Great Lakes Woodland Alliance

Reliving History, Honoring Tradition. GLWA

The GLWA is available to particpate at Living History Events or to provide Presentations to your group.

Our association of living history reenactors can bring our encampment to your living history event. We can also offer educational presentations for your classroom, library program, club or organization.  We specialize in presentations relating the lifeways of the indigenous people of the Great Lakes region during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Great Lakes Woodland Alliance of Living Historians is an association of living history reenactors and historians specializing in Native American lifeways of the Woodland cultures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The GLWA provides two means to provide educational outreach; living history encampments, and presentations to groups including classrooms, library programs, clubs and associations. 

We participate as a group at living history events throughout the Midwest and Northeast states, setting up a circle of wigiwams and demonstrating various lifeways, arts and skills during the warmer months of the year. Individual members of the alliance are also available year-round to provide special interest presentations to smaller groups in the Chicago metro area, as well as Kankakee Joliet and Northwest Indiana.

Our members have spent years in their avocation, researching, visiting historic sites, museums, and exploring both public and private archives and collections to gain a better grasp of this period in our history. Some have Native American ancestry, and bring the traditional and spiritual values of a remarkable culture to the overall mix. We also employ experiential methods of research to further our understanding of the historical data. We attempt to recreate the Lifeways we study and learn by doing. We build wigiwams, and live in them in all weather situations. We make bows, and arrows, and learn to shoot and hunt with them as well as period firearms. We grow antique varieties of indigenous food crops, and cook them over our fires. And we build this information and these activities into our presentations.

Invite the Great Lakes Woodland Alliance to your Living History Event

Living History Events: Members of the GLWA are able to provide a wide range of educational offerings. Our general theme is Native Lifeways. Under that heading, we offer an ever-changing array of activities to interest the public as part of ongoing lifeways activities within our camp circle.

 Some of our current offerings:

Ø Woodland Drum

Ø Life in the Wigwam

Ø Woodland Pottery Making

Ø Storytelling

Ø Weapons and War Parties

Ø Hunting and Trapping

Ø Bow and Arrow Demonstrations

Ø Indigenous weaving techniques

Ø Flute making and Musical Instruments

Ø Body Decoration Painting and Tattooing

Ø The art of Quillwork

Ø Woodworking with the Tomahawk and Crooked Knife

Ø Woodland Gardening and Foodways

The above listed activities vary and are subject to change. In addition, we are available to plan and provide authentic Woodland styled combat scenarios, as well as participate in tactical battle reenactment.

If your organization would be interested in booking the GLWA for your event, or arranging for any of our Individual Presentations, please contact us at one of the addresses provided below.

 

Living History Presentations for

 your Classroom or Group

 School, Library, and Club Presentations: Individual Alliance members are available to provide educational programs on 18th Century Woodland Lifeways for organizations. Programs currently available include:

Ø Voices of the Woodlands; Woodland Music

Ø Native Lifeways

Ø Storytelling

Ø Special programs designed on request. Programs may be available outside the Chicago metropolitan area when traveling expenses are provided.

If your organization would be interested in booking the GLWA for your event, or arranging for any of our Individual Presentations, please contact us at any of the addresses below and we will send you complete information regarding our individul presentations.

 We are able to work with contracts you provide, or supply our own.

Contact us:

GreatLakesWoodlandAlliance@gmail.com


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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