This is the first of a five-part series.
Just months after we published our first news stories in August 2015, we tried something new: we listed and published brief biographies of the state’s 28 Most Influential Black Leaders. People responded immediately. They shared it widely, added their perspectives, and told us who else should have been included. Many asked if we would do it again the next year. I said yes, we probably would.
We did more than that. The following year, we published another list of the state’s most influential Black leaders, along with a list of the state’s most influential Latino leaders. Almost immediately, we began hearing an important and reasonable question: what about the state’s Asian American and Indigenous leaders?
We wanted to do those lists, but we wanted to do them the right way. It took time to build authentic relationships within those communities and to earn trust. I’m glad we took that time. That work made it possible for us to publish those lists for the first time in 2020.
This week, we are proud to present the sixth annual edition of Wisconsin’s Most Influential Native American leaders.
Each year, with every list, the goal has been consistent: to highlight the depth, strength and diversity of leadership across our state. We want young people in Wisconsin to see what is possible. To see people who look like them leading, building and shaping communities. To understand that impact is not limited by background.
This week, we shine a statewide spotlight on the leaders of Wisconsin’s Indigenous communities. The individuals highlighted here are elected officials, business leaders and community leaders doing meaningful, often complex work. They are navigating responsibility, making difficult decisions and helping move their communities forward in ways that require both strength and clarity.
We also recognize that no list like this can ever be complete. The number of nominations alone makes that clear. There are far more than 26 influential Indigenous leaders across Wisconsin doing important work every day. We hope you will continue to share those names with us so we can highlight even more leaders in the future.
For now, we simply want to introduce you to some of the individuals doing this work, often without recognition, across our state.
You may recognize a few of these names, but many will likely be new to you. Take the time to learn about them. Connect with those in your communities. Learn from them. Build relationships. Create partnerships. And share their stories.
Wisconsin is stronger when leadership is seen, supported and connected across communities.
Henry Sanders
CEO, 365 Media Foundation
Publisher, Madison365
Nathan King
Nathan King, an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation, is vice president of Bay Bank in Green Bay, where he oversees retail banking and administration, including the branch network, consumer products, strategic planning, human resources, and marketing. Bay Bank, owned by the Oneida Nation, is the only tribally owned bank in Wisconsin. King led the establishment of the bank’s Keshena branch on the Menominee Reservation, which opened in 2021 and is the only bank in Menominee County, providing full-service banking directly on tribal lands. He works with multiple Wisconsin tribal communities to secure financing for infrastructure and economic development. Prior to joining Bay Bank, he worked for the Oneida Nation for nearly 20 years in various roles, including community planner and director of legislative affairs, where he advocated for the nation’s interests at the federal, state, and local levels. He serves on the board of directors of First Nations Financial, a Native community development financial institution, and on the UW-Green Bay Council of Trustees. He earned a bachelor’s degree in urban regional studies at UW-Green Bay and an MBA at Baker University.
Elizabeth Arbuckle
Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Arbuckle is chairwoman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a position she took on in November 2025. Since becoming chair, she has focused on improving communication with tribal members, increasing transparency and accountability within the tribal government, supporting Bad River’s cultural revitalization, creating programming for elders’ enrichment, and exploring new economic opportunities for the tribe. She previously served as a Senior Councilwoman on the Bad River Tribal Council for two years, and has also served on the Bad River Housing Authority, Education Committee, Indian Health Board, and was a founding member of the tribe’s Police Commission. She spent more than 10 years in academia as an assistant professor of political science at UW-Stevens Point and Northern Arizona University, and then in Native American studies at Northland College. Most recently, she did tribal liaison work for the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She is the founder of Rezberries, Bad River’s 4-H club. She was raised on the Bad River Reservation and graduated from Ashland High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree at UW-Madison and a PhD in political science at the University of Michigan, specializing in tribal government, treaty rights, and ethnic group identity.
