Wisconsin Conservation Voices

Wisconsin Conservation Voices brings people together to protect the Wisconsin we love. We work to improve public health, protect natural resources, and promote a robust democracy by connecting Wisconsinites with the policy making process and voting through education, advocacy, and nonpartisan voter participation techniques.

Wisconsin Conservation Voices' priority campaigns include: Clean Energy for All, Clean Water for All, and Democracy for All. Wisconsin Conservation Voices runs Wisconsin Native Vote, which works to combat historic voter disenfranchisement and contemporary barriers to voting by educating voters, registering people to vote, and working to improve policies that impact Native communities' access to the polls.

Testimonials

What can't be demonstrated in numbers are the interactions we have with the people we work with and the gratitude and trust that comes across due to the years we dedicated to building those relationships. Here's one inspiring story from our work ahead of the 2022 election.

On Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022, Native Vote Manager Dee Sweet was working as a poll observer when she saw Chief Buffalo (Robert Buffalo, Ojibwe), the hereditary chief of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa ready to cast his ballot. He was talking about his new Native Vote t-shirt to the poll worker, and how excited he was about voting after hearing a presentation Dee gave months before.

This was a significant moment and here's why: Chief Robert Buffalo is the great-great-great grandson to Kechewaishke, or the principal Chief Buffalo - the one who, at age 95, began his trip to D.C. in a birchbark canoe to have a sit-down with President Fillmore. This historic meeting was an unforgettable one for Wisconsin. That meeting led to the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, signed by the United States and the Ojibwe (or Chippewa) people, which established reservations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

What Dee witnessed was more than a man wearing our t-shirt. It was the Seventh Generation concept playing itself out. Chief Kechewaishke gave the Ojibwe people a permanent homeland. And now, generations later, Chief Robert Buffalo was casting his ballot with his future generations in mind.