Curated developments to fold into a future revision. Each item is tagged
so a third-edition rewrite can pull related brief coverage automatically.
Stories from The Weekly Brief tagged with any of this chapter's themes,
most recent first. Each new issue's tagged stories appear here automatically.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
Lew Boyd of the Menominee Nation was inducted into the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame in Green Bay on May 30, recognized for a remarkable amateur boxing career of 76 wins and 6 losses and for his subsequent work as a coach. The Potawatomi Traveling Times, which covered the induction, notes Boyd's dual legacy as competitor and mentor. This is the kind of ordinary-person story Patty's 'Native People Up Close' frame was built for: a Mamaceqtaw man excelling on his own terms, not as a symbol of anything larger.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A group of Ashland residents rallied Wednesday against Enbridge's use of municipal Lake Superior water for hydrostatic testing of the Line 5 reroute through Bad River ceded territory. The protest adds a local-community dimension to what has largely been framed as a tribal-versus-pipeline fight, and raises a pointed question: who authorized the city to supply water for a project the Bad River Band is actively challenging in federal court? The Wisconsin Examiner's coverage is the most detailed available this week, though WPR's ongoing beat reporting on the reroute remains the essential running record.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
A federal judge has continued the injunction blocking Lac du Flambeau from enforcing its fishing restrictions on the lakes that cross allotment-era roads at the center of the ongoing easement dispute. The ruling keeps the band's access-control strategy on hold while the broader road-dispute litigation works through the courts, and it sits in direct tension with the tribe's sovereign interest in managing its own lands. WPR's coverage, the Native source of record on this beat, is the right place to start.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
Michigan is accepting public comment on the proposed Line 5 oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac, and NARF's updated resource page makes clear what tribal nations and Indigenous communities have long argued: the tunnel project poses direct risks to treaty-protected waters, fisheries, and natural resources. This is the Michigan flank of the same pipeline fight that runs through Mashkiiziibii, and the comment window is a rare moment when organized tribal voice can enter the formal record. NARF is the right source here, and Patty, you may want to flag this for Bad River's legal team if they haven't already.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
The National Indian Law Library has released a curated water-resources guide through NARF's Headwaters Report, covering federal Indian water law, tribal water rights adjudications, and the intersection of treaty rights with water infrastructure disputes. For anyone updating a chapter on Wisconsin Ojibwe treaty rights or preparing for a keynote on sovereignty, this is a practical reference tool, not just a press notice. The guide is particularly useful alongside the ongoing Line 5 and manoomin litigation.
Issue 008 · June 28, 2026
The Tohono O'odham Nation has filed a federal lawsuit challenging what it calls an illegal border wall construction on its lands, a fight that directly implicates tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and the nation's ability to protect sacred sites and family connections that cross the international boundary. ICT's Southwest Bureau has the report. The case is a clean example of the federal government treating tribal land as a resource to be used rather than a sovereign territory to be respected, and it will be worth tracking as it moves through the courts.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a jurisdictional challenge to the White Earth Nation's permitting process, in a case that tested whether a tribe or the state holds regulatory authority over water use on non-Indian fee land within reservation boundaries. NARF's case review frames this as part of a growing conflict with direct implications for Wisconsin Ojibwe bands, whose ceded-territory water rights face similar pressure from non-Indian landowners. The ruling is a quiet but significant win for tribal water sovereignty, and the legal reasoning will matter to anyone tracking manoomin protection cases.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Department of Defense has reduced its list of recognized religion codes for military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, folding Native American religion into a generic 'other' category. ICT broke this story, and the implications are direct: Native service members seeking ceremonial support, smudging, or traditional spiritual care from a chaplain now have no recognized category to anchor that request. For Patty, whose documentary 'Way of the Warrior' traced the spiritual dimensions of Native military service, this is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is a policy that touches the ogichidaa tradition she has spent a career honoring.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has scheduled a nomination hearing for Mark Cruz, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, to lead the Indian Health Service. IHS has operated without a confirmed director through much of the past decade, and the hearing comes as tribal health programs face budget uncertainty under the current administration. Cruz's Klamath citizenship is notable: the Klamath Tribes have their own history of termination and restoration that shapes how any member of that nation understands federal trust responsibility from the inside.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
The United States is running critically short of benzathine penicillin G, the sole FDA-approved treatment for congenital syphilis, and ICT reports that Indigenous babies have had the highest rates of the disease in recent years, disproportionate to their share of the population. The shortage compounds an already severe health disparity, and it arrives as IHS budget uncertainty makes tribal health infrastructure more fragile. This is the kind of story where the crisis frame is unavoidable, but the underlying cause is federal supply-chain failure, not community failure.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has approved the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation's request to retrocede civil jurisdiction of tribal matters back to the tribe, the first such action in Oregon's history. The move reverses a piece of the termination-era Public Law 280, which transferred civil and criminal jurisdiction over tribal lands to states without tribal consent. Retrocession has been a slow, state-by-state process across the country, and Oregon's action is a meaningful marker of that arc, relevant to any Wisconsin reader tracking how PL 280 states handle sovereignty restoration.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Native News Online's feature on the proposed Indigenous School of Medicine (ISOM) is the most substantive long-form piece in this week's candidate pool. The school's founders want to train physicians whose education integrates ceremony, culture, and Indigenous healing practices alongside Western clinical training, a model that would address the IHS physician shortage while producing doctors who understand the communities they serve from the inside. The piece names specific architects of the proposal and engages the real tension between accreditation requirements and Indigenous pedagogical values. It is not a press release dressed as a feature: it sits with the difficulty. Given the IHS director hearing scheduled for this week and the congenital syphilis shortage story, the timing is right to think hard about what Indigenous health sovereignty actually requires at the institutional level.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Wisconsin Watch profiles Mariah Tyakohelahthè Diaz, whose business Ostalókwa by Mariah brings Oneida beading traditions into a contemporary urban setting in Milwaukee's historic Third Ward. Diaz treats beadwork not as heritage performance but as a living creative practice, one she is actively teaching and expanding. The story is a fine example of the urban-Indian beat: a young Oneida woman doing specific, skilled work in a specific Milwaukee neighborhood, not an abstraction about 'keeping culture alive.'
