The summer has gone by so fast. As it stands, there is one week til my paper is due and two weeks til I head home. Time really flew by and now I just realised how long its been since I posted. So much for a week by week recap lol, but I thought I’d put up some of my pictures (not that I took that many). I went with some of the project leads on a trip up north. We went to Ely then Boise Forte and then Grand Portage. The drive to Grand Portage was the best part because it was all along the North Shore on Lake Superior. Definitely a dejavu moment because of how similar it felt to drives along the Lake Michigan on the way to Petoskey.

I’m sitting in a cafe downtown right now, still working but getting closer to that ideal word count. This Wednesday we were at the Sandy Lake Memorial where Andrea and I canoed across the lake. We also had a preliminary poster presentation with our pals from Duluth and GLIFWC interns. It was good practice on talking about my project. Anyways, it was just a good time with the other interns and I can definitely say that I will miss the friends I have made this summer. So here’s to the next two weeks with these girls.

I’ll admit this week went by rather slowly compared to last week but it did feel good to not have to pack a bag for another trip. The week was spent working on readings and honing the focus of my research for this summer. Currently, I am reading about issues pertaining to intellectual property and tribal data protection, which is right up my alley! I am definitely excited to look into this since it applies to what I want to do in the future so well.

I didn’t take the time to mention a lot of the fun stuff I did in my last post, so I wanted to share those as well. The weekend was well spent, going to the movies on Saturday and hanging out at a food truck festival on Sunday. The best part though was that we stopped at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists exhibit. Free for Native audiences and curated by Native peoples, it was everything I could have wished for and more. When possible, the artist statements were translated to their language and their voices could be heard everywhere you walked. A particular favorite of mine was a reading of one of Joy Harjo’s poems. The recording of her was so much more special, especially after the news of her being named the U.S Poet Laureate. I’ll definitely admit to being on the verge of crying, both because of the themes presented in the exhibit but also because it was beautiful to see so many Indigenous women’s work in one place. Resiliency is in our blood and this exhibit was another reminder of that.

This week has been an equally busy and exhausting week, with Monday being the equally calm and boring eye of the storm. Trainings and readings took up my day before a BBQ at one of our mentors place where we met everyone on the project. Then it was time to pack up before we left at 7:00 in the morning for 3 days of field work. It was a four hour drive to the Lac du Flambeau reservation in Wisconsin, a solid two and a half hour drive from my home (so close, yet so far away). The first day we went straight to a site where I was able to watch the coring process and then begin learning about the different samples we would take and how to use the different methods. The next day we held a workshop at the same site for tribal members and I was able to actually get a core sample. Thursday, instead of coring, the other interns and I utilized our newfound skills in setting up and taking the samples from the cores. The days were long, but the good company and the intro to field work really made them fun.