Time Room# | All morning AM sessions will be held in various locations across campus, |
9– 11:00 AM TBD | Salve Making Workshop — Dennis & Donna Dunlap Join Dennis and Donna for a hands-on workshop on traditional herbal salve making. Participants will learn the process of crafting herbal salves using traditional methods, from selecting and preparing herbs to blending and finishing the salve, gaining practical, take-home knowledge along the way. This intimate, guided session offers a chance to connect with the plants and practices behind traditional Indigenous medicine. Registration is limited to 18 participants to ensure a hands-on experience for everyone involved. |
9– 10:00 AM Reynolds Recital Hall | Music as Medicine — Old Bridge Singers Join the Old Bridge Singers for an introduction to Indigenous drumming traditions, including the Pow Wow Big Drum, Hand Drum, and Haudenosaunee Water Drum. This session explores drumming and song as medicine and as a source of healing, connection, and spiritual grounding. Respectful participation is encouraged as attendees learn alongside the singers. |
9:30 – 11:00 AM Academic Mall
| Bagodowe as Medicine & Bagodowe Gift Game — RJ Smith & Chris Shawa RJ Smith and Chris Shawa host a Bagodowe Gift Game on the Academic Mall (weather permitting). Please dress accordingly as this is an athletic event. This session explores lacrosse as medicine, sharing the traditional origins and spiritual significance of Bagodowe. Traditional lacrosse sticks will be on hand, and sticks and jerseys are provided to participants. Bring a gift to the game, and note that a signed release is required to play. |
10– 11:00 AM Jamrich 1317
| Tea Readings — Dr. Bimadoshka Pucan Join Dr. Bimadoshka Pucan for a session on traditional tea readings, exploring this practice as a form of insight, reflection, and connection. Drawing on deep cultural knowledge, Dr. Pucan will guide participants through the tradition and its meaning within Indigenous ways of knowing. |
10-11:30 AM NMU Hoop House | Hoop House Medicines — Katy Pawlusiak Join Katy for a hands-on, plant-based presentation held inside the hoop house, where she'll showcase her knowledge of traditional and medicinal plants in a living, growing setting. Participants will get an up-close look at the plants themselves as Katy shares their uses, teachings, and significance. |
| 11:30 AM -12:00 PM | End of AM Sessions- Refreshment provided at Northern Center Ballrooms |
Time Room# | All afternoon PM Sessions will be held at the NMU Northern Center |
12-12:50 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Tony Duncan Performance Get ready for an unforgettable performance from award-winning Native American flutist and five-time World Champion Hoop Dancer, Tony Duncan! A once in a lifetime event, Tony starts the Indigenous Perspectives Symposium on Medicines with his mastery of intricate hoop patterns as they come alive in a dazzling display of rhythm, movement, and storytelling, set to the powerful sound of the flute. This is artistry in motion and a celebration of skill, spirit, and tradition. |
| 12:50-1:10 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Emcee – Andie Balenger Introduces Teal Lake Singers & Old Bridge Singers: Opening Song Opening remarks: Duane Bedell, President Bay Mills Community College Dr. Chris Olsen, President Northern Michigan University |
1:15-2:00 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Acts of Colonization and Health Disparities; Where do we find Sustainable Solutions in Medicine? — Dean S. Seneca, MPH, MCURP Historical and ongoing acts of colonization instigate significant social and health challenges for indigenous communities. Western medicine often ignores the structural causes of health disparities and neglects indigenous perspectives of health and healing. The Indigenous Interactive Trauma Reduction Model is a theoretical, native-informed framework for providers that centers safety, holistic well-being, and relationships. Indigenous healing must reconnect feeling secure with the physical and spiritual aspects of health. |
1:15-2:00 PM Peninsula V | Indigenous Foods as Medicine — Pamela Valdez, Marquette Food Co-op Join Pamela as this session explores the deep connection between traditional foodways and healing, highlighting how Indigenous food practices nourish body, community, and spirit. |
1:15-2:00 PM Founders Room | Mashkikiwan: Healing People and Wetlands — Destine Alvarado-Seymour, Wetlands Specialist, KBIC Natural Resources Department Our mashkikiwan relatives offer us many gifts. The plants around us promote our physical wellness by relieving ailments and strengthening our bodies. To ease our minds, they offer beauty and companionship. Our plant relatives support us humans, but also other plants, animals, and the entire ecosystems they engineer. The mission of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Natural Resources Department's Wetlands Program is to protect, enhance, and understand wetland ecosystems across the L'Anse Indian Reservation. Plants are some of our greatest teachers, and the Wetlands Program often relies on their teachings to understand and connect with wetlands through biological and ecological surveys. This presentation explores the ecological role of medicines such as cedar, sphagnum moss, bull rush, tag alder, and more. Wetlands Specialist Destine Alvarado-Seymour will share how surveys such as Floristic Quality Assessments and Michigan Rapid Assessment Methods for Wetlands demonstrate the importance of our mashkikiwan and how they drive the unique functions and values of each wetland. |
| 2:00-2:10 PM | Networking Break |
| 2:10-2:55 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | "When Sharing Is Caring and When It Isn't" — Lisa Kahaleole Hall, PhD This presentation explores the promises and perils of collective identities, of generosity and appropriation, and cultural genocide through "appreciation." The term "Indigenous" has served both as a call-in for different nations, peoples, and tribes to come together in alliance, sharing similarities and differences, and as an opening through which those with no legitimate claims to the collective have been able to enter. Cultures of generosity have been essential to the survival of Indigenous peoples and their relations, yet have also been turned into weapons of dispossession and replacement by those who abuse that generosity. Indigenous medicines sustain communities and their relations, raising the question of how they can be protected in the face of rampant distortion and misuse. |
2:10-2:55 PM Peninsula V | Jingle Dress — Michelle Reed, Founder of Native Dance Fitness & Co-Founder of Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company Join Michelle for a presentation on the Jingle Dress, exploring its origins, meaning, and role as a dance of healing within Indigenous communities. |
| 2:55-3:05 PM | Networking Break |
| 3:05-3:50 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Traditional Medicine Program — Lori Gambardella (Waasinode Ndizhinikaaz), Traditional Medicine Supervisor, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe Health Center This presentation covers a variety of topics within the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe Health Center's Traditional Medicine Program, including the role and purpose of the program, medicines, ethical gathering and harvesting practices, and the use of medicines in ceremony. Established in 1995, the program was the first tribal traditional medicine program in the United States to be integrated into a tribal health delivery system, and has since become a recognized model for traditional medicine programs offered by other tribes.