Nicole Boyd
Nicole Boyd is chair of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Council, a position she was first elected to in 2023 and won again in 2025. In February 2026, she delivered the State of the Tribes Address at the Wisconsin State Capitol, where she called on lawmakers to protect natural resources, expand mobile sports betting for tribal nations, address mental health and substance abuse in tribal communities, and legalize cannabis. Before becoming chair, she spent more than 15 years in direct service and planning roles for the tribe. She worked at the Red Cliff Early Childhood Center from 2008 to 2018, serving as director beginning in 2014, and then became administrator of the tribe’s planning department. As chair, she oversees inter-governmental relations, policy development, and day-to-day government operations, with stated priorities in education, land use, Ojibwe language and culture preservation, economic development, housing, and health services. She earned an associate degree in human services from Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University, a bachelor’s degree in social work from UW-Superior, and a master’s degree in tribal administration and governance from the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Gimiwan Dustin Burnette
Gimiwan Dustin Burnette, a descendant of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, is president and executive director of the Midwest Indigenous Immersion Network (MIIN), a nonprofit he founded in 2020 that promotes collaboration and curriculum development among Ojibwe language immersion educators across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The network connects 11 participating communities and maintains an online repository of Ojibwe language materials organized by grade level, from pre-K through adult learners. He launched MIIN with the support of a 2021 Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship from the First Nations Development Institute. Before that, he spent more than a decade as an Ojibwe language immersion teacher, first at the Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion Program at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota, where he taught kindergarten and first grade, and then for nine years at the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute in Lac Courte Oreilles, where he taught third through fifth grade. He also serves as a subject matter expert for Rosetta Stone Ojibwe.
Geraldine Sanapaw
Geraldine Sanapaw is chief academic officer of the College of Menominee Nation, the tribal land grant college with campuses in Keshena and Green Bay. She oversees educational policy, academic programs, accreditation, assessment of student learning, and student success initiatives. She was named to the role permanently in April 2022 after serving as interim CAO since May 2020. Under her leadership, CMN received a ten-year reaffirmation of accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission in 2023 and a $10 million gift from the MacKenzie Scott Foundation in 2025. She has also led the establishment of new partnerships, including a GIS pilot program with Fort Peck Community College in Montana and a renewed transfer agreement with UW-Madison. Sanapaw is a CMN alumna who began her academic career there, earning an associate degree in business. She started at the college in 2005 as associate administrator in academic affairs and has also worked in institutional research and as registrar. Before joining CMN, she served as business manager at Menominee Tribal School from 1991 to 2005. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Silver Lake College and an MBA from Lakeland College, and is pursuing a doctorate in education at Concordia University.
Waawaakeyaash Keller Paap
Waawaakeyaash Keller Paap, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, is indigenous knowledge development coordinator at the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation near Hayward. He co-founded the school in 2000 with Lisa LaRonge, starting with six kindergarteners in a conference room and guidance from Ojibwe elder first-language speakers. Over 25 years, Waadookodaading has grown into a K-8 immersion program with more than 70 students and over 10 teachers and trainees, modeled on successful language immersion efforts in Hawaii and New Zealand. Paap learned Ojibwe as an adult while studying at the University of Minnesota, where he worked with elders and first-language speakers. He and linguist Anton Treuer conducted a 2009 census that documented approximately 1,000 Ojibwe speakers remaining in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He is a 2007 Bush Fellow and a co-author of Awesiinyensag, a collection of Ojibwe-language stories for language learners. He was featured in the PBS documentary First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language and has been a keynote speaker at the Ojibwe Language Symposium at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. He also serves as a veteran mentor to other immersion educators across the region.
Katie Ackley
Katie Ackley is an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation through her mother and is also Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa through her father. She serves as the club advisor for the Native American Student Association and as a Student Engagement Specialist in the Division of Organizational Impact & Culture at Madison College. She organizes cultural programming, including the college’s Annual Spring Pow Wow, which she has helped grow over the years into one of the most prominent intertribal pow wows in southern Wisconsin, drawing more than a thousand attendees each year. In 2024, she co-curated Indigenous Wisconsin: A Story of Resistance, an art exhibit at Madison College featuring works by 18 Native artists representing 11 of Wisconsin’s 12 tribal nations, alongside colleagues Nicole Soulier and Micaela Salas.
