Kickapoo Conversation
“I’m more interested now in figuring out how we collectivize our refusals of colonialism, and move beyond critique to world building or building the alternatives. That requires a coming together in ongoing, real world relationships.”
An intimate gathering on 160 acres of land in southwest Wisconsin, the Kickapoo Conversation is an annual autonomous seminar and workshop supporting the development of a place-specific platform for decolonizing, commoning, and resisting in the heart of Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. The inaugural conversation, held in 2017, focused on the question of land. What stories intersect in this place, and how has this land shaped their unfolding? What changes when land is understood as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations? What futures can be imagined when people start talking—and listening—to the land and each other? The five-day gathering included conversations, presentations, hikes, tours, meals, and a program design charrette. This process generated non-exclusive affinity groups to develop programming around three themes: habitation, education and inquiry. Future Kickapoo Conversations will serve as annual convergences for experimentation, learning, and regeneration on and of the land.