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(pronounced: ) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. The twelfth-largest state by area in the U.S., it is the 21<sup>st</sup> most populous, with just over five million residents as of 2006. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the 32<sup>nd</sup> state on May 11, 1858. While the state's residents are primarily white and of Western European ancestry, substantial influxes of African, Asian, and Latin American immigrants have joined the descendants of European immigrants and of the original Native American inhabitants.