UW MADISON

ARBORETUM

This land is sacred. Its energy and abundance have sustained Wąąkšikra from time immemorial. It sings to our community
and transforms all who listen.

Hazac Mąą
Melanie Tallmadge Sainz (Hoocąk)
Lightning the Earth New Rider (Hoocąk / Oneida)

Hazac Mąą (English translation: Earth Shelter) is a three-dimensional temporary mixed media sculpture designed with cultural and historical connections to the land and legacy of the Arboretum site in Teejop (English translation: Four Lakes). This project represents a collaboration of Ho-Chunk artists Melanie Tallmadge Sainz (founding Director of Little Eagle Arts Foundation - LEAF) and her son (in the Ho-Chunk way) Lightning the Earth New Rider. Lightning is a new and emerging visual artist and a skilled maker of ciipodoke (also known as a wigwam form) and hazac (temporary shade or ramada form) frames made with tamarack or maple saplings. Lighting will create the hazac frame of foraged saplings. The frame will be covered with bark and hand-made cattail mats woven by Melanie Tallmadge Sainz, Lightning, and invited community members who want to learn the process. Inside of the form will be a variety of images created on small mats constructed of cattail and/or bulrush along or paper made from cattail.

I’m an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of WI. My mother Bernadine Miner Tallmadge and my mother’s sister Dr. Helen Miner Miller were a part of the original tribal council that worked to get our tribe federal recognition in 1963. As a child of these fabulous women and role models I have done my best to represent my Ho-Chunk people at many gatherings and events throughout my lifetime.

More on Melanie Sainz

Lightning New Rider is a Ho-Chunk Nation Bear Clan member motivated to care for his community through Ho-Chunk traditional foods. Lightning is the Garden Coordinator for Wild Bearies in Wisconsin Dells and the Little Eagle Art Foundation L.E.A.F. consultant at Mąą Wakącąk.

More on Lightning New Rider

UW Madison Arboretum

Teejop has always been a place of abundance. Prairies like this were once common. And oak trees––specifically, oak trees in openings that allowed their lower limbs to reach freely outward. You can still visit oak savanna in parts of the Arboretum. Along with oaks, many types of birds, like passenger pigeons. Canvasbacks and other ducks would fly from here overtop the nearby Dividing Ridge toward Lake Monona. In Lake Wingra: wild rice, wild celery, muskrats, and many fish. Ho-Chunk people have always loved and cared for Teejop. And, in turn, it has sustained Wąąkšikra. 

Resources

Reflection

  • What’s a place that’s sacred to you?

  • How do we treat places that are sacred?

  • When you feel energy, what does it feel like? 

  • How do we learn to become better listeners to land? 

  • How do we hear the song of this place?

View map of the art installation location

Park on either side of visitor center parking lots. Installations are adjacent to parking areas.