Shannon Holsey, the president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, will deliver the annnual State of the Tribes address to the Wisconsin State Legislature at 1 pm Tuesday.
In an interview Monday she said she plans to focus on what elected leaders need to do as Wisconsin emerges from the pandemic.
“There’s a lot of people counting on us as elected leaders and we have a lot to do,” she said. “We can collectively come around the issues that matter most, like economic development, investing in our education system, stewarding the land and its protection and looking at civility. There are so many systematic failures that currently exist, especially in communities of color. And we have to look for collective ways to find solutions or bring resolution around that.”
Holsey delivered the State of the Tribes address five years ago and said not enough has changed since then.
“The things that I discussed five years ago, a majority of issues still are here today,” she said. “Even in a pandemic, we still are faced with all of these similar issues.”
Holsey was elected as president in October 2015, following eight years as a member of the Tribal Council. Holsey is the youngest to ever lead the Stockbridge-Munsee, which has about 1,470 enrolled members and is one of 11 Native tribes in Wisconsin. The Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe is the largest employer in Shawano County. She grew up on the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in Bowler, Wisconsin. Holsey also serves as vice president of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council (GLITC), which represents 11 member tribes with a land base of about one million acres spanning 45 counties. She is appointed as the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Special Committee on State-Tribal Relations. Hosley is also Co-founder of the Midwest region Woodland Women WEWIN Chapter.
Each year since 2005, GLITC has chosen a tribal leader to speak to the legislature and the people of the state on the issued facing the 11 federally recognized Indigenous nations based in Wisconsin.
