In 2015, University of Michigan students, faculty and staff collaborated with the Cultural Department of the Chippewa Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, Lake Superior State University and Bay Mills community members to pilot a project in writing and documenting local histories. The ATE was formed when the artists realized there was a willingness within the community to tell stories this way, and its aim is to continue to develop performance events which speak to social concerns and histories of the Anishinaabe people.
The Anishinaabe Theatre Exchange presented Sliver of a Full Moon by Mary Kathryn Nagle in 2015, a play about the passage of the violence against women act, and followed with 50 Cents a Pound by Rebecca Parish, stories about the fight for Great Lakes fishing, in summer 2018. February 2019, the exchange presented a new work by poet, playwright, and scholar Dr. Carolyn Dunn at the University of Michigan, and hold classes and public panels about social issues which persist on Native American reservations including domestic violence and suicide. The residency featured Dr. Dunn and a female artistic team which includes Colleen Medicine (Ojibwe Sault Ste Marie), Rebecca Parish (Ojibwe Zhiibahaasing), Tomantha Sylvester (Ojibwe Sault Ste Marie), Micaela Ironshell-Dominguez (Lakota and member of the Indigenous Youth Council) and NYC-based theater director Sara Rademacher. Collectively, they developed work and discussed their ongoing work with Native American performance, storytelling and social activism.