The Weekly Brief

Indian Country news for Patty Loew

Indian Nations of Wisconsin · Chapter 6

The Potawatomi Nation

Pages 84-99 · Second edition (2013); third edition in progress

Forest County Potawatomi history: Three Fires alliance, removal and return, Big Drum (Dream Dance), the Class One Air Quality designation in 1999, gaming and economic development, language revitalization.

What's changed since publication

Curated developments to fold into a future revision. Each item is tagged so a third-edition rewrite can pull related brief coverage automatically.

This chapter's themes

Brief coverage tagged to this chapter

Stories from The Weekly Brief tagged with any of this chapter's themes, most recent first. Each new issue's tagged stories appear here automatically.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Wisconsin Tribes and Commercial Gambling Companies Clash Over Online Sports Betting Bill

Wisconsin's tribal nations and commercial gambling interests are at odds over a state legislative proposal to legalize online sports betting, with tribes arguing the bill would undercut the exclusivity provisions in their gaming compacts. WPR has been tracking this story, which sits at the intersection of sovereignty, economic development, and the state's long-standing compact relationships with tribal governments. The compacts were hard-won; any erosion of exclusivity has real fiscal consequences for nations whose governmental programs depend on gaming revenue.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Bad River Asks Federal Court to Stop Enbridge Line 5 Reroute Construction

The Bad River Band filed a motion in federal court this week seeking to halt construction on Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute through Ashland and Iron counties, arguing the project should not proceed while the tribe's underlying easement lawsuit remains unresolved. WPR's Native American coverage has the story, though the tribal filing itself is the document worth tracking down. This is the central legal front in a fight that has defined Bad River's public life for years, and the motion signals the band is not prepared to let construction create facts on the ground while the courts deliberate.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Ashland County Cuts Deal to Be Reimbursed for Policing Line 5 Reroute Protests

Ashland County approved an agreement this week that would provide county reimbursement for law enforcement costs associated with policing protests of the Enbridge Line 5 reroute project. WPR reported the development without specifying who funds the reimbursement, which is the question worth pressing. The arrangement has a familiar and troubling shape: public safety resources aligned with a private pipeline company's construction timeline, in the homeland of the very tribe whose treaty rights are at the center of the dispute.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

U.S. Attorney General Backs Town's Demand That Lac du Flambeau Repay Road Dispute Costs

The U.S. Attorney General filed a brief this week endorsing the position that the Lac du Flambeau Band should repay the town of Lac du Flambeau for costs incurred during the 2023 road access dispute, when the tribe closed roads crossing allotment-era easements. WPR has the story. The federal government's alignment with the town rather than the tribe in this brief is worth noting carefully: it continues a pattern in which the current administration reads allotment-era property arrangements in ways that constrain rather than support tribal sovereignty.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Federal Judge Blocks Lac du Flambeau from Restricting Fishing on Nearly Twenty Lakes

A federal judge ruled this week that the Lac du Flambeau Band cannot restrict non-tribal fishing on approximately twenty lakes within its territory, a decision that touches directly on the ongoing tension between tribal resource management authority and off-reservation public access claims. WPR reported the ruling. The legal reasoning matters here: whether the court grounded its decision in treaty rights, state law, or something else will shape how far the ruling reaches and whether it invites further challenges to tribal fisheries management across the ceded territories.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

What Would It Take to Actually Halt Line 5 Reroute Construction? WPR Explains the Legal Landscape

WPR's explainer this week lays out the procedural terrain for Bad River's emergency motion to stop Enbridge construction, walking through the Bayfield County court proceedings and the federal case running in parallel. It is a useful primer, though it would be stronger with more direct tribal voice. The core tension the piece surfaces is real: construction is advancing on the ground while the legal question of whether the reroute can proceed at all remains genuinely open.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Tribal Leader on Northern Wisconsin Priorities: 'North of Highway 29' Is Its Own Country

