Milwaukee Indian Summer Festival returns March 28-29 after seven-year hiatus

ICT reports that the Indian Summer Festival has returned to the Milwaukee area after a seven-year hiatus, opening with a Spring Powwow & Native Art Market at the Waukesha Expo Center. The original festival ran from 1980 to 2019 and served as an annual gathering for Milwaukee's 14,000 American Indian and Alaska Native residents, according to ICT News. Organizers spent two years planning the revival to recreate the event's community atmosphere, drawing hundreds of attendees, 24 vendors and participants for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included volunteers, sponsors and Waukesha’s mayor, Shawn Reilly.

The spring event featured Indigenous artists selling beadwork and drums alongside a powwow led by the Forest County Potawatomi Color Guard. Lloyd Ninham, an Oneida Nation of Wisconsin citizen and the festival's CEO, described the effort to restart the gathering as a massive labor of love driven by community persistence. Revenue generated from the spring event will be used to fund the upcoming three-day fall festival scheduled for late September.