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Arlene Alloway, whose Bodewadmi name Nigansekwe means Leading Lady, marked her 98th birthday in May surrounded by family and community at Forest County Potawatomi. The Traveling Times sat down with her and her daughter to document her life, a quiet act of intergenerational record-keeping that the community's own newspaper is doing better than any outside outlet could. At 98, Alloway carries memory of the FCP community across nearly a century of federal policy, from the Indian Reorganization Act era through gaming and sovereignty. She is, in the most literal sense, a living archive.
Issue 007 · June 21, 2026
Noden-bem-zet (Wind Walker), son of Patrick Daniels Sr. and Lana Rodriguez, graduated from Crandon High School this spring with gold medals from the Wisconsin School Music Association Solo Ensemble Festival, forensics awards, and four years of academic honors. The Traveling Times named him by his Bodewadmi name first, a small editorial choice that carries real weight. He is exactly the kind of young Wisconsin Native voice Patty's 'Native People Up Close' framework asks us to foreground: a specific person doing specific things, not a symbol.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Governor Evers signed Assembly Bill 98 into law as 2025 Wisconsin Act 222, guaranteeing that Native students who are tribal members, descendants, or eligible for membership may wear traditional regalia at graduation ceremonies across the state. The Oneida Nation's Kalihwisaks covered the milestone with the kind of community-level specificity that mainstream outlets missed. This is the sort of policy win that took years of advocacy by tribal education directors and families who were told, year after year, that a mortarboard was the only acceptable headgear. It belongs in the record alongside Act 31 as a marker of how Wisconsin's relationship with its Native nations continues to evolve.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's report on tribal leaders calling for sovereignty as federal support wavers is a useful document of the current moment: the federal government has legal obligations to tribal nations that do not disappear when a new administration decides to cut agency budgets. The piece is careful to distinguish between political discretion and treaty-based legal duty, which is the distinction that matters. Worth keeping as a reference point as the 2027 budget cycle approaches.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A court decision clearing the way for a foreign mining company to take land sacred to Apache and other Southwest tribes has drawn a pointed analysis from Native News Online: the U.S. remains out of step with international Indigenous rights standards, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, when it comes to protecting sacred sites. The Oak Flat case is not a Wisconsin story, but the legal gap it exposes is directly relevant to every Wisconsin nation that has fought to protect ceremonial and culturally significant lands from extractive industry. The source is Native News Online, which Patty has found inconsistent, but this particular piece cites specific legal comparisons worth tracking.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, secured the Democratic nomination for governor of New Mexico on Tuesday, becoming the first Native woman to win a major-party gubernatorial primary in the state. Native Sun News covered the win with the weight it deserves. Haaland's trajectory from the first Native woman confirmed as a cabinet secretary to a gubernatorial candidate represents a shift in what Native political leadership looks like at the highest levels, and it is a story that will matter to every Wisconsin nation watching how sovereignty translates into electoral power.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Adjustments to kinship care reimbursement rules are allowing more Native families to qualify for support when caring for relatives, and state officials report a measurable increase in Native foster homes as a result. ICT covered this as a quiet but real ICWA-adjacent win: when the financial barriers to keeping children within their extended family networks are lowered, more children stay connected to their nations. The story is light on specific voices, but the policy direction is worth tracking.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Donald Warne, a physician and longtime advocate for Native health equity, is leading a feasibility study for an Indigenous School of Medicine in Rapid City with a target opening of 2030. As of 2024, just 0.3 percent of practicing physicians in the United States are Native American. ICT covered this with the institutional detail it requires, and the story is worth watching: a Native medical school would be a landmark institution of the kind that reshapes what the next generation of Native health care looks like.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Bill Anoatubby, who first took office as Chickasaw Nation Governor in 1987, announced his retirement this week after nearly four decades leading one of the most economically successful tribal nations in the country. ICT and Native Sun News both covered the announcement; the NCAI statement is the institutional voice, but the Native Sun News piece carries the community weight. Anoatubby's tenure spans the entire modern era of tribal self-determination, from the Indian Self-Determination Act's early implementation through the gaming compact era and beyond. His retirement marks the end of a chapter that shaped what tribal governance looks like across Indian Country.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The second installment of Buffalo Fire's press freedom series looks at Native radio stations as community infrastructure, examining how they can build editorial independence, sustain themselves financially, and serve as information anchors for communities that mainstream media has long ignored or misrepresented. The piece pairs institutional analysis with specific examples of stations that have found ways to stay independent, and it connects to the broader question of what a healthy Native media ecosystem looks like in a moment when federal support for public media is under pressure. Buffalo Fire is doing some of the most careful thinking in Indigenous journalism right now, and this series is worth reading in full. For Patty, whose Tribal Youth Media work has always been premised on the idea that Native communities need to tell their own stories, the question of who controls the infrastructure for that storytelling is not academic.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Funded through a Wisconsin Partnership Program grant with UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the Oneida Nation's Mending the Disconnect with Food initiative is working to restore food sovereignty for Oneida families across a five-year community grant cycle. The project connects traditional food knowledge with contemporary health outcomes in ways that reflect the Oneida understanding that mino-bimaadiziwin, a good life, is inseparable from what you eat and how it was grown. Kalihwisaks framed this as a community-driven effort, not a public health intervention imposed from outside.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
