Megan Kalk grew up in a family where exploring faiths was the norm.
Her Ojibwe father is Roman Catholic but also grew up with tribal traditions. Her white mother is Southern Baptist but dabbled in different Christian denominations and New Age beliefs.
“I was always interested in what belief systems are out there,” said Kalk, a 31-year-old St. Cloud resident who is Ojibwe. “I was just really interested in reading about every kind of religion out there.”
Kalk said she would read through Wikipedia pages and watch YouTube videos. She was particularly moved by the recitations of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, and converted to Islam when she was 16.
Kalk is part of a minority within a minority—nearly 1 percent of the 1 percent, according to a new study on Native American Muslims. Kalk and 16 other Native American Muslims across the nation shared their stories for the study from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a group that conducts some of the most extensive research about Muslims in the United States.
“I kept coming back to Islam, because of the simplicity of it,” Kalk said of why she converted.
The project is the first of its kind to look at a largely unknown sector of Native American Muslims, according to the institute, which is based in Dearborn, Michigan. The study did not report the total number of Native Muslims in the country.
“Through a combination of narrative-style interviews, visual storytelling, cutting-edge qualitative research, and community outreach, NAIMS [Native American and Indigenous Muslim Stories] sheds light on a doubly-minoritized group whose voices have largely gone unheard,” says the report released in November 2023.
The project analyzes information from 17 interviews with Native American Muslims ranging in age from 21 to 65 that was released in the project’s first stage in 2022. The interviews include conversations about identity, similarities between Native cultures and Islam, Palestinian and Indigenous solidarity, and the community’s hopes and needs.
RELATED STORIES
Researchers also conducted three virtual focus groups with 17 additional Native Americans who are not Muslim. The focus groups discussed encountering Native American Muslims, participants’ understanding of Islam, cultural commonalities and differences, and Islamophobia.
The institute recommends further research of Native American Muslims. It also recommends building understanding between Native Americans and Muslims by creating more community gatherings and arts programs that bring the groups together.
Sisterhood
Kalk spent the last 15 years figuring out what Islam looks like for herself, leaning on friends in the Muslim and Native American communities for support.
The experience equipped her to work in community engagement and needs assessment at OneCommunity Alliance, a nonprofit that works to close disparities in health, employment, education, and housing, said the organization’s executive director, Hudda Ibrahim.
Hudda first met Kalk about six years ago at an event with Reviving Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment, a nonprofit that develops civic engagement and leadership skills among Muslim women in Minnesota.
“I didn’t know she was Native. I mean, how do you know?” Hudda, who is Somali, said with a laugh. “In our area, when Megan and I met, we didn’t have a lot of Muslim females who weren’t Somali. There wasn’t very much diversity within the Muslim community in St. Cloud, so when I met her, I was really excited.”
Hudda’s first impression of Kalk was that she was shy, but she’s seen Kalk step out of her comfort zone over the years, coaching new refugees from Ethiopia about life in Minnesota and helping them find employment despite a language barrier.
“I’ve met her family, friends, cousins, and what I’ve seen is that we have a lot of similarities,” Hudda said. “She’s very communal. She comes from a culture that’s very similar to Somali culture when it comes to generosity, hospitality, welcoming people with open arms, and really helping others.”
Celebrating two cultures
In her interview with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Kalk said her interest in Islam stemmed from watching discussions and lectures on YouTube—a common entry point for other Muslim converts.
Kalk said that preserving her own Ojibwe culture while practicing Islam has been equally important. She’s found similarities in the two, such as the Ojibwe concept of one great spirit and the idea of one god in Islam.
But finding her place in the Muslim community has been difficult.
“I’ve kind of gotten away from trying to find a community and just finding people that accept me for who I am,” Kalk said. “Muslim communities come with so many cultural things, and that’s fine. But when I don’t conform to it, you feel like an outsider. For me it’s about, ‘Where are the new Muslims—a new generation of just American Muslims?’”
However, Kalk feels supported by her Muslim community. She often rode the bus as a college student, and when one of her Muslim friends passed by, they would stop and insist on giving her a ride.
“If you lived on the reservation, you can rely on your neighbors. I’ve found the same thing with the Muslim community,” Kalk said. “They are so willing to go out of their way to help or give you an opportunity.”
Kalk noted in the institute’s project that cultural food is the foundation of celebrating Islamic holidays such as Ramadan and Eid. But, she said, she felt there wasn’t room at the table for Ojibwe dishes.
Kalk said she struggled to differentiate Islamic values from cultural practices in the Somali community. For example, understanding if Muslim women are required to wear the long dresses many Somali women wear or if she could just wear jeans.
“You don’t have to wear that to be Muslim,” Kalk said of the long dress. “That was many years of trying to figure out that what Islam is going to look like for me is going to look different than what it looks like for whatever community is nearby.”
In some ways, Kalk’s been able to combine practices from her Ojibwe and Muslim beliefs and appreciate parallels between them. Ojibwe people set out a pile of tobacco leaves at a tree several times throughout the day—similar to the Muslim prayers that are conducted five times a day, she said.
“I’m sure some people would have some issues with it theologically,” Kalk said. “But it’s more about trying to hold onto both.”
She added that the prayers also have similar themes. For example, both the Islamic prayer and Ojibwe prayers ask for a higher power to keep her on the straight path. The idea of prayer being personal is also similar in the two traditions.
Kalk doesn’t know any other Native American Muslims in the state, and said some Native American community members don’t fully understand Islam.
“You have to understand, everything that came from the East over the Atlantic Ocean for these tribes destroyed their cultures,” she said. “It wasn’t done out of malice that they were skeptical of what Islam is. It was just something foreign, and we’re in this phase of trying to preserve our culture.”
But she has reconnected with childhood friends from the reservation in recent years, and visits the reservation nearly every weekend.
Kalk makes a conscious effort to preserve her Ojibwe culture with help from her childhood friends. Kalk and her husband, who is Mexican-American and also Muslim, have a 12-year-old daughter.
“We’re taking the initiative to teach all of our kids the things that we learned growing up,” Kalk said of her Ojibwe friends, “whether that’s learning about wild ricing, maple sugar, the Ojibwe language, how to row a canoe and pull in a net full of fish, making moccasins.”
Kalk and her friend, Naomi Kristiansen, plan to write a book documenting their children learning about Ojibwe culture.
“Like me, she grew up with a white mother and a Native father,” Kristiansen said of Kalk. “Growing up like that, you learn to inhabit both worlds.”
Kristiansen first met Kalk around the time Kalk became Muslim. She said she’s had inspiring conversations with Kalk about the similarities between Islamic and Ojibwe teachings.
“I felt like it was a confirming idea for me,” Kristiansen said. “We’re connected through little things in religion. I don’t believe people think that our Indigenous culture—our ideas and our faith—is similar to Islam at all. But what Megan’s found out is that it is.”
