Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
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.
Background
· 2025
· beloit-daily-news
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
· 2023
· madison365
Jon 'White Feather' Greendeer was first elected President of the Ho-Chunk Nation in 2011. In 2023 the Ho-Chunk general electorate returned him to office, this time as a write-in candidate who took 26.1 percent of the primary vote, ousting incumbent Marlon WhiteEagle whose pandemic-era term was marked by gaming shutdowns and budget battles. Greendeer's renewed agenda has centered on the Food is Our Medicine campaign and the Beloit casino build.
Background
· 2023
· WPR Native American coverage
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
· 2023
· project-muse
Stephen Kantrowitz's 2023 book Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the Nineteenth-Century United States rewrites the Ho-Chunk into the foreground of the removal-era story Patty's chapter sketches. The book tracks the Wisconsin remnant's refusal to relocate, the splitting of the tribe between Wisconsin and Nebraska, and the legal and political mechanics by which the United States manufactured the Ho-Chunk's invisibility. It is the most significant new scholarship on the Ho-Chunk since Patty's first edition.
Background
· 2022
· hochunk-renaissance
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
· 2020
· wisconsin-academy
William Nąąwącekǧize Quackenbush (Deer Clan) serves as the Ho-Chunk Nation's Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and Cultural Resources Division Manager. He has guided interpretation at Effigy Mounds National Monument including the Sny Magill Mound Group and Kingsley Bend, taught mound stewardship through the Wisconsin Academy and the Wisconsin Archeological Society, and is the most consulted Indigenous voice on Wisconsin mound projects.
Background
· 2019
· city-of-madison
In October 2019 the Madison Board of Park Commissioners approved the city's first Burial Mounds Policy, developed with the Ho-Chunk Nation and the Wisconsin Historical Society. The policy governs management of mound groups on city land including the Forest Hill Cemetery group, seven precontact effigy mounds dating from 700 to 1200 CE that are listed on the National Register and the City of Madison's landmarks register. The policy sets the template Bill Quackenbush has built on across Dane County since.
Background
· 2016
· in-these-times
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
· 2016
· nps
In July 2016, longtime Effigy Mounds superintendent Thomas Munson was sentenced for the 1990 theft of bones of 41 Native Americans from the monument's collection, a theft he carried out to evade NAGPRA. A 2015 Park Service report also found that Superintendent Phyllis Ewing oversaw more than $3 million in illegal construction that desecrated archaeological resources during her 1999-2009 tenure. The reckoning reset NPS tribal consultation across the Upper Midwest and brought the Ho-Chunk, Iowa, and Upper Sioux into active co-stewardship at the site.
Background
· 2014
· wisconsin-academy
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.