#ethnic festivals

Milwaukee’s Indian Summer Festival (Part 2)

Indian Summer is noted as the “largest Native American gathering of its kind in the country” (https://www.indiansummer.org/). In our prior post, we noted that Milwaukee had its inaugural festival in September 1987. The pictured posters are from subsequent years of the festival and are included in the publicity materials within the collection (UWM Mss 250) along with materials that reference Education Day and the annual Winter Pow Wow at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. 

Milwaukee’s Indian Summer Festival is on-going and continues to be an event that is significant in educating and engaging the public with the history and culture of Milwaukee’s indigenous communities. As always, we acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.