A Michigan House committee took testimony on legislation that would create a separate hunting and fishing regulatory authority for the Upper Peninsula, a proposal that tribal nations and treaty-rights advocates are watching closely. The Great Lakes Ojibwe bands have treaty-protected rights that cross the Wisconsin-Michigan border, and any restructuring of state fish and wildlife authority in the UP carries potential consequences for GLIFWC's co-management framework. ICT covered the committee hearing; no vote was taken.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund's reflection on the Katie John Day Supreme Court victory, which secured Alaska Native subsistence fishing rights on federal public lands, is worth reading alongside the White Earth water jurisdiction ruling as a pair. Both cases turn on the same fundamental question: when federal Indian law says tribes have priority, does that hold when states push back? The Alaska answer, after decades of litigation, is yes. The Wisconsin manoomin and treaty-fishing cases are still working toward that same clarity.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
ICT's analysis of the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling finds that Native Americans have lost what one advocate called a 'silent partner' in legislative redistricting fights. South Dakota will not redraw its districts until 2031, but the structural damage is already visible: tribes that relied on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge diluted districts now face a harder road. The ruling's effects will ripple into Wisconsin, where off-reservation Native voters in northern counties have long been underrepresented in state legislative maps.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
Kirby Metoxen's farewell column in Kalihwisaks carries an unusual grace note: he reprinted the farewell message his father, Russell Metoxen, wrote upon completing his own term on the Oneida Business Committee. The intergenerational echo is a small, specific thing, but it is the kind of detail that tells you something true about how Oneida governance works, how families carry civic responsibility across generations, and how a tribal newspaper holds that continuity. Worth a moment of attention.
Issue 006 · June 14, 2026
The 8th Annual Walk for Recovery on May 15 brought members of the Forest County Potawatomi and Sokaogon Chippewa communities together for a roughly ten-mile walk from Mole Lake to the FCP Potawatomi Community Center. Recovery walks like this one are a form of community medicine, and the fact that two neighboring nations have been doing this together for eight years running is a story of sustained solidarity that deserves to be named. The Potawatomi Traveling Times covered it as the community event it was.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved the long-disputed segment of the Dakota Access Pipeline that runs beneath Lake Oahe, bringing a formal end to the regulatory saga that began with the 2016 Standing Rock protests, though further litigation remains likely. ICT covered this with the context it deserves: the announcement lands as communities prepare for the tenth anniversary of the #NoDAPL encampment, and tribal leaders are clear that the legal fight is not over. For Patty, the Dakota Access decision is a useful frame for the Bad River/Line 5 fight: federal regulatory approval has never meant the end of a pipeline dispute.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit's decision in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians et al. v. Howe, a North Dakota voting rights case in which the lower court had stripped private individuals of the right to sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. NARF, which litigated the case, called the ruling a significant correction. The case matters beyond North Dakota: the Eighth Circuit's original ruling had threatened to gut private enforcement of voting rights across the region, and the Supreme Court's remand keeps that door open. Native voting rights and treaty rights are not separate issues.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
At a Senate Indian Affairs Committee budget hearing, tribal health leaders pressed agency officials on Indian Health Service funding cuts, with clean water access and hospital construction emerging as the most urgent concerns. The FY 2027 budget requests $9.1 billion in discretionary IHS funding, but advocates say that number falls far short of what the trust responsibility requires. For Wisconsin readers: IHS underfunding affects every one of the twelve nations, and the gap between what the federal government is legally obligated to provide and what it actually appropriates has been a defining feature of tribal health for generations.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The business councils of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have formally condemned Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon for calling on lawmakers to reexamine electoral boundaries on the Wind River Indian Reservation following the Supreme Court's voting rights ruling. The tribes' statement used the phrase 'direct attack on Native voting,' and Wyoming lawmakers appear unmoved by Gordon's push, at least for now. The episode is a clean illustration of how the Louisiana v. Callais ruling is already being weaponized against Native political power.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
President Trump signed the Tribal Trust Land Homeownership Act, a new federal law aimed at reducing mortgage processing delays on tribal trust land, and tribal housing leaders are calling it one of the most significant policy shifts for Native homeownership in years. The delays have long been a structural barrier: trust land's legal status means conventional mortgage processes don't apply cleanly, leaving families in limbo. Whether the implementation matches the promise is the next question, but the underlying problem is real and the law addresses it directly.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe marked the return of approximately 3,400 acres known as the Cloquet Forestry Center through Minnesota's state bonding bill, a transfer that tribal leaders called historic. Native News Online covered the signing ceremony, which brought together tribal and state officials for what amounts to one of the larger land returns to a Lake Superior Ojibwe band in recent memory. The Cloquet land sits within the Band's ceded territory and has ecological significance for manoomin and other traditional resources. For Patty, this story sits at the intersection of several beats she tracks closely: land back, Lake Superior Ojibwe treaty territory, and the slow, grinding work of restoring what removal took. It is also a useful counterpoint to the pipeline and mining fights: sometimes the land comes back. The piece is worth reading in full alongside the NARF voting rights and IHS funding stories this week, as a reminder that sovereignty is exercised in many registers at once.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
