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Hello and welcome to a new season of In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people,
places and issues in this state.
This week take flight with a delicate federally
endangered species that somehow thriving in Wisconsin.
Find out how state manufacturers are becoming the big cheeses
of a specialty industry.
And hit the streets with the candidates from a
state senate race that could impact the political
direction of the entire state.
All this and more coming up in Wisconsin.
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Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
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friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
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Our first story takes us to northern Wisconsin.
Conflicts in the 1980s over spearfishing rights of
Ojibwe Indians left many resentful and bitter feelings
that still linger today.
In an attempt to ease racial tensions, students from Manakwa
and Lakhda Flambo are trying to create better cultural
understanding between Native Americans and non-Indians.
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They were born during tumultuous times.
During the 1980s for two weeks each
spring, their parents squared off on violent boat landings
over Ojibwe spearfishing.
A lot of those values were passed down and if the
parents didn't change their minds 20-some years ago,
then their kids are already set up with those values.
My dad, I know he was involved in that.
I know he was close-bearing and people would
be on the dog saying stuff and over throwing candles and stuff.
Do you have any memory of those days?
No, no, no.
Many in the Manakwa, Lakhda Flambo area, agree that
racism is a community problem.
According to federal and independent studies, like
this one conducted by the US Commission on Civil Rights,
spearfishing did not cause the cultural misunderstanding but
certainly contributed to it.
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The children of the boat landings live with its legacy.
Just because the violence part of it kind of diminished doesn't
mean that spirit that was behind it went away.
So I think it still affects everything
one of us pretty deeply.
This is I-L-I, the Intercultural Leadership Initiative, a
unique program at Lakeland Union High School in Manakwa.
It attempts to bring native and non-native students together to
bridge the cultural divide that separates the two communities.
I honestly, I didn't know what to think when I first went
to I-L-I.
Honestly, I was like, "Yeah, we're going to
be fighting racism and it's going to be all righteous."
So then it really, for me, I didn't join I-L-I to meet
people. I joined I-L-I because I was like, "We have
a problem in this school and this is what needs to happen."
I was like, "Whoa, this is so much more about people."
And it really became much less of a cause to me as just
a cool place to hang out.
That was exactly what organizers had hoped would happen.
Bring students from different cultural backgrounds together
for fun and conversation.
And maybe they discovered they actually liked each other.
It's working slowly.
I can see progress, a student
at a time, which is that's what we focus on.
It's all about relationships.
Bob Kovar coordinates I-L-I.
They're an amazing group of kids because they had the weight of
this program on their shoulders from the very beginning.
We didn't really know what we were doing.
Nobody had done this before.
Today, I-L-I is hosting a cultural fair
at the high school.
When you go on, it turns into a spark.
It turns into a call.
And at that time, you get the flight in the same way.
When I came in the school, I was one of the people that I
didn't let people in, except for the people that I was
friends with the year before.
That's what we hear about in grade school, the big
scary native guys that you know you're gonna get feed
up or something.
And I mean, it's not like that at all.
I think one of the most important things about I-L-I
is that you get to know people as people, not the labels that
have been forced on them by community prejudices and stuff.
Lawrence Mann carried the big scary native guy label.
Cultural day is his brainchild, a day to put fear aside
and celebrate diversity.
They start to realize that they're just people from
different cultures.
They're just the same as them.
The only thing that's different is their culture.
They're still humans.
And when they realize that they walk away a
little feeling a lot better, and actually kind of feeling
kind of a connection with the other cultures because they had
a chance to participate in some of their cultural activities.
Several of the students say it would be easier if the school
was multicultural.
Instead, it is overwhelmingly bicultural,
Native American and white.
The groups have been polarized for so long,
people expect racism and find it around every corner.
I think there are a lot of times problems that
aren't actually racially based are labeled as that.
Like, if there's a conflict between a girlfriend and a
boyfriend that are biracial, they'll just be like, "Oh,
there's some big racial problem going down and the cafeteria."
And it's not.
And it just gets mislabeled.
The healing process is something that takes a long time, takes
decades, one child at a time, to rethink history, to rethink
perspectives and rethink the perspectives that are passed on
from generation to generation.
And it's happening.
But apparently not fast enough.
Despite the pocas, Mexican yo-yos, and German
chocolates, there was the perception that this was Native
American day.
Nearly half the white students were absent.
Their parents signed letters, excusing them
from the days of events.
And just like, you know, it gets me upset that, you know,
people are doing this.
We spend 180 days of the year learning
about white history and white English and white literature.
And then one day, we devote to people who are different
than us and everyone leaves.
The fair was top heavy on Native American culture.
