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What is a BioBlitz?

A BioBlitz is part contest, part festival, part educational event, and part scientific endeavor where MPM brings together a group of scientists in a race against time to see how many species they can count in a 24-hour celebration of biodiversity in a Wisconsin natural area.

The public is invited to observe the scientists’ activities, to interact with them, and to participate in other activities that are presented by the Museum and a host of invited nature-oriented organizations.

Peter French donated 51 Ndyuka artifacts to the MPM in 1945, constituting the vast majority of Suriname artifacts in the collection. These items included wooden food stirrers, combs, hammocks, calabash utensils, a baton, a laundry beater, and a white clay (pemba) sample. Unfortunately, not much is known about the life or work of this particular source.

Potawatomi Culture

Potawatomi speak a language of the Algonkian language family and have lived in the Great Lakes region for at least four centuries. Throughout their history, the Potawatomi have moved and been moved many times, but their aboriginal territory was in Michigan’s lower peninsula. Oral traditions of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Ottawa assert that at one time, all three tribes were one people who lived at the Straits of Mackinac.

Cosmic Curiosities

“In the year 1456...a Comet was seen passing retrograde between the Earth and the sun...
Hence I dare venture to foretell, that it will return again in the year 1758.”
- Edmond Halley

Comet Ramblings

Works Cited: 05/24/2011 (Modified January 2013)

Works Cited and Additional Resources:

Altorfer, Kurt R. Die Prähistorischen Feuchtbodensiedlungen von Wetzikon-Robenhausen: Auswertung der Altgrabungen Jakob Messikommers 1858-1917. Lizentiatsarbeit, Universität Zürich, 2000.‡

A world-class team has been assembled to design and construct the Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin.

Unique to this particular project, the full team has been collaborating since the beginning, building on the ideas and expertise of each team member and each firm. The team kicked off the project with a tour of Wisconsin, which proved to be instrumental to grounding the project in the natural wonders and diverse cultures found across the state.

The 12 samplers of the ABCs of Schoolgirl Samplers exhibition are drawn from more than 40 examples within the Milwaukee Public Museum’s extensive textile and clothing collection. They are representative of school-related samplers during a narrow 66 year period of time, 1790-1856, and include examples from the United States, England, Germany, and Mexico.

One of the food staples particularly enjoyed by the Ojibwe and Menominee was wild rice. 

Wild rice is not a true rice, but rather a cereal grass -- Zizania aquatica -- which grows in shallow lakes and streams. It ripens in late summer, usually from the middle of August to early September. Native people in the Great Lakes boiled rice and ate it with corn, beans, or squash. Meat, a small amount of grease, or maple sugar was often added for seasoning. As a treat, it was occasionally parched like popcorn.