WPR's conversation with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader this week surfaced the persistent frustration that state and federal policy is made by people who rarely travel north of Highway 29, let alone understand what treaty-protected resources mean to communities whose livelihoods and spiritual lives depend on them. The framing is one Patty, you will recognize from your own fieldwork: the geography of neglect is not accidental. The piece is worth reading alongside the Line 5 and fishing-restriction stories as a reminder of the political context in which those legal fights unfold.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Controversial Gas Pipeline Across Navajo Nation Moves Forward, Catching Community Members Off Guard

High Country News reports that a 234-mile gas pipeline across Navajo Nation land is moving toward construction after a hearing that community members say they were not adequately notified about. The story echoes Line 5 in its structure: a pipeline company, a federal permitting process, and a tribal community whose consultation rights appear to have been honored in form but not in substance. For the Ice Worlds frame, the Navajo Nation's water and land relationships are as central to its future as manoomin is to the Anishinaabe.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

NARF Marks 25 Years of the Tribal Supreme Court Project with a New Report

The Native American Rights Fund released its 25-year retrospective on the Tribal Supreme Court Project this week, documenting a quarter century of coordinated advocacy before the nation's highest court on behalf of tribal sovereignty. The report is a useful reference document, and its timing alongside the new ICWA challenge is pointed: the Project exists precisely because the Supreme Court is not a neutral forum, and tribal nations need sustained, coordinated legal strategy to navigate it. Worth downloading for your files.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

'Alligator Alcatraz' Immigration Detention Center May Close After Miccosukee-Led Resistance in the Everglades

Native News Online reports that the controversial immigration detention facility built in the Florida Everglades, which critics dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz,' may be shut down following sustained resistance from the Miccosukee Tribe and allied environmental and Native advocates who argued the facility threatened both the ecosystem and tribal sacred sites. The story is a useful reminder that tribal resistance to federal land use decisions takes many forms and that the Miccosukee have been among the most consistent defenders of Everglades ecology for generations.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

NARF Explains What Tribal Sovereignty Means for Birthright Citizenship Debates

The Native American Rights Fund published a clear-eyed explainer on tribal sovereignty and birthright citizenship, addressing the question of whether current legal debates about the Fourteenth Amendment affect the citizenship status of tribal members. The piece is careful to distinguish tribal citizenship from U.S. citizenship and to ground the analysis in the pre-constitutional existence of tribal nations. It is a useful resource for anyone navigating these questions in a policy or classroom context.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Western Drought Deepens Ahead of Summer, Threatening Tribal Water, Crops, and Electricity

Native News Online reports that Western states are entering summer with critically low water reserves, with consequences that fall disproportionately on tribal communities whose water rights are often junior in practice even when senior in law. The story does not center tribal voices as strongly as it should, but the underlying conditions it describes are directly relevant to the Ice Worlds frame: water scarcity, disrupted seasonal cycles, and the gap between treaty-protected rights and on-the-ground reality.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

South Dakota's Missouri River Water Plan Ignores Tribal Ownership, Native Sun News Reports

Native Sun News Today flags that South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson's federal bills to expand Missouri River water use for the state do not address the question of who actually holds water rights in that river system, a question that implicates multiple Oceti Sakowin nations whose treaty territories the Missouri runs through. The piece is a good example of the kind of story that only a Native publication is likely to frame this way: the mainstream coverage of the same bills would almost certainly not lead with tribal water rights.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

ICT: Mining Company Pulls Out of Pe' Sla After Indigenous Occupation Forces the Question

