One of my favorite people of all time, longtime Menominee Indian leader and Wisconsin political activist Ada Deer, stopped by the office the other day just to say “hi” and bring me up to date on what she’s up to these days.
Ada, the first member of the Menominee Nation to graduate from the UW-Madison, officially “retired” last year frher job as director of American Indian studies at her alma mater, a job she assumed after serving in Bill Clinton’s administration as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
….She’s now 72, but hasn’t slowed down a bit. In fact, she’s taken up a new cause: Wisconsin’s overburdened prison system, which is consuming so much of the state’s resources.