Walking in the Footsteps of our Ancestors (Ahadada Wathigre Hįnéwi Ke) is a joint project of the Center for Great Plains Studies and the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma that aims to promote healing and reconciliation in southeast Nebraska by reconnecting the Otoe-Missouria to their homelands and engaging non-Native people with the history and ongoing presence of the Tribe and other Indigenous peoples in our region.
A major component of the project is to involve young people in the work, so project leaders led a trip for Otoe-Missouria youth during the first week of August 2025.
About 30 Otoe-Missouria young people and chaperones visited Lincoln during the trip led by project Co-Director Christina Goodson.
On Friday, Aug. 1, the Lincoln Indian Center hosted the group for a teepee raising workshop and community dinner with local elders, the Lincoln Public Schools' Trauma Warriors youth group, the UNL Indigenous student group, UNITE, and UNL administrators. On Saturday morning, the group participated in an animation workshop at UNL's Johnny Carson School for Emerging Media Arts taught by Erica Larsen-Dockray. On Saturday afternoon, Lena' and Marci Black led a zine making workshop at the Great Plains Art Museum.
On Sunday, the group visited the Indigenous garden the project is growing at Prairie Pines Nature Reserve before visiting the site of a new Lincoln park that will contain Otoe-Missouria ceremonial ground. In the afternoon, UNL Outdoor Adventures led a group kayaking excursion at Pawnee Lake.
On Monday morning, the group toured UNL's City and East Campus before heading to Pipestone, Minnesota and then Wisconsin for holistic wellness activities with Ho-Chunk relatives.
Throughout the week, the group spent time reflecting in journals about their experience visiting the area.
Everyone had a great time in Lincoln, especially in the dorms, Goodson said. They also enjoyed going to Pipestone and spending some time with the Ho-Chunk tribe in Minnesota. "They changed so much in a week," she said. "They loved pretty much everything we did."
Cory DeRoin talked to the group after they returned home: "Their favorite part was all the adventures they got into, especially spending time on the lake."
