(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people
and issues in our state.
This week, this woman's life has been forever changed
by a deadly neurological disease,
but find out why she's even more concerned
about the health of her sons.
Travel back 100 years ago for a story of tragedy
and indignity, learn how people in the Green Bay area
were routinely stripped of their land.
And stand watch on an observation deck
off the Mississippi for an annual rite
of avian passage.
We'll bring you these stories plus a trip to the delts,
not the popular tourist destination
in Salkin Columbia counties, but a different scenic
spot in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a liant energy who brings safe,
reliable and environmentally friendly energy
to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly, a liant energy, offering
energy-saving ideas on the web.
- It's a brain disorder that usually strikes in middle age
and for which there is no cure.
It's Huntington's disease.
Bonnie Miller of Ocona, Milwaukee is one of
about 30,000 Americans and about 500 people
here in Wisconsin who have the
debilitating disease.
Huntington's has forever changed Miller's life,
but as she watches her symptoms progress,
she also has an eye on the health of her children.
Reporter Frederica Freiberg explains that
even as the Miller family is dealing with
concerns for the future, they have received new hope
from a discovery at UW-Madison.
- 12-year-old Ted and 11-year-old Andy Miller
can't ever seem to put their books down.
They inherited their love of reading from their mother,
a librarian, but the boys are also in line
to inherit something else.
The boys have a 50% chance of inheriting
their mother's Huntington's disease.
Still in her 40s, Bonnie Miller is in mid-stage
of the progressively degenerative brain disorder.
She has trouble speaking and with involuntary movements.
She watched her own mother die of it.
Still, she has framed what she calls Bonnie's creed
that says, "Hold on, be strong, never give up.
Don't forget the pleasures of life."
- Is that hard to hold to your creed?
- Hmm, sometimes.
(laughs)
- They have the honor of sometimes.
- These photos were taken before Bonnie was diagnosed
with Huntington's in 1999.
Since then, her oldest son, Dan, now in his early 20s,
has tested positive.
The younger boys have not yet been tested,
but they say their mother is teaching them a lot
about persevering.
- Yes, we are.
We are learning each other and she is holding out strong.
I think that's a positive example
on what we should be like if we get a seat.
- Just 'cause we have a risk of getting it,
doesn't mean that we're going to.
And if we are, we shouldn't give up.
We should just keep on trying.
- If the next generation does test positive for Huntington's,
onset is usually at about the same age
as the parent who had it.
- And for these guys, it's 30 years.
So I have high hopes, you know, that they're not ever
going to have to go through the same thing
that their mother has.
- And those hopes have been raised,
some, by new research going on in Madison.
- So Marcus, how far are these?
Why is it going to be Huntington's disease?
- In the lab at the UW Pharmacy Department,
scientists have made what's being called
an amazing discovery.
- It was like complete protection
by the transplant itself.
And I still, it still just makes me quiver a little bit,
think about, you know, that it actually worked that well.
- Professor Jeff Johnson and his team
are getting national attention for their research breakthrough.
What they found and isolated was a naturally
occurring substance that protects brain
cells from dying when exposed to toxins.
Toxins that mimic the effects of brain cell death
in Huntington's patients.
They transplanted cells with the protective substance
into the brains of mice.
Then they exposed the mice to toxins that kill neurons.
The result was that the side of the mouse's brain
that was not injected with the protective substance
literally developed a hole, which shows up as a
white mass in X-ray and represents dead brain cells,
like what happens in degenerative brain disease.
The stunning result was that the side that was transplanted
with cells containing the protective substance
showed no cell death, like a healthy young brain.
Johnson says it may be possible within the
next three to five years to transplant protective
cells into the human brain to prevent disease
from ever occurring.
He is also working on developing a pill
to do the same thing.
- Hey, if we can get drugs or molecules
that will get into the brain and activate this system,
we can have significant impacts on these chronic
neurodegenerative diseases.
- Johnson says he hopes to have a pill ready for testing
in humans in two to four years, even sooner than the
medically riskier cell transplant procedure.
This kind of breakthrough represents Bonnie Miller's
greatest hope for her children.
- Yeah, maybe I imagine a reason, but no,
I might not survive.
With this, all these drugs, they have so much more opportunities
for hope for the future.
- It should help us if they get it right,
and it gives me more hope that I won't be infected.
- I hope is eternal.
- You can get more information about Dr.
Jeff Johnson's Huntington's research
by going to our website at www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
You can also find more information on our site about
the disease and its symptoms.
- We change gears now and head to the Mississippi River area.
That's where each fall, the small town of Alma
puts out the welcome mat for a group of snowbirds.
Visitors stay for about two or three weeks before heading
off to their winter digs.
And as producer Joanne Garrett found, they've
been winging their way through Western Wisconsin as
long as anyone can remember.
- You can find them just off Highway 35, north of Alma,
in a place called Ricks Lake.
Just listen.
- These rather loud visitors like to hang out in front
of this observation deck.
