About Jonnelle Walker
I am a FDL Ojibwe descendant born and raised in the central hillside of Duluth, also known as Misaabekong or the place of the giants. I am the fourth generation of my family to live along the ridgeline of Duluth, prompted by our removal from Wisconsin Point in the early 1900s. Much of my work examines the relationship between colonial infrastructure, land-theft, Indigenous erasure, and the world of living relations. I am interested in how Indigenous Knowledge Systems can inform our everyday engagements with land, our educational processes, and our expansive networks with earth relations.
My upcoming project, Footnotes of a Misaabekong Rugrat, is my version of a love letter to the hillside that raised me and highlights how Indigenous peoples in the hillside of Duluth strategically and artistically navigate colonial violence to create communities and networks of care in spite of ongoing removals and dispossessions while maintaining responsibility to land and each other.
I joined the Department of American Indian Studies at University of Minnesota Duluth in 2025. I received by B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota American Studies Program with graduate minors in American Indian and Indigenous Studies and Geography.
Publications
- Huaman, Elizabeth Sumida, and Jonnelle Walker. "Beyond sustainability: Indigenous Knowledge Systems for locally and globally renewing earth relations." International Journal of Educational Development 103 (2023): 102935.
- Walker, Jonnelle. "Wendigocene: A Story of Hunger." Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health (2023).