Making a Difference as Educators
Friday, October 1, 2021 | 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
In her memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice (2019), Ada Deer begins: "I am a Menominee Indian. That is who I was born and how I have lived. I am tall like the trees that blanket my reservations in northern Wisconsin, and my skin is brown like their bark...my taproot is Menominee."
Elder Ada Deer (Menominee) in conversation with Dr. Lisa Poupart (Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Anishinaabeg), Associate Professor and Director of First Nations Studies, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Ada Deer is a women of firsts: the first Menominee to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the first leader to restore tribal status after termination by the U.S. government, and the first woman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Deer grew up on the Menominee Reservation, the oldest of five children, in a cabin without running water or electricity. Her mother and teachers encouraged her to excel in school and she earned degrees in social work from UW-Madison and Columbia University in New York City. Prior to her leadership in the restoration struggle, she lived in Minneapolis as a social worker assisting people, including American Indians who had relocated to the city as part of the government's assimilation efforts. She is a Distinguished Lecturer Emerita in American Indian Studies at UW-Madison, earned a fellowship at Harvard, worked for the Native American Rights Fund, was a U.S. Congressional candidate, and served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton Administration. Now in her 80's, Ada Deer continues to be an activist for human rights, especially for American Indians. She lives in Fitchburg, WI.
Lisa Poupart, Ph.D., is a member of the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Anishinaabeg. She is the Director of Education Programs and Associate Professor of First Nations Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and Humanities at UW-Green Bay. Dr. Poupart's work is concerned with healing First Nations generational historic trauma. She is also involved in a number of initiatives to standardize First Nations Studies curriculum in K-16. Her collaborative book Connective Pedagogy: Elder Epistemology, Oral Tradition and Community explores the traditional knowledge and teaching methodology of the Tribal World (2013, Aboriginal Issues Press/University of Manitoba). Dr. Poupart works with First Nations oral traditional Elders and First Nations youth in higher education settings. Elder Ada Deer is one of her mentors.
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