Margaret Noodin


Margaret A. Noodin is an American poet and Anishinaabemowin language teacher. She is a professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Associate Dean of the Humanities. She also directs a tribal Head Start program in Minnesota.
WWW ojibwe.net

Background and education

Noodin grew up in Chaska, Minnesota. She has self-identified as having Ojibwe descent from her paternal great-great-grandfather; however, she could never identify what tribal nation she believed he descended from. She also identifies as being of Irish, French, and English descent.
Noodin earned an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English and linguistics from the University of Minnesota. Her doctoral dissertation is titled Native American Literature in tribal context: Anishinaabe Aadisokaanag Noongom.

Life and career

Noodin is a professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Associate Dean of the Humanities. She began teaching at the university in 2013, and earned tenure in 2016. Noodin also served as the director of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee's Electa Quinney Institute from 2014 until she stepped down in 2022.
Noodin is the co-founder and content manager of the ojibwe.net website. She led a weekly Ojibwe language group at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she served as Director of Comprehensive Studies.
Noodin is the author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature and Weweni: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English. With her daughters, she belongs to a women's hand drum group, Miskwaasining Nagamojig, which sings in Anishinaabemowin.
Her work was originally included in the Field Museum's Native American exhibition but has since been removed after Native American advisors questioned her Indigenous identity claims and she could not furnish any connections to any Native American tribes. Doug Kiel, a University of Wisconsin professor and member of the Oneida Nation, spoke out against her inclusion in the Field Museum's exhibition.
She has also published a literary translation into the Ojibwe language of a famous poem in Connaught Irish by Máirtín Ó Díreáin.

Works

Dissertation

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Articles and essays

  • Noodin, Margaret with James Price and Tracy Boyer. "Challenges and Opportunities for Nonmarket Valuation of Water Among the Anishinaabe Nations of the Great Lakes Basin" with James Price and Tracy Boyer in The Solutions Journal, vol 11, issue 2, online.

Books

  • Gijigijigaaneshiinh Gikendaan: What the Chickadee Knows. Made in Michigan Writers Series. Wayne State University Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0814347508
In anthology

Poetry online

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