Identity and Dinner: The Interpretive Potential of Plant Macroremains

For more than 20 years the Menominee Historic Preservation Department, the College of Menominee Nation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Midwest Ethnohorticulture LLC, and others have been collaborating on a renewed series of studies about ancient Menominee garden systems. In 2020 we planned a field conference for a public tour of the ancient garden sites and to share results and impressions from research participants and invited speakers. However, the coronavirus pandemic prevented us from holding a safe gathering, so we cancelled the conference.

To reach out to the public with our findings anyway, we have turned instead to a virtual conference with recorded presentations available online. Here you will find videos of the presentations you otherwise would have heard in person. CMN Interim President Caldwell welcomes you to our conference, Dr. Overstreet and his partners each highlight aspects of the work here and how these ancient gardens are being studied, and Dr. Hoover wraps things up with a keynote address about the state of the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Movement today. We invite you to watch these videos at your leisure. Afterwards, please let us hear your impressions of these ancient gardens of the Menominee ancestors and of our ongoing work there.

Conference website: http://www.menominee.edu/com_ser.aspx?id=2008

Jennifer Picard’s presentation