The Indigeneity Lab at Marquette University was born out of Native student activism on campus in 2020, when Native students voiced long-standing concerns about the imagery of the University Seal and the lack of support and resources for Native students on campus.
In 2021, the Indigeneity Lab was founded by Dr. Samantha Majhor (Dakota and Assiniboine), Dr. Jacqueline Fontaine Schram (Sagkeeng First Nation) and Dr. Bryan C. Rindfleisch, with generous funding from the Joerres Family Fund for Experiential Learning. Since its founding, the Indigeneity Lab has employed thirty student researchers on ten different cross-disciplinary research projects.
With faculty mentorship, the Lab’s student researchers have engaged in a variety of scholarly outputs, including publishing peer-reviewed articles, presenting at university, state, national, and international academic conferences, and collaborating with Native communities and tribal nations. We are honored the scholarship and activism of the Lab’s student researchers has been locally and nationally recognized, with grants and awards from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, and more.
Presentations
Academic conferences
American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Conference (2021)
Critical Indigenous Studies Symposium, Marquette University (2021)
Midwestern History Conference, Midwestern History Association (2022)
Seven Generation Inter-Tribal Leadership Summit, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University (2022)
Seven Generation Inter-Tribal Leadership Summit, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University (2023)
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Conference (2024)
Wisconsin Indian Education Association Annual Conference (2025)
Timeline
Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2020
The Native American Student Association, together with student, faculty, staff, and community supporters, organize a ‘teach-in’ on campus about Indigenous history and culture and their representations at the University Seal. The students also present their demands for changes at the university, first among them being a new University Seal.
Spring 2021
The Indigeneity Lab is founded by Dr. Samantha Majhor (Dakota and Assiniboine), Dr. Jacqueline Fontaine Schram (Sagkeeng First Nation) and Dr. Bryan C. Rindfleisch, together with Dr. Martin St. Maurice and Dr. John J. Su. Soon afterward, they are joined by Dr. Michael Schläppi. In Summer 2021, the first cohort of student researchers begins.
Fall 2021
The university adopts a Land and Water Acknowledgment to recognize the long history of Native peoples and nations that lived on and stewarded the land and water where the university now resides. The acknowledgement was drafted with help from Native students and Indigeneity Lab members, together with members of the university’s Council on Native American Affairs.
Spring 2022
The university approves a new University Seal that more accurately represents the role of the Indigenous nations that guided Father Marquette on his journey. The new University Seal was developed with help from Native students and Indigeneity Lab members, together with members of the university’s Council on Native American Affairs and Milwaukee-based Oneida artist Kristelle M. Ulrich who contributed to the creative design.
Indigeneity Lab members and university leaders travel to the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation where the leaders of Marquette and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University sign an agreement establishing a path for students to transfer from the tribal university to attend Marquette.
Fall 2022
Indigeneity Lab faculty and staff are honored as Faculty All-Stars at Native American Heritage Night at the Marquette Men’s Basketball game. The award recognizes outstanding faculty for their service to the university as well as contribution to their academic field.
Indigeneity Lab member Alex Gambacorta travels to the Apsáalooke Reservation in Pryor, Montana, to begin sharing records from the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Archives (located on campus in Raynor Library’s archival collections) with members of the Crow nation, including photographs and documents of relatives and family members.
Spring 2023
The university unveils the marker commemorating the university’s Land and Water Acknowledgment located on campus at Eckstein Common. Milwaukee-based Oneida artist Kristelle M. Ulrich contributed to the creative design.
Indigeneity Lab members return to the Apsáalooke Reservation in Pryor, Montana, where records from the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Archives (located on campus in Raynor Library’s archival collections) are shared with more than 130 members of the Crow nation.
Fall 2023
Indigeneity Lab members host members of the Crow nation from the Apsáalooke Reservation at the university to visit the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Archives located on campus in Raynor Library’s archival collections.
Spring 2024
Indigeneity Lab faculty and staff win one of three 2024 Explorer Challange Awards to support reestablishing natural spaces, human connections, and relations of stewardship and care on the university’s Milwaukee campus.
Jo Ann Schedler (Stockbridge-Munsee) receives the university’s Professional Achievement Award. As a founding member of Marquette’s Council on Native American Affairs, she has strengthened the ties between the university and Native communities, promoting education and nurturing future leaders.
Fall 2024
Native community members lead Indigeneity Lab members in a wild rice blessing ceremony to mark the Lab’s reintroduction of wild rice to the Menominee River Valley in Milwaukee.
Spring 2025
The Indigeneity Lab and Center for Peacemaking on campus organize the first “Indigenous Solidarity Immersion Trip” by students, faculty and staff to the Stockbridge-Munsee Nation in northeast Wisconsin, led by Stockbridge-Munsee elder and Marquette alumna Jo Ann Schedler.