ICT's coverage of the annual MMIW rally near the Menominee Nation puts a specific family's grief and advocacy at the center, exactly as it should be. Linda Dickenson's murder is one case among many the movement tracks, and her relatives' presence at the rally is the kind of ordinary-people-doing-extraordinary-things story Patty's journalism ethics demand. The piece is careful not to reduce advocacy to statistics.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Preliminary studies and field data from fourteen Wisconsin lakes show that the aquatic herbicide ProcellaCOR causes elevated mortality in manoomin at submerged and floating-leaf stages — the most vulnerable points in the rice's life cycle. Tribes including the Menominee Nation and GLIFWC member bands are pushing back against continued use of the chemical in ceded territory waters. Mazinaigan carries the data; this is the kind of story that will not appear in mainstream Wisconsin media until the damage is done.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Voigt Intertribal Task Force chair and GLIFWC member tribes are formally pushing back against ProcellaCOR applications in regional waterways, citing potential harm to wild rice, fish, and other subsistence resources. This is the advocacy side of the same story as the field data above — the two pieces together show both the scientific concern and the political response. Mazinaigan again.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit confirmed that NAGPRA applies to children's remains held by the U.S. Army at Carlisle Barracks, ruling in favor of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska's effort to repatriate two boys who died at the school. NARF, which litigated the case, calls it a victory for every tribe whose children were buried far from home. The ruling has direct implications for Wisconsin nations — the Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Oneida, and Ojibwe bands all had children taken to federal boarding schools, and Carlisle held some of them.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
A federal judge this week ordered work stopped on sections of Enbridge's proposed Line 5 reroute in northern Wisconsin, a significant if partial legal victory for the Bad River Band. The ruling keeps the Band's federal lawsuit — which argues the reroute would cross ceded territory without tribal consent — alive and consequential while the broader case proceeds. WPR's coverage, the preferred source here, frames the legal landscape clearly without flattening the sovereignty stakes. This is the same dispute the brief tracked when Bad River asked the court to halt construction outright; the judge's partial halt is the first concrete relief the Band has won.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The State of Wisconsin filed suit against the Lac du Flambeau Band on April 30, 2026, after the Band issued fishing restrictions on nineteen reservation lakes citing documented declines in walleye and muskellunge populations. The Band's position is straightforward: tribal resource managers are doing exactly what conservation science demands, and the state's lawsuit challenges that authority. Mazinaigan, GLIFWC's publication, is the right source here — it carries the tribal conservation framing that mainstream outlets routinely miss. Patty, this sits directly alongside the earlier federal ruling blocking LdF from restricting off-reservation fishing; the two cases together define a complicated moment for the Band's resource sovereignty.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands expect to file a joint 9th-round biennial stipulation in LCO v. Voigt, consolidating and updating six previous filings dating to 2001. Key changes include a tribal fee waiver for state park access in the ceded territory and expanded harvest opportunities. This is the kind of incremental, durable treaty-rights work that rarely makes mainstream news but shapes daily life in the ceded territory for generations. Mazinaigan carries the full picture.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration's unprecedented reorganization of the USDA Forest Service is generating serious concern at GLIFWC, whose member tribes hold off-reservation treaty rights across millions of acres of National Forest land in the ceded territory. Proposed changes could reduce research capacity and interagency coordination that tribes depend on to monitor and defend those rights. Mazinaigan frames this as a structural threat, not a bureaucratic shuffle.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
GLIFWC and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University signed an MOU to launch the Nanda-gikenjigeng Program, a new Bachelor of Science in Treaty Natural Resources that integrates Ojibwe worldview with Western scientific methodologies. The program is designed to train the next generation of tribal natural resource managers — the people who will be monitoring those rice beds and fish populations for decades to come. This is mino-bimaadiziwin in institutional form.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Iron County, with support from GLIFWC and the Bad River and Lac du Flambeau Bands, purchased 1,051 acres of undeveloped shoreline, uplands, and islands on the Gile Flowage from Xcel Energy for permanent conservation and public access. The acquisition protects waters within the ceded territory and keeps the land from development. Mazinaigan carries the story with the tribal conservation framing it deserves.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
Ann McCammon Soltis retired from GLIFWC in early 2026 after nearly 33 years as director of intergovernmental affairs, a career that included central roles in the Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band litigation and decades of legal and policy victories for the six Wisconsin Ojibwe bands. Mazinaigan's tribute names her specific contributions — the kind of institutional memory that rarely gets acknowledged in mainstream coverage. Her retirement is a genuine transition moment for the organization that has been the operational backbone of Ojibwe treaty rights since the Voigt Decision aftermath.