ICT's account of the Pe' Sla victory is the single best long read of the week, not because it is the longest piece but because it synthesizes the full arc of the fight: the U.S. Forest Service permit issued over tribal objections, the NDN Collective lawsuit alleging NEPA and Religious Freedom Restoration Act violations, the direct-action occupation of the site, the federal temporary restraining order, and finally the withdrawal of the permit by Pete Lien and Sons. ICT names the specific combination of legal, ceremonial, and physical presence that produced the outcome, and it does so with the kind of sourcing that privileges tribal voices over agency statements. Read this alongside the NDN Collective primary release (candidate 7) and the Native Sun News coverage (candidate 132) for the full picture. The story matters beyond its immediate facts: it is a working model of how Indigenous communities can use multiple pressure points simultaneously, and it arrives in a week when Bad River is doing exactly that on Line 5.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Pe' Sla Victory: Mining Company Withdraws Drilling Permit After Occupation, Lawsuit, and Community Ceremony

In a striking win for Indigenous land protection, Pete Lien and Sons formally withdrew its permit to drill for graphite near Pe' Sla, the high mountain meadow at the heart of Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota creation stories, after a week of direct action occupation, a federal temporary restraining order, and sustained legal pressure from NDN Collective and allied tribes. NDN Collective's own announcement is the primary source here, and it is worth reading in full: the organization names the specific combination of forces that produced the outcome, which is a model worth studying. The win is real, though the underlying permit framework that allowed the drilling application in the first place remains unchanged.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Grist: Indigenous Action Wins the Day at Pe' Sla, and the Broader Pattern It Represents

Grist's Indigenous coverage this week frames the Pe' Sla victory within the larger pattern of Indigenous-led environmental resistance, connecting the Black Hills win to a documented record of Native communities halting or delaying extractive projects. Tristan Ahtone's team at Grist has been building this beat carefully, and the framing here is consistent with the research showing that Indigenous land protection produces measurable climate outcomes. The story is worth reading alongside the NDN Collective primary source.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Kimberly Blaeser, Former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and Ojibwe Writer, Wins National Book Foundation Prize for 'Ancient Light'

WPR reports that Kimberly Blaeser, a White Earth Ojibwe poet and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, has received a National Book Foundation prize for her collection 'Ancient Light.' Blaeser's work has long woven Anishinaabemowin, landscape, and memory into forms that resist easy categorization, and this recognition from a major national literary institution is a genuine milestone. Patty, you know her work well, and this is the kind of story that belongs in your files for the next edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin.

Issue 001 · May 10, 2026

Ojibwe Jingle Dress Dancer Carries Family Legacy of Activism into Digital Spaces

WPR profiles an Ojibwe jingle dress dancer who is using digital platforms to extend a family tradition of activism, connecting the physical practice of dance to contemporary forms of Indigenous visibility and resistance. The story is exactly the kind of 'Native People Up Close' framing Patty's textbook calls for: a specific person, a specific practice, a specific lineage, no vanishing-race framing in sight. The jingle dress itself carries a healing origin story from the flu pandemic era, which gives the digital extension of that tradition an additional layer of resonance.

Background · 2024 · forest-county-potawatomi

Forest County Potawatomi Foundation Crosses $30 Million in Community Grants

Since its founding in 1999, the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation has contributed more than $30 million to charitable organizations across Forest County and the five-county Milwaukee region. The Foundation funds art and culture, civic affairs, community development, after-school programs, senior services, and environment, with targeted attention to low-income communities in Milwaukee. It operates from offices on West Kilbourn Avenue alongside the Potawatomi Hotel and Casino.

Background · 2024 · wikipedia

Potawatomi Casino Hotel Grows to a $700+ Million Milwaukee Enterprise

The Potawatomi Casino Hotel, operated by the Forest County Potawatomi Community, has tripled in size since its first Milwaukee expansion in 2000. A $240 million expansion in 2008 tripled the gaming floor and added a 1,700-space parking garage; a 19-story hotel opened in 2014; and a $190 million renovation of the first two levels recently added new restaurants and a sportsbook. The build-out has anchored the tribe's economic diversification across Milwaukee real estate and renewable energy.