Previously, she worked in Student Life at Madison College; served as an Inclusion Facilitator, Respite Provider, and Support Specialist with United Cerebral Palsy of Dane County and coordinated Youth Recreational Programming through the Atwood (Goodman) Community Center. She earned a degree in Social Welfare from UW–Madison.
Sherman Funmaker
Sherman Funmaker is a poet, essayist, and speaker, and an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation from Baraboo. He is a Bear Clan elder and the grandson of Xéhachiwinga (Mountain Wolf Woman), the renowned Ho-Chunk storyteller and autobiographer. His debut book, Bear Tracks: Memories of a Ho-Chunk Elder, was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in February 2026. The collection of poems and short essays draws on his upbringing in the Wisconsin Dells area in the 1950s and ’60s as one of 11 children. He didn’t begin writing until age 52, when he took a creative writing class at UW-Baraboo. After graduating, he began coaching and collaborating with other writers and presenting storytelling workshops for high school students and adults. He also runs Funmaker Custom Clothing, a design line, and has been a musician since his teenage years. He lives in Wisconsin Dells.
Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis
Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis is a Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and on the advisory council for the Native American Center for Health Professions. She is also an administrative coordinator for the Center for Indigenous Health at the University of Washington and on the planning committee for the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit. She previously completed a fellowship in Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Ethics at the University of Arizona-Tucson and served on the Board of Directors for the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science. She graduated from Lawrence University in Appleton in 2018, from Tulane University in 2023 with her Ph.D., and from Johns Hopkins University in 2024 with a graduate certificate in American Indian Public Health.
Dr. Jeneile Luebke
Dr. Jeneile Luebke is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at UW-Madison and an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. Her research focuses on gender-based violence in the lives of Indigenous women, using community-engaged and Indigenous-specific research methodologies. She is a co-director of the Center for Indigenous Research to Create Learning and Excellence (CIRCLE), a mentorship program for Indigenous graduate students supported by a National Science Foundation grant of approximately $1 million over four years. She leads the annual Native Nations Nursing, Helpers, and Healers Summit and serves on Wisconsin’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force. She holds affiliate appointments with the American Indian Studies program and the campus Sexual Violence Research Initiative. In 2020, her research team received a $2 million Department of Justice grant, Tracking our Truth, to expand culturally relevant medical forensic care options for American Indian women in Wisconsin after experiences of sexual violence. She was an Anna Julia Cooper postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison from 2020 to 2022. She received an Outstanding Woman of Color award in 2025. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in nursing at UW-Madison and a PhD at UW-Milwaukee.
Tara Tindall
Tara Tindall, an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is the Native American teacher leader for the Madison Metropolitan School District, where she oversees the Native American Education Program and the federal Title VI program serving Native students from pre-K through 12th grade. She provides professional development for teaching staff on Native curriculum under Wisconsin Act 31, which sets requirements around Native American history, culture, and tribal sovereignty. She also supports the Title VI Parent Advisory Committee and tutoring program for Native students, facilitates access to the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and advises Native American Student Association groups in MMSD high schools. She grew up in Black River Falls and has spent multiple decades in education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from UW-Stevens Point and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison.
Will Funmaker
Will Funmaker, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is director of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center (GLITEC) and executive director of the Great Lakes Area Tribal Health Board, both based in Lac du Flambeau. He took on the GLITEC director role in June 2022 after nearly two years as program director for Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country and executive director of the tribal health board. GLITEC serves tribes across Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and produces regional health data reports on American Indian and Alaska Native populations. Before joining GLITEC, he oversaw individual health clinics and multiple federally qualified health centers. His career in the medical field began in the U.S. Navy, where he served five years as a hospital corpsman. He also serves as a director on the Veterans Civic Action Network (VetsCAN) board. He earned an associate degree in medical laboratory technology from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, a bachelor’s degree in applied leadership from UW-Green Bay, and an MBA in management from UW-Whitewater.
