love Jessica’s story because she realized Saint Paul wanted to get a youth mental health facility. People were pushing back against it — not in their backyard. She thought, that’s not right. She told a friend, they told two friends, and then it expanded. They brought people to City Council, and the youth mental health facility has been built in Saint Paul.

Jessica Stabenow Magers

I’m humbled to receive the award, because I did a small thing. Cherilyn said something about a spark, and I feel like that’s that was my role, just being a spark to start a movement in our city of West Saint Paul. I felt pushed to bring people to support this mental health facility. The opposition helped push me towards that, because I didn’t feel that was right. I felt like the majority of people would be in favor of it. We just didn’t know that we needed to say something about it. The opposition voices were loud, and we needed to be more and louder — and we did it. The two neighbors I first went to — the three of us worked very hard together — and they are here tonight. Can you stand up please?

The three of us were a powerful group, but we didn’t do a ton, and it didn’t tax us. That’s what was so exciting. We started this movement, and it took off. Our city council approved the building, and it’s built, and it’s being used. It’s a beautiful place. It was intentionally built for people with mental health issues to come and recover. There are 16 beds there. It’s a very dignified way to live and work on recovery. The building was built trauma-informed. It’s a very calming, safe feeling within it. I’m really happy that we have it in my backyard.

Catherine Squires

I just want to say a quick thank you to Mikki for reaching out during COVID, during lockdown, when she was trying to get a new, broader set of voices in the Women’s Press, and she wanted to make sure that she had a wide variety of people talking. So she reached out to me, and I started writing for the Women’s Press. When I had the idea for the recent column, it kind of exploded. As an academic who used to publish things in journals that usually sit on shelves, that get really dusty, it’s been very heartening to see that piece circulate. To this day, people come up to me in the street, Black women, women of color, who have been in academia in really awful, toxic situations, who thank me for writing that piece. I thank them for reading the piece, and it keeps moving. I hope that all of you keep reading and supporting Minnesota Women’s Press, because it matters to so many people when they see.

 

Short Message on the 40th Anniversary and These Times from Winona LaDuke