A Brief Update From Whose Land?

Issue 5 - July 2024

Attendees at our June 8th Lost Stories Retold event in partnership with Metcalfe Park Community Bridges. June 2024.

A Brief Update During a Busy Season

Whose Land? team members have been busy this summer, immersed in our many projects and preparing for our next season of work beginning in the fall. Stay tuned for a deep dive into each project in upcoming newsletter issues. We greet you today with a brief update on our main projects—the Northside Community History Project and the Oneida Boarding School History Project—and on a few of our developing partnerships.

Northside Community History Project

Our Northside Community History Project had its second phase wrap-up event on June 8th with our partner, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges.

Metcalfe Park community and Whose Land? team members participating in a memory-mapping activity at Lost Stories Retold event. June 2024.

Community members of many generations gathered together at the Black Joy Farm in Metcalfe Park to share memories and stories about Metcalfe sites. Residents at the event beat the rain, working with Whose Land? team members over the course of a cloudy Saturday morning to utilize Whose Land? “memory-mapping” tools, including paper-and-Sharpie story maps and a beta version of our interactive story map that links stories and archival materials to specific locations and dates.

We are presently working on making the many oral histories, artifacts, and photographs gathered for the project easily accessible to all in an online-archive through the interactive map that will be featured on the Whose Land? website. The next phase of the mapping project will go beyond gathering memories to guide community members through the practice of interpretation. Thank you to Wisconsin Humanities for providing funding for the project. Thank you to our Northside Archive steering committee members for your guidance and creativity. Thank you to UW-M’s Culture and Communities for supporting our events and operations. Thank you to Metcalfe Park Community Bridges for their partnership. And thank you especially to the community members who have shared their stories and engaged in conversation with the Northside Community History Project thus far.

Oneida Boarding School History Project

Oneida elders and student at second elder-youth dialogue event. May 2024.

Our Oneida Boarding School History Project wrapped up the school year with great success. We completed four elder-youth dialogue sessions, three recorded walking tours of reservation schools and sites of cultural significance, and many hours of oral histories.

We are working closely with the Oneida High School and the Oneida Cultural Heritage office to implement the next phase of the Boarding School History Project, which will include the creation of an in-person exhibit at the Oneida Museum and the co-production of an episode for the Whose Land? podcast. We are grateful for our partners within the Oneida Nation, WI who have fostered this project and for the Oneida elders and high school students that have participated. Thank you also to the National Endowment for the Humanities & the Department of the Interior’s Federal Boarding School Initiative for funding the project.

Developing Partnerships

In collaboration with the Oneida Nation, Whose Land? is exploring a partnership with the Indian Community School (ICS) located in Franklin, WI. ICS was founded by three Oneida women in 1969 and has become an institution and national leader in Indigenous education. Its mission is “to cultivate an enduring cultural identity and critical thinking by weaving indigenous teachings with a distinguished learning environment.”

Photo of the Indian Community School as it exists today.

We are looking forward to further conversations with ICS and will include updates in future newsletter issues as a program is established.

Our partnership with the Madison Country Day School continues as we settle on a plan for place-based curriculum for the 2024-25 school year.

Aerial photo of Madison Country Day School.

The project will continue to put student voices first through a student-guided exploration of Wisconsin land genealogy that features both the campus grounds of the school in Madison and the site of Ceresco, a 19th-century utopian community in present-day Ripon, WI.

Thank You for Your Support!

Thank you for subscribing to the Whose Land? newsletter! Your support allows Whose Land? to capture histories, produce stories, and facilitate creative, collaborative problem-solving around the legacies of land dispossession.

Whose Land? is a small non-profit organization dependent on grants and donations to stay afloat. We are presently fundraising to support our Sharing Our Stories event series as part of our Northside Community History Collection Project, which brings members of the Northside Milwaukee community together to remember, preserve, and teach their community history. You can learn more here, contact us about participating here, and donate to support these events here.

Want to know how else you can get involved? You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Consider asking your friends to follow us on social media and to subscribe to our newsletter. Don’t forget to let us know about new partnership opportunities here. And if you are interested in making a donation, you can do so here!