Lecture by Dr. Rick St. Germaine. Monday March 25th, 2024 at 5:00 pm EST. In-Person (G22, Goldwin Smith Hall) + Livestreamed (lecture video & slides available below)
Cornell University owns a severed fifty-percent mineral interest on 155,340 acres of land in twelve northern Wisconsin counties – a legacy of the public lands allocated by the Morrill Act of 1862. On one 160-acre parcel within that portfolio lies the Blue Hills Pipestone Quarry, a sacred site listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 as the Wajiwan ji Mashkode Archaeological District. Professor St. Germaine will speak on the historic relationship of northern Wisconsin’s Anishinaabeg communities to the Quarry, how that relationship has been disrupted by non-Indigenous ownership of the Quarry, and what improved access to the Quarry and its culturally significant resources would mean to members of those communities.
SPEAKER BIO: Dr. Rick St. Germaine is a career educator and community knowledge-keeper from the Lac Courte Oreilles Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) community in northern Wisconsin. Educated at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Arizona State University, he has served as Tribal Chairman of the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe and taught at various institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley, the American Indian Graduate Center (Albuquerque, NM) and most recently at his undergraduate alma mater (UW-Eau Claire). He is currently writing a book on the history of the Lac Courtes Oreilles community.
SPONSORS: This talk was made possible by the support of the Cornell University Department of History, the Cornell University Department of History’s Public History Initiative, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, the American Studies Program. and the Department of Anthropology.
