WALKER, Minn.
Irene Folstrom traveled a long way from the Indian reservation where she was born — to Stanford University, then on to law school at Cornell.
Tribal members often urged her to bring her talents back home to help tackle drugs, gangs and violence on the impoverished Ojibwe reservation. But Folstrom would just smile and nod — until her uncle was stabbed to death on the Leech Lake reservation and a cousin was killed by a drunken driver.
“When I came home for back-to-back funerals, I knew then that I had to come home” for good, Folstrom said.
Folstrom, 31, abandoned plans to stay with her husband during his medical residency in Arizona and returned to Minnesota, launching a state Senate bid that could make her the first American Indian woman elected to the Legislature.
“Our areas are ignored a lot of the time because we’re poor,” she said. “The state has a lot of power and the Legislature has a lot of power to assist communities that are in need.”
Around the United States, American Indians are increasingly getting elected to state office and taking part in a political process that they once kept at arm’s length.
