Indigenous Peoples Celebration scheduled at UWEC-BC

Sep. 26—RICE LAKE — UW-Eau Claire—Barron County will host an Indigenous Peoples Celebration on Oct. 6 to honor the original inhabitants of the land where the campus now sits.

The celebration will begin at 12:30 p.m. with a "Thursdays at the U" presentation by Kristin Welch, titled "Healing and Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women."

The presentation by Welch, founder and executive director of Waking Women Healing Institute, is free and open to the public in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall, 1800 College Dr. The presentation will be livestreamed.

"We are lucky enough to work on some beautiful and bountiful land here in Rice Lake," said Abbey Fischer, UW-Eau Claire—Barron County campus outreach director and associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, in a university news release. "While it belongs to Barron County now, it originally belonged to Indigenous people. We are honoring the heritage of the land and remembering we weren't the first ones here. It's important to remind our campus community and our local community to honor those who came first."

Following Welch's presentation, a drumming ceremony and smudging ceremony will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the Meggers Hall Commons.

Welch and Paul DeMain, board chair of Honor the Earth, will be co-keynote speakers at the event.

Others scheduled to speak according to the university are UW System Board of Regents President Karen Walsh; Amy Blumenfeld Bogost, Board of Regents vice president; UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt; Catherine Emmanuelle, director of UW-Eau Claire's Center for Racial and Restorative Justice; UW-Eau Claire student Maddie Blong; and representatives of tribal nations of Wisconsin.

This will mark UW-Eau Claire—Barron County's second year of celebrating Indigenous Peoples.

For more information, contact Gary Wheeler at wheelew@uwec.edu.