2025 REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Midwest Memory
2024 – 2026
2025 marked the continuation of our three-year initiative supporting the expression, elevation, and preservation of diverse stories through monuments and memorials in Midwest communities. Midwest Memory is a Forecast Public Art initiative, in partnership with Justice + Joy and The Outside, with generous support from the Mellon Foundation.
Grant Recipients and their projects Forecast's Midwest Memory grant opportunity supports rural Midwest communities in creating, recontextualizing, and preserving monuments and memorials that honor important untold local histories and stories.
Buffalo Star People A living monument created by Lakota students and Elders at Crazy Horse School will feature a cultural garden and Memorial Plant Walk to celebrate Lakota heritage and provide a space for reflection and education.
Steelville Trail of Tears Remembrance Committee (a committee of the Steelville Area Historical Society) This project is creating a 10-foot clay model for a Trail of Tears monument, honoring the thousands of individuals who passed through Steelville, Missouri on the Trail of Tears, including Cherokee, Muscogee, enslaved people, and others.
Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Partnering with the City of Marquette, Michigan, this project will enhance visibility of local Anishinaabe culture through a monument symbolizing the Three Fires Confederacy.
Friends of Lakeside Lab This project re-dedicates Iowa’s first water trail in honor of Inkpaduta and the Dakota people, fostering connections to the region’s history.
Hardin County Historical Museums Redeveloping a park in Alger, Ohio, this project will honor Ray Brown, a locally born Negro Leagues baseball star and Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, while creating a community space for wellness and recreation.
Lincoln School Project (complete) Added two bronze statues to the restored Lincoln School grounds and new Reflection Plaza in West Plains, Missouri. This project celebrates the school’s history and role in the community.
The Red Lake Memorial Fund- a family fund of the NW MN Foundation The 3.21.05 Memorial Project will establish a community-driven memorial to honor the victims of the Red Lake School Shooting and create a space for healing.
Red Wing Arts “Homecoming: A Place to Heal” will invite Dakota people back to Red Wing (He Mni Can), with a symbolic bark lodge serving as a gathering space for reflection and learning. Red Wing Arts serves as the steward of the Honoring Dakota Project (HDP), a true partnership between the Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC), the City of Red Wing, Minnesota, Goodhue County, and Red Wing Arts itself.
Our Goal
The goal is to foster cross-sector collaboration in rural communities, enriching their efforts to tell more complete and accurate stories about the Midwest’s diverse and often-overlooked histories.Through this grant, Forecast is committed to helping rural communities in the Midwest reclaim their stories, elevate marginalized histories, and create monuments that reflect a fuller, more inclusive understanding of our shared past.
Forecast’s role includes:
- Providing funding: $75,000 grant to realize a unique monument project, $25,000 for capacity building, plus an additional $10,000 to pay cultural advisors.
- Providing a team of national experts and practitioners to guide grantees through project planning, capacity building, and project implementation.
- Documentation of each team’s project.
- Development and dissemination of a simple toolkit that other communities can use on monuments projects.
- Managing the planning and development of each in-person learning exchange and virtual cohort gathering.
- Evaluation of the process through a systems change lens.
- A simple portal for ongoing information sharing and relationship building among Grantees.
A multi-year initiative
2025 marked the second year in this three-year initiative. In April 2025, we convened our eight rural Midwest Memory grant recipient teams together for the first time. Bringing people together to share across communities is critical. Our on-site facilitators included Theresa Sweetland, Jen Krava and Singer Horse Capture from Forecast, with Mallory Rukhsana Nezam (Justice + Joy), Tuesday Rivera, and Gian Paul Ganzoni (The Outside).
On May 17, one of our Midwest Memory Grantees, The Lincoln School Project in West Plains, Missouri, invited the public to a dedication ceremony of Reflection Plaza at the historic Lincoln School. Adding two bronze statues to the restored Lincoln School grounds in West Plains, this project celebrates the school’s history and role in the community.
Midwest Memory exemplifies our growing commitment to fostering a more inclusive understanding of history and public memory in rural communities. We look forward to more milestones in 2026!
RURAL MIDWEST COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Images: (1 / Top Banner:) Nicky Buck, a member of the Prairie Island Indian Community and Community Engagement Specialist for the Honoring Dakota Project (Red Wing Arts team), leads a tour with Midwest Memory Grantee cohort. (2) We were hosted by the Prairie Island Indian community and the City of Red Wing, Minnesota in April 2025. (3) Workshop facilitators and Midwest Memory leads, L-R: Mallory Rukhsana Nezam (Justice + Joy), Gian Paul Ganzoni and Tuesday Rivera (The Outside), Jen Krava, and Singer Horse Capture (Forecast). (4) Midwest Memory Lincoln School Project plaza dedication. Photo courtesy Crocket Oaks III. (5) One of two bronze statues added to the restored Lincoln School grounds in West Plains, Missouri. Photo courtesy Crocket Oaks III. (6) Community celebrating at Lincoln School. Photo courtesy Crocket Oaks III. (7 & 9) A mural honoring baseball star Ray Brown, by Ohio Northern University art student Aubrey Davis. Photo courtesy David Strittmatter. (8) The existing Seven Grandfather Teachings monument. As phase 2 of the monument—Keweenaw Bay Indian Community's project—a stone sculpture titled Ishkade (an Anishinaabemowin word translated as fire), will be fabricated and installed in the center. The sculpture will depict three flames, representing the Three Fires Confederacy, and complete the larger monument.