Background · 2023 · wxpr

Forest County Potawatomi Open Renovated Health and Wellness Center

In November 2023 the Forest County Potawatomi Community opened a newly remodeled Health and Wellness Center in Crandon, funded in part by a $4.7 million state Healthcare Infrastructure grant. The renovation added a lobby and registration area, a triage room, additional medical exam rooms, and a drive-thru pharmacy. The facility offers medical, behavioral health, dental, optometry, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, and weekend walk-in services, anchoring tribal health infrastructure for the post-pandemic decade.

Background · 2023 · potawatomi-trail-of-death-association

Trail of Death Commemorative Caravan Continues Across Four States Every Five Years

The Potawatomi Trail of Death of 1838, the forced removal of 859 Potawatomi from Indiana to Kansas during which more than 40 people, mostly children, died, has been commemorated by a Potawatomi-led caravan retracing the 660-mile route every five years since 1988. Eighty historical markers placed by Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H clubs, and Potawatomi families now mark campsites every 15 to 20 miles across 26 counties in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. Wisconsin Potawatomi descendants participate annually.

Background · 2023 · forest-county-potawatomi

Forest County Potawatomi Hold the Line on Bodéwadmimwen with Seven Native Speakers Remaining

Tribal estimates put the number of native Potawatomi (Bodéwadmimwen) speakers at seven. The Forest County Potawatomi Language and Culture Department teaches rotating community classes in Carter, Wabeno, Blackwell, Crandon, and Stone Lake, anchored by elder-led seasonal ceremony and traditional practice. The community has leaned on the broader Potawatomi diaspora, with shared curriculum work between Wisconsin's Forest County community and the Pokagon and Citizen Potawatomi nations.

Background · 2023 · wisconsin-state-farmer

Bodwéwadmi Ktëgan Farm Anchors Forest County Potawatomi Food Sovereignty

Bodwéwadmi Ktëgan, the 126-acre Forest County Potawatomi farm near Laona, was established in 2017 to produce a natural and sustainable source of vegetables, fruits, greens, fish, and animal proteins for tribal members. The operation includes aquaponic greenhouses by Ceres (with a second expanded greenhouse online in August 2025) as well as cattle, chicken, tilapia, bison, honey, and maple syrup, all produced without chemical fertilizer or pesticides. A $200,000 USDA grant supports food-box distribution to tribal members beyond elders.

Background · 2022 · sunvest

Forest County Potawatomi Lead Tribally-Owned Renewables in the Upper Midwest

During its Milwaukee casino expansions, the Forest County Potawatomi installed heat-recovery wheels that channel warm air back into the heating system, digital energy monitoring, no-water urinals, low-flow fixtures, and skylighting. The tribe has gone on to anchor multiple solar projects across its Forest County properties through SunVest and the Department of Energy's Office of Indian Energy.

Background · 2018 · forest-county-potawatomi

Ned Daniels Jr. Becomes Forest County Potawatomi Chairman in 2018

Ned Daniels Jr. won the Forest County Potawatomi chairmanship in the 2017-2018 election, succeeding longtime chairman Harold 'Gus' Frank. As chair, Daniels works with the five-person Executive Council on tribal administration and external agreements. The Daniels era has overseen the Health and Wellness Center renovation, the launch of the Bodwéwadmi Ktëgan farm, the expansion of tribal solar through the Office of Indian Energy, and continued strategic investment in Milwaukee real estate alongside the Potawatomi Casino Hotel.

Background · 2015 · indian-community-school

Indian Community School Anchors Urban Native Education on a 178-Acre Franklin Campus

The Indian Community School, born from the 1971 AIM takeover of the abandoned McKinley Coast Guard Station on Milwaukee's lakefront, moved in 2007 to a $35 million, 178-acre campus in Franklin, about thirteen miles from downtown. The Forest County Potawatomi's twenty-year lease and the gaming revenue that followed funded the move and helped sustain the school. ICS serves about 364 Native students K-8, and every kindergartner commits to daily language instruction in Oneida, Menominee, or Ojibwe — a quiet but radical bet on the next generation.