Intentionally so, according to the Intercultural Leadership
Initiative, so it could be introduced to white students
in a safe, friendly atmosphere.
Everybody follows.
We're achieving the greatest quest
of all.
Personal fulfillment.
Those who stayed home, missed Olympic gold medalist, turned
motivational speaker Billy Mills, a Lakota Su from
the Pine Ridge Reservation.
And Popstar Janna, a Lumbee Indian from North Carolina
whose autograph was the hottest ticket in town.
And the powwow with food, singing, and dancing.
And we want all those other people to be a part of it, but
we can't make people do what they don't want to do or what
they might be afraid to do.
So we just lead by example.
And that is where ILI says it has truly made a difference.
There are just 15 students who belong to the organization
at the high school level.
But there are more than 500 elementary school children
who have joined.
And most of them were here today.
The kids that are in the high school that have not been
able to be a part of the program, they're part of the
old script, which is to be afraid of each other, to
distrust each other, that they can't be friends, that they're
going to fight with each other.
And these younger kids are part of that new script.
A lot of people in the high school, sadly enough, will
probably think the same things they think now for the rest of
their lives.
So I think that the younger kids have the best
chance of making a difference.
Hopefully if we work with the younger students, you know,
that you know they learn about each other and stuff
like that by 20 years, that maybe we won't have so much
racism and stuff like that.
20 years from now, you all come back for your 20 year reunion.
How is it going to be different?
Everything kind of comes in waves like we've been talking
about in cycles, and the racism is all going to be
there. So it's hard to say if you can actually see a
visual change in our school.
But if there is a visual change and we'll know we're
there for the beginning of it, that would be pretty cool.
The Intercultural Leadership Initiative is coordinated
by Great Lakes Intertribal Council.
Multiculturalism can also be the key to business
survival as some Wisconsin industries have discovered.
One Dodge County businessman turned his traditional but
struggling dairy state company into a success story after
embracing more of a worldview.
The Shish Cafe in Madison, the recipes are from Syria,
but a key ingredient for Chef Rabay Bin Yat comes
from Wisconsin, cheese.
We do like braille cheese, we do it with salad and
pizza, we broil the cheese.
Deserve? Deserve was a cheese.
I mean we use a cheese a lot.
Exactly the way we cook a cancilla.
That Syrian cheese called a kawa is made in one of
Wisconsin's oldest cheese factories.
For the factory owners Paul and Vicky Sharfman,
it started with a phone call.
We got a phone call from a man in New Jersey whose
name was Mahmoud Abul Rumi.
And Mahmoud was making his own cheese in his own dingy
store flour in New Jersey.
And he wanted to find a factory to make it for him so he
could go do the marketing.
Abul Rumi came to Wisconsin to show the Sharfman's cheese
makers how to make a kawa.
Talk about an electric moment when this ethnic, Jordanian,
Palestinian cheese maker comes to Wisconsin and works
with older, long time, Germanic, Wisconsin cheese
makers and tries to explain cheese maker to cheese
maker how to make this curd.
We have two fat fingers.
We want girls with thin fingers
and you have to go like this and the German cheese makers.
No, we don't do that stuff.
This kind of cultural exchange has become commonplace at
the Sharfman's business, the specialty cheese
company of Loa, Wisconsin.
Talk to most cheese makers about culture and they'll
assume you mean bacteria.
But the specialty cheese company
understanding culture has an entirely different meaning.
In 1991, the Sharfman's bought a struggling cheese
factory with the idea of making cheese for the growing
number of Hispanic consumers.
And you look for what the needs are of course and
we're looking at food and the Hispanic population
eight eats a lot of cheese.
The Sharfman's developed La Bacarica brand through
extensive testing with Hispanic consumers.
And slowly we refined the products until they looked like
what people expected them to look like and we were looking
to replicate cheese from home.
In just the last few years, America's Hispanic population
has grown 13%.
And the big cheese companies have
added Hispanic varieties, increasing competition.
So the specialty cheese company added more specialties like the
Serian Akawa, Kosher Munster and an Indian cheese called Paneer.
We also are a national powerhouse in the Paneer
market at this point, which I think is very funny myself.
But you know, there it is and we sell to quite a few
Indian distribution companies.
I used to eat frozen Indian TV dinners because at least
years ago you couldn't get good Indian food in
this town and now you can.
Now Vicki Sharfman's business makes the Paneer used
in those frozen dinners.
And the specialty cheese company has connected
Lowell Wisconsin with America's growing diversity.
We both love it.
Yeah. I don't know that it's changed
our outlook so much but it has been great to see how it has
affected the rural community, which was rural so it didn't
have the opportunity to have people of all stripe come visit.
