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.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
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
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
· 2023
· WPR Native American coverage
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
· 2022
· indigenous-climate-resilience-network
Research across the Great Lakes region has confirmed that manoomin is now declining roughly 5 to 7 percent annually due to drastic precipitation shifts and rising temperatures, and the species has been deemed the most vulnerable food throughout Anishinaabeg territories. The Bad River sloughs, which hold the largest remaining coastal wild rice bed on the Great Lakes, face accelerating heat, lake-level fluctuation, and algal blooms. Tribal nations are leading restoration grounded in Traditional Ecological Knowledge while agencies belatedly learn from elders.
Background
· 2020
· lco-tribe
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
· 2015
· ICT (Indian Country Today)
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
· 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.