Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin (CHEW)
Goodman Community Center-Ironworks 149 Waubesa St., Madison, Wisconsin 53704
press release: “Furrows Beneath the Forest: A History of Sustainable Menominee Indian Agriculture,” presented by Bill Gartner
Most academics and government agencies characterize ancestral Menominee peoples as hunter-gatherer-fishers, but archaeological excavations and soil analyses on the Menominee Reservation indicate that ancestral Menominee peoples also planted fields maize, squash and sunflowers by ca 850 AD. They developed a sophisticated agroecological system centered on raised field agriculture and rotational agroforestry over the next millennium. Moreover, they did so through several periods of environmental change. The fur trade, settler colonialism and the post-reservation political economy largely obliterated traditional food production by the 20th century. Today, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin’s (MITW) Culture Camp initiative seeks to produce local, healthy, and culturally appropriate foods by reviving and modernizing their traditional food production methods.
This presentation, sponsored by the Culinary History Enthusiasts of Wisconsin (CHEW), is free and open to the public. For more information, visit http://www.chewwisconsin.com/
Bill Gartner is a senior lecturer and research scientist in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include geoarchaeology, agricultural origins and landscapes, food sovereignty, human impacts to the environment and indigenous cartography. Bill is currently working on a participatory research project with the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin (MITW); it concerns the history of ancestral Menominee raised field agriculture and agroforestry in northeast Wisconsin and its implications for sustainable food production today.
Please join us at 7:15 pm at the Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa St., Madison, WI 53704; 608-241-1574. For more information, visit the CHEW website at
http://www.chewwisconsin.com/ or visit our Facebook page. To get on the mailing list, or for additional information, email Joan Peterson at info@eatsmartguides.com or Terese Allen at tallen@gdinet.com