Erin Hughes

A team from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Grand Rapids Public Museum, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, Culture Keepers Collective, and Muskegon River Watershed Assembly will create an online, interactive mapping experience and linked on-the-ground activities to engage decision-makers, residents, and Tribal members with the Maple River Restoration, which aims to re-open a 4.6-mile side channel of the Muskegon River—blocked by 1880s lumber barons—to support culturally important Manoomin (wild rice). We will use Mukurtu to experiment with cross-institutional infrastructure to protect culturally-sensitive materials about Ottawa persistence, leveraging open source digital and in situ placemaking activities to re-story Indigenous erasure and imagine together what Maple River might become.