I think everybody at the firm has grown as a result of that.
I think that's really one of the things that we're
most proud of as well.
It's cool.
It's definitely cool.
Cool but also good business and a growing one in Wisconsin.
Ten years ago specialty and artisan Jesus accounted for only
4% of state cheese production.
Today it's 13%.
State Secretary Rod Nilsis-Duen says Wisconsin is well suited
to specialty cheese making.
It's such a good fit for Wisconsin because we got
the right size farm.
Small farms we've got a lot of
existing small cheese plants and probably as important
as anything else.
We've got a long long tradition
and cheese making.
But it's actually a non-traditional cheese
that today is the specialty cheese companies
fastest growing product.
In the 90s Paul Sharfman patented a process to bake
cheese into a hard crunchy chip.
They sold it as cheese and crackers without the
crackers or just the cheese.
It was expensive and crunchy and salty and weird.
But it was a -- it was cheese and crackers
without the crackers.
And by early 1997 it was a dismal failure.
I had a lot of pretty boxes and no sales.
Until just the cheese caught the attention of Dr.
Robert Atkins.
This is now the summer of 1997.
Atkins has just started his catalog and he's
searching for a crunchy munchy that can be in his catalog.
What's crunchy munchy that's on the Atkins diet?
Answer nothing.
Well there was pork rinds which --
Which -- Which he didn't --
It wasn't -- It wasn't crazy for pork rinds.
But low carbohydrate dieters have gone crazy
for just the cheese.
To keep up with great demand the specialty cheese company
is bought in old school in the neighboring town of Riesville.
They've converted it to a factory and hired
dozens of local people.
Like Ruthie Snow, who now works in the building where
she once went to high school.
Lots of good memories.
I was prom queen in the gym.
That gym now holds boxes and boxes of just the
cheese ready to be shipped.
Some of it ordered over the internet and
processed by Ruthie Snow.
Another change from her high school days.
I'm aging myself now.
Oh, we got electric typewriters and that was very cool.
Internet was so far away.
So far away.
I find it exciting to ship all to all these different
international places.
And a little tone like this, it's pretty cool.
Whether it's over the worldwide web, a Syrian
immigrants kitchen, or a favorite Indian meal,
Wisconsin's cheese makers are finding new homes for the
state's most famous product.
Another Wisconsin cheese maker from Sock County, Car Valley,
took best in show at the American Cheese Society's annual
contest in July of this year.
Topping 725 other cheeses from across the country,
including California, in America's most prestigious
handcrafted specialty cheese competition.
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We move now from cheese competitions to another
type of contest, an unusual political contest.
Wisconsin's incumbent lawmakers are seldom challenged in their
own party's primary election, but this year is different.
In next Tuesday's election, state Senate Majority Leader
Mary Panzer will face off against another Republican,
Assemblyman Glenn Growthman.
The candidates live in West Bend, but reporter Art Hackett
says the outcome of the race may impact the entire state.
Mary Panzer served 12 years in the Assembly and was elected
to the state Senate in 1993.
She became Majority Leader in 2003.
As she campaigned in front of the Piggly Wiggly
in Cedarburg Tuesday, she said her leadership
position was a plus for people in the district.
Leadership provides the ability for a district to help set
an agenda in a very real way.
Their hands on to be part of it.
Is any fiscal and more conservative than Mary?
Okay, well I'm Major Conservatives, so you're
probably going wrong.
No problem, no question.
But Panzer's opponent, Republican Assemblyman Glenn
Growthman, argues Panzer is leading the state Senate
in a direction that doesn't match the district's wishes.
We ought to have a great conservative Senator, or at
least a conservative Senator, from the 20th Senate District.
Growthman claims and Panzer doesn't dispute that the
20th is the most conservative district in the state.
It's centered in West Bend.
It covers most of Wisconsin's east coast between
Shabuigan and Milwaukee.
Hi, how are you today?
Okay. I'm Mary Panzer.
I'm your state senator.
On this day of campaigning, Panzer was concentrating your
efforts in the more densely populated areas like Cedarburg.
At a senior citizen center in Grafton, she let people gathered
for lunch lead the discussion.
Would you like me to remember?
I'd say me to Alfon.
We need the biggest description.
The description drugs.
Well, I've been a supporter of senior care.
I think it matters.
Growthman style is different.
A contact with the potential voter at the Shabuigan County
Fair in Plymouth begins with a rapid fire list of credentials.
Growthman feels qualifier as the true conservative.
It's been very tough on the tax issue.
On parental rights, there's a new program that I'm
fighting that's free birth control for 15, 16, and 17
year old girls know their parents knowing about it.
I think that's awful.
