Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
On Mooningwanekaaning-minis, Red Cliff Ojibwe elder Marvin DeFoe Jr. harvested birch bark and cedar the old way, then led construction of a traditional wiigwaasi-jiimaan intended to mark the 1854 Treaty and the cultural revitalization it continues to inspire. The canoe is both object and argument: the Anishinaabe relationship to these waters predates every treaty and outlasts every political season. Mazina'igan's account of the build is the kind of specific, grounded reporting that puts a face and a set of hands on what sovereignty actually looks like. This one belongs in the Red Cliff section of the Ojibwe chapter.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
Kathleen Smith, GLIFWC's manoomin specialist, offers the 2026 wild rice harvest preview in Mazina'igan with a framing that Patty will recognize immediately: no aerial photo or single weather event tells the full story of a rice year. The season opened with variable water levels across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Smith's holistic read of conditions is itself a lesson in how Anishinaabe ecological knowledge and Western survey data can work together rather than past each other. Worth reading before the harvest window closes.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
More than 30 canoes and hundreds of Ojibwe descendants crossed Big Sandy Lake in Minnesota to reach the Mikwendaagoziwag Memorial, which GLIFWC and a dozen Ojibwe bands built 25 years ago to honor those who died during the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850. The crossing is ceremony and history lesson at once, a living reminder that the forced removal that killed hundreds of Lake Superior Ojibwe is not ancient history but a wound whose commemoration is still tended by living communities. Mazina'igan's account is the right source for this.
Issue 017 · August 30, 2026
A new four-year initiative called LakeCare, funded by a $5 million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, is launching to protect aquatic ecosystems in Michigan's 1836 and 1842 Ceded Territories from environmental change and shoreline degradation. The program is tribally driven, with frontline conservation priorities set by the nations whose treaty rights depend on healthy lakes. This is the kind of institutional development that belongs in the Ojibwe chapter's co-management section: a new named program, a significant grant, and a clear connection to the treaty framework Patty has written about for decades.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
Dozens of Potawatomi leaders from the United States and Canada gathered at Potawatomi Casino Hotel Carter in Forest County for the 2026 Bodewadmi Gathering, where the Confederacy formally welcomed three new member nations. The gathering is the living expression of the Three Fires relationship: the Bodewadmi, youngest of the brothers, Keepers of the Fire, maintaining the circle. The source here is Native News Online, which despite its general AVOID signal carries the only detailed account of this specific gathering; the Forest County Potawatomi's own Traveling Times confirms the event but without the Confederacy membership detail.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
ICT's tracker of Indigenous candidates in August primaries covers close to a dozen states, with two Potawatomi candidates facing off in Michigan's 4th Congressional District (candidate 28) among the most closely watched races. The breadth of Native political participation in 2026 is a story in itself. Wisconsin's own primary on August 11 does not appear to feature Indigenous candidates in major races, but the national pattern is worth tracking for anyone writing about Native political power.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
Dozens of Potawatomi leaders from the United States and Canada gathered at Potawatomi Casino Hotel Carter in Forest County this week for the 2026 Bodéwadmi Confederacy meeting, welcoming three new member nations into the confederacy. The gathering is a reminder that the Bodewadmi relationship to place and to one another is alive and expanding, not a relic. Forest County Potawatomi hosted, continuing their role as a hub of pan-Potawatomi organizing. The source here is Native News Online, which we generally avoid, but the underlying development is substantive and no Wisconsin outlet covered it.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
ICT counted close to 70 Indigenous candidates running for public office in August primaries across nearly a dozen states, a number that reflects a generation of Native political organizing bearing fruit. The list includes candidates for state legislatures, congressional seats, and local offices. Two Potawatomi candidates are facing off in a Michigan congressional primary (candidate 19), which is the most Wisconsin-adjacent of the races. This is the kind of story that belongs in the brief not as a horse-race item but as evidence of the civic vitality Patty documents.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
On July 15, Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy authorized Enbridge to build an oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, a decision that tribal nations and NARF called a betrayal of the consultation process. Bad River and other Great Lakes tribes have argued for years that the tunnel project poses an existential threat to the waters that sustain manoomin and the fisheries protected by treaty. NARF's statement, linked here first, frames the ruling not as a conclusion but as the opening of the next legal front. The fight over whether construction can actually proceed, and on whose terms, is far from over.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Department of Defense reduced its list of recognized religion codes used by military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, eliminating Native American religion as a named category and folding it into a generic 'other' designation. ICT broke this story, and it deserves to be read by anyone who has watched a Native veteran try to access ceremony in a VA facility or on a military installation. For Patty, whose grandfather Edward DeNomie served in the 32nd Red Arrow Division and whose documentary Way of the Warrior traced the ogichidaa tradition across generations, this is not an abstraction. It is a policy decision that tells Native service members their spiritual practices are not worth naming.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Abby Roque, Anishinaabe from Sault Ste. Marie, led the Montreal team to the Professional Women's Hockey League championship this week, facing off against another top Indigenous player in the finals. ICT covered the matchup as the story it is: two Indigenous women at the top of their sport, competing against each other at the highest level, in a league that didn't exist a few years ago. Roque is the kind of figure Patty's 'Native People Up Close' framework was built for: a person doing extraordinary things in an ordinary professional context, not a symbol.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Abby Roque, Anishinaabe from Sault Ste. Marie, led the Montreal team to the Professional Women's Hockey League championship this spring, one of two prominent Indigenous players in the finals. ICT's coverage foregrounds her identity without reducing her to it — she is a championship-winning athlete who is also Anishinaabe, not the other way around. This is the kind of story Patty's journalism ethics call for: Native people doing extraordinary things in ordinary arenas.