Issue 004 · May 31, 2026
The Trump administration is proposing to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected approximately 60 million acres of National Forest land — including significant portions of the Ojibwe ceded territory in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan — from road construction, timber harvesting, and mineral leasing. GLIFWC's Mazinaigan lays out the tribal opposition with the specificity that the issue demands: these are not abstract wilderness acres but the forests where Ojibwe families hunt, gather, and exercise treaty rights that predate the National Forest system itself. The rollback would open ceded territory forests to the same extractive pressures that the Roadless Rule has held at bay for a quarter century, and GLIFWC's formal opposition letter frames it explicitly as a treaty-rights issue. For the third edition of Indian Nations of Wisconsin, this is the kind of federal policy shift that belongs in the environmental and treaty-rights sections of every Ojibwe band chapter — the Seventh Generation lens applies directly here.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
Governor Evers signed a $125 million package to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribes explicitly named among those eligible for grant funding to address private well contamination. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been found near tribal communities. The intersection of water quality, treaty-protected resources, and tribal sovereignty makes this more than a general environmental story.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
St. Croix Band spearfishers launched onto three lakes on April 10, registering the first 390 walleyes of the 2026 season, near the historical average. Mazinaigan notes that long-term GLIFWC data shows open-water spearfishing has remained within sustainable bounds, a quiet counter-narrative to the crisis framing that has historically surrounded Ojibwe off-reservation harvest. High water from snowmelt and rain slowed the eastern Ceded Territory season, while western Upper Michigan saw a productive stretch between rain events.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
The Department of the Interior's fiscal year 2027 budget request proposes cutting more than $150 million from tribal colleges and universities and tribal postsecondary programs. Campus presidents in North Dakota told ICT that cuts at this scale would be a death knell for institutions that are already operating on thin margins and serving students with few other options. The threat is national, but it lands directly on Wisconsin's tribal college infrastructure as well.
Issue 003 · May 24, 2026
WPR profiles Ojibwe filmmaker Alex Nystrom, whose new short film takes grief and death as its subject, working in a register that is intimate rather than documentary. Nystrom is exactly the kind of emerging Wisconsin Native voice that Patty's 'Native People Up Close' editorial logic was built for: a specific person doing specific creative work, not an inheritor of a vanishing tradition but a contemporary artist with a contemporary practice.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Bad River Band filed a motion asking the court to extend the partial halt into a full construction stop, arguing that any reroute work through the ceded territory threatens treaty-protected resources and the Band's sovereign interests. The motion follows the partial injunction and signals that Mashkiiziibii is not settling for half measures. This is the piece to pair with the partial-halt ruling above.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's explainer maps the procedural steps between the current partial halt and a full construction stop, walking through the injunction standards, the appeals risk, and the timeline pressures Enbridge is using to its advantage. It is the clearest single-source guide to where the litigation stands and what Bad River needs to prove next. Worth keeping close as the court calendar moves.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Ashland County Board approved an agreement under which the county will be compensated for law enforcement costs incurred while policing protests of Enbridge's Line 5 reroute. The arrangement raises the pointed question of who, ultimately, is paying to police opposition to a private pipeline project on contested ceded territory. WPR's reporting is the right source here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
The Department of Justice filed a brief siding with the Town of Lac du Flambeau's demand that the tribe reimburse it for costs stemming from the 2023 road-closure dispute, a significant federal intervention against the Band's position. The move follows the 2023 easement standoff that drew national attention and complicates the tribe's ongoing legal posture. WPR, which has tracked this dispute from the beginning, has the story.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
A federal judge ruled against the Lac du Flambeau Band's attempt to restrict non-tribal fishing on nineteen reservation lakes, finding the tribe had not met the legal standard for such restrictions. The Band had cited declining walleye and muskellunge populations as the basis for the closures. The ruling lands in the same week as the DOJ roads brief, compounding pressure on the Band from multiple federal directions.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
WPR's interview with a northern Wisconsin tribal leader makes the case that the priorities of the Ojibwe bands and their neighbors are distinct from the rest of the state, organized around treaty rights, manoomin, and the particular ecology of the Northwoods rather than the policy concerns that dominate Madison and Milwaukee. The framing, 'north of Highway 29 is its own country,' is a useful shorthand for what Patty's Ojibwe chapter has always argued. Lead with the tribal voice here.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
ICT reports that the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the primary international body where tribal nations can raise concerns before the world community, is facing questions about its effectiveness and continuity as the UN grapples with a broader budget crisis. The timing is particularly fraught given the current U.S. administration's posture toward multilateral institutions. For Wisconsin nations whose sovereignty arguments have always had an international dimension, this matters.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
NARF's analysis of the April 29 Callais ruling explains that the Supreme Court has effectively dismantled the primary tool tribal nations and other minority communities have used to challenge racially discriminatory district maps. The decision lands as North Dakota tribes are already in litigation over redistricting that dilutes Native voting power. NARF's framing is the right entry point: this is a sovereignty and self-determination story, not just a civil rights one.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Mazinaigan's feature on the 2026 maple sugarbush season in the Ceded Territory is the kind of story Patty's journalism ethics were built to honor: specific people, a specific place, a specific practice, and the quiet transmission of knowledge across generations. The season was marked by cooler temperatures and ideal sap-flow conditions, with a fourth-grade class from Hayward visiting Pat Eaten's sugarbush to learn the work firsthand. The iskigamizigan, the sugar camp, is not a relic; it is a living institution that connects Ojibwe families to the land, to each other, and to the seasonal rhythms that mino-bimaadiziwin requires. This is the kind of piece that belongs in the brief not because there is a crisis but because there is joy, and because the joy is the story. It is also a window into the TEK-and-climate conversation Patty has been tracking since Ice Worlds: what happens to the sugarbush as winters shorten and sap-flow windows shift? The 2026 season was good. The question is how many more like it remain.
