It's Anne, Egan,
Waka.
You say it like Wausau.
Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
I was born and raised there.
Daughter of Edith and Hilary
Sparkuwaka.
My dad was an environmental
activist, leader.
He's in the DNR Conservation
Hall of Fame.
I love it.
Egan Waka
Waka, like wasa with a K,
waka, wasa, wake.
Let me see my name so fast that
people call me Annie Egan,
Annie Wacka, so I say Annie Egen
Wack, and they're like, hi Annie.
I'm like, well, my friends call me,
Annie. I'm, like, that's cool.
I'm okay, Wack is my maiden name, so
I'll keep that one.
You know what?
Whatever you want to call me is
fine.
You can call me Ann or Annie.
I kind of feel I think Annie would
be okay because I think it's kind of
such a personal interview.
Yeah, that probably would be better
and you know what you're talking
about.
You did!
What was going on?
Excellent.
Oh, that's excellent.
Oh it's a beautiful
I have a lot of family up there.
It is. Thank you for saying that.
Okay, first of all, I do want to
say that we are a 501c3
non-profit, so we are non-partisan.
So we make sure that when we go out
that we don't talk to political
candidates. Our goal is to get our
people, our Native people to the
polls. So we work on combating
historic voter disenfranchisement.
Also, we work on
contemporary barriers that people
may face,
educating our voters.
and registering people to vote and
improve policies that impact our
native community access to the
polls.
And the key is that we do a lot of
one-on-one and that's how I think
we're successful.
Well, that's kind of changed a
little bit here and there.
So we've had voter
disenfranchisement where people are
actually faced some
challenges where maybe
their tribal ID won't
be accepted or they're
turned away or
the local election commission just
gives them the incorrect
information.
And I can give you an example that
I experienced about,
it was in 2014,
I actually moved to a Milwaukee
suburb.
and I went to vote.
And I was registering and had all my
information and she was, I was real
excited.
And she was
asking me all the questions, you
know, name, date,
where you live now, age.
And then she wanted to know where
I was born.
And I told her I was on the
Menominee Reservation.
And she said, you're Indian?
And I said, yes, ma'am, I am.
And she says, you can't vote.
Indians aren't allowed to vote!
And I just looked at her and I was
having one of those days, you know,
where it rained when I got out of my
car, kind of every little thing.
And I looked at, I said, ma'am, I
can't vote.
We are allowed to vote.
I'm Native American. I was born in
Wisconsin.
I'm in Menominee County, which is a
reservation. I voted before and
she was a gas that I said I voted
for.
And I Just looked at it and I said
ma'ame, I can vote, I've voted
before.
And she said, Indians can't,
vote, you're not allowed.
And I think
She was really confused when she
went to the head of the poll and I
could see she got a little talking
to and she came back and she was
quite elderly.
And she said, ma'am, I just
want to tell you I was following
policy procedure.
This wasn't racist.
And then I voted.
She finally let me vote.
I had the right ID and et cetera.
But you know, that story I tell
because people take voting for
granted and we shouldn't.
But also we have people that may
face this and I want them to know,
I don't care how old you are.
If you're just turned 18 or if
you're 90, if people treat you like
that, you have the right to vote.
You make sure you let people know
that you're not going to leave until
you vote.
Yes, she did.
She was so elderly, I
think she may have remembered when
we didn't have the right to vote.
So we got it 100 years ago, it was
101 years ago.
And it took
some states longer to get
the tribes to vote like I think the
last was in the 70s and it was in,
I want to say out east.
It was a county out east, state out
east that was one of the last to
give the native people the right
vote.
But she was misinformed.
And then the happy story is I went
back
When I voted like three years ago, I
vote every year, but I voted at the
three years ago when I went to vote,
I had my tribal ID and
she took it without question.
And I was just using my license to
vote at the first time.
And she said, oh, that's acceptable.
And then I told her my story real
quick. And she says, can you come
back? I said, sure.
And I went and voted and I came back
and she said I wanted to tell you
that a high school kid was here.
He just turned 18.
He was so excited and he wanted to
vote. And he said, how much does it
cost to vote?
I was like, are you kidding me?
So that tells me we have to educate
all people, our native people, but
all people about voting.
And we actually have gone into some
high schools on our reservations and
I've got some in