Denise “Dee” Sweet is First Nations Organizer for Wisconsin Conservation Voices and manager for WI Native Vote. Dee initiates contact and builds working relationships with tribal communities— both urban and rural— fostering civic engagement through voter registration and voter participation. In a public information capacity, she also helps build awareness about the environmental issues that tribal citizens in the state and of the Great Lakes Region feel most profoundly about; those that not only effect their homelands and their economic livelihood, but their cultural lives and spiritual practices.
Dee is also faculty emerita, having taught Humanistic Studies, Creative Writing, and First Nations Studies for UW-System, 1985-2010. A publishing poet, her books of poetry include Know By Heart (Rhiannon Press), Songs For Discharming (Greenfield Press), Days Of Obsidian, Days Of Grace (Poetry Harbor), and Nitaawichige (Poetry Harbor; the latter a four-author collection).
In 2004, Gov. James Doyle appointed Sweet as WI’s Poet Laureate (4-year term); the 2nd laureate named for the state of Wisconsin. She currently serves as Poet Laureate for the city of Bayfield in northern Wisconsin where she and Squeak the Cat have lived since 2021.