And there is also the issue of abortion.
The pro life, no comparison.
If you look on there, I was pro life legislator of the year.
We are going to be taking calls at 338-8-6-2.
Abortion was the first issue to come up Tuesday
at a debate sponsored by WBKV Radio in West Bend.
Growthman questioned Panthers' pro life credentials,
charging she voted against his bill to require a 24-hour
waiting period prior to a woman having an abortion.
When the bill with a 24-hour waiting period came up, my
senator was one of five out of 68 Republicans who voted against
the 24-hour waiting period.
It's important for the listeners to understand
that both represent a growthman and I are pro life.
But I am pro life with three exceptions.
Wife of the mother rape and incest.
My opponent takes a very extreme, extreme position which
I understand some people have.
But I believe most people in this state, especially people
who have had the challenge of raising a child, would
never want to be faced with a decision of government saying,
should my 13 year of white force to have an abortion
if she has been raped.
I just think that is taking it too far.
Most Wisconsin voters won't get a chance to vote in this race.
It is but one Senate district out of 33.
But this race does matter to the rest of the state since
Senate's leadership hinges on next Tuesday's vote.
You can find more information on all of this year's political
candidates and results on primary night by checking
out our election year online resource, WisconsinVote.org.
It's the size of a postage stamp and very rare,
except in Wisconsin.
The Carnor Blue Butterfly is a federally endangered
species whose numbers are plummeting across the country.
Yet in Wisconsin, this rare creature is holding
steady if not soaring.
We travel to the Nacita National Wildlife Refuge, home to the
world's largest population of Carnor Blue Butterflies, to
explore this winged mystery.
They are here.
But they require a little searching because
they're so small.
Carnor Blue Butterflies are a postage stamp
size, roughly speaking.
It has a name indicates blue, baby blue.
Rich King is the staff biologist at ground zero of Carnor
Blue Butterflies, the Nacita National Wildlife Refuge.
Nacita National Wildlife Refuge hosts what is the
world's largest population of Carnor Blue Butterflies.
You can find more here at Nacita and see if
you can anywhere else.
This is the Mother Load, which is pretty amazing since these
beauties are almost gone, pretty much everywhere else.
Federally, it's an endangered species, which means it
has protection of the Endangered Species Act.
States like New York, New Hampshire, Ohio, the
province of Ontario, Carnor Blue Butterflies
are almost entirely gone.
Yet here, these creatures are common.
Why? What explains this winged mystery?
The answer is in our flowers.
Our flowers, the food source for Carnor Blues, particularly
for their picky children.
Adult Carnor Blue Butterflies will feed on over a hundred
different flowering plants, so they don't really care.
But their larval food source is very specific.
It is one species, wild lupin.
And if you don't have it, you're not going
to have Carnor Blue Butterflies.
No lupins?
No Carnor.
There's a patch of wild lupin growing right here.
The larval form needs this lupin.
Here's how it works.
The female then will lay about 80 eggs on this lupin stem
or down in the grass around the base of the lupin stem.
And basically, the idea is when the larva come out for
the first brood which would be next May or June, they'll have
their food source right there.
They don't have to go far to find it.
And they can't make it without it.
You have to have wild lupin to have Carnor Blue Butterflies.
And fewer and fewer places have wild lupin.
Fewer and fewer places have the habitat, the landscape
that lupin needs, wide open oak savanna, shaped by fire.
Places like Nisida.
In the eastern part of the Carnor Blue Butterflies range,
there's a lot of development.
Changing these upland sites into subdivisions, industrial
parks, what have you.
They need places like these and they're rapidly disappearing.
Such an ephemeral thing, like so many sweet parts of
summer, they come and go.
The adults Carnor Blue Butterfly only lives for
a week, two at the most.
They come and go.
They have just two hatchings, two times a flight, one in
late May, one in late July.
But the presence of this tiny animal tells a larger
story about the landscape and legacy of Wisconsin.
Carnor Blue Butterflies, you know, in their own right are
beautiful little butterflies.
But it's really a symbol for not only the habitat and the
fact that here in Wisconsin, we have more of that habitat
than anywhere else because of the care we take with the land.
But also it's really a symbol of Wisconsin's
environmental ethic.
And there's a reason we have more of this habitat and more
Carnor Blue Butterflies here in this state than anywhere else.
They're here for a reason that can be seen any time,
all year round, in Nisida and across Wisconsin.
That's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
Tune in next time when we explain why some state
inmates have moved from the prison yard to the farm yard.
We'll also tell you why this couple is broadcasting
a need for social change.
We leave you now in Juno County with another look at the
Nisida National Wildlife Refuge.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Good night.
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