How to help
This site is by no means complete, and it will never be. However, we'd like to continue to add sites, write longer site descriptions, and provide links for these and the hundreds of other sites in the Midwest (including Canada!) where Native people(s) are standing for sovereignty, defending the land, and shaping the future. Please contact us at nicholas.senn@gmail.com or sarah.kanouse@gmail.com with suggestions, texts, images, etc. and we'll happily add them to the site.
Also, we would like to move to a more interactive, database-driven site, but it may take awhile. If you have skills you can volunteer for this effort, please get it touch!
How to learn more
The tremendous diversity of experience among the indigenous peoples and nations of this continent is reflected by the wide range of news sources, books and organizations that focus on various issues of concern to Native Americans. News From Indian Country published out of Hayward, Wisconsin, is an excellent source of information on happenings throughout Indian Country, with an emphasis on the upper Midwest. To learn about land struggles throughout Canada, Defenders of the Land is an outstanding resource. Tune in online to Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond, a weekly radio program featuring interviews with political leaders, community activists, artists and scholars engaged in the struggle for justice, sovereignty, and decolonization. Founded by Winona LaDuke, Native Harvest and the White Earth Land Recovery Project focus on land stewardship, traditional food systems, and renewable energy. Also based in northern Minnesota, the Indigenous Environmental Network works tirelessly for the protection of sacred lands and the revitalization of traditional ways of knowing. The Midwest Treaty Network and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission both emerged out of the treaty rights struggle in northern Wisconsin in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Check out Mazina'igan, GLIFWC's quarterly newsletter. Whereas the GLIFWC continues to cultivate off-reservation treaty rights through progressive management of natural resources, the Midwest Treaty Network—an alliance of Native and non-Native groups supporting indigenous sovereignty—maintains an impressive archive documenting the treaty rights and anti-mining movements. For an overview of Native American history and politics in Wisconsin check out Patty Loew’s book, Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal (2001). In contrast, Waziyatawin’s What Does Justice Look Like?: The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland (2008) focuses on a contemporary movement for justice and decolonization in Minnesota.
Image: Boat landing in Ceded Territories, July 2009