Members of the Ho-Chunk Nation are pictured during a heritage marker dedication ceremony for the “Our Shared Future” plaque on Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on June 18, 2019. The “Our Shared Future” plaque makes clear that the university occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land and will serve to educate the campus community members and campus visitors. (Photo by Bryce Richter, UW-Madison)
Next Monday, October 12, Wisconsin will celebrate its second official Indigenous Peoples Day. Last year, SoHE faculty compiled resources to help students learn more about the event and about Wisconsin’s Native Nations. This year, SoHE is proud to announce both an ongoing related initiative as well as the arrival next Tuesday of the Our Shared Future heritage marker at Nancy Nicholas Hall, part of the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies’ annual event.
Heritage Marker comes to SoHE
Next week, from Tuesday, October 13, through Thursday, October 15, the UW Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies (“the CommNS”) at SoHE will host its annual event, this year themed “Getting the Work Done: ‘How Tos’ in Nonprofit and Community Efforts”. The event features world-class speakers, hands-on workshops, and expert panels, and this year is completely free to participate, with all events having moved online.
The series of events will open with a special presentation by Mark Webster Denning, a nationally recognized educator, lecturer, and curriculum specialist in American Indian history and culture and member of the Oneida Nation. He will help welcome the Our Shared Future Heritage Marker to SoHE, which has been moving around the UW–Madison campus since fall 2019 as part of a multi-year effort to educate campus and the broader community on the Ho-Chunk Nation and the history it shares with the university. The online event will take place Tuesday, October 13, from 4:30–6:00 p.m. CT, and is free and open to the public. Learn more and register here.
SoHE’s Indigenous Ecowell Initiative
The School of Human Ecology is home to several Native/Indigenous faculty whose work addresses the intersections of Indigenous cultures, health, language, landscapes, environment, and community. Building from their expertise in working closely with local and global Indigenous communities and shared vision to advance Indigenous peoples’ aspirations, they are collaborating with campus partners and First Nations to develop the SoHE Indigenous EcoWell Initiative to connect and engage a community of scholars, practitioners, and students working in these areas. Led by SoHE’s Ecology of Human Well-Being Professor Dr. Carolee Dodge Francis, the initiative’s team also includes Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano, Dr. Kasey Keeler, and Dr. Brian McInnes.
“Our group is eager to embrace a collaborative community that enhances this initiative from both across and beyond campus,” says Dodge Francis. “This reflects the human ecology perspective of honoring, acknowledging, and amplifying the rich knowledge of Indigenous people.”
Learn more about the CommNS annual event, the SoHE Indigenous Ecowell Initiative, and Wisconsin’s Native Nations.
View last fall’s exhibition, Intersections: Indigenous Textiles of the Americas, now available online from the UW Center for Design and Material Culture. The exhibition, curated by artist and Design Studies MFA alumna Dakota Mace (Diné) and Art History PhD student Kendra Greendeer (Ho-Chunk), showed in the Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery from September through December of 2019.