Sharing Personal Narratives, Reshaping Societal Narratives: Angie Carter

Angie Carter is a writer, organizer, and sociologist whose work focuses on rural communities, agriculture, and movements for ecological and food justice. Originally from the land between two rivers, or what is now known as Iowa, she continues to remain engaged in the movements for ecological justice in the heart of what is now the commodified agricultural system. She currently lives in a very different watershed today – Lake Superior – where she works at Michigan Technological University as an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. She also serves as co-president of the Women, Food and Agriculture board and on the Western Upper Peninsula’s Food Systems Collaborative’s planning team.

Angie Carter has lived the majority of her life and continues to find much inspiration for her scholarly and creative work from the lands and waters known today as Iowa, taken through theft and false treaties by the US federal government from the Ioway, Meskwaki, and Sauk nations in 1838 and 1842. These lands and waters provided historic and seasonal homelands and hunting grounds for the Oceti Sakowin, Winnebago, Potawatomi, Ponca, Ottawa peoples, among others. Today, the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, or the Meskwaki Nation, own a settlement in central Iowa, the Omaha and Winnebago nations own lands in western Iowa and, in 2022, 7 acres in Johnson County, IA became the first lands formerly returned to the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Today, Angie lives along Lake Superior, on the ancestral and contemporary homelands of the Anishinaabe, ceded to the US through the Treaty of La Pointe in 1842 and now known as the western part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin. She is indebted to those who have cared for, since time immemorial, the lands and waters she knows as her childhood and adulthood homes. She works to unlearn colonial relations within human and more-than-human communities through her professional and personal lives.

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Visit The EcoTheatre Lab's website at ecotheatrelab.com for links to Angie's work and how to connect with her, the transcript for this episode, and more information about the podcast, production team, and The EcoTheatre Lab.

This podcast series is all about finding ways to talk about climate change with each other. The EcoTheatre Lab wants to also be in dialogue with our listeners!  Please let us know your thoughts on this episode through this brief feedback form (tinyurl.com/artofclimatedialogue)! 

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Thank you to our podcast funders:

Johnson Center for Land Stewardship Policy Emerging Leader Award and North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Graduate Student Grant.*

This podcast is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number 2021-38640-34714 through the North Central Region SARE program under project number GNC22-345. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Thank you to our podcast production team:

Vivian M. Cook - Producer, Host, and Editor

Rosie Marcu-Rowe - Editor

Moselle Nita Singh - Cover Artist

Omar de Kok-Mercado - Musician

Charissa Menefee, Taylor Sklenar, and Mary Swander - Consultants