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3:05-3:50 PM Founders Room | Rez Metal as Medicine: A Conversation with Ghidora Join the members of Ghidora for an intimate conversation about why they've chosen Rez Metal as their medicine. This is a chance to meet the band, hear their stories firsthand, and learn what drives them to channel Indigenous identity, resilience, and tradition through their sound. An open discussion on motivation, artistry, and the healing power of music. |
| 3:50-4:00 PM | Networking Break |
| 4:00-4:50 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Indigenous Health PhD Program — Melanie Nadeau, PhD, MPH (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians) The Indigenous Health PhD program is the first of its kind in the world, designed to advance Indigenous health sovereignty through rigorous scholarship, culturally grounded pedagogy, and community-driven research. This presentation provides an overview of the program's vision, curriculum, and unique strengths — including its Indigenous-led faculty, high retention and graduation rates, and the national impact of its students and alumni. Participants will learn how the program cultivates leaders who are reshaping research, policy, and practice in Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities globally. |
4:00-4:50 PM Peninsula V | Herbs & Salves: A Discussion — Dennis & Donna Dunlap Join Dennis and Donna for a discussion-based session on traditional herbal knowledge and salve making. This conversation-style presentation invites participants to explore the history, uses, and teachings behind traditional herbs and salves, offering attendees an opportunity to ask questions, share knowledge, and learn through dialogue.
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| 4:50-5:00 PM | Networking Break |
| 5:00-5:50 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | Keynote Speaker Dr. Evan Adams Evan Tlesla Adams is a Coast Salish physician and actor from the Tla'amin First Nation near Powell River, BC, Canada. Dr. Adams brings a rare and powerful perspective to the stage — one that bridges the worlds of Western medicine and Indigenous knowledge, storytelling, and community healing. Dr. Adams is perhaps best known for his role as Thomas Builds-The-Fire in the Miramax film Smoke Signals, a portrayal that brought Indigenous voice and humor to audiences worldwide. Alongside his work in film, he has built a distinguished career in medicine, completing his Medical Doctorate at the University of Calgary and a residency in the Aboriginal Family Practice program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He was a Harkness Fellow at the John A. Burns School of Medicine in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, and currently serves as the Assessment Lead for the National Circle for Indigenous Medical Education (NCIME) in Canada. Drawing on decades of experience at the intersection of medicine, culture, and storytelling, Dr. Adams will speak to the deep knowledge of healing, community, and identity that has shaped both his medical practice and his life's work — offering a keynote grounded in the lived understanding of medicine as something far greater than clinical care. |
| 5:50 -6:00 PM | Networking Break |
| 6:00- 7:20 PM Northern Center Ballrooms | You're Invited: Indigenous Perspectives Symposium Dinner featuring The Old Bridge Singers Smoke Dance Demonstration Following Dr. Evan Adams' keynote, settle in for a Decolonizing Diet Inspired dinner featuring:
The Old Bridge Singers and Dancers will delight the audience with the sacred sounds of the Haudenosaunee water drum along with a Smoke Dance demonstration, bringing rhythm, movement, and living tradition to the table. Tickets & Pricing Registration closes September 22, 2026 — don't wait to reserve your seat. |
7:00 – 9:00 PM The Crib 401 N 3rd St, Marquette | Ghidora Live at the Crib Closing out the night, get ready for Ghidora!! A Rez Metal band hailing from the Hannahville Potawatomi Reservation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Guitarist Lexie Keshick fuses the raw power of heavy metal with the pulse of Native tradition, while drummer Jose grounds the sound in Hannahville rhythms, bridging powwow-inspired cadence with modern intensity. GHIDORA Rez Metal Expect a high-energy, unapologetically Indigenous performance that channels ancestral rhythm and resistance through raw sound and stage presence. This is Native music like you've never heard it — loud, proud, and rooted in legacy. Ghidora Live at the Crib | 7-9pm |