Anthropology

This year marks the 40th anniversary of a landmark ruling that reaffirmed the 1837 treaty rights of a northern Wisconsin tribe to hunt, fish and gather on ceded territory. In 1983, two brothers from the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Fred and Mike Tribble, were arrested for spearfishing outside the boundaries of…

Michael Witgen’s deep research of Indigenous and early North American history is evident in his 2021 book “Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.” A finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in History, the book examines colonization of a region now known as the Midwest and was…

Friends and colleagues are mourning the death of Wisconsin State Archeologist James Skibo, a man they say emobodied the ethos of a “people’s archeologist.” Skibo, 63, died Friday morning after a dive at Lake Mendota in Shorewood Hills. The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office is still investigating the cause and manner of his death, but…

Lulu Miller is known for her work on curiosity-driven radio shows and podcasts, including “Invisibilia” and “Radiolab,” where she is now a co-host. She is also the author of the book, “Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life.“ Her latest project, near and dear to her heart,…

It feels like everyone’s dad in Wisconsin plays the tuba. That was Elizabeth Renner’s impression after she moved to Madison from Chicago a year ago. Her other thought was that people are still very much into polka music. “Shouldn’t that have died out decades ago?” she said. Renner asked several people about tubas and polka,…

WHYsconsin is all about your questions. We believe community listening is empowering; and at the center of this community-driven reporting project is you. For each story, we try to connect with the person who asked the question. Our goal is to put the public in public radio, and one way to do that is by…

After a decade-long effort, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin brought home the remains of tribal ancestors. Since 2011, the Menominee have worked to return ancestral remains to Wisconsin from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The remains were unearthed in 1956 and have been in storage at the University of Michigan Museum of…

Wisconsin will soon have a new state park. Kind of. While the 22-acre Lizard Mound Park in Farmington was first designated as a state park in 1950, the property has been owned and managed by Washington County since 1980. But earlier this month, the park was transferred back to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources…

It was Tamara Thomsen’s first day off in a while. So the diving instructor and maritime archeologist chose to spend the day in one of her favorite places: underwater. It was a sunny afternoon in June, so visibility in Lake Mendota was good. Thomsen and a friend were following some fish along a wall about…

Winters in Wisconsin are long, no doubt. Which begs the question: How to pass the time? For Vietta Kampen, of Portage, there’s curling, the small-team sport, played on rectangular sheets of ice, where players slide stones toward a target on the opposite end. Kampen says it’s a small community tradition in Wisconsin. “There’s quite a…