Background · 2014 · wisconsin-academy

Patty Loew Builds the Wisconsin Indigenous Bookshelf Across the Decade Between Editions

Patty followed Indian Nations of Wisconsin with Native People of Wisconsin (2003), a social studies text for younger readers, and Seventh Generation Earth Ethics (2014), profiles of twelve Indigenous Wisconsin stewards including Joe Rose, Dot Davids, and Walter Bresette, which won the Midwest Book Award for Culture. Her PBS documentary Way of the Warrior aired nationally in 2007 and 2011, drawing on her grandfather Edward DeNomie's WWI service with the 32nd Red Arrow Division. The decade between INW editions produced the body of work the third edition now sits alongside.

Background · 2003 · itep

Forest County Potawatomi and Sokaogon Buy the Crandon Mine to Stop It

In a closing chapter of the long Crandon Mine fight, the Forest County Potawatomi Community partnered with the Sokaogon Chippewa Community to purchase the proposed mine site from Nicolet Minerals, ending decades of threat to the wild rice waters between Mole Lake and the Wolf River headwaters. The tribes hold the land in trust. Walter Bresette's organizing coalition, the Midwest Treaty Network, had built much of the resistance that made the buyout possible.

Background · 2024 · Wisconsin Examiner

Walter Bresette Posthumously Inducted to Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame

On April 17, 2024, twenty-five years after his death at 51, Walt Bresette was inducted to the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. A Red Cliff Ojibwe activist, author, and storyteller, Bresette led the 1996 Bad River train blockade against sulfuric acid shipments to the Crandon mine site, co-founded the Midwest Treaty Network, and drove the campaign that produced Wisconsin's Prove It First mining moratorium law. He was a central treaty rights organizer through the spearfishing years.

Background · 2023 · tribal-college-journal

Menominee Mark 50th Anniversary of Restoration Act

On December 22, 2023, the Menominee Indian Tribe marked 50 years since President Richard Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act, reversing the 1961 termination that had stripped federal recognition, dissolved the reservation into Menominee County, and pushed the people into poverty. The restoration was won by DRUMS, the Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stockholders, founded by Jim White and Ada Deer. The College of Menominee Nation marked the date with a year of programming.

Background · 2023 · oneida-nation

Tehassi Hill Enters Third Term as Oneida Nation Chairman

Tehassi Hill has served as chairman of the Oneida Nation since August 2017 and is now in his third three-year term. He represents the nation on the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council board, sits on Wisconsin's Natural Resources Damage Trustee Council, and is the nation's designee to the EPA's Regional Tribal Operating Committee. His leadership has centered on land buy-back, health care, and natural resources protection.

Background · 2023 · midwest-environmental-justice-network

Federal Judge Orders Enbridge to Shut Down Line 5 on Bad River Reservation by June 2026

On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.

Background · 2023 · WPR Native American coverage

Wisconsin Ojibwe Mark 40th Anniversary of the Voigt Decision

On January 25, 2023, the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands marked 40 years since the Voigt Decision, the 1983 federal appeals court ruling that reaffirmed treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on ceded territory under the 1837 and 1842 treaties. Voigt is the legal foundation under every subsequent treaty case in Wisconsin, from the spear fishing battles of the 1980s to the wolf hunt lawsuits to the Line 5 trespass ruling. Northwoods tribal leaders reflected on the violence the original ruling provoked at the boat landings and on what has been built since.

Background · 2021 · wuwm

McKinley Coast Guard Station Takeover Marks 50 Years as Milwaukee's Urban Indian Founding Moment

On August 14, 1971, Milwaukee AIM activists Herb Powless (Oneida) and Jerome Starr (Ojibwe) occupied the abandoned McKinley Coast Guard Station on Milwaukee's lakefront, citing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie's provision that abandoned federal property reverts to original inhabitants. The takeover led to the city and BIA handing over the building for use as the original Indian Community School. WUWM, Shepherd Express, and TMJ4 all marked the 50th anniversary in August 2021. The story is the founding myth of urban Indian Milwaukee and a reminder that 'land back' has Wisconsin precedent.

