This is the fourth of a five-part series. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here and part 3 is here.
Rick Peterson
Rick Peterson is vice chairman of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Council, a position he has held since 2022. He previously served as tribal chairman from 2017 to 2021, winning election in 2017 and reelection in 2019. As chairman, he testified before the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee in 2019, led the tribe’s successful federal lawsuit against Bayfield County over unlawful zoning enforcement on reservation lands, and oversaw the construction of a 300-foot FirstNet cell tower — the first such tower built by a sovereign nation in the United States — which expanded cell coverage from 20 percent to 80 percent of the reservation. He championed the development of the Red Cliff Fish Company, a tribally owned zero-waste fish processing plant and retail operation that processes Lake Superior fish harvested by tribal commercial fishermen. He has also represented the tribe in intergovernmental relations with Bayfield County, WisDOT, and federal agencies including HUD and the FCC.
Kristie Goforth
Kristie Goforth, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, is executive director of Free Bikes 4 Kidz Madison, a nonprofit that works in transportation equity by collecting donated bikes, repairing them, and distributing them to marginalized communities across southern Wisconsin. She served as an alder on the Monona City Council beginning in 2020 and has twice run for mayor of Monona, in 2021 and 2023, campaigns that would have made her the first Native American mayor in Wisconsin history. She also serves as a Dane County parks commissioner, appointed by County Executive Joe Parisi. Before leading FB4K, she was executive director of the Monona East Side Business Alliance, a rebranded and expanded version of the Monona Chamber of Commerce. Earlier in her career, she opened a cartography firm that grew into a graphic design and video production agency, which she ran for 10 years. She co-founded the Momentum Urban Arts Fest in 2019 and brought the Vibrant Hydrant public art project to Monona in 2022. She was honored as a YWCA Madison Woman of Distinction in 2024. She grew up on an island in Lake Huron in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and was a first-generation college student. She earned degrees in conservation biology and geography with an emphasis in cartography and urban planning at UW-Madison in 1998.
Dr. Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr.
Dr. Michael Migizi Sullivan Sr. is faculty director of Native American Studies at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University on his home reservation of Lac Courte Oreilles, where he teaches Ojibwe language, American Indian studies, and linguistics. He was the first LCO Ojibwe College alumnus to earn a doctorate. Before joining the college in 2021, he served for six years as the resident linguist at the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School, where he contributed to curriculum development, immersion teacher training, and middle school grade expansion. He previously served as chair of American Indian studies and professor of Ojibwemowin at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth and as community language curator for the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary at the University of Minnesota. He is the managing linguistic editor for Rosetta Stone Ojibwe, an app-based language program launched by the Mille Lacs Band. He co-authored Plums or Nuts: Ojibwe Stories of Anishinaabe Humor, a bilingual collection published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 2023, with the late Larry Amik Smallwood. He earned an associate degree from LCO Ojibwe College, a bachelor’s degree from UW-Superior, and a master’s degree and PhD in linguistics from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Lauren Cornelius
Lauren Cornelius, a member of the Oneida Nation, is the academic program specialist at the Native American Center for Health Professions (NACHP) in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, where she focuses on recruitment and retention of Native students into health professional programs. She has been with NACHP since 2014, when the center received its first Indians into Medicine grant from the Indian Health Service. She is the creator and host of Medicine Talkers, NACHP’s podcast about health through an Indigenous lens, which launched in 2021. She has worked on the UW-Madison campus since 2010, supporting Native American students, providing pre-college outreach in tribal communities across Wisconsin, and building partnerships with tribes. She grew up on the Oneida reservation outside Green Bay. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in educational leadership and policy analysis, both at UW-Madison.
Debra J. Danforth
Debra J. Danforth is division director of the Oneida Comprehensive Health Division for the Oneida Nation, a position she has held over the course of a 41-year career with the tribe. She is an enrolled Oneida Nation tribal member. She has served on numerous boards and committees at the local, state, and national levels representing the Oneida Nation and other tribal organizations in health and education. She served the Oneida Nation in an elected capacity on the local Board of Education for multiple years and on the Oneida Nation Trust and Enrollment Committee, which oversees the nation’s trust funds and endowments. She is a graduate of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows program. She earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing.
Kwnwahta Smith
Kwnwahta Smith is the Dare2Know Youth Program Coordinator at End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, where he plans and facilitates the statewide Teen Ambassador Program, co-creates social media content with teen ambassadors, and co-plans the annual Teen Summit. Dare2Know is a statewide campaign challenging teens to rally around healthy relationships and end teen dating violence. He has been with End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin since 2019, first part-time and then full-time beginning in 2022. Before that, he worked at Wise Women Gathering Place, where he served as youth program coordinator and then victim advocate. As youth program coordinator, he planned and facilitated afterschool programs for middle school youth, high school youth, and young adults, and taught a healthy relationships curriculum in the tribal school. He also facilitated community classes using the White Bison “Mending Broken Hearts” program to address unresolved grief and trauma.
Part 5 coming tomorrow!
