Workshop & Excursion Leaders - Fresh Voices from the U.P.

Barbara is a Professor of Music and Director of Strings and Orchestra at Northern Michigan University. Barbara regularly instructs fiddling, classical violin and viola, and enjoys composing music and collaborating with local artists. She has been the Associate Concertmaster of the Marquette Symphony Orchestra for twenty-seven years, and a fiddle player and vocalist in the regional Irish folk ensemble, the Knockabouts, for about eight years. 

Barbara and her husband Tim enjoy attending the Hiawatha Music Festival each year to perform, host workshops, attend folk performances, and to dance all night.

Devi Lockwood is the Commentary and Ideas editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of 1,001 VOICES ON CLIMATE CHANGE, a book published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. Previously she worked as an editor and writer at the New York Times Opinion section and launched the Ideas section at Rest of World. She spent five years traveling in 20 countries on six continents to document 1,001 stories on water & climate change. 

You can read her writing in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, The Washington Post, Bicycling Magazine, Yale Climate Connections, and elsewhere.

Finn Ryan is a film director and media producer whose work focuses on stories of empowerment and revitalization around community, conservation, and the outdoors. He is currently producing media with Grassland 2.0, a project to support managed grazing in agriculture. In addition, Finn works with the Ho-Chunk Community History Project sharing stories of Teejop, the Four Lakes region, where he is based. He recently directed Ogichidaa Storytellers, a series of short films featuring Lake Superior Ojibwe treaty rights. 

Previously, Finn directed We Are Healers, a video project to inspire Native youth to become health professionals, and The Ways, a series on contemporary language and culture from Native communities around the central Great Lakes. He also produced and directed the Emmy Award winning Climate Wisconsin, a collection of multimedia stories and interactive data exploring local climate change impacts.

Finn worked as a high school special education teacher and co-founded an outdoor education program. He has a degree in special education and English, and a master’s in curriculum and instruction, all from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Jessica L. Thompson, PhD is an Associate Professor at Northern Michigan University. She teaches courses in public relations, new media and environmental responsibility, and is the founder and director of the Northern Climate Network. Thompson previously served as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP), "Building Place-Based Climate Change Education through the Lens of National Parks and Wildlife Refuges," and led an interdisciplinary and inter-agency team to develop climate change education and engagement tools for national parks and wildlife refuges.

She is the author of two books: Interdisciplinary Research Team Dynamics: A Systems Approach to Understanding Communication and Collaboration in Complex Teams (2008) and America's Largest Classroom: What We Learn from Our National Parks (2020), an edited collection of chapters and case studies about place-based learning in National Parks.

Linnea Bemis is a tribal citizen of Mashkiiziibiing (Bad River) and a descendant from Asiniinsikaajiigibiig of Keweenaw Bay. She has spent her life traveling along her homelands near Gichigami (Lake Superior) within the 1842 Treaty of LaPoint. Her academic journey led me back to Gichi-namebini Ziibing (Marquette) for a degree in Native American Studies with a minor in biology. She finds balance by reconnecting with Anishinaabemowin (language) and by celebrating her relationships with Anishinaabewakiing (the Great Lakes Northwoods).

Linnea is currently working with the Center for Native American Studies at NMU and the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy for the Dead River Community Forest Project to identify and create an interdisciplinary Anishinaabeg-education outdoor learning environment that connects Traditional Ecological Knowledge with western studies for a diverse and complex understanding of her homeland relatives in Anishinaabewakiing.

Dr. Martin Reinhardt is an Anishinaabe Ojibway citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians from Michigan. He is a tenured professor of Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University. He is the president of the Michigan Indian Education Council, and the lead singer and songwriter for the band Waawiyeyaa (The Circle). 

His current research focuses on revitalizing relationships between humans and Indigenous plants and animals of the Great Lakes Region. He has taught courses in American Indian education, tribal law and government, and sociology. 

He has a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the Pennsylvania State University, where his doctoral research focused on Indian education and the law with a special focus on treaty educational provisions. 

Martin serves as a panelist for the National Indian Education Study Technical Review Panel and as the primary investigator for the Decolonizing Diet Project. He has also served as Chair of the American Association for Higher Education American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus, and as an external advisor for the National Indian School Board Association. He also holds both a Bachelor's and a Master’s degree in Sociology.

Norma Froelich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences at Northern Michigan University. She teaches courses in meteorology, climate science, physical geography, and energy & the environment. She has a PhD and MS in Geography from Indiana University and BS in Astronomy & Geophysics from the University of Western Ontario.

Her research uses a physics-based perspective to investigate interactions between land surfaces and the atmosphere. She is a lifelong self-powered outdoor adventurer, as a hiker, skier, canoeist & kayaker, rock climber, and mountain biker.

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work  has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press 2015)  and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called “Operation USA” through the Baltimore based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her third collection, Waterbaby, is out from Copper Canyon Press. She was a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop from Spring 2021/ to Spring 2022.

Sarah Mittlefehldt has been holding down the low end since 2003. She has played upright bass in a number of bluegrass, old time, and country bands including Whiskey Friday, The Honey Buckets, The Virginia Pigdogs, and most recently, Cloverland. 

When she is not setting a steady rhythm on bass, Sarah Mittlefehldt is Professor of Environmental Studies & Sustainability at Northern Michigan University, author of Tangled Roots: The Appalachian Trail and American Environmental Politics (University of Washington Press, 2013), and several articles on land use change, energy policy, and environmental history. 

In addition to her music, teaching, and scholarship, she serves as chair of the City of Marquette’s Planning Commission.