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
High Country News reports that a 234-mile gas pipeline across Navajo Nation land is moving toward construction after a hearing that community members say they were not adequately notified about. The story echoes Line 5 in its structure: a pipeline company, a federal permitting process, and a tribal community whose consultation rights appear to have been honored in form but not in substance. For the Ice Worlds frame, the Navajo Nation's water and land relationships are as central to its future as manoomin is to the Anishinaabe.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund released its 25-year retrospective on the Tribal Supreme Court Project this week, documenting a quarter century of coordinated advocacy before the nation's highest court on behalf of tribal sovereignty. The report is a useful reference document, and its timing alongside the new ICWA challenge is pointed: the Project exists precisely because the Supreme Court is not a neutral forum, and tribal nations need sustained, coordinated legal strategy to navigate it. Worth downloading for your files.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native News Online reports that the controversial immigration detention facility built in the Florida Everglades, which critics dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz,' may be shut down following sustained resistance from the Miccosukee Tribe and allied environmental and Native advocates who argued the facility threatened both the ecosystem and tribal sacred sites. The story is a useful reminder that tribal resistance to federal land use decisions takes many forms and that the Miccosukee have been among the most consistent defenders of Everglades ecology for generations.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
The Native American Rights Fund published a clear-eyed explainer on tribal sovereignty and birthright citizenship, addressing the question of whether current legal debates about the Fourteenth Amendment affect the citizenship status of tribal members. The piece is careful to distinguish tribal citizenship from U.S. citizenship and to ground the analysis in the pre-constitutional existence of tribal nations. It is a useful resource for anyone navigating these questions in a policy or classroom context.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native News Online reports that Western states are entering summer with critically low water reserves, with consequences that fall disproportionately on tribal communities whose water rights are often junior in practice even when senior in law. The story does not center tribal voices as strongly as it should, but the underlying conditions it describes are directly relevant to the Ice Worlds frame: water scarcity, disrupted seasonal cycles, and the gap between treaty-protected rights and on-the-ground reality.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native Sun News Today flags that South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson's federal bills to expand Missouri River water use for the state do not address the question of who actually holds water rights in that river system, a question that implicates multiple Oceti Sakowin nations whose treaty territories the Missouri runs through. The piece is a good example of the kind of story that only a Native publication is likely to frame this way: the mainstream coverage of the same bills would almost certainly not lead with tribal water rights.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
ICT's account of the Pe' Sla victory is the single best long read of the week, not because it is the longest piece but because it synthesizes the full arc of the fight: the U.S. Forest Service permit issued over tribal objections, the NDN Collective lawsuit alleging NEPA and Religious Freedom Restoration Act violations, the direct-action occupation of the site, the federal temporary restraining order, and finally the withdrawal of the permit by Pete Lien and Sons. ICT names the specific combination of legal, ceremonial, and physical presence that produced the outcome, and it does so with the kind of sourcing that privileges tribal voices over agency statements. Read this alongside the NDN Collective primary release (candidate 7) and the Native Sun News coverage (candidate 132) for the full picture. The story matters beyond its immediate facts: it is a working model of how Indigenous communities can use multiple pressure points simultaneously, and it arrives in a week when Bad River is doing exactly that on Line 5.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
WPR covers a Wisconsin author whose debut middle-grade novel is being described as an epic Indigenous fantasy, a genre that has been growing in visibility since Rebecca Roanhorse and others demonstrated its commercial and cultural reach. Middle-grade fiction is a particularly important space for Indigenous storytelling because it reaches young readers before the mainstream curriculum has had a chance to flatten Native history into the past tense. The Wisconsin connection makes this especially worth tracking for Patty's Indigenous youth media beat.
Background
· 2024
· WPR Native American coverage
With fewer than one percent of tribal members functional in the Menominee language and one living first-language speaker left in an unbroken chain, Menomini yoU Inc. broke ground on the 10,000-square-foot Wāsecewan Language Campus near Keshena. The campus will house immersion classrooms, an outdoor cultural space, and the operations of a revitalization movement that took shape during the COVID pandemic through online courses.
Background
· 2023
· tribal-college-journal
On December 22, 2023, the Menominee Indian Tribe marked 50 years since President Richard Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act, reversing the 1961 termination that had stripped federal recognition, dissolved the reservation into Menominee County, and pushed the people into poverty. The restoration was won by DRUMS, the Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stockholders, founded by Jim White and Ada Deer. The College of Menominee Nation marked the date with a year of programming.
Background
· 2023
· Wisconsin Examiner
Ada Elizabeth Deer of the Menominee Indian Tribe died August 15, 2023, in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, at age 88. The first Menominee to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1957), the first Native American to earn a Master's in social work from Columbia, the first woman to chair the Menominee tribe after restoration, and the first woman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1993-1997), Deer was the throughline of every Menominee chapter the third edition would build on.
Background
· 2023
· college-of-menominee-nation
Dr. S. Verna Fowler (July 1, 1942 to August 12, 2023) founded the College of Menominee Nation in 1993 in her home's basement with classroom space borrowed from a public high school and an initial cohort of 42 to 49 students. She retired in 2016 after 24 years, having grown the institution to more than 130 faculty and staff, 1,100 alumni, and an annual economic impact of $37 million. The library at CMN now bears her name.
Background
· 2022
· earthjustice
In June 2022, the Michigan State Historic Preservation Review Board voted unanimously to support the nomination of Anaem Omot, the Menominee cultural landscape bisected by the Menominee River between Wisconsin and Michigan, to the National Register of Historic Places. The district includes burial mounds, garden beds, and dance rings. The vote followed years of advocacy by Menominee historians, scientists, and tribal leaders, and arrived alongside the tribe's defeat of the Back Forty open-pit mine on the same river.
