Lecture: The Manoomin Marsh Project
September 25 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Lecture: The Manoomin Marsh Project
Vaughn Public Library, third floor, Room 301
The Manoomin Marsh Project explores the intersection of ecological restoration, community engagement, and collaborative design, with a growing focus on how protection efforts have evolved into broader strategies for improving water quality. Through consultation with Tribal communities and partnerships with educators, conservation organizations, and local governments, the project develops creative approaches to reestablishing wild rice while inviting people into deeper relationships with the places they inhabit. This lecture traces the project’s evolution, the successes and setbacks encountered along the way, and how design, engineering, and collaborative making can strengthen both ecological restoration and the relationships among people that long-term watershed stewardship depends upon.
This talk is connected to Superior Rivers’ project on Prentice Park, Plant Relatives and Communities Healing Fish Creek Slough: A Community Led Approach to Restoration. Superior Rivers is removing aggressive non-local cattails who have overcrowded and outcompeted native species. Removing cattails provides more room and resources for native plants to grow and thrive. Superior Rivers will seed manoomin in the slough and the domes will help protect them. The Chequamegon Community can help cut invasive cattail or build domes during the month of September. Sign up for either volunteer opportunity below.
About the Speaker
Sara Alsum-Wassenaar is currently on staff and teaches at Grand Valley State University. She received an MFA in New Media Art at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sara was recently nominated for the Sustainability Champion Award, selected to conduct programming at the MDW Fair in Chicago and presented work at the CAA Conference in New York City.
Within the broader societal context her creative practice offers hope in a landscape marked by disparities. It centers on reimagining the historical extractive lens that has measured the value of the land and invites collective participation. At stake is the pursuit of spatial justice, policy reform, and community empowerment, achieved through strategic and participatory design interventions that promise to redefine the academic and societal landscape. (Co-written with collaborator Ramya Swayamprakash)
