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Turtle Island Confederacies: Relationships and Balance

Roots of Democracy Series

Thursday, February 11, 2021 - 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Democracy flourished on the North American continent well before any of the American founding fathers were born. Around 800 CE, the Three Fires Confederacy of the Anishinaabe and, later, between 1450 and 1660 CE, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy were established as models of participatory democracy, sustaining peace and cooperation between Indigenous people for many generations.

Watch a recording of the Wisconsin Academy's Roots of Democracy series discussion with three First Nations scholars who explore the conditions that gave rise to these two confederacies and the lessons we can learn from their approaches to democratic principles.

View a transcript of the recording

Visit our Roots of Democracy series page for other presentations and more information.

Subject Tags:

First Nations

Contributors

Richard Monette

Richard Monette is a Professor of Law at the UW-Madison Law School and director of the Great Lakes Indian Law Center. He is a former chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and served as director of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Margaret Ann Noodin

Margaret Noodin is a Head Start Director and Ojibwemowin Instructor with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Grand Portage, Minnesota. Until 2023 she was a Professor of American Indian Studies, Associate Dean of the Humanities, and Director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at UW-Milwaukee.

Rebecca Webster

Rebecca M. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin and an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in their American Indian Studies Department, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in their Tribal Administration and Governance programs.