Dane County
recently purchased
165 acres
in the lower
Mud Lake
Natural Resource Area
and donated it
back to the Ho-Chunk Tribe
of Native Americans
in what they
are calling a
landmark conservation
partnership
with the Ho-Chunk Nation
and the Groundswell Conservancy.
I'm Erica Ayisi,
a reporter with
PBS Wisconsin.
Teejop, a word that means
four lakes in the
Ho-Chunk language.
A language that's
still alive and
spoken amongst the
Ho-Chunk Nation
since time immemorial
long before it
became Madison
and Dane County.
But through a series
of treaties in the 1800s
they were forcibly removed
from the area.
I spoke with
Bill Quackenbush,
the Ho-Chunk Tribal
Preservation Officer
who says they
lost their ability
to call this place home
and will use
this opportunity for
educational purposes
about ancestral
Ho-Chunk ways of living
preserve their burial grounds
and nourish their
medicinal practices.
Every Plant is a resource
right?
They say everything
our Mother Earth gifts us.
Because, like,
that is a form of medicine.
You just get to
find out what it is.
So you can smell that
I also spoke with
Groundswell Conservancy,
a community based group
that protects
natural resources.
but we didn't. Yeah.
they ended up being,
deadfall or tree falls
They are collaborating with
Ho-Chunk to protect
the lands ecological
and archeological significance
indefinitely.
If you want to know more
about this land back
acquisition for Ho-Chunk
and their plans
for the land
go to pbswisconsin.org
and click on the news tab.