"For most of the last century, the state of Wisconsin ignored the treaty rights of native people that were reserved in the 1800s and earlier. Traditional ways of hunting, fishing and gathering were prevented or discouraged, and tribes' complaints about harassment went unresolved. All of this changed in the 1980s, when U.S. federal courts stepped in to protect and sustain the rights of native people in the ceded territories of Wisconsin.

Or did it? A public panel sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison asks whether the rights of Wisconsin's native people are respected or routinely trampled, and explores how tribes assert sovereignty through grass-roots organizing, organizational alliances, and legal challenges to such contentious proposals as the recently-deferred mining bill and new wolf-hunting legislation.

On Thursday, May 3, faculty members Patty Loew of the Department of Life Sciences Communication, Richard Monette of the Law School, Larry Nesper of the Department of Anthropology, and Rand Valentine of the Department of Linguistics will discuss challenges to the sovereign rights, health, safety and culture of Wisconsin's native people in "Whose Land? The Fight for Tribal Sovereignty and Stewardship in Wisconsin," at 7 p.m. at the Hillel Foundation, 611 Langdon St. This is the final event in the Center for the Humanities' 2011-2012 Humanities NOW series, which brings thoughtful, interdisciplinary examination of current topics through the expertise of UW-Madison faculty."

Get the Story:
Whose Land? The Fight for Tribal Sovereignty & Stewardship in Wisconsin (UW Center for the Humanities 5/3)