In May 2009, the Minnesota State Legislature asked the Minnesota Humanities Center and four state councils - the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Council on Black Minnesotans, the Chicano Latino Affairs Council, and the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans - to collaboratively create new programs and events that celebrates and preserves the artistic, historical, and cultural heritages of the communities represented by each council.

The Humanities Center's work with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) has primarily been focused on an exploration of Minnesota treaties through collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian. Minnesota American Indian Treaties programming is a real and important "absent narrative" or "missing story" about our culture's genesis and in whose stories lie the foundation of indigenous issues still alive today.