Alexx Zawada
Alexx Zawada, an enrolled member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, is chief marketing officer at Potawatomi Casino Hotel in Milwaukee, where she has worked since she was 18. She started as a guest relations specialist in 2008 and after graduating from college joined the marketing department in 2014, rising through roles in corporate sponsorships, marketing management, and director of marketing before being named CMO in 2023. She oversees marketing for one of the Midwest’s largest entertainment and hospitality destinations, which is owned by the Forest County Potawatomi Community. She serves on the VISIT Milwaukee board of directors and coordinates marketing for the Hunting Moon Pow Wow. She was named a Milwaukee Magazine Woman of Distinction in 2022 and was featured in the magazine’s Faces of Milwaukee in 2024. She also volunteers with the Young Athlete Program at Special Olympics Wisconsin. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies at UW-Milwaukee and an MBA at UW-Whitewater.
Casey Brown
Casey Brown is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Bear Clan, and a filmmaker, educator, and cultural preservationist based in Wisconsin. He is one of the creators of “Exploring the Artistic Process of Truman Lowe: A Journey Through Native American Art & Education,” a short film produced by the Ho-Chunk Nation that won a Midwest Regional Emmy Award in 2023, the first Emmy for a Ho-Chunk Nation production. The film documents the legacy of sculptor and UW-Madison professor Truman Lowe, who served as a mentor to Brown during his time at the university. Brown is currently producing a documentary on Wisconsin’s effigy mounds from a Ho-Chunk perspective, building on decades of survey work conducted by his father, Ho-Chunk elder Ritchie Brown. The two have traveled across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Canada to identify and mark the mounds, including a rare ghost eagle mound spanning approximately 700 feet in Muscoda. He is a public speaker on Ho-Chunk history and contemporary culture; his 2025 presentation “Shuffling Many Worlds: How Being Ho-Chunk is Modern” at the Crosscurrents Heritage Center in southwest Wisconsin sold out.
Natasha Chevalier
Natasha Chevalier is director of community development and utilities for the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin in Keshena, where she oversees infrastructure development, construction project management, community planning, solid waste disposal, and tribal utility operations. She also serves as secretary of the Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association. Before taking on the director role in 2022, she was regional director for UMOS in Menominee County for six years, managing workforce development services, and before that directed the Menominee Job Center, where she oversaw delivery of one-stop employment services and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act grants for adults, dislocated workers, and youth. Earlier in her career, she worked as an activity coordinator at the College of Menominee Nation and as a training and performance specialist at Menominee Casino Resort. She earned an associate degree in business from United Tribes Technical College, a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Silver Lake College, and an MBA in management of organizational behavior from Silver Lake College.
Vincent Miresse
Vincent Miresse is a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the 71st District in central Wisconsin since January 2025. He serves on the committees on environment, forestry, parks and outdoor recreation, and sporting heritage. He has sponsored legislation on tribal access to certified copies of vital records and on allowing pupils to wear traditional tribal regalia at graduation ceremonies and school-sponsored events. Before his election to the Assembly, he served on the Portage County Board of Supervisors beginning in 2017, where he chaired the Solid Waste Management Board and the Portage County Health Care Center Committee and served as vice chair of the Human Resources Committee. He also chaired the county’s former Diversity Committee. He is a small business owner specializing in residential energy retrofits, building science, and renewable energy, and is a lifetime member of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. He previously worked at the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station, teaching environmental education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in social science with emphases in history, anthropology, and music at UW-Stevens Point.
