About Deidre and the Water Quality Internship

My name is Deidre Ann Wolfe.  I am 29 years old and the proud mother of an amazing and beautiful girl named Nevaeh Boyd and the significant other of Jerred Caldwell. I am also a member of the Lac Courte Orellies Ojibwe Nation.  I have obtained associates’ degrees in pre-nursing and biological sciences from College of Menominee Nation (CMN) and am currently working on a bachelor’s degree in education.  My current goals and intentions for my educational journey are to provide the best life I can for my family and to work for a Native American tribe.  My teaching goal is to help inspire Native American children to reach their full potentials and continue on into higher education.  I also want to incorporate my love of sciences into my teaching and open up children’s eyes to the possibilities, creativity, exploration and opportunities that science brings. 

Continuing on with my education has opened many new doors, challenges, successes and triumphs into my life.  I am honored and appreciative of the fact that my newest educational opportunity was receiving a summer internship through the CMN Sustainable Development Institute.  I was granted the Water Summit intern position.  This position is the second half of an internship that was initially completed by Ben White in 2010.   Ben helped coordinate and plan the Great Lakes Land Grant Tribal Water Resources Summit. The purpose of the summit was to: identify priority tribal water resource issues of the Great Lakes Area Tribal communities, develop collaborations to address the priority issues, and to increase the understanding of potential resources to address the issues and increase the understanding of the cultural importance of water to tribal communities.  In addition to the summit, Ben also conducted a Great Lakes Tribal Water Resources Inquiry in order to, according to the Great Lakes Tribal Water Resources Inquiry Executive Summary, “obtain information that related to water resource issues and determine appropriate paths to develop relationships between the 1862 Land Grant institutions and Tribal Colleges as well as leverage research resources to address water resource issues and improve tribal water quality.”  I now have the privilege of working alongside Ben to complete the second half of the Water Summit internship.  We will be researching and compiling information of water resource related materials pertaining to local Native American communities to promote a better understanding Tribal water quality issues.  We will create a research poster and presentation of our findings combined with information from the Great Lakes Land Grant Tribal Water Resources Summit and the Great Lakes Tribal Resources Inquiry.  We will then travel to the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota and the Bay Mills Tribal/Community College in Michigan to present our information obtained.

My personal goals for this internship are in the areas of Community involvement, public speaking and learning more about water quality from a Native American Community perspective.  I am looking forward to stepping out of my comfort zone to build up my communication skills and become more confident in my public speaking.  I also want to become more involved with in environmental issues in my community, and this is a remarkable way to introduce myself to the coordination, planning and presentation of issues important to Native communities.  I am also excited to learn everything I can from Ben White and everyone in the Sustainable Development Institute.  I appreciate this opportunity and know it will be an amazing experience.