8-8:30 a.m. | Registration & Breakfast

Check-in to get your name badge & grab breakfast

8:30 -9:15 a.m. | Opening & Keynote

​Opening Ceremony - Drum and Invocation with Karen Ann Hoffman

Keynote - Jen Martel

9:20 - 10:20 a.m. | Panel 

​Water Protectors - Sandra Gokee, Paul DeMain, & Jen Martel

10:30-11:15 a.m. | Breakout Sessions

​Workshops Hosted by:

Paul DeMain, & Sandra Gokee -Organizing Communities

Misty Cook - Traditional Medicines Workshop

We will talk about our ancestors who passed this information down throughout the generations.  How to identify the Medicines, gather, dry, preserve and use them in our lives.​​

Lucy Grignon - Planting Seeds of Healing in Our Community

​Corice Lieb - Discussion of his 2023 Running Strong Grant project.

His focus for the grant is to strengthen indigenous sovereignty with the utilization of drones to help tribes become more independent from the state with conducting preliminary damage assessments for FEMA, as well as, shorten the paperwork process when conducting a preliminary damage assessment with the help of drone footage instead of written report we can use a visual footage for the assessment. 

11:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. | Professional Networking Fair

Hosted by: David O'Connor

Our Professional Networking Fair is open to all individual’s, organizations, government departments and businesses that are doing work that relate to Indigenous wellness, sustainability, advocacy, natural resources, and revitalization.

​The NAC wants to help celebrate all the good work being done locally in all areas relevant to Indigenous communities. Indigenous people and them allies are at the forefront of Integrated wellness, environmental sustainability, and restorative justice. Building relationship between people locally to help to grow and recognize Indigenous knowledge for future generations.​​

12:15 - 1 p.m.| Lunch

​Lunch Ceremony, Drum, and Invocation with Sonny Smart

Keynote Speaker - Rebecca Webster

1:15 - 2:15 p.m. | Panel

​Food Sovereignty - Misty Cook, Lois Stevens, & Rebecca Webster

2:15 - 3:15 p.m. | Indigenous Food Demonstration

​Brian Yazzie

3:15 - 3:45 p.m. | Networking Time

Spend some time networking with exhibitors and  conference attendees.

3:45 - 4:30 p.m. | Closing

Closing and Smudging Ceremony and Traveling Song

5 p.m. | Storytelling

Storytelling With Michael Laughing Fox and Feast 

For detailed information, click open the tabs below​
​

JENNIFER MARTEL​​

 

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Jennifer Martel is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Reservation, resides and works on the Standing Rock Reservation.  She has worked for Sitting Bull College 21 years, currently the Visitor Center Coordinator of the Sitting Bull Visitor Center at Sitting Bull College. Tourists from all over the world come through the doors.  She has gained knowledge and understanding through grant writing and giving opportunities to the communities and surrounding communities offering traditional art, food and medicine classes. Having a good rapport with Native artists locally, nationally and internationally through networking and resourcing. Always seeking to help the community of artists as well as spring up new artists. Helping in the community is where you will find her working with the Youth, Elders or an event she has helped coordinate. As Native and artist rights activist, community leader, grant writer and educator, and a public speaker for the relatives. 

She had courage to help produce a film named OYATE. OYATE elevates the voices of Indigenous activists, organizers, and politicians as they offer their perspective on that complicated history, contextualize the #NoDAPL movement, illuminate the interconnectivity between the issues facing Indian Country today, and look towards a more sovereign and sustainable future for their people. She was a key organizer during the Standing Rock protests, directing thousands in and out of the reservation and developing protocols for national media outlets. Jen is a founding member of the Indigenous People's Movement, a worldwide advocacy group for first nation sovereignty and rights.  She was key in developing the Oceti Sakowin Treaty Conference, a revival of a 150 year old tribal leader tradition, and continues to develop Indigenous-empowering conferences around the world.     

 

​​Rebecca M. Webster​

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Rebecca M. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. She is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth in the Department of American Indian Studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in their Tribal Administration and Governance programs. Her research interests focus on tribal administration and food sovereignty. She is the editor of the book, Tribal Administration Handbook: A Guide For Native Nations in the United States. She is the author of the book, In Defense of Sovereignty: Protecting the Oneida Nation's Inherent Right to Self-determination, as well as the book, Our Precious Corn: Yukwanénste. She received her B.A., M.P.A., and J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Walden University. In addition to her academic interests, she grows heirloom traditional foods with her family on their 10 acre farmstead Ukwakhwa: Tsinu Niyukwayayʌthoslu (Our foods: Where we plant things) and with Ohe·láku (among the cornstalks), a co-op of Oneida families that grow Iroquois white corn together. Based on their family farming practices, they started a YouTube Channel called Ukwakhwa (Our Foods) where they share what they learned about planting, growing, harvesting, seed keeping, food preparation, food storage, as well as making traditional tools and crafts. In 2021, their family formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Ukwakhwa Inc., to help advance their goals of helping share knowledge with the community."

Her speech is titled, “Seeding Resilience: Haudenosaunee Corn and History".​​

David J. O'Connor

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David J. O'Connor is originally from and is a citizen of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa ( Anishinaabe or Ojibwe) in northern Wisconsin. In January 2012, he became the American Indian Studies Consultant at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). In David's role at DPI, he supports school districts' efforts to provide instruction on the histories, cultures and tribal sovereignty of Wisconsin's American Indian nations and tribal communities, often referenced as Wisconsin Act 31, and the education of Native American students.

