Great Plains Anywhere: Ted Hibbeler

A conversation between Dr. Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Margaret Jacobs, Director of the Center for Great Plains Studies. Norby, the first full-time curator of Native art in The Met’s 153-year history, spoke about her vital curatorial work that foregrounds Indigenous perspectives and experiences. The “Centering Indigenous Voices in Museums" speaker series features Indigenous museum and cultural professionals who are working to change the narrative and elevate Native creative expression. This series is part of the “Walking in the Footsteps of our Ancestors: Re-Indigenizing Southeast Nebraska” project at the Center for Great Plains Studies, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

In this episode, Stephen Bridenstine, assistant director of the Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan, Kansas, talks about what the Flint Hills are, who cares for the land, and how people can experience this unique landscape. The Discovery Center's mission is to inspire people to celebrate, explore, and care for the Flint Hills with an array of exhibits and programs meant to educate about the geology, ecology, and cultural history of the area.

Legal experts Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii) spoke at the Center for Great Plains Studies on Nov. 17 about racism and reconciliation on Canada’s Great Plains. Sniderman and Sanderson’s “Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation” (Harper Collins, 2022), is the winner of the 2023 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize.

Jodi Voice Yellowfish (Muscogee Creek, Oglala Lakota, and Cherokee) spoke about the history and current day realities of the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women crisis on Oct. 24, 2023. Yellowfish is founder and chair of the Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women Texas Rematriate, a Dallas-based organization that helps Indigenous families search for and bring home missing and murdered relatives, to support and offer healing processes to the missing and murdered and their families, and to advocate for social change.

Rosalyn LaPier is an award winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, ethnobotanist, and professor at the University of Illinois. She works within Indigenous communities to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge, to address the growing climate crisis, and to strengthen public policy around Indigenous languages. LaPier is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.

Erica Larsen-Dockray, Cybele Moon, Steph Coley, Eve LaFountain, and Marissa Magdalena Sykes will discuss the historical women that inspired their work, their personal experiences as female artists, and the creative process behind the collaborative exhibition “Threads & Trails: Contemplations of Our Herstories.” This exhibition and panel were made possible by the generous support of the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Humanities Nebraska and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, Kimmel Charitable Foundation, Lincoln Community Foundation, Union Bank & Trust, UNL Research Council, and UNL Faculty Senate Convocations Committee.

The Center for Great Plains Studies and its Reconciliation Rising Project hosted the second annual Proclamation Day and Homecoming Ceremony for the Otoe-Missouria nation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Sept. 21.

José Francisco García presents a historical and contemporary perspective on almost 500 years of the Mexican-American presence in Nebraska and the Great Plains, from early Spanish conquistadors and explorers to later years’ traders, settlers, and immigrants.

Members of the community rally around welcoming back indigenous people to their tribal homelands. Learn more about the 2023 Otoe-Missouria Proclamation Day on University of Nebraska–Lincoln's campus at https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/otoe-missouria-center-for-great-plains-studies-earn-mellon-funding/

Vagell is a meteorologist and storm chaser who travels the country documenting and researching severe weather. Previously he worked as a meteorologist for The Weather Channel and doing on-air broadcasting for TV. As a storm chaser for the last decade, Vagell has visited all but a handful of counties in the Great Plains. We spoke with him about severe weather and why the Great Plains is ideal for storm chasing.