De Soto and Genoa, Wisconsin

Gathering on the banks of the Mississippi River, the seminar begins by acknowledging the colonial violence that unleashed the bio-geo-social transformation that we now call the Anthropocene. Black Hawk Park is near the site of the Bad Axe Massacre of 1832 in which the US Army and state militias killed 250 unarmed Sauk Indians, mostly starving women and children, as they attempted to flee to safety across the Mississippi River. The conflict erupted over agriculture: Sauk leader Black Hawk had lead the group across the Mississippi in May to replant their traditional agricultural fields in defiance of a fraudulent treaty. And the conflict resulted in agriculture: the “war” provided the cover to remove the Indigenous communities that paved the way to settler farms and statehood for Wisconsin and Iowa. This convocation will honor those who lost their lives and lifeways to the settler-colonial violence that unleashed the Anthropocene and examine the responsibilities this inheritance demands.