The Nohr Gallery hosted UW-Platteville’s tenth annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Lecture, titled “Air, Land, Fire and Water: In the Nest of the Thunderbirds” on Oct. 15. It was presented by Mike Wiggins, Jr., former chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and focused on the tribe’s environmental history amidst rising mining activity, oil pipelining and water privatization.
As an opening to the lecture, members of the Ojibwe Tribe’s Black Thunderbird Singers performed a traditional tribal piece with vocals alongside drums to symbolize the heartbeat of Mother Earth. This led to a reading of UW-Platteville’s Land Acknowledge Statement honoring Indigenous People of the Land, first drafted by Shaun Stoeger, Tribal Liaison of the Lakota Tribe.
Stoeger started by telling stories of when he was young, learning about the world around him and connecting with the community of Bad River. He spoke about what it meant to lead in an Ojibwe community, reinforcing the idea of “loving more” as being a vital aspect of Ojibwe leadership.
Further discussing his time working with the tribe, he highlighted a few of the significant struggles of carrying tribal land “into perpetuity” amidst major environmental shifts. One major issue was maintaining clean water, a valuable and vital part of the land and its people. He mentioned large-scale tribal connections to the Great Lakes and its many waterways.
He later talked about the tribe’s history and their eternal respect for the future by quoting a resonant idea from his tribal elder, saying, “A circle is a sacred symbol. Just like time, just like the things around us, there’s no end.”
The concept of generational connectedness across time is something highly valued by people of the tribe, with Stoeger detailing several tales and stories passed down to children which focus on the idea that every living being impacts every other.
These deep connections to the natural and enduring world played significant roles in the tribe’s actions interacting with the land. Stoeger continued detailing the tribe’s rich history with nature, later bringing up the topic of creation and the importance of “air, land, fire and water” in harmony with tribal culture.
Stoeger closed his talk with a vibrant photo of the sky over a thunderstorm-ridden Lake Superior, the light of the sun representing a thunderbird, a powerful and symbolic spirit representative of nature and strength for the Ojibwe people.