It's not a very big day, but it's at a big impact
on the small town of Alma, which is very fond
of these visitors.
The visitors are tundra swans migrating
through from the Arctic, on their way to Chesapeake Bay.
Harry Buck is a retired schoolteacher and
former resident of Alma, who seems to sum up
the town's delight and fascination with tundra swans.
- Oh, gosh, how can you not like them?
They're just such marvelous creatures.
- Start with the fact that the swans can find the city of Alma.
- Their global positioning system is wonderful.
- They don't have any radio in the tells them
that they're at Alma when they're above the clouds,
you better circle down.
- They circle down for this crucial R&R in Alma.
They'll stay from mid-October to Freesup.
It's a chance to rest and feed on a 4,000 mile long migration.
These birds are truly top flight flyers.
- They go from here to the east coast in one flight.
And how far is it 1,300 miles?
They can fly up to 100.
They've been clocked up to 100 miles an hour,
but with a tailwind.
- They have a seven-foot wingspan,
and are described by our nethologists as the most
aerodynamic of birds.
-
[cow mooing]
- Chundras can be found all along the Mississippi
from Alma down to Iowa.
But they tend to congregate here.
This confluence where the Buffalo River
hits the big muddy.
- And part of it is because it's close to hunting.
There are no boats going back and forth in here.
- Water depth was right, the food was there.
And so I think they've formed a habit of coming here.
It's just a nice place.
- It is a nice place, especially if you're a swan.
Rick's Lake is a swan smorgasbord.
Chak Ful, one of their favorite foods, arrowhead,
which grows a tasty tuber down in the mud.
They love it.
This place is perfect for swans.
They first started soaring in here in the late 60s.
Their arrival sparked another migration of
tourists and bird watchers.
Which in turn sparked an Alma swan watch.
- Yeah, yeah.
- It's a group of volunteers.
People like Buck and Grand Sites, who
working for the watch.
- 14 people already.
- Have turned the observation deck into a place where
people can not only look, but also learn
about tundra swans.
- That's probably a family down there.
There's two white ones, two green and two yellow.
A place where they can look and learn about all the wildlife
that cause this place to be more.
- Yeah, don't open your mouth if you're looking up.
- From the 15th of October until Thanksgiving or the
first part of December, we have people on the platform
every day from 10 o'clock and they stay there until dusk.
The beauty of it is that you don't have a railroad
track in front of you.
You don't have a highway in front of you and you're close.
And you look through the scope and you can look right
into this little black eye.
- The swan watch began in 1992 when Buck, a retired teacher,
saw an opportunity for education.
- When we first were building the platform,
there was a person on the platform and there were about
2000 swans in front of him and they were making the noise
that you hear the swan noise.
He was talking to his tape as he recorded me,
said that sound you hear is coming from all those snow geese
that are out in front of me.
- That man's misidentification, sparked a mission.
- Buck guessed that there might be some
interest in Tundra Swans.
He didn't guess how much.
The retired teacher and his wife offered to
be on deck on a Sunday to answer questions
about the birds.
- So what are the merchants' memographed 100 pages
of this information and we took it out there
on a Sunday afternoon and 700 people showed up.
We find that people absolutely are fascinated by this bird.
They have hundreds and hundreds of questions about,
well how does it do this?
How does it find its way?
- Is there any fox or anything like that for natural enemies?
- Oh sure.
- Information, questions, they pack the place.
10 to 20,000 people a year seeking swans,
which in turn, flutters through Alma, in tourism and trade.
- What this does for the area, for the communities
up and down the river, is extends their tourist
season by about six weeks.
- All was going swimmingly, but as anyone who lives along
the river will tell you, there is an ebb and flow
here. Things come and go.
And what is gone from Rick's Lake is water.
- We have maybe a foot of water and average,
six inches to a foot of water in the open areas.
It's a long time story of rivers.
It's the story of silt.
And silt creates complications.
You're looking at one, the burr-read,
a brown clumpy plant that infests shallow waterways.
- It limits the number of swans it can come in,
because they need open water because they have
to take off into the wind and they have to have a run-go.
[waves crashing]
- They need their runway.
The birds are bailing, and the numbers are down from the
peaks of just a few years ago.
- There were 6,000 swans one day counted by the
Fish and Wildlife Service.
And if you were standing on the deck, it looked like the
water was covered with popcorn.
You could hardly see the water.
Now if we have three, four hundred there, that's a big day.
- But this story has a happy ending in the form of a
national scenic byways grant.
Federal money for Rick's Lake.
Think if you dredge it, they will come.
- Either next summer or the summer after, they
will take silt and the burr-read out of there
to a depth of about three feet, which is the depth
that the swans can reach with their long beak.
And so hopefully that area in front of the platform
will be weed-free again.
And therefore you should see many, many more swans.
We'll probably be counting swans in the thousands
rather than the hundreds.
- It's remarkable now.
It should be even better.
Look for it.
When next year's migration wings in, passing through
the Mississippi River.
