Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
Governor Evers joined the Stockbridge-Munsee Community at North Star Mohican Casino on July 30 to unveil the final set of dual-language highway signs, completing a statewide project that places Mohican and other Wisconsin tribal languages on public roads across the state. The signs are a visible, everyday assertion of presence and continuity. That the Mohican Nation is the last community in the statewide rollout is worth noting: the Stockbridge-Munsee have been here, and the signs now say so in two languages.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
On August 5th, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community celebrated the return of twenty-five cultural items belonging to Sachems John and Austin Quinney, repatriated from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and timed to coincide with the 2026 Language and Culture Camp. John Quinney's 1854 Fourth of July address, reprinted in full in the Mohican News this same week (candidate 32), remains one of the most piercing critiques of American democracy ever delivered on American soil. Bringing his belongings home to the community that has kept his memory alive is the kind of act that the Seventh Generation principle was made for.
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
Ayasha M. Bowman, a senior at Wausau East High School and enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, took first place in Wisconsin's Seventh District Congressional Art Competition with a piece titled 'Apostle Islands.' The Apostle Islands sit in the heart of Ojibwe treaty territory, and a Mohican student choosing that landscape as her subject is its own quiet statement. Bowman's win is the kind of story that belongs in the brief not as an exception but as an ordinary fact: a young Wisconsin Native woman making art that matters, on her own terms.
Issue 014 · August 9, 2026
Mayme 'Pat' Melva Davids, age 95, of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community passed to the spirit world on May 12, 2026, as the second-eldest enrolled member of the tribe. Born in 1930, she lived on the reservation for most of her life and was remembered by family and community as a devoted presence across generations. The Mohican News notes she was the second-eldest tribal member, a marker of how much living history walked with her. The Davids name carries weight in Stockbridge-Munsee history; Dorothy 'Dot' Davids, the educator Patty has written about, is part of the same extended family network that has shaped the community's intellectual and cultural life.
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
With Wisconsin's August primary approaching, NARF issued a clear reminder this week: "Native Vote" shirts are nonpartisan and are generally permitted at polling places, even though some Native voters have been wrongly turned away for wearing them in past elections. The guidance is practical and timely for tribal members in northern Wisconsin counties where poll workers have historically been unfamiliar with Native voting rights. NARF notes that rules vary by state, so tribal election offices should verify local guidance before August 11.
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 005 · June 7, 2026
Governor Tony Evers signed 2025 Wisconsin Act 222, protecting the right of Native students who are tribal members, descendants, or eligible for membership to wear traditional regalia at graduation ceremonies. The Oneida Nation's Kalihwisaks covered the signing with the kind of specific pride that a press release never captures: this is a law that came from Native communities pushing back against schools that had told students to cover their regalia or leave the stage. It is a small but real act of recognition that Native identity belongs in every room, including the one where diplomas are handed out.
Issue 002 · May 17, 2026
Governor Evers signed legislation directing $125 million to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin's water supplies, with tribal communities explicitly included among those eligible for grant funding. Mazinaigan notes that some of the highest PFAS levels in the state have been documented near tribal lands. The funding is meaningful but the contamination problem it addresses is not going away.
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.
Background
· 2024
· stockbridge-updates
Shannon Holsey has served multiple terms as Tribal President of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Her tenure has spanned a long compact dispute with the State of Wisconsin over revenue payments and the Ho-Chunk Beloit casino proposal, a 2019 federal court loss on the rival casino challenge, and ongoing leadership at the National Congress of American Indians, where she has served as a vice president.
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
· new-england-public-media
In January 2023 a new Massachusetts law authorized the town of Stockbridge to transfer eighteenth-century documents to the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohicans of Wisconsin, including a 1780 document signed by tribal leaders describing the tribe's efforts to regain control of land distribution. The transfer joined an ongoing repatriation of objects from the Berkshire Museum and other Massachusetts institutions and built on Rose Miron's scholarship of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation Historical Committee's decades of archival activism.
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
· 2020
· north-star-mohican-casino-resort
Since opening in May 1992 in Bowler, the North Star Mohican Casino Resort has grown into the economic engine of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, with more than 1,000 slot machines, table games, weekly bingo, a hotel, and tournament golf. The casino sits at the heart of a decades-long compact-and-revenue dispute with the State of Wisconsin, including Stockbridge-Munsee's call on Governor Walker to enforce compact terms after Ho-Chunk's Beloit expansion.
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.
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
· 2010
· Native American Rights Fund
In 2010 the State of New York and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community settled the tribe's land claim by transferring 330 acres in Sullivan County in the Catskills plus 2 acres in Madison County, in exchange for the tribe's release of its larger 23,000-acre claim near Syracuse. New York granted the tribe rights to develop a Catskills casino, which the tribe withdrew in June 2014 amid competition from Orange County developers. The Sullivan County land remains in the tribe's ancestral Munsee homeland.