David provides training opportunities and presents at conferences and workshops throughout the state of Wisconsin on American Indian education and studies. He also provides general consultation on issues related to the education of American Indian students. David serves as liaison to American Indian nations and tribal communities of Wisconsin; tribal education departments, Wisconsin Indian Education Association (WIEA), Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council (GLITC) and the Special Committee on State-Tribal Relations.

David received both his Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Educational Leadership Policy and Analysis (ELPA) and Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in History with certificates in American Indian Studies and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a graduate of the School District of Ashland where he did his K-12 education and a graduate of the Bad River Tribal Head Start where he started his education and his early learning.

Lucille Burr

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My name is Lucille Burr Gringon. I am an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Nation and a direct descendant of the Menominee Nation. Muh-he-con-ne-ok being of the People of the Waters that are never still and Menominee being of the Ancient movers. I am a passionate Indigenous homesteader, educator, writer, doula, and advocate for my community and the world around me. My family owns an Indigenous Homestead called Ancient Roots in Bowler, Wisconsin. We research traditional gardening practices from our ancestors dating back to ages ago to the present day. We use a combination of their methods to learn, preserve, grow, seed save, reconnect, and share. We are working to reconnect to our cultural inheritance through the land, plants, medicines, and wildlife. I recognize my connections to my Indigenous roots come in many forms, from our language journey to the stories of our elders, our people, and our healing.

Brian​​ Yazzie

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Brian Yazzie aka Yazzie The Chef (Diné/Navajo) is a chef and food justice activist from Dennehotso, Arizona and based out of Saint Paul, MN. He is the founder of Intertribal Foodways catering company, a YouTube creator under Yazzie The Chef TV, a delegate of Slow Food Turtle Island Association, and a member at I-Collective: a collective of cooks, chefs, seed keepers, farmers, foragers, and scholars, focused on bringing awareness to the cultural appropriations of Indigenous foods of the Americas.​

Paul DeMain (Skabewis)​

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Sandy Gokee

Wenipashtaabe indigoo, Sandy Gokee indizhinikaaz zhaaganaashmong, makwa indoodem, jiigibiig gichigaming wenjibaayaan. ​​

Misty Cook (Davids)

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Author of "Medicine Generations" herbalist, and a cultural consultant with a Master's in management providing diversity trainings on many topics including, Native American history, games, and of course medicine.

Lois Stevens

Lois Stevens is a mother, teacher, researcher, geographer, and citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. Her true name is Kah^tuwahna, given to her by her great grandmother. She is an Assistant Professor of First Nations Studies and the First Nations Education Doctoral Program at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She received her PhD from the University of Kansas in the Department of Geography. Growing up on the Oneida Reservation, she developed a deep appreciation for ancestral knowledge, community relationship, and an understanding of her impact on Mother Earth. Beside her partner, Paul, they are dedicated to continuing this transference of knowledge to their three daughters; Kah^tes, Yakokalanolu, and Yakoliwawihe. As a researcher and geographer, her research interests involve the effects of environmental and climatic change on Indigenous food systems and Place-based adaptation within Indigenous communities. She is also invested in empowering Indigenous voices in academia by encouraging individual wellness and fostering a love for collaborative research and writing.​

​Corice Lieb

Corice is from the Omaha Nation Tribe located in Macy, Nebraska, he attends the university of Omaha Nebraska majoring in emergency management, minoring in tribal emergency management and drone theory. He’s a Veteran in the armed forces and Running Strong Grant 2023 recipient. His focus for the grant is to strengthen indigenous sovereignty with the utilization of drones to help tribes become more independent from the state with conducting preliminary damage assessments for FEMA, as well as, shorten the paperwork process when conducting a preliminary damage assessment with the help of drone footage instead of written report we can use a visual footage for the assessment. ​​​​​​

​​Karen Ann Hoffman

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Karen Ann Hoffman is a Haudenosaunee Raised Beadwork artist and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. A 2020 National Heritage Fellow and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, she beads, hunts, forages and caretakes Haudenosaunee heritage seeds on a 40 acre homestead poised on the edge of the Fogerty Marsh in Central Wisconsin. 

An advocate for the voices of Native art and artists, she has been instrumental in curating both temporary Native art exhibitions across the region as well as multiple permanent, prominent pieces of Native driven public art throughout Portage County.

Her own Beadwork is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Chicago's Field Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, New York's State Museum in Albany NY, the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cavern, NY, the Fenimore Art Museum I'd Cooperstown NY and other prominent institutions.​​

Alton " Sonny" Smart

​Fire Nation Drum Group

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Fire Nation drum group are from the Potawatomi nation in northeast Wisconsin. We have been existence for 10+ years. We enjoy dancing and singing all over Indian country. Traveling to new places and meeting new people are a favorite of ours. Culture is prevention. We are proud of where we come from. We continue the traditions that were pasted down by our older generations so our children and their children's​​ children will be proud of their culture and hopefully they pass it down just as we have. Many migwetths​.

We are a grassroots group who have a determination to protect Mother Earth and our water. We as Menominee have been fighting a metallic sulfide mine that is threatening the Menominee River and our Ancient Cultural Sites that have been there since time immemorial. We also plan, organize and take part in Water Walks in NorthEast Wisconsin. We include our youth in our water protecting events to give them the teachings so they will someday pick up this task to save and protect Mother Earth and our Water.