Mississippi Dialogues is a public art project elevating Indigenous knowledge and experience of the Mississippi River, in collaboration with the Nations whose homelands include the River. The destination is a series of large-format map panels to be installed in parks along the river, with an accompanying guidebook.

With support from Creative Capital Foundation.

With support from Anonymous Was a Woman in partnership with the New York Foundation for the Arts.

2023–26 Collaborators and partners
The Mississippi River
Ho-Chunk Nation Cultural Resources Division
  (Bill Quackenbush & staff)
Prairie Island Indian Community THPO
  (Franky Jackson, Noah White, Rylee Hince, & Meya Callstrom)
Iowa Tribe of Kansas & Nebraska THPO (Randy Teboe)
Otoe-Missouria Tribe THPO
  (Elsie Whitehorn, Kelene Deer, & Naomi Robedeaux-Quiroga)
Meskwaki Nation THPO
  (Tieranny Keahna)
Ben Spears, artist (Red Lake Nation)
Chloris Lowe III, artist (Ho-Chunk Nation)
The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation
Jessie Conaway
+ many knowledge holders who lent their voices to the maps

We are supported by
Creative Capital 
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant
NEH Cultural & Community Resilience Grant
    Awarded & congressionally approved, January 2025
    Terminated April 2025
Small Communities & Rural Placemaking Grant, Blandin Foundation
     (awarded to Prairie Island Indian Community)
Minnesota Arts Board (awarded to the Anderson Center)
Red Wing Shoe Foundation (awarded to Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance)
Guggenheim Foundation

And earlier support from
Yaddo, Art Omi, American Philosophical Society, CNAIR / Northwestern University, The Anderson Center, A Studio in the Woods, and the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund.



Media from the early days

Proximal Braveries, with Kelly Wisecup. For Indigenous Mississippi: Indigenous Art & Activism of the Mississippi River. A Humanities without Walls project.

Adaptations Residency video produced by A Studio in the Woods.