Background
· 2021
· earthjustice
The Menominee Nation's seven-year legal and political fight against the Back Forty open-pit mine along the Menominee River produced a decisive 2021 ruling. Aquila Resources withdrew its Michigan wetlands permits after the tribe's challenge and a court ruled the project would have a probable negative effect on Menominee sacred sites. In December 2021, Aquila was absorbed by Gold Resource Corp; Chairman Ronald Corn Sr. responded that the merger did not change the tribe's opposition.
Background
· 2020
· wikipedia
Apesanahkwat (born January 19, 1949) served as tribal chairman of the Menominee Indian Reservation eight times and is widely considered one of the foremost originators of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. A Vietnam Marine Corps veteran, he is also a champion northern traditional dancer and singer and has acted in Wind River, Northern Exposure, Stolen Women, and Babylon 5. He remains one of the most active orators on tribal sovereignty, education, and language revitalization.
Background
· 2020
· menominee-tribal-enterprises
Menominee Tribal Enterprises continues to operate the only Native American forest dual-certified by both the Forest Stewardship Council and Scientific Certification Systems. The Menominee Forest, sustainably managed by the tribe for more than 150 years, was among the first to receive FSC certification after the council's 1993 founding, and won United Nations and presidential awards for sustainable development in 1995 and 1996. Three decades on, MTE remains the global reference.
Background
· 2018
· american-forests
Marshall Pecore has served as forest manager for Menominee Tribal Enterprises across the decades that turned the Menominee Forest into the world's reference for sustainable Indigenous forestry. The son and grandson of loggers, Pecore co-authored the canonical Menominee Forestry: Past, Present, Future and is among the most cited Indigenous foresters in North America. The 235,000-acre forest he stewards remains the only Native American forestland with dual FSC and Scientific Certification Systems certification.
Background
· 2018
· us-climate-resilience-toolkit
The College of Menominee Nation's Sustainable Development Institute has built a national reputation since 2009 for tribal climate adaptation research, anchored by an Indigenous six-dimension sustainability framework (land and sovereignty, natural environment, institutions, technology, economy, human perception). SDI led a U.S. Forest Service-supported climate study on the Menominee Forest and now sits at the hub of the Center for First Americans Forestlands partnership, plus the Northeast Climate Science Center.
Background
· 2016
· Indianz.com
In 2016 the Menominee Tribal Legislature elected an executive council of women in all three top posts, with Joan Delabreau as chair. Delabreau has served as chairwoman of the Menominee Tribal Legislature four times across the post-Ada Deer generation. Gary Besaw and Ronald Corn Sr. have also held the chair since restoration.
Background
· 2015
· indian-community-school
The Indian Community School, born from the 1971 AIM takeover of the abandoned McKinley Coast Guard Station on Milwaukee's lakefront, moved in 2007 to a $35 million, 178-acre campus in Franklin, about thirteen miles from downtown. The Forest County Potawatomi's twenty-year lease and the gaming revenue that followed funded the move and helped sustain the school. ICS serves about 364 Native students K-8, and every kindergartner commits to daily language instruction in Oneida, Menominee, or Ojibwe — a quiet but radical bet on the next generation.
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.
Background
· 2024
· Wisconsin Examiner
On April 17, 2024, twenty-five years after his death at 51, Walt Bresette was inducted to the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. A Red Cliff Ojibwe activist, author, and storyteller, Bresette led the 1996 Bad River train blockade against sulfuric acid shipments to the Crandon mine site, co-founded the Midwest Treaty Network, and drove the campaign that produced Wisconsin's Prove It First mining moratorium law. He was a central treaty rights organizer through the spearfishing years.
Background
· 2023
· oneida-nation
Tehassi Hill has served as chairman of the Oneida Nation since August 2017 and is now in his third three-year term. He represents the nation on the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council board, sits on Wisconsin's Natural Resources Damage Trustee Council, and is the nation's designee to the EPA's Regional Tribal Operating Committee. His leadership has centered on land buy-back, health care, and natural resources protection.
Background
· 2023
· midwest-environmental-justice-network
On June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Bad River reservation by June 2026 and to pay the Band $5.1 million for nine years of trespass, with continuing quarterly payments. The court found the pipeline a 'public nuisance' carrying an imminent threat of rupture that could contaminate the Band's drinking water and the manoomin sloughs. It was the first U.S. court order to shut down a major operating oil pipeline on tribal land.
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
· 2021
· wuwm
On August 14, 1971, Milwaukee AIM activists Herb Powless (Oneida) and Jerome Starr (Ojibwe) occupied the abandoned McKinley Coast Guard Station on Milwaukee's lakefront, citing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie's provision that abandoned federal property reverts to original inhabitants. The takeover led to the city and BIA handing over the building for use as the original Indian Community School. WUWM, Shepherd Express, and TMJ4 all marked the 50th anniversary in August 2021. The story is the founding myth of urban Indian Milwaukee and a reminder that 'land back' has Wisconsin precedent.
Background
· 2021
· WPR Native American coverage
Joe Rose, known by his Ojibwe name Moka'ang Giizis (Rising Sun), walked on February 23, 2021, at age 85 from complications of COVID-19. A Bad River tribal elder and Northland College emeritus professor, Rose was a part of virtually every significant environmental and treaty-rights struggle the North Country faced for half a century. He died during the brutal February wolf hunt he had spent decades resisting as a lifelong wolf advocate. Patty called him a second dad.
