Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative

Brian Jackson is an assistant professor on the faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Epidemiology and Social Sciences and the President of the Wisconsin Indian Education Association. He is also a current Wisconsin Humanities board member. He is the former Cultural Connections Coordinator at Lac du Flambeau Public School and has years of experience working with students and families as an advocate for Native education and cultural inclusion. He developed the American Indian Studies – Wisconsin Act 31 curriculum used as the guiding principle throughout Wisconsin’s public school system.

Alton “Sonny” Smart is an Anishinabe educator who occupies many roles in native and non native communities. He is first and foremost a father, husband, son, uncle, and grandson. He is a Tribal Judge; a United States Army (Airborne) Vietnam Veteran; He holds positions on Ojibwa ceremonial Big Drum and Midewiwin medicine societies. He is a member of the Band River Band of Chippewa of Wisconsin, where he was born into the Fish Clan. His spiritual names of Ozaawaa Na quad and later a Menominee tribal name of Notnowgiishick, when he was adopted into the Menominee tribe.

Sonny is also a former Wisconsin Humanities board member. You can read more about Sonny Smart’s work and other contributions here.

Dr. J P Leary (Cherokee/Delaware) serves as an Associate Professor in First Nations Studies, History, and Humanities, as a member of the graduate faculty in the Professional Program in Education, and as a faculty affiliate with the Education Center for First Nations Studies. He regularly teaches a variety of courses including Introduction to FNS: The Tribal World, American Indians in Film, Mohican Ethnohistory, First Nations and Education Policy, and the FNS Seminar. His primary research interests relate to curriculum policy, the history of education, and the representation and self-representation of Native people in education and popular culture.

Dr. Arijit Sen is a historian of everyday places and ordinary people. He examines the cultural landscapes of immigrant communities and interprets cities from the bottom up by engaging the voices and histories of urban communities traditionally ignored in official narratives. In 2022 he was inducted as a Fellow in the Society of Architectural Historians. 

Sen has directed public history and preservation fieldwork projects in Milwaukee, Chicago, Calgary, and New Orleans. Since 2012 he has directed the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school, a public humanities project that engages students, scholars, and community members in a collaborative exploration and documentation of the history and heritage of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods. The field school is currently partnering with the Newark-based Humanities Action Lab to contribute to “Climates of Inequality,” a traveling exhibit on environmental justice. 

You can read more about Sen’s published work and other contributions here.

Sapatis Menomin is an enrolled member of the Forest County Potawatomi Nation and is also Menominee and Oneida. He was the former Community Powered Project Coordinator in the Forest County Potawatomi community. Together with his community, he worked on a traditional lacrosse revitalization project that helped revive and introduce traditional lacrosse back into the community. He is a father and husband within his amazing family. He has a B.A. in First Nations Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and is currently working with Bodéwadmimwen Ėthë tėk a Potawatomi language nonprofit as a Grants Manager. He is excited to be advising this Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative (CPTHI).  Here, he hopes to use his background with Tribal communities to help guide and build this initiative into an impactful program for Wisconsin Tribal Nations and their members.

Chrissy is the Director of Community Powered at Wisconsin Humanities. Community Powered is an initiative that puts the humanities tools of history, culture, and storytelling in the hands of Wisconsinites through training and educational programming. Chrissy has a PhD in Folklore Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She spent over ten years teaching folklore, writing, oral history, and other humanities courses at the college level in both Wisconsin and Virginia. Her research explores how communities create connections and relationships using foodways and storytelling and has appeared in Narrative Culture, Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture, New Directions in Folklore, and Cultural Analysis. Chrissy is also a co-founder of WiseFolk Productions and content creator for Folkwise.