Background · 2021 · earthjustice

Menominee Defeat Back Forty Mine on the Menominee River

The Menominee Nation's seven-year legal and political fight against the Back Forty open-pit mine along the Menominee River produced a decisive 2021 ruling. Aquila Resources withdrew its Michigan wetlands permits after the tribe's challenge and a court ruled the project would have a probable negative effect on Menominee sacred sites. In December 2021, Aquila was absorbed by Gold Resource Corp; Chairman Ronald Corn Sr. responded that the merger did not change the tribe's opposition.

Background · 2021 · WPR Native American coverage

Joe 'Moka'ang Giizis' Rose Walks On at 85

Joe Rose, known by his Ojibwe name Moka'ang Giizis (Rising Sun), walked on February 23, 2021, at age 85 from complications of COVID-19. A Bad River tribal elder and Northland College emeritus professor, Rose was a part of virtually every significant environmental and treaty-rights struggle the North Country faced for half a century. He died during the brutal February wolf hunt he had spent decades resisting as a lifelong wolf advocate. Patty called him a second dad.

Background · 2016 · in-these-times

Ho-Chunk General Council Votes to Add Rights of Nature to Constitution

In 2015 the Ho-Chunk Nation's General Council adopted a resolution to amend the tribal constitution to recognize the rights of nature, becoming the first U.S. tribal nation to take that step. By 2020 a working group was integrating the resolution into the constitution, laws, regulations, and tribal processes. The General Council is the fourth branch of Ho-Chunk government, the body in which all enrolled members vote directly.

Background · 2015 · ICT (Indian Country Today)

Gogebic Taconite Withdraws Penokee Hills Iron Mine, Ending Three-Year Fight

On March 24, 2015, Gogebic Taconite president Bill Williams pulled the company's preapplication for the 4.5-mile open-pit iron mine that would have produced eight million tons of taconite annually over the Bad River watershed. Six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, led by Bad River, had organized the EPA review and grassroots resistance that surfaced the wetlands the company claimed did not exist. Williams cited 'unexpected extensive wetlands' and EPA permit uncertainty.

Background · 2013 · oil-and-water-dont-mix

Bad River Tribal Council Votes Not to Renew Enbridge Line 5 Easements

In June 2013 the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing the 20-year easements that had allowed Enbridge's Line 5 to cross 12 allotment parcels on the reservation. The decision came three years after Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, dumping more than 843,000 gallons of crude. That no vote became the foundation of every Line 5 ruling that followed.

Background · 2024 · WPR Native American coverage

Menomini yoU Breaks Ground on Wāsecewan Language Campus

With fewer than one percent of tribal members functional in the Menominee language and one living first-language speaker left in an unbroken chain, Menomini yoU Inc. broke ground on the 10,000-square-foot Wāsecewan Language Campus near Keshena. The campus will house immersion classrooms, an outdoor cultural space, and the operations of a revitalization movement that took shape during the COVID pandemic through online courses.

Background · 2024 · wiea

Wisconsin Indian Education Association Convenes Statewide Annually for Native Education

Founded in 1985 to carry on the work of the former Great Lakes Intertribal Council Education sub-committee, the Wisconsin Indian Education Association (WIEA) is the statewide body advocating for Indigenous students and educators across Wisconsin's public school system. WIEA serves on advisory bodies to the State Superintendent and the Department of Public Instruction, and its annual conferences (2024: 'Fostering Teamwork & Collaboration'; 2025: 'Honoring Our Languages') gather Native and non-Native educators around Act 31 implementation, language revitalization, and recruitment of Indigenous teachers. Membership crosses urban-reservation lines and is one of the few statewide infrastructures connecting Milwaukee, Madison, and reservation classrooms.

