Visitors to Earth Fest in River Falls will have the opportunity to meet Ojibwe ponies from The Humble Horse, a nonprofit organization currently based in Spring Valley dedicated to the preservation, education, and reconnection of the Ojibwe people with their spirit animals. This is the second time they’ve visited Earth Fest, though they’ve been on the UW-River Falls campus several times.

Dr. Em Loerzel, founder and director of The Humble Horse, is descended from the White Earth Ojibwe Nation. In 2022, she and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members rallied together to bring six rare Ojibwe ponies from their home in Ontario, Canada, to their southern ancestral homelands in western Wisconsin. 

“We were able to adopt another mare last year from Canada and she is one of the only genetically compatible mares that we can breed to our stallions, one of the only ones left in the world that would make healthy babies,” Loerzel said. “Her name is Weaver. She’s super cute and super funny.”

When she was young, Loerzel heard stories about the small Ojibwe ponies to used to coexist with Native communities in Northern Wisconsin.

“In my early 20s, one of my uncles would tell stories about how when he was a kid, there were small horses who would live in the woods,” Loerzel told the Journal in 2022. “One day they all disappeared.”

In the 1970s, the Canadian and United State governments collected the remaining horses and exterminated them. Some were made into dog food and glue. They were considered a public nuisance, Loerzel said.

“They didn’t consider them useful,” Loerzel said. “They weren’t big, they weren’t draft horses.” The Ojibwe people consider the horses family. The small, sturdy horses would come back every fall and help the Ojibwe during the winter with tasks such as logging and trapping.

“And in turn, we would help them during the foaling season,” Loerzel said. “We would offer them protection.”

The horses could once be found wherever the Ojibwe people lived, from Winnipeg, Canada to Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., to Milwaukee to the Dakotas. In the early 1900s, there were thousands of horses living along the Minnesota/Canadian border. They had adapted to the northern forest region and their small stature helped them easily navigate the dense woods. But by the 1970s, there were only four left. As Native American people were moved onto reservations and into cities, the horses were left behind. The history of the Ojibwe and the horses parallel each other. In an historic moment dubbed “Heist Across the Ice,” four Minnesota men drove north into Canada and rescued the four remaining Ojibwe mares and brought them to safety to a farm in Orr, Minn., before they could be exterminated. Bred with a Spanish mustang stallion, the horses slowly made a comeback.

As a horse-crazy child growing up outside Chicago, Loerzel’s family didn’t have the means or resources to have horses, though she loved them. A few years ago, Loerzel was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that affected her mobility and strength. She began therapeutic horseback riding. And in her mind, the words of her uncle echoed: “Remember, the Ojibwe are horse people too.” As she regained her strength, Loerzel began volunteering with an organization called “This Old Horse,” based in Hastings, Minn.

In April 2022, she saw a Facebook post from a Canadian rancher who was selling part of their herd of Ojibwe horses because they couldn’t afford to feed them anymore, due to COVID. Loerzel and her husband, River Coakwell, raised enough money with help from the local community to purchase the horses and bring them back to the United States.

Loerzel and Coakwell brought the ponies to their new home in the town of Gilman. While they’re grateful for the property, they are quickly outgrowing it and hope to relocate closer to River Falls on 10-20 acres.

“That is where a lot of our community and support has been,” Loerzel said. “This spring we are planning on finally doing some breeding, one of our stud colts to our new little mare, and another one of our mares will be bred via artificial insemination to a different breed of pony to do an out-cross breeding.”

The idea behind outbreeding is to introduce new genetic diversity, reducing the risk of inbreeding abnormalities, eventually improving the health of the breed.

There are 11 registered, known Ojibwe horses in the United States. Currently, The Humble Horse is home to 20% of the breed’s stallion population in the entire world.

“We only have three, and there are only 17 or 18 left,” Loerzel said. “It’s actually pretty pressing. We are looking to buy bigger land in Pierce County to expand because we’re at the point where we need to expand operations. We want to start building something that’s centered around the ponies and to be more intentional to support their ongoing needs and in the future.”

Besides collaborating with the social work department at UW-River Falls, where she was an assistant professor for 1.5 years, Loerzel offers high quality, affordable, and accessible counseling and other services to the western Wisconsin area. She also works with the Kinnickinnic River Land Trust on an outreach program funded by the Inclusa Foundation called Elders and Equines focused on how to reduce feelings of loneliness and social isolation using nature-based interventions with adults over the age of 55.

“We actually have partnered with them via The Humble Horse to support their efforts,” Loerzel said. “We just launched the program; in cases where older folks have interacted with the horses, I’ve seen an immense feeling of connection and wellness. Our horses really love people and are super friendly. They really love it too. It’s nice to see both sides enjoying the interaction.”

Loerzel brought the horses to the UWRF campus after a string of suicides last year rocked the university community. The horses offered comfort to those who needed it.

“We’ve also started showing the ponies in dressage, not only showcasing their amazing history but that they have an amazing future as well,” Loerzel said.” One of the big reasons I left my position as an assistant professor at the university was to give more time to the nonprofit. The hope is wherever we end up next, we can branch out to equine therapy and create a space of community wellness.”

Another goal of The Humble Horse is to educate First Nations people about their heritage and share that knowledge with the larger community, which is why events like Earth Fest are important.

“I think it puts things into perspective when you have this living, breathing being that almost went extinct, but it didn’t,” Loerzel said. “It transcends race and is really a community coming together. I feel like they (the ponies) are that personification of resilience when people work together to help conserve a living being. It’s really powerful.”

To learn more, visit thehumblehorsewi.org or find them on social media.