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Wisconsin’s Native American heritage and a state law requiring Indian education will be featured in a Diversity Speaker Series presentation at 91��Ƭ.

David O’Connor will speak from 4:15 to 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, in room 110 of Jarvis Hall Science Wing, 410 10th Ave. E. A discussion will follow until 6:10 p.m. Admission is free.

O’Connor, a member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, is the American Indian Studies consultant for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. He will share information about Wisconsin Act 31, passed in 1989, which requires education programs to prepare teachers to provide instruction to their own students in the history, culture, sovereignty rights and treaty rights of the state’s 11 tribes.

The act was passed in response to protests in Wisconsin when Native Americans exercised their 1837, 1842 and 1854 treaty rights, affirmed by the 1983 Voigt decision, to hunt, fish and gather off their reservations.

According to the state’s American Indian Studies Fact Sheet, the intent of Act 31 is “to provide Wisconsin’s students with accurate, academically appropriate information that could also serve as a positive force to combat misunderstanding and social unrest.”

91��Ƭ offers a variety of teaching majors in its , which has nine undergraduate and five graduate programs.

The Diversity Speaker Series is sponsored by the Nakatani Teaching and Learning Center, with financial support from the Chancellor’s Office. In November, Brian Jackson, president of the Wisconsin Indian Education Association, presented as part of the series.