Background · 2023 · WPR Native American coverage

Hoocąk Speakers Fall Below Forty as Nation Builds New Digital Tools

Ho-Chunk tribal leaders now estimate fewer than 40 native Hoocąk speakers remain. The Hoocąk Academy, a Language Apprentice Program training new teachers, the EeCoonį early childhood program, and the Hoocąk Woiperes e-learning platform run out of Black River Falls, anchored by elders and teenagers recording about 1,000 phrases for the app. Hoocąk has been taught in Baraboo, Black River Falls, Tomah, Wisconsin Dells, and Wisconsin Rapids high schools since 2001.

Background · 2022 · teach-lang-wisconsin

Stockbridge-Munsee Run Parallel Mohican and Munsee Language Programs

The Stockbridge-Munsee Community now runs language revitalization programs in both of its recognized languages, Mohican and Munsee. The Cultural Affairs Department has produced an extensive Mohican video series using Total Physical Response, in which words attach to physical movement to aid retention. The programs sit alongside the archives of the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library and Museum, the largest collection of Mohican documents and artifacts in the world.

Background · 2022 · oneida-nation

Oneida Language Immersion Anchors a Multi-District Revitalization

The Oneida Nation School System runs a full immersion school on the reservation near Green Bay, the only Iroquois language immersion school in Wisconsin. Oneida is also taught at two nearby public school districts, at St. Norbert College and UW-Green Bay, and through an immersion Head Start program and adult community classes. The Indian Community School, founded in 1969 by three Oneida mothers, remains a model for tribally-run urban schooling in Milwaukee.

Background · 2022 · hochunk-renaissance

Ho-Chunk Wisconsin and Winnebago of Nebraska Continue a Two-Nation Reconnection

More than 150 years after the 1837 treaty split the tribe into a Nebraska-removed faction and a Wisconsin remnant, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska continue a long arc of cultural reconnection. Joint language work between Wisconsin's Hocąk Wazija Haci and the Nebraska-based HoChunk Renaissance has produced shared curriculum and elder recordings, and members of both nations gather across the Missouri River for ceremonial and ceremonial seasons their ancestors traveled by night under cover of darkness.

Background · 2021 · red-cliff

Bad River, Red Cliff, and Bayfield Schools Launch Three-Year Ojibwemowin Immersion Program

In 2021 Red Cliff received a $900,000 grant from the federal Administration for Native Americans to create a three-year Ojibwemowin Teaching and Training Program in partnership with the Bayfield School District, the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network, and the Bad River Band. Dustin 'Gimiwan' Burnette of MIIN, who began as a Bad River adult language instructor in 2020, anchors the curriculum. Bad River Head Start now produces and publishes immersion-classroom books written by language trainees about people and places in Bad River.

Background · 2020 · lco-tribe

Edward 'Bawdwaywidun Banaisee' Benton-Banai Walks On at 89

Edward Benton-Banai walked on November 30, 2020, at age 89 in Hayward, Wisconsin. A Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe of the Fish Clan, Grand Chief of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge since 1986, and a co-founder of the American Indian Movement, he wrote The Mishomis Book in 1979 from the Teachings of the Seven Grandfathers. The book remains the most widely used Anishinaabe primer in North America.

Background · 2018 · uw-milwaukee-eqi

Electa Quinney Institute at UW-Milwaukee Trains Native Educators for Urban Schools

Named for Electa Quinney, the first public schoolteacher in Wisconsin and a Stockbridge-Munsee citizen, the Electa Quinney Institute at UW-Milwaukee is a teacher training and Indigenous education research center. Its work partners directly with Indian Community School, Milwaukee Public Schools, and tribal-level education programs across the state. The institute closes a gap the 2013 chapter could not have known would matter so much: how to prepare teachers — Native and non-Native — to serve the urban Native classrooms that Wisconsin's relocation history created.

