In person: Dreaming Our Futures: Book launch with Brenda J. Child and Howard Oransky

Join us for the launch of Dreaming Our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Artists and Knowledge Keepers, with editors Brenda J. Child and Howard Oransky. With contributor and The Seed Keeper author Diane Wilson, they’ll discuss their new book, a beautiful collection of the art and life stories of regional Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe, who encompass a range of generations, professional experience, and genres.

Brenda J. Child is Northrop Professor of American Studies and former chair of the Departments of American Studies (2016–19) and the Department of American Indian Studies (2009–12). She is the author of award-winning books of American Indian history, including Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940, (1998), which won the North American Indian Prose Award; Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community, (2012); Indian Subjects: Hemispheric Perspectives on the History of Indigenous Education (with Brian Klopotek, 2014). Her 2014 book My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation won the American Indian Book Award and the Best Book in Midwestern History. Child’s book for children, Bowwow Powwow (2018), won the American Indian Youth Literature Award for best picture book. She served as a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian and was President (2017–2018) of the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. Child was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota where she served as a member of a committee writing a new constitution for the 12,000-member nation.

Howard Oransky became Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in 2011. Prior to that, he was Director of Continuing Education at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2008–2011) and, prior to that, he was Director of Planning at Walker Art Center (1994–2008). After living in New York for ten years, he moved to Minnesota in 1994. He was born in Los Angeles.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is the author of The Seed Keeper. She is also the author of a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the One Minneapolis One Read program, as well as a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, which was awarded the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her most recent essay, “Seeds for Seven Generations,” was featured in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Wilson has received a Bush Foundation Fellowship as well as awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the East Central Regional Arts Council. In 2018, she was awarded a 50 Over 50 Award from Pollen/Midwest. Wilson is the executive director for the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people. She is a Mdewakanton descendent, enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation, and lives in Shafer, Minnesota.