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
· 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
· 2013
· oil-and-water-dont-mix
In June 2013 the Bad River Tribal Council voted against renewing the 20-year easements that had allowed Enbridge's Line 5 to cross 12 allotment parcels on the reservation. The decision came three years after Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured into Michigan's Kalamazoo River, dumping more than 843,000 gallons of crude. That no vote became the foundation of every Line 5 ruling that followed.
Background
· 2003
· itep
In a closing chapter of the long Crandon Mine fight, the Forest County Potawatomi Community partnered with the Sokaogon Chippewa Community to purchase the proposed mine site from Nicolet Minerals, ending decades of threat to the wild rice waters between Mole Lake and the Wolf River headwaters. The tribes hold the land in trust. Walter Bresette's organizing coalition, the Midwest Treaty Network, had built much of the resistance that made the buyout possible.
Background
· 2024
· northwestern-history
Doug Kiel (Oneida Nation, Northwestern University) is the author of Unsettling Territory: The Resurgence of the Oneida Nation in the Face of Settler Backlash, published by Yale University Press. He co-curated the Field Museum's permanent Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories exhibit (2022) and the Newberry Library's Indigenous Chicago (2024-2025), and has served as expert witness in federal appeals over Oneida land rights. His work is the contemporary scholarly companion to Patty's chapter.
Background
· 2024
· wiea
Founded in 1985 to carry on the work of the former Great Lakes Intertribal Council Education sub-committee, the Wisconsin Indian Education Association (WIEA) is the statewide body advocating for Indigenous students and educators across Wisconsin's public school system. WIEA serves on advisory bodies to the State Superintendent and the Department of Public Instruction, and its annual conferences (2024: 'Fostering Teamwork & Collaboration'; 2025: 'Honoring Our Languages') gather Native and non-Native educators around Act 31 implementation, language revitalization, and recruitment of Indigenous teachers. Membership crosses urban-reservation lines and is one of the few statewide infrastructures connecting Milwaukee, Madison, and reservation classrooms.
Background
· 2023
· heather-bruegl
Heather Bruegl, Oneida Nation citizen and first-line descendant of Stockbridge-Munsee, serves as Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. She curated the touring exhibit Muh-he-con-ne-ok: The People of the Waters That Are Never Still and speaks widely on Indigenous history, policy, and truth-telling in museums. Her doctoral research at UW-Green Bay centers the responsibility of cultural institutions to tell Indigenous history truthfully, and she sits on the boards of the Wisconsin Federation of Museums and AASLH.
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
· 2022
· teach-lang-wisconsin
The Stockbridge-Munsee Community now runs language revitalization programs in both of its recognized languages, Mohican and Munsee. The Cultural Affairs Department has produced an extensive Mohican video series using Total Physical Response, in which words attach to physical movement to aid retention. The programs sit alongside the archives of the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library and Museum, the largest collection of Mohican documents and artifacts in the world.
Background
· 2022
· oneida-nation
The Oneida Nation School System runs a full immersion school on the reservation near Green Bay, the only Iroquois language immersion school in Wisconsin. Oneida is also taught at two nearby public school districts, at St. Norbert College and UW-Green Bay, and through an immersion Head Start program and adult community classes. The Indian Community School, founded in 1969 by three Oneida mothers, remains a model for tribally-run urban schooling in Milwaukee.
Background
· 2022
· milwaukee-public-schools
Milwaukee Public Schools operates a First Nations Studies program at the district level, providing curriculum and student support across MPS's hundred-plus schools. The program partners with the Electa Quinney Institute at UW-Milwaukee and Indian Community School in Franklin. For Native families whose children attend regular MPS schools rather than ICS, the First Nations Studies program is the connective tissue: pulling out Native students for cultural programming, supporting Wisconsin Act 31 implementation building-by-building, and keeping urban Indian families and reservation-rooted families in conversation through the school year.
Background
· 2021
· uw-madison-msc
Wunk Sheek, the UW-Madison Indigenous student organization founded in 1968, is one of the oldest Native student groups in the country. Its annual On Wisconsin Spring Powwow draws hundreds of students and Madison-area community members for traditional foods, dancing, music, and vendors. The Indigenous Student Center, established under the American Indian Studies Program in 2009 and transferred to the Multicultural Student Center in 2021, hosts Wunk Sheek and five other Indigenous student organizations. Together they form the Madison-side counterpart to Milwaukee's institutional Native infrastructure — a campus-anchored urban Native presence the chapter doesn't name in its 2013 version.
Background
· 2021
· red-cliff
In 2021 Red Cliff received a $900,000 grant from the federal Administration for Native Americans to create a three-year Ojibwemowin Teaching and Training Program in partnership with the Bayfield School District, the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network, and the Bad River Band. Dustin 'Gimiwan' Burnette of MIIN, who began as a Bad River adult language instructor in 2020, anchors the curriculum. Bad River Head Start now produces and publishes immersion-classroom books written by language trainees about people and places in Bad River.
Background
· 2018
· uw-milwaukee-eqi
Named for Electa Quinney, the first public schoolteacher in Wisconsin and a Stockbridge-Munsee citizen, the Electa Quinney Institute at UW-Milwaukee is a teacher training and Indigenous education research center. Its work partners directly with Indian Community School, Milwaukee Public Schools, and tribal-level education programs across the state. The institute closes a gap the 2013 chapter could not have known would matter so much: how to prepare teachers — Native and non-Native — to serve the urban Native classrooms that Wisconsin's relocation history created.