Tracey Cordova
Tracey Cordova, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, is the owner of Universal Consulting Solutions LLC, a business consulting firm based in Oneida. Before starting her own business, she worked for the Oneida Nation for 26 years in a variety of roles across gaming and tribal government, including community events coordinator, accounting assistant, assistant director of profit centers, organizational development for the Oneida Business Committee, personnel services manager, and organizational development for gaming. Her consulting work focuses on strategic planning, organizational development, and emotional intelligence-based leadership. Universal Consulting Solutions was among 32 Indigenous-owned small businesses to receive funding through a 2024 grant program. She earned a bachelor’s degree in management and communication from Concordia University-St. Paul, a master’s degree in management from Cardinal Stritch University, and an education specialist degree in adult education from Walden University.
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.
Dr. James E. Pete
Dr. James E. Pete (Guyaushk), a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and the Eagle Clan, is an elder and cultural advisor for the Red Cliff community. He has extensive experience in Indian health services, having served as health and clinic administrator for the Mille Lacs Band, the Ho-Chunk Nation, and the Red Cliff Band, with responsibilities including accreditation through the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, budget development, third-party revenue collection, and program development. He served on the Red Cliff Tribal Council from 1982 to 1984 and again from 2010 to 2011, including service as vice chairperson and tribal treasurer, and served as tribal manager. He has participated in dual-language highway sign ceremonies with WisDOT representing Red Cliff as a cultural advisor. His powwow regalia was selected by the Wisconsin Historical Society for display at the new Wisconsin History Center in Madison, expected to open in 2027; in lieu of payment, he donated to the Great Lakes Native American Elders Association. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, a master’s degree in organizational management, and a doctorate in business administration.
Alison Bowman
Alison Bowman is associate director of the WCER Clinical Program and a project manager with the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative, both housed within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW-Madison. She is also an analyst with Bowman Performance Consulting, where she provides research and technical support for Indigenous and tribally focused evaluations. She co-directs the WCER Evaluation Clinic, which matches trained graduate students with schools, postsecondary institutions, and community organizations in Wisconsin to provide culturally responsive evaluation services. She is a certified project manager with more than a decade of experience on large-scale education and nonprofit evaluation and research projects. She serves as advisor to Wunk Sheek, the UW-Madison American Indian student organization. She earned a master of public affairs degree from the La Follette School at UW-Madison, where she studied public policy, administration, and tribal affairs.
Biskakone Greg Johnson
Biskakone Greg Johnson is an Anishinaabe cultural practitioner, traditional craftsman, and educator from Lac du Flambeau. He has spent much of his life seeking out and mastering traditional Ojibwe crafts, including cedar bark mat weaving, birch bark basket making, winnowing baskets, beadwork, moccasin sewing, and canoe building. As a young man, he saw objects in museums attributed to his culture and set out to learn how to create them, seeking knowledge from community members and teaching himself when he could not find a teacher. He is an instructor at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota, where he teaches multi-day courses in traditional Anishinaabe crafts such as cedar bark weaving and winter birch bark basket making. He also teaches the Ojibwe language and works with youth to pass on traditional skills and knowledge. He was featured in Season 14 of the PBS series Craft in America in the “Home” episode, which documented his life and work in Lac du Flambeau. He lives in Lac du Flambeau with his partner, artist Anungo Kwe Alexandria Sulainis, and their children.
Dr. Kala Kimberly Cornelius
Dr. Kala Kimberly Cornelius, a member of the Oneida and Menominee nations, is a nurse practitioner researcher in the Gleason Research Group at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. She is co-principal investigator, alongside Dr. Jeneile Luebke, on a five-year National Institutes of Health grant through the Great Lakes Native American Research Centers for Health, in partnership with the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council. The initiative, the Four Directions Career Pathway Program, provides Native American students in higher education with culturally congruent support and experiential learning opportunities that strengthen pathways into health and biomedical professions. She grew up in the Oneida community and attended the Oneida tribal school from kindergarten through eighth grade. She worked as a community health nurse for the Oneida Nation for six years and has also served as an adjunct nursing instructor for associate degree and certified nurse assistant programs. She earned a bachelor of science in nursing from UW-Oshkosh, a master’s degree in nursing, and a doctor of nursing practice degree from UW-Madison.
Who’d we miss? Email [email protected] to tell us who in your community should be on the list next year!
