Two Native-centered health clinics will open newly expanded buildings in south Minneapolis next month, improving health care access for a population that faces disproportionately high health disparities and has long lacked adequate access to culturally responsive care.
The projects include a $36 million, 40,000-square-foot addition of new clinic space to the Indian Health Board (IHB) at 2027 E. Franklin Ave., and a $67 million, six-story building at the Native American Community Clinic (NACC), 1213 E. Franklin Ave., that includes expanded health services and 83 affordable housing units.
“It’s critical that the populations in south Minneapolis gain more access to health care,” Ruth Buffalo, CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, said. “It says something of the richness of our values as Indigenous people to these lands that we use a comprehensive approach where all people are welcome. It’s exciting, and it’s hopeful,” said Buffalo, who is also the chair of the health and wellness committee under Metro Urban Indian Directors.
The clinics, which blend Indigenous and Western health care practices, are open to the general public.
IHB and NACC are the latest Native-centered clinics to expand this year; in March, the Red Lake Nation inaugurated its newly renovated Ombimindwaa Gidinawemaaganinaadog (meaning “uplifting our relatives” in Ojibwe) cultural wellness center on Bloomington Avenue, with partial funding from the city.
Healing with an ‘Indigenous lens’
Dr. Antony Stately, CEO and president of NACC, is hopeful about the expanded service the clinics will provide, but said the Native community continues to experience poor health outcomes.
“The reality of those outcomes is that those are tied to systemic things that take a long time to shift and change,” he said.
According to government data, Native women continue to see disproportionately high mortality rates and the community at large is overrepresented in homelessness, opioid-related deaths and hospital visits.
In 2023, American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) had the lowest life expectancy at birth among all racial and ethnic groups, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. A 2024 study published in the National Library of Medicine found that AIAN people had higher risks of mortality from alcohol-related problems, drug overdose, unintentional injuries and homicide than in the general population; AIANs also had the highest overall disability, mental and ambulatory disability, health uninsurance, unemployment, and poverty rates in the country, with differences in these indicators varying across tribes.
‘Culture is healing’
The new campus will be the third clinic in the Twin Cities for the IHB, which served over 4,800 patients in 2025, including 2,400 identified Native Americans, with services ranging from dental care to pediatric and maternal care, recovery and counseling.
Despite being a Native-run and Native-centric organization, Dr. Patrick Rock, CEO of IHB said engagement isn’t always easy.
“We do have access across certain barriers that some clinics may not, by virtue of being an Indian Health Board clinic, but you also have to build your platform every day,” said Rock. “You have to be out there and you have to be doing good service, quality service, for people to still want to stay engaged.”
One of the ways IHB plans to continue to do that is by integrating traditional wellness practices with Western medicine, providing a well-rounded and holistic care approach unique to Native-run health institutions.
“If you saw me for your blood pressure and your blood pressure number is high, I’ll tell you, ‘It’s high,’” said Rock. “But from a wellness perspective, people will want to know if you’re living in balance, and not just to throw it from a Western approach to throw a pill or adjust the medication or order a lab test. It’s a little bit more involved in seeing if you’re engaged spiritually, if you’re engaged from a diet approach.”
The IHB’s services go beyond Western medicine to include drum circles, craft groups, language lessons from elders and more, said Michael Harris, a psychologist and director of communication and community engagement at IHB. “Culture is healing,” he said.
The new building itself is a reflection of the pride in that culture, and a representation of the many tribes in Minneapolis.
Visitors will be greeted into the building by a three-story image of a jingle dress dancer dressed in regalia that represents Sioux patterns. Constellations, considered medicine by many tribes, will arch over the dancer, Rock said.
At NACC, too, medical professionals provide care with a balance of both Western medicine and traditional medicines, services, and values: “We’re not saying that ceremony and traditional practices is better health care than Western care, or more important than Western care; we’re saying that it has equal weight, relevance and importance to the health and well-being of our people,” Stately said.
‘Relational care instead of transactional care’
NACC’s expansion has been in the works since 2019; the need for a new space came from the goal of offering more comprehensive and integrated health care services to patients, said Stately.
The clinic will take up the first and second floors of the new building, offering expanded maternal and child health care, dental care, behavioral health and addiction services, primary care and street outreach programs.
The top four floors will consist of 83 housing units ranging from one to four-bedrooms. Thirty-six of the units will be subsidized through the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, federal Section 811 housing for adults with disabilities and Simpson Housing Services. The remaining units will be rent controlled. Twenty units will be designated for people living with disabilities or who have experienced homelessness. The housing units are owned and managed by Twin Cities-based real estate company Wellington Management in partnership with NACC.
The expansion was funded by city, state and federal sources as well as grants through a process Stately called challenging.
“But we also knew that we wouldn’t likely get back to this space again anytime in the near future. We could see where things were headed financially for the country, and the likelihood we’d get all these people together to kind of do a thing again was likely not going to happen, and so we just bit the bullet,” he said.
Both Stately and Rock emphasized the importance of trust and relationship-building in the community so people feel encouraged and welcome to seek care. IHB and NACC have spent years doing work rooted in the community.
That cultural connection is key, said Joseph Regguinti, the former fitness center manager at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
“When you have people that look like you, especially in the recovery spaces, I don’t have to sit here and explain to Native people what it’s like to basically have half your family be addicted to drugs and have cousins that have passed away from overdoses,” he said.
Regguinti, who is also in recovery, ran a group for cultural connection for those in recovery as well as a Native-run club.
“When you can look at things through an Indigenous lens and provide opportunities for people to connect with their communities in healthy ways, [we] will find that these problems are a little bit easier to tackle,” he said.
Buffalo likens health care provided by and to the urban Indian community as “relational care instead of transactional care.” She hopes that the positive impact of expanded health care access will be long-term. “Maybe we won’t live to see them within our lifetime, but for sure our great-great-great-grandchildren will,” she said.
But Stately said two clinics providing this care is barely enough. “What we really need is actually a few more, and we need strong partnerships with non-Native clinics that are our allies that want to do the work in partnership with us,” he said.
NACC’s new building is slated to open its doors on Sept. 15 with some limited capacity; IHB will open to the public on Sept. 22.
