This traveling seminar considers the ongoing geological, biological, and social formation of the Midwest in order to locate the historical, political and philosophical roots of the environmental crisis as it manifests in this territory. The seminar unfolds over five days in the landscape marked physically by the action of glaciers, shaped by the enduring presence of Indigenous nations, and defined politically by the colonization that intensified after the 1832 Black Hawk conflict. Bringing together Native leaders, local residents, scholars, activists, and artists for a series of lectures, tours, and conversations, the seminar aims to understand the origins and effects of the present engineered landscape and build alliances for more just and sustainable futures.

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.