Open Job Listing at the Niibi Center

Job Description: Co-Executive Director, Operations and Development, Niibi Center The Niibi Center is a repository of Anishinaabe culture and knowledge to protect and advance our prophecy, sovereignty, and cultural survival.…

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VIDEO: Dr. Aimée Craft Keynote – Second Annual Anishinaabe Law Conference

Dr. Aimée Craft is an Associate Professor at the Faculty Law, University of Ottawa. She is a lawyer from Treaty One territory in Manitoba and is of mixed Indigenous (Anishinaabe-Métis) and settler ancestry. She holds a University Research Chair Nibi miinawaa aki inaakonigewin: Indigenous governance in relationship with land and water. Craft is an internationally recognized academic leader in the area of Indigenous laws, treaties and water. Dr. Craft had to Zoom in due to COVID. Filmed in Mahnomen, MN on the White Earth Reservation on June 24, 2024. The Second Annual Anishinaabe Law Conference was sponsored by the Niibi Center.

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VIDEO: Dr. Darren Ranco Keynote – Second Annual Anishinaabe Law Conference

Darren Ranco Darren J. Ranco, PhD, a citizen of the Penobscot Nation, is a Professor of Anthropology, Chair of Native American Programs, and Faculty Fellow at the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine. He has a Master of Studies in Environmental Law from Vermont Law School and a PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University. Dr. Ranco had a family emergency and had to Zoom in.

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VIDEO: Judge Korey Wahwassuck Keynote – Second Annual Anishinaabe Law Conference

Korey Wahwassuck (Cree) serves as a Minnesota District Court Judge for the Ninth Judicial District. Judge Wahwassuck previously served as tribal court judge for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Tribal Court, was a founding member of the first Joint Tribal-State Jurisdiction Wellness Courts in the nation and authored “The New Face of Justice: Joint Tribal-State Jurisdiction” for the Washburn Law Journal and “Building a Legacy of Hope: Perspectives on Joint Tribal-State Jurisdiction” for the William Mitchell Law Review. Judge Wahwassuck is also a member of Project T.E.A.M. (“Together Everyone Achieves More,”) helping other jurisdictions create tribal-state collaborative courts of their own.

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VIDEO: Steve Newcomb Keynote – Second Annual Anishinaabe Law Conference

Steven Newcomb is a Shawnee-Lenape scholar and author. He has been studying and writing about U.S. federal Indian law and policy since the early 1980s, particularly the application of international law to Indigenous nations and peoples. Mr. Newcomb is the Director of the Indigenous Law Institute, which he co-founded with Birgil Kills Straight, a Traditional Headman and Elder of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Together they have carried on a global campaign challenging imperial Vatican documents from the fifteenth century.

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Niibi Center’s Language Immersion Program continues to thrive

Ayaanikeshkaagewaad, the Niibi Center’s innovative, nature-based Ojibwe language immersion training program, is working to reclaim the Ojibwe language through a series of in-person and online Zoom sessions. The language reclamation work is led by our Language Program Director Biidaabanikwe (Kim Anderson), a White Earth enrolled member, Azhoobines (John Daniel), a Leech Lake enrolled member, and Waase (Monique Paulson), a White Earth descendant, all second language scholars. Funding from the Blandin Foundation, the Equation Foundation, Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC), and most recently the competitive NDN Collective grant program have supported our reclamation efforts over the past two years.

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Niibi Center holds healing space for Water Protectors at Water is Life Festival

Labor Day weekend was bustling in Petoskey, MI with the annual Water is Life festival on Saturday, as well an art build on Sunday and the Mackinaw Bridge Walk event on Monday that attracted around 20,000 people. Members of the Niibi Center’s staff, as well as a few of our collaborators, joined in on the festivities for the second year by hosting an informal Water Protector healing circle at the festival and supporting the art build and Bridge Walk.

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