The Great Lakes Woodland Alliance of Living Historians is an association of living history reenactors and amateur historians specializing in Native American lifeways of the Woodland cultures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The GLWA provides two means to provide educational outreach; living history encampments and presentations to groups including classrooms, library programs, clubs and associations. Please click on pages listed at the left for more information regarding either.

We participate as a group at living history events throughout the Midwest and Northeast states, setting up a circle of wigiwams and demonstrating various Lifeways arts and skills during the warmer months of the year. Individual members of the alliance are also available year-round to provide special interest presentations to smaller groups in the Chicago metro area, as well as Kankakee and Northwest Indiana.

Our members have spent years in their avocation, researching, visiting historic sites, museums, and exploring both public and private archives to gain a better grasp of this period in our history. Some have Native American ancestry, and bring the traditional and spiritual values of a remarkable culture to the overall mix. We also employ experiential methods of research to further our understanding of the historical data. We attempt to recreate the Lifeways we study and learn by doing. We build wigiwams, and live in them in all weather situations. We make bows, and arrows, and learn to shoot and hunt with them as well as  period firearms. We grow antique varieties of indigenous food crops, and cook them over our fires. And we build this information and these activities into our presentations. 

Please click on the icons in the column at left to learn more about GLWA educational presentations, and living history encampments.