Background · 2008 · national-endowment-for-the-arts

Oneida Hymn Singers of Wisconsin Receive NEA National Heritage Fellowship

The Oneida Hymn Singers of Wisconsin, who have maintained their Oneida-language Christian hymn tradition for nearly nine decades, received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2008, the highest honor the United States bestows on its folk and traditional artists. The group, ranging in size from a dozen to more than fifty and in age from teens to over eighty, opened the National Museum of the American Indian in 2004 and carries more than one hundred hymns. Most learn the songs phonetically, the language having outlasted speakers.

Background · 2025 · oneida-nation

Ernie 'Big Cat' Stevens Jr. Walks On at 66

Ernie Stevens Jr. of the Oneida Nation passed suddenly on September 26, 2025, at age 66, six months after his thirteenth re-election as chairman of the Indian Gaming Association. He led IGA for 24 years and served as a councilman on the Oneida Business Committee from 1993 to 1999, working in self-determination and youth advocacy. He was a regular voice at the Native American Basketball Invitational and a fixture of Indian Country sports.

Background · 2025 · beloit-daily-news

Ho-Chunk Beloit Casino Opens September 2026, Wisconsin's Second-Largest

After a 1992 federal designation and decades of compact negotiation, the Ho-Chunk Nation's $705 million Beloit casino and conference center is scheduled to open September 2026 on the southeast corner of Willowbrook and Colley roads. The 240,000-square-foot gaming floor will hold 1,500 machines and the hotel will start at 200 rooms. The state compact directs 5 percent of gross gaming revenue to Wisconsin, 1.4 percent to Beloit, and 0.6 percent to Rock County.

Background · 2024 · stockbridge-updates

Shannon Holsey Leads Stockbridge-Munsee Across Multiple Terms

Shannon Holsey has served multiple terms as Tribal President of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Her tenure has spanned a long compact dispute with the State of Wisconsin over revenue payments and the Ho-Chunk Beloit casino proposal, a 2019 federal court loss on the rival casino challenge, and ongoing leadership at the National Congress of American Indians, where she has served as a vice president.

Background · 2020 · north-star-mohican-casino-resort

North Star Mohican Casino Resort Anchors Stockbridge-Munsee Economy

Since opening in May 1992 in Bowler, the North Star Mohican Casino Resort has grown into the economic engine of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, with more than 1,000 slot machines, table games, weekly bingo, a hotel, and tournament golf. The casino sits at the heart of a decades-long compact-and-revenue dispute with the State of Wisconsin, including Stockbridge-Munsee's call on Governor Walker to enforce compact terms after Ho-Chunk's Beloit expansion.

Background · 2020 · wikipedia

Apesanahkwat: Eight-Time Chair, Vietnam Veteran, Architect of IGRA

Apesanahkwat (born January 19, 1949) served as tribal chairman of the Menominee Indian Reservation eight times and is widely considered one of the foremost originators of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. A Vietnam Marine Corps veteran, he is also a champion northern traditional dancer and singer and has acted in Wind River, Northern Exposure, Stolen Women, and Babylon 5. He remains one of the most active orators on tribal sovereignty, education, and language revitalization.

Background · 2017 · wikipedia

Cristina Danforth Shaped Oneida Self-Governance Across Two Decades

Cristina Danforth (Oneida name Kwahlak^ni) served on the Oneida Business Committee for twenty years across roles as Councilwoman, Treasurer, Vice Chairwoman, and Chairwoman, the last role twice. As treasurer she led the balanced budgets and self-funded gaming expansion that transformed the nation's finances. She negotiated gaming compacts for the United Tribes of Wisconsin, the Oneida Compacts, and the New York Land Claims, served as president of the Midwest Alliance of Sovereign Tribes, and preceded Tehassi Hill as chair.