Emma Big Bear Foundation

Due to Covid-19, we'll not hold our July 4 Emma Big Bear-Winnebago History Day event.Due to Covid-19, we'll not hold our July 4 Emma Big Bear-Winnebago History Day event.

https://driftlessareamag.com/index.cfm It's too bad in this article following our 2019 EMMA BIG BEAR FOUNDATION public program, the writer misspelled my last name Halvorson -- hee hee (but I'm used to it with a first name of Rogeta & my parents say they found it in a baby naming book, which means "Little Roger"). Plus, the writer also inaccurately reported that my mother Connie Halvorson had just passed, which I'm happy to report she's alive and well at 82 years old, and he...lps to put on our foundation's annual educational programs. It was my father Roger Halvorson who passed away in November of 2014. Together, my mother and father started the EMMA BIG BEAR FOUNDATION, and I'm so glad they did because I'm able to carry on the foundation's work for them. As a child I was so interested in knowing more about Emma Big Bear as I saw her sitting on the front stairs of her Marquette, Iowa home and, surprisingly, my parents share that same curiousity and respect for Emma Big Bear and her Ho-Chunk people. This interest and our passion are what help sustain the EMMA BIG BEAR FOUNDATION's mission to keep alive Emma Big Bear's memory, share her basketry art and beadwork art, and educate the public with historical, family and first-hand "European" tales of Big Bear and her Ho-Chunk people. If you'd like to learn more about, make a donation to, or help this non-profit foundation, please email us at [email protected]. Thank you for your support! See more

Thank you, CLAYTON CO. FOUNDATION for the FUTURE & 501(c)(3) COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DUBUQUE, under which our foundation is affiliated. Facebook Followers: To make a donation to EMMA BIG BEAR FOUNDATION, please click on this link below. Please help our foundation continue the good works of promoting and preserving the history of EMMA BIG BEAR and her WINNEBAGO (HO-CHUNK) history, traditions, artistry. Thank you!

As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we would like to thank the women who have contributed to the rich history of Effigy Mounds National Monument and the ...surrounding area. One such remarkable woman is Emma Big Bear Holt, a Ho-Chunk woman famous in the Marquette-McGregor area for her beautiful basket weaving. Emma Big Bear was born in 1869 at the end of a long series of removals forced upon the Ho-Chunk people by the United States government. Although originating from western Wisconsin, by the time of Emma’s birth the Ho-Chunk had been removed to a reservation in Nebraska. In 1917, Emma Big Bear left Nebraska and journeyed with her husband Henry closer to her Wisconsin homeland. They settled in northeast Iowa, perhaps to be closer to the earthen burial mounds built here by her ancestors. Emma and Henry continued to practice a traditional way of life, living in wickiups and selling her famous baskets. Emma Big Bear’s perseverance and resilience is symbolic of the survivance of the many other Ho-Chunk people who returned home to Wisconsin over and over again. What is your #WomensHistoryMonth story? ~KM [Image description: A woman with long black hair dressed in a shawl and a traditional dress.]

I just submitted this information to the National Women in History site with Emma Big Bear's portrait taken by McGregor, Iowa's professional photographer Marjery Georgen c. 1960s. What a beautiful story about a beautiful Ho-Chunk woman. Deidre "Dee" Decorah Maiselles and I wrote something very similar to this, which today appears at the base of Emma Big Bear's life-sized bronze statue, dedicated in 2010, at Prairie du Chien, WI's Mississippi River Sculpture Park. Enjoy & p...lease share Emma Big Bear's story and photo below: "Emma Big Bear Holt (Wa' ka' ja' ze Winga), a Ho-Chunk woman born in 1869 near Tomah, Wisconsin of the Bear tribal family, was the daughter of Chief Big Bear and Mary Blue Wing, wife of Henry Holt (Floating in Air) and mother of Bertha Emiline. Big Bear, who walked in silence, kindness and humbleness, was a direct descendant of Ho-Chunk Chief Waukon Decorah, and instilled in her bloodline was the fortitude to be honest, strong in beliefs and to march ahead, never complaining of the hardships she encountered and endured. Outliving her husband and daughter, Big Bear made a living by selling her black ash baskets, beaded jewelry and ginseng, and by accepting food and assistance offered by the caring local people of McGregor and Marquette, Iowa. She didn't wander far from the graves of her ancestors and lived out her days until 1968 as the last in the tradition of the ancestors who inhabited the prehistoric site near the Effigy Mounds sacred space along the Mississippi River in northeast Iowa." Check out the website of National Trust for Historic Place's - Where Women Made History (which says it may take 1-2 days for my Emma Big Bear submission to appear): https://savingplaces.org/where-women-made-history