Gwen Westerman PhD | |
---|---|
Occupation | poet, educator, and artist |
Language | Dakota, English |
Nationality | Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation, Cherokee Nation, American [1] |
Alma mater | Oklahoma State University, BA and MA; University of Kansas, PhD [2] |
Genre | poetry |
Website | |
gwenwesterman |
Gwen Nell Westerman [3] is an educator, writer and fiber artist.
She is a professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and the Director of the Native American Literature Symposium. [4] Governor Tim Walz appointed her as Poet Laureate of Minnesota in September 2021. [1]
Westerman is Dakota and Cherokee. She is an enrolled citizen of both the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation and the Cherokee Nation. [1] She speaks the Dakota language. [5] Her mother was Cherokee, and Westerman grew up in Kansas. [6]
Westerman earned her bachelor's and master's degrees English from Oklahoma State University. She received a PhD in English from the University of Kansas. [2]
She is Professor of English and Director of the Humanities Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. [7]
Westerman is a fiber artist who specialized in quilt-making. [2]
Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
Blue Earth County is a county in the State of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 69,112. Its county seat is Mankato. The county is named for the Blue Earth River and for the deposits of blue-green clay once evident along the banks of the Blue Earth River. Blue Earth County is part of the Mankato-North Mankato metropolitan area.
The Minnesota River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 332 miles (534 km) long, in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It drains a watershed of 14,751 square miles (38,200 km2) in Minnesota and about 2,000 sq mi (5,200 km2) in South Dakota and Iowa.
Minnesota State University, Mankato is a public university in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. It is Minnesota's second-largest university and has over 145,000 living alumni worldwide. Founded in 1868, it is the second-oldest member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and is commonly referred to as the flagship institution. It was established as the Second State Normal School in 1858 and officially opened as Mankato Normal School a decade later. Minnesota State University, Mankato is a significant contributor to the local and state economies, adding $827 million annually.
The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed on July 23, 1851, at Traverse des Sioux in Minnesota Territory between the United States government and the Upper Dakota Sioux bands. In this land cession treaty, the Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota bands sold 21 million acres of land in present-day Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota to the U.S. for $1,665,000.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, Dog Road Woman, won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books and edited eight anthologies. She is known for addressing issues of culture, prejudice, rights, the environment, peace, violence, abuse, and labor in her poetry and other creative works.
North Dakota Quarterly (NDQ) is a literary journal published quarterly by the University of North Dakota. NDQ publishes poetry, fiction, interviews, and literary non-fiction. It was first published in 1911 as a vehicle for faculty papers. After a hiatus during the depression, NDQ began publishing again with a broader focus that gradually came to include stories and poems. Preeminent Hemingway scholar Robert W. Lewis edited NDQ from 1982 until his death in 2013 and published about a dozen special editions focused on Hemingway, as well as a number of special editions focused on China, Yugoslavia, and Native American issues and literature. In 2019, NDQ began being published by the University of Nebraska Press.
Heid E. Erdrich is a poet, editor, and writer. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain.
The Native American Literature Symposium (NALS) is a Native American literature conference. It was founded in 2001. It is held at a tribal venue every spring. The NALS was first established by a group of independent scholars committed to creating a place where Native voices can be heard. The current director is Gwen N. Westerman of Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Kim Shuck is a Cherokee Nation poet, author, weaver, and bead work artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian life. She was born in San Francisco, California and belongs to the northern California Cherokee diaspora. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and also has Sac and Fox and Polish ancestry. She earned a B.A. in art (1994), and M.F.A. in Textiles (1998) from San Francisco State University. Her basket weaving work is influenced by her grandmother Etta Mae Rowe and the long history of California Native American basket making.
Cloud Man was a Dakota chief. The child of French and Mdewakanton parents, he founded the agricultural community Ḣeyate Otuŋwe on the shores of Bde Maka Ska in 1829 after being trapped in a snowstorm for three days. The village was seen by white settlers as a progressive step towards assimilation, yet members of the community maintained a distinctly Dakota way of life. The community was abandoned in 1839 and Cloud Man's band moved along the Minnesota River to join the Hazelwood Republic.
Barbara K. Charbonneau-Dahlen PhD, RN, was an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. She was a tenured professor of nursing who advocated for indigenous recruitment into the nursing field and fought for those who have experienced sexual abuse. She earned both a Bachelor's and master's degree from University of North Dakota (UND). She completed the Family Nurse Practitioner certification program at UND and earned a doctorate from Florida Atlantic University Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing. She was a professor at Minnesota State University Mankato in the School of Nursing until her passing.
The Bde Maka Ska Public Art Project is part of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's Bde Maka Ska–Harriet Master Plan. In parallel with the restoring the name of Lake Calhoun to its Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska, a public art project was initiated to commemorate Ḣeyata Oṭuŋwe, a 19th-century Dakota agricultural community on the southeast bank of Bde Maka Ska, and its founder, Dakota leader Maḣpiya Wic̣aṡṭa.
Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community is a Dakota community centered in Mendota, Minnesota. The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community (MMDTC) is an organization that works to continue Dakota cultural practices and tribal organization. Officially formed in 1997, the MMDTC has sought to be a federally recognized tribe by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as offering community activities such as pow wows, Dakota language and culture classes, and partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society.
The Poet Laureate of Minnesota is the poet laureate for the U.S. state of Minnesota.
Bdóte is a significant Dakota sacred landscape where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, encompassing Pike Island, Fort Snelling, Coldwater Spring, Indian Mounds Park, and surrounding areas in present-day Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. In Dakota geographic memory, it is a single contiguous area not delineated by any contemporary areas' borders. According to Dakota oral tradition, it is the site of creation; the interconnectedness between the rivers, earth, and sky are important to the Dakota worldview and the site maintains its significance to the Dakota people.
Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota is a non-fiction book on Dakota history in Minnesota which focuses on the Dakota connection to location and language. The book is written by Dakota historian and professor Gwen Westerman and Bruce M. White, with a foreword by Glenn Wasicuna. It was published in 2012 by Minnesota Historical Society Press.