UWSP Honors Native American Burial Ground with Mural Memorial

Written by: Delila Lyshik

On March 28, UWSP erected a mural painted by Christopher Sweet, an artist, and a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and White Earth Ojibwe tribes, to commemorate the burial ground beneath the campus. It is titled “The Wake and The Healing.”

Sweet’s mural took about two months to complete, and he worked on the panels individually. The painting stands 24 feet tall by 32 feet across at the Communication Arts Center.

In 2016, Dr. Ray Reser, an alumnus, professor, and archaeologist at UWSP, was given an article about indigenous burials from the 1930s. Soon after, he requested and succeeded in asking the Wisconsin Historical Society to recognize the UWSP campus as an uncatalogued burial ground in 2018.

Reser said, “The first step to the mural was finding out there were Native American burials here on campus.” He contacted Tommy Thompson, the former UW System president, to fund the mural.

Thompson allocated $30,000 to support the endeavor.

“I had spoken to many indigenous tribes and individuals, and they all felt there needed to be some monument to remember their ancestors,” Reser said.

According to Reser, formal funerals for indigenous tribes take over a year by tradition, and after the bodies were buried in the stone quarry that is now on campus, their tribal members never got to perform the proper funeral services for them.

He said, “Around 80 [indigenous] people passed from Scarlet Fever in the Mid-1800s, and Native American bodies were likely put into the old stone quarry that ran from Old Main to the health center.”

The mural pictures four graduates of the tribes: Menomonee, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, and Potawatomi. It has corresponding Native American beading pictured for those tribes represented on each graduation cap.

During his process, Sweet burned sage throughout working on the mural and asked the ancestors to bless him. He hopes the mural will be an awakening for them.

“I want my mural to encourage and inspire indigenous students throughout their careers at UWSP,” Sweet said.

Denise “Dee” Sweet, Christopher Sweet’s cousin, and inspiration for his artwork, wrote a poem for the mural.

Dee’s poem titled “Earth Diver” reads:
“Through chards of pots
And musky tangled roots
We swim the crushed soil
And clumps of clay to wind
our way from the underground.
Our hands reach for the sunlight
Like shimmering arrowheads
Voices emerging, dust to dust.
Still breathing our names
Still singing our songs.”

Karen Ann Hoffman, an alumnus of UWSP, worked with Dr. Ray Reser after her late husband’s passing. Around 2018, she and Reser started advocating for the burial ground to be recognized. She is a beadwork artist of the Haudenosaunee tribe.

“Most of the artwork from this tribe has been erased, both intentionally and unintentionally. As an advocate for Native American art, that bothers me,” she said. “I want to think about opportunities to uplift and bring to light other Native American artists.”

She pushed to have a call for art to the Native American artistic community to select a final piece of artwork for a commission to memorialize the burial ground

“[Sweet’s] paintbrush, his knowledge, and community are what inspired the mural. I hope that everyone, after seeing the mural, acknowledges daily [that] they walk over the grave of so many of our ancestors,” Hoffman said.

Following the debut of the mural, a traditional ghost feast took place on April 13 where the ancestors were brought food and drinks to give them a ceremony that they would have received if their burial was done properly. The formal unveiling of the mural is scheduled for May 5.

Delila Lyshik

News Reporter

[email protected]