Monday, May 19, 2025
Brianna Torres, a Riverside University High School senior soccer forward and artist, describes herself as “a poet in everything I do.” Making a mural at Riverside with peers in the First Nations Studies College Access Program changed her as an artist.
“Talking to students in First Nations brings out my happiness,” Brianna said. “The mural created a feeling of partnership and teamwork. I realized my art can be shared with others.”
Yazmarie Swett-Morales, a senior at Riverside, painted for her family. She’s of Lakota ancestry and her younger siblings are Menominee. Together, they were raised in the Menominee tradition. Her siblings will attend Riverside someday.
When sophomore Donovan Pate looks at the completed mural, “I feel proud of the people who did it,” he said.
Last spring and fall, he and the other muralists were joined by Isabella Muro, a Riverside junior who says she felt happy contributing to something beautiful.
Access from a First Nations perspective
Milwaukee Public Schools First Nations Studies College Access Program provides individual and small group mentoring and academic enrichment, and it previews college and career opportunities for Native American students. A platform for cultural representation and expression, the program can look different across 24 participating MPS high schools.
“It’s unique to the needs of each school and individual student,” said Jody Bauer, who uses the program’s Expanding the Circle curriculum to teach weekly lessons across the district.
Site teachers mentor students during or after the school day at MPS sites such as Bay View, Reagan, and Hamilton. During tours of UW-Madison, College of Menominee Nation, and the Medical College of Wisconsin, students meet with cultural advocates and First Nations representatives from each campus. 
For National Native American Heritage Month, Riverside students shared stories of Native leaders during daily announcements. They’ve made fry bread, maple popcorn, and wild rice from Menominee Nation. In early 2024, Riverside seniors knew they wanted their final First Nations program project to make a statement: First Nations is not a story or history. We are here now.
Mural connects students, shares culture
Today, a four-foot-by-eight-foot mural outside Riverside’s main office focuses on the Milwaukee Public Schools land acknowledgment and the tribal seals of three Wisconsin First Nations whose people were the first to call Milwaukee home. First Nations Studies faculty wrote the land acknowledgment, which the Milwaukee Board of School Directors adopted in 2021.
“The point of many land acknowledgments, at their baseline, is to give honor and merit to land and cultures that have resided in spaces that are predominantly westernized,” Bauer explained. “First Nations Studies encourages students to recognize people and cultures beyond the acknowledgment itself.”
Everyone agreed the land acknowledgment was a must when Bauer and Riverside site teachers Christopher Kell, Mary Zietlow, and Tryphena Fischer proposed the mural. Students shared design ideas in a Google document.
District educators research and develop curriculum that infuses Native American and First Nations heritage, studies, and histories in lessons for kindergarten through grade 12. Through research and conversation, they helped the team decide clan animals would not be featured on the mural. What would: a braid of sweetgrass, birchbark scroll, and QR codes linked to the websites of the Menominee, Forest County Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk nations.
The students’ vision came to life during seventh period drawing and painting sessions. Art specialist teacher Kelli Wiest contributed design concepts, acrylic paint, and brushes.
Yazmarie is a theater artist who is more comfortable with a microphone than a paintbrush. She painted the mural’s Menominee seal, and she points it out to family who see her perform in Riverside productions such as “The Lion King” and “Cinderella.”
“I thought it was abnormal that we did not have something like this at Riverside,” she said, explaining that her school in Green Bay had a “Yes Room” for Native students, flags of Wisconsin’s 12 First Nations, and an Oneida teacher on faculty. “When we began talking about the mural, I knew it had to be done.”
Riverside’s site teachers are credited as contributing artists, along with Yazmarie, Brianna, Donovan, Isabella, and Class of ’24 graduates.
Fischer is impressed by the conversation and collaboration that led to the mural’s creation, and by its ongoing potential.
“The best part? It’s expandable,” Fischer said. “We’ve talked about having every graduate make their own seal and board when they graduate and place it around the mural. It brings us back to the present moment. These are nations that Riverside graduates come from and their journeys continue in perpetuity.”
Learn more about Milwaukee Public Schools First Nations Studies lessons, teaching and learning resources, and programming for all grades.