Ho-Chunk honor anthropologist Lurie with gift of blanket

In addition to the honorary degree she received at UW–Madison’s commencement ceremony this spring, anthropologist Nancy Oestreich Lurie has been given a blanket designed by Truman Lowe, a professor of art who is on leave from UW–Madison. Lowe is serving as curator of contemporary art for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.

The Ho-Chunk Nation presented the blanket to Lurie, who is anthropology curator emerita of the Milwaukee Public Museum, on May 15 in thanks for her research and lifelong support of the Ho-Chunk and other indigenous nations. The gift of a blanket is a high honor in many American Indian cultures.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian commissioned Lowe, a Ho-Chunk member, to design a collector’s-quality blanket in recognition of the museum’s opening in September. Lowe named the blanket design to honor his mother, Sauninga, which means “The Shining One.” Lowe based the pattern on traditional ribbonwork she used.

Lowe, who is from the area around Black River Falls, is an internationally recognized artist whose abstract works in metal and wood are inspired by elements of nature and his ancestral culture. He has exhibited at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, Ontario, and the Wright Museum of Art at Beloit College in Wisconsin. One of his large outdoor sculptures was included in an exhibit at the White House in 1998. The University of Wisconsin Press recently published “Woodland Reflections: The Art of Truman Lowe,” in which Beloit College associate professor of art history Jo Ortel explores Lowe’s art and influences.

Lurie earned her bachelor of arts degree in anthropology in 1945 from UW, her master’s degree in 1947 from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. in 1952 from Northwestern University. She served as Milwaukee Public Museum’s chief curator of anthropology from 1972-1992.

Because of Lurie’s interests as a young child, her father told her she should become an anthropologist. “I knew when I was 6, thanks to my father’s perspicacity,” she says.

Two years later, he took her to the Milwaukee Public Museum “to meet some real anthropologists,” she recalls. From then on, her future was set.

Lurie edited the book “Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Woman” (University of Michigan Press, 1961), the first autobiography of an American Indian woman. That project began a lifelong involvement with the Ho-Chunk Nation.

She assisted Helen Miner Miller, a Ho-Chunk member, to write the Ho-Chunk’s first grant to the Social Security Administration for a self-survey to use as the basis for planning community improvements.

Beginning in 1954, Lurie served as an expert witness to further cultural and political goals of the Ho-Chunk and eight other American Indian groups at the U.S. Indian Claims Commission hearings. She has served on the anthropology faculties at the University of Michigan and UW-Milwaukee.

“Nancy was adept at learning Ho-Chunk words and cultural ways. With her talent, respectful ways and use of Indian humor, she gained the hearts of many,” says Janice Rice, a UW–Madison senior academic librarian and Ho-Chunk member.

“She was treated with honor and given a Thunder clan name, Naw-jee-jay-winga (Alights on a Tree); however, she is affectionately known among the elders of our communities as Nancy-ga,” says Rice, who helped organize the gift of the blanket and an honorary brunch sponsored by American Indian Studies and the Department of Anthropology at UW–Madison, the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Ho-Chunk Nation.

The National Museum of the American Indian is producing Lowe’s blanket in collaboration with Pendleton Woolen Mills company, which sells the blanket through its catalog under the heading “Smithsonian Ribbon Blanket.” It is also available from the museum, with a portion of the proceeds going toward its educational programs.