Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
Stockbridge-Munsee veterans joined Native American veterans from all eight of Wisconsin's federally recognized tribes at the Highgrounds Veterans Memorial Park in Neillsville on June 25 for a day of recognition. The Highgrounds is one of the few places in the state where Wisconsin's tribal veterans gather together across national lines, and the Mohican News account names the participants specifically. This is the kind of story Patty's Way of the Warrior instinct recognizes: ogichidaa honored not as symbols but as specific people who served.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
Harold Robert 'Whitey' Bowman, age 72, of Shawano, an enrolled member of the Mohican Nation, passed away peacefully on July 23, 2026, surrounded by family. He served eleven years in the United States Navy during the Vietnam era, reaching the rank of Petty Officer. The Mohican News account places him among the community's veterans, the ogichidaa whose service the Stockbridge-Munsee have honored this summer at Highgrounds and in their Banners of Honor project. He is remembered by his family.
Issue 013 · August 2, 2026
At nearly 81, Forest County Potawatomi elder and veteran JR Holmes sat down with the FCP Communications team to reflect on his childhood, his military service during the Vietnam era, and the decades of community work that followed his return. Holmes's story fits squarely in the ogichidaa tradition Patty has documented since Way of the Warrior: the warrior who comes home and turns his discipline toward his people. The Potawatomi Traveling Times piece is the kind of ordinary-voice profile, an elder speaking in his own words about his own life, that Patty's Studs Terkel principle puts at the center of the brief.
Issue 012 · July 26, 2026
At nearly 81, JR Holmes sat down with the Forest County Potawatomi Communications department to share stories of his childhood, his Vietnam-era military service, and the decades of community work that followed his return. Holmes is the kind of ordinary voice Studs Terkel would have sought out: a man whose life is the history, not a footnote to it. The Potawatomi Traveling Times profile is the right source, and the story fits Patty's veterans beat directly. Miigwech to Holmes for sharing.
Issue 011 · July 19, 2026
The Wisconsin Indigenous Riders Awareness Group completed its sixth annual ride honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, People, and those lost to the opioid crisis, traveling from Lac du Flambeau to the Sokaogon Chippewa Community at Mole Lake, the Potawatomi Traveling Times reports. Riders stopped at Bodwéwadmi sacred sites along the route, weaving ceremony into advocacy. The ride's route through the heart of the ceded territory, connecting Ojibwe and Potawatomi communities, reflects exactly what you noted about MMIW: all the nations and urban Natives have embraced this cause, and the grassroots riders are the story, not the press release.
Issue 010 · July 12, 2026
ICT's North Central Bureau profiles a Two-Spirit dancer who describes the powwow circle as a space of healing and self-determination, dancing in a style that is entirely their own. This is the kind of story Patty's 'Native People Up Close' editorial logic was built for: an ordinary person doing something extraordinary, foregrounding joy and agency rather than crisis. The powwow circle has always held space for Two-Spirit people, and this piece says so plainly.
Issue 009 · July 5, 2026
The Wisconsin Indigenous Riders Awareness Group completed its sixth annual ride honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, and opioid victims, traveling from Lac du Flambeau to the Sokaogon Chippewa Community at Mole Lake with stops at Bodwéwadmi sites along the route. The ride is now in its sixth year, a sign of how deeply MMIW awareness has taken root across Wisconsin's Ojibwe and Potawatomi communities. Riders moving through the landscape of ceded territory, stopping at community after community, is itself a form of treaty rights exercise.
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
Native Sun News's reflection on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Greasy Grass sets the commemoration against the backdrop of the United States' own 250th birthday celebrations, and the juxtaposition is quietly devastating. The piece does what the best Native journalism does: it holds two calendars at once, refuses to let the dominant culture's anniversary swallow the other, and insists that what happened along the Greasy Grass was not a defeat but a moment of sovereign assertion that still resonates. Read alongside the ICT newscast coverage of the commemoration events and the Native Sun News profile of historian Donovin Sprague, this piece anchors a week in which tribal nations gathered on that ground to say, in the words of one elder quoted by ICT, 'We changed history.' The Seventh Generation lens is implicit throughout: these nations are not commemorating a past; they are teaching their children who they are.
Issue 007 · June 21, 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 distinguished amateur boxing career (76-6) and decades of coaching work. The Potawatomi Traveling Times carried the item, a reminder that Indigenous athletic achievement in Wisconsin crosses tribal lines and that Green Bay remains a gathering point for inter-tribal recognition. Boyd's induction is the kind of specific, joyful story that belongs in the brief alongside the legal and policy news.
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 006 · June 14, 2026
The Department of Defense reduced its list of recognized religion codes used by military chaplains from more than 200 to just 31, eliminating Native American religion as a named category and folding it into a generic 'other' designation. ICT broke this story, and it deserves to be read by anyone who has watched a Native veteran try to access ceremony in a VA facility or on a military installation. For Patty, whose grandfather Edward DeNomie served in the 32nd Red Arrow Division and whose documentary Way of the Warrior traced the ogichidaa tradition across generations, this is not an abstraction. It is a policy decision that tells Native service members their spiritual practices are not worth naming.
Issue 005 · June 7, 2026
Abby Roque, Anishinaabe from Sault Ste. Marie, led the Montreal team to the Professional Women's Hockey League championship this week, facing off against another top Indigenous player in the finals. ICT covered the matchup as the story it is: two Indigenous women at the top of their sport, competing against each other at the highest level, in a league that didn't exist a few years ago. Roque is the kind of figure Patty's 'Native People Up Close' framework was built for: a person doing extraordinary things in an ordinary professional context, not a symbol.
Issue 001 · May 10, 2026
Native Sun News Today reports that Faith Spotted Eagle, one of the most respected culture carriers in the Oceti Sakowin and a longtime leader in the movement against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from South Dakota State University at its 140th commencement. The recognition is overdue and meaningful. Spotted Eagle has spent decades doing the patient, unglamorous work of cultural transmission and political resistance that honorary degrees are supposed to honor.
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
· 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.