A passion for public service leads to a career in history

St. Cloud State University alumna Cathy Coats has always been drawn to the world of academia.

“I have a passion for public service and academia and history and libraries and research and reading — and all of those things put together is sort of where I ended up,” she said.

Now a metadata specialist librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries, Coats earned her bachelor’s in history in 2013 and her master’s in public history in 2017 from St. Cloud State. She interned with University Archives at SCSU while pursuing her master’s before working as a library technician in the University’s James W. Miller Learning Resources Center.

Coats spent her master’s thesis researching the removal of the Ho-Chunk people from southern Minnesota. She said the thesis, housed in SCSU’s Repository, was shared around in the history world to the point that it reached the Minnesota Historical Society. Coats was encouraged to publish the thesis as a book, and “To Banish Forever: A Secret Society, the Ho-Chunk, and Ethnic Cleansing in Minnesota” was released in 2024. It details a secret society of Mankato men named Knights of the Forest in 1863 that worked to remove the Ho-Chunk people from their reservation as part of the ethnic cleansing of southern Minnesota. Coats said the release of the book — which was named a finalist for the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards — has led to some significant conversations as she’s promoted it.

“This story is really evidence and part of the storytelling of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Indigenous people, especially right here in Minnesota. Similar stories to my book were happening throughout Wisconsin and the Midwest, but it really has been important when telling the story of the U.S.-Dakota War, which has in recent years gotten a lot more attention and more coverage in history and in curriculums around the state. More high school history teachers are aware of it; I grew up in Minnesota, and I was never taught about the U.S.-Dakota War,” she said. “It’s being worked into the curriculum now in high school and this aspect of it with the Ho-Chunk people is a missing part that hasn't really been worked into the narrative as much as it should be yet. Especially since the Ho-Chunk people weren't really involved in the U.S.-Dakota War; it really says a lot about what exactly was happening there. It tells a different side of broken treaties and the settlement and colonialism that happened here in Minnesota at the beginning of statehood.”

Coats credits a number of SCSU’s current and retired faculty with helping bring her thesis to life as well as drawing her to St. Cloud State in the first place, including Mary Wingerd, Darlene St. Clair and Robert Galler.

“Mary Wingerd was definitely the number one draw to the program at St. Cloud State, and she is retired now, but still she came to my book launch and she really was instrumental in helping me,” Coats said. “Darlene St. Clair was one of my advisors for my thesis, and she was really instrumental in this thesis becoming a book or really even the thesis happening in the first place. She was a great advisor and I couldn't have done any of this research as good as it is without her.”

She also credits her graduate program internship with SCSU University Archivist and Professor Tom Steman with laying some important professional groundwork.

“That internship gave me some really crucial experience that has helped me get many interviews,” Coats said. “That experience was really just instrumental.”

Coats has continued to build off of that experience, and believes preserving information is paramount for a knowledgeable society.

“I have a passion for public service, so fundamentally it's about my work in the libraries. In archives and museums in general, it’s about access for the public to information and it's about having all kinds of knowledge and public knowledge available to everybody, collecting the history of institutions as part of the work of archives. Collecting government documents is part of the work of libraries, and I think preserving the public knowledge is really important for history,” she said. “When it comes to this book; telling new stories that haven't been told before to tell a more complete story of Minnesota's history, specifically, is really important in all of the work related to libraries and museums.”

While Coats has been kept busy with “To Banish Forever,” she’s far from finished when it comes to sharing history with the public.

“I'm working on some ideas,” she said. “There's so many stories in Minnesota history that need to be told that just haven't been told yet.”