It's our good fortune to be their restite before they make
their way east and they're gone.
[Music]
A good story has the ability to take us to
another culture or time.
Our next story does both.
And comes from a special called "Onight of Speaks"
created by independent producer Michelle Danforth.
Danforth special draws from a collection of stories called
"The Onight of Journals."
The journals were written by members of the Onighta Nation
dating back to the 1800s.
The following excerpt is from that special and
is called "Indus Seat."
I was 10 years old and my father let me go with my grandpa.
We were in the truck and all four truck and he
said to me, he said, "Well let's go for a drive."
And I said, "Tell me a story about your grandpa."
[Music]
The WPA journals were begun in probably 1939 as a result
of the many make-work agencies that were begun by President
Franklin D.
Roosevelt after his election in 1932.
And WPA stands for "Works Progress Administration."
The Onighta's were in the oral history project.
It was not only oral history but it was the preservation
of the Onighta language.
Because those who were selected to work in this project not
only could read and write English very well but they could
also speak Onighta fluently and could write Onighta.
The journals covered everything.
They covered everyday life, told how the roads were
repaired and how people had to contribute to that, told
about the foods that were prepared by the women while
men worked collectively, told about people who were born,
people who died, epidemics.
Even the immigration from New York State because the people
that were being interviewed in 1939, 40 and 41 were people
who remembered what it was like to immigrate from New
York State through the Great Lakes and then to come to Green
Bay and make a settlement.
If we had not participated, if our people from that time in
the 40s had not participated in this project, we would
have a large, large segment of our history just absent and
not available to us at all.
[Music]
You could say we lived in heaven up until the time a
devil came to the Onighta's.
[Music]
So he thought it best to establish a town where
all of the people would pay taxes.
All the older men disagreed with him.
And so he failed at this meeting.
He was so disappointed that he went around and
talked to different people, especially those who were
against him.
He paid him $200 each to work on his side.
So a few days after this, he called another meeting.
All the men who were against him were now on his side.
So the majority of the people voted on his side.
And so the township was established and they called
it the town of Hobart.
The Onighta started to pay taxes.
About five years after this, some of the Onighta's got
behind in their taxes and some began to lose what they
had because they were not accustomed to paying taxes.
[Music]
It has always been so that if anything comes up, it always
ends and loss for the Onighta's.
This man who worked on establishing the town of
Hobart, he wasn't Onighta Indian.
He was hired by the white man to bring this about
where the Onighta's live.
[Music]
The Allotment Act provided that after everything is
allotted, what is left over is declared surplus and
falls to the United States.
Because we had 65,430 acres and we had about 1800 people.
There was to land within the 1838 fallegrees to allow
168 acres and 40 acres for children and so forth.
So they prorated that.
We had no extra land in our case.
But the Sue Country and other tribes that the Doz Allotment
Act was applied to in the West did have surplus land.
So immediately 100 million acres reverted.
All right, I have to say just given to
the United States of America because the United States didn't
know it in the first place.
So it was just given to the United States.
So 100 million acres fell to the United States
immediately upon application of the Doz Allotment Act
to all the reservations.
Eventually almost all the land was alienated.
So that was between 1911, 1929 when of
the Great Depression because that's a cutoff point there.
There were far more non Indian people on the reservation
than there were Indians.
So what it did is the farmers
voted in their own people and the United States were
left without anything to say.
And that is the case today.
Long time ago my grandpa would go to Boulder and they'd
go logging and my grandpa actually would go sometimes
and they come back and they didn't understand taxes.
So as my grandfather and as my grandfather's grandfather
came back and my grandfather's father's Albert and Thomas they
turned around and saw that the out of the game is sheriff and
his deputies on horseback work excording those people out
of the house.
My grandpa didn't understand and he was
at home and as his dad and grandpa were asking questions
they turned around and said you have to move out because
you didn't pay your taxes.
So then my grandpa was unpacking and my grandpa's grandpa was
trying to argue and say well here's your money and it's
pretty soon the wagon was full.
So it was raining pretty hard.
There were only logs on the roads and it was pretty
muddy so the sheriff and the deputies said you have
to move on you're loitering.
And my grandpa looked up and he noticed that his father
and his grandpa they were both upset and they were crying
and one of them was crying so hard he couldn't shake the
reins for the horse to move.
[Music]
Took those reins and he shook them.
All the remembers was seeing that water dripping
off his hat on his hands and the horse went down the road.
The journals they were translated if they were in
onida and they were typed from the writing because it was
all written in long hand.
Every tribal member needs to understand where they came from.
They need to be connected and this is one of the greatest
connecting kind of things that we can do.
It's right there before us.
All we have to do is utilize it.
You can watch the entire special onida speaks on our website the
address is wpt.org/inwisconsin.
And that's our program for this week.
We leave you with a trip to the delts.
Not the popular tourist destination in Sock and
Columbia counties but the delts of O'Clayer located in
Marathon County.
Confused yet?
Well sit back and enjoy.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
We'll see you again next week.
[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]