The Indian Community School of Milwaukee campus was shaped by land, movement, culture and pedagogy. The school grew from the activism of three Oneida mothers who began homeschooling in response to the inadequate education they believed the public school system was providing to native Children. What began as a small, grassroots effort evolved into a guerrilla school housed in an abandoned Coast Guard station on the shored of Lake Michigan, and later expanded into several campuses across Milwaukee. After decades of operation, the School secured a nearly 200-acre site of wetlands, prairie, and remnant forest – land reminiscent of tribal homelands – on which to build a permanent campus. The 165,000 square foot building traces a natural ridge through the trees and topography. Long-lasting, low maintenance materials – including copper, concrete, heavy timber and limestone – reflect the school’s aspiration of timelessness and permanence in its forever home.
Movement and physical fitness are integral to the educational program. Students walk from the gym to distant fields, traverse long ramps, and cross glazed bridges toward the wetlands folding exercise, landscape and ritual into their daily experience. The School’s central entry opens into a “living room,” a great hall where students gather for breakfast and lunch, anchored by fireplaces and framed by sweeping views across the restored prairie to the west. This hall opens to a circular “drum” assembly space. As they grow, they move from early-childhood classrooms near the heart of the building to a progression of classrooms extending toward the wetlands along the campus’s northern edge, and then ascend the earth-to-sky stair to the middle school classrooms on the second level. Each classroom is shaped to capture a distinct view – toward a tree, the forest, the wetland, or the restored prairie.
