12 Badgers recognized in Madison365’s annual Wisconsin’s Most Influential Native American Leaders of 2023

Twelve College of Wisconsin-Madison neighborhood members have been acknowledged on March 24 in Madison365’s “Wisconsin’s 33 Most Influential Native American Leaders for 2023.”

Madison365 is a nonprofit information publication that conducts annual lists of influential leaders from totally different racial and ethnic teams. The publication has been compiling the lists for over eight years and launched the Native American chief checklist in 2020, in response to Henry Sanders, the CEO and writer of Madison365.

“We wish to present folks succeeding,” Robert Chappell, govt editor of Madison365, mentioned. “A part of the rationale we do these is to encourage younger folks to aspire to be one thing they wish to reside.”

These recognitions initially began with Black leaders in 2015. As soon as the outlet established genuine relationships with folks from different racial and ethnic communities, the lists started to increase, in response to Chappell. A better variety of connections by way of previous lists motivated a sequence response the place the outlet may join with extra folks.

“Once you get a listing of people who find themselves actually invested within the communities — they’re working laborious to serve these communities — it turns into fairly clear who ought to get the popularity fairly shortly,” Chappell advised The Every day Cardinal.

Madison365 desires college students of colour to be impressed by these they see attaining nice issues, in response to Chappell. Sanders described how he desires children in Wisconsin to have position fashions to look as much as and likewise find out about these in the neighborhood.

“It’s an honor to be acknowledged amongst so many proficient people,” Carla Vigue mentioned, one in every of this 12 months’s winners. 

Vigue is a member of the Oneida Nation and the director of tribal relations at UW-Madison, in response to Madison365.

“In fact, I can consider many, many extra individuals who work very laborious for Indian Nation, together with these leaders who helped me alongside in my training and profession,” mentioned Vigue. “I’m very proud to be a Badger who works with the tribes and the Native neighborhood to create alternative for all.”

One other chief acknowledged was Dr. Carolee Dodge Francis, a member of the Oneida Nation and the primary Native American girl to chair a division at UW-Madison. Dodge Francis chairs the Civil Society and Neighborhood Research inside the College of Human Ecology. 

“I’ve all the time been targeted on being a mentor to college students, even proper after graduating from highschool,” Dodge Francis advised the Cardinal.

She defined how she received her calling for mentoring when she was a camp counselor at a Johnson-O’Malley summer time camp after highschool. This led to all of her skilled and tutorial positions having a robust mentoring element, she mentioned.

“Mentoring brings me such pleasure. Only in the near past, a Native American scholar I mentored from eleventh grade contacted me and let me know that she had two sturdy affords from outstanding medical faculties,” Dodge Francis mentioned. “This information all the time brightens my day, I can solely think about how the mother and father really feel — most likely doing the comfortable dance.”

The Wisconsin Indian Training Affiliation’s Annual Awards convention will likely be hosted in Madison from April 20-21, in response to Dodge Francis. The subsequent annual lists from Madison365 characteristic Asian American leaders in June and Latino leaders in September. 

Learn extra concerning the winners of 2023 under. 

The 12 leaders acknowledged:

Carla Vigue

Vigue is a member of the Oneida Nation and the director of tribal relations at UW-Madison. Vigue was beforehand director of communication, occasions and neighborhood engagement for the Nationwide Council of City Indian Well being in Washington D.C. She served as communications director for the Wisconsin Division of Veterans Affairs for greater than a decade. There, she applied a statewide technique for participating tribal veterans. 

Josie G. Lee

Lee is the director of the Ho-Chunk Nation Museum and Cultural Middle. She has 10 years of expertise as an unbiased curator, artist and museum marketing consultant. The Discipline Museum, La Crosse County Historic Society and Overture Middle for the Arts have featured Lee’s work. 

Nicole Soulier 

Soulier is a member of the Unhealthy River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa from the Unhealthy River Indian Reservation. She is the director of faculty entry and expertise packages at Madison School.

Kip Ritchie

Ritchie is the chief operations officer of the Potawatomi Enterprise Growth Company. He has additionally served as president of Greenfire Administration Service since 2014. 

Richard Monette:

Monette is a professor of regulation and has served as director of the Nice Indian Legislation Middle at UW-Madison since 1992. From 2000-03, he took depart to function CEO and chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. Within the late Eighties, Monette labored as a workers legal professional with the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. He served as president of the Nationwide Native American Bar Affiliation and sat on the Environmental Safety Company’s Nationwide Environmental Justice Advisory Council’s Indigenous Folks’s Subcommittee. Monette additionally served as Chief Choose for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Particular Choose for the Trial Court docket of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Particular Choose for the Ho-Chunk Nation. 

Melissa Metoxen

Metoxen is the assistant director of the Native American Middle for Well being Professionals at UW-Madison and has been working there since 2013. She is a member of the Oneida Nation and is from the Oneida and Inexperienced Bay space. 

Annie Jones, Ph.D.

Jones is a professor and group and growth and Tribal Nations specialist with UW-Madison’s Division of Extension. She is an enrolled member of the Menominee Nation and an affiliate school member with the Division of American Indian Research and Neighborhood and Environmental Sociology. Having labored for the Division of Extension for nearly 25 years, she served in a wide range of capacities together with affiliate dean, neighborhood growth educator primarily based in Kenosha and particular assistant to the dean for strategic course. Jones additionally co-leads UW-Madison’s UW-Native Nations effort and makes a speciality of community-based and participatory motion analysis.

Martina Gast

Gast is a member of the Pink Rock Indian Band, an Ojibwe First Nation. She is the founding father of Pipestone Legislation and makes a speciality of tribal employment regulation. She served as an in-house employment legal professional for the Forest County Potawatomi Neighborhood in Wisconsin. There, she was accountable for coordinating all human sources issues, and employment involving the tribe and its entities. 

Tim Annis

Annis is initially from Sheboygan and went on to work with UW-Madison’s Precollege Enrichment Alternative Program for Studying Excellence (PEOPLE) program. This program helps first-generation, low-income college students obtain their school aspirations. Now, he is a worldwide model supervisor for all of SC Johnson’s disinfection merchandise. 

Amanda White Eagle

White Eagle is the senior counsel to the Ho-Chunk Nation Division of Justice. She assumed this position in 2019 after serving 4 years because the Ho-Chunk Nation’s legal professional basic. White Eagle has 15 years of expertise in trial regulation, beforehand serving as a judicial officer, interim chief justice and affiliate choose, in addition to the tribe’s legal professional basic and govt director for the Ho-Chunk Nation Division of Justice. White Eagle has additionally served as tribal court docket choose or justice to tribal governments throughout america, together with the Wampanoag Judiciary, Prairie Island Indian Neighborhood Court docket of Appeals and Santee Sioux Nation Judiciary.

Carolee Dodge Francis, Ph.D.

Dodge Francis is a member of the Oneida Nation and the primary Native American girl to chair a division at UW-Madison. She is the chair of the Civil Society and Neighborhood Research Division on the College of Human Ecology. She has been a principal investigator for a number of Nationwide Institutes of Well being-funded grants and a member of a worldwide analysis committee that focuses on guaranteeing insurance policies and analysis practices for Indigenous persons are primarily based on fairness, equity and justice. 

Denise Blackdeer Wagner

Blackdeer Wagner is the board chair and cofounder at Greywolf Companions. This can be a industrial actual property agency with workplaces in Cottage Grove and Milwaukee. The Indigenous Enterprise Group acknowledged the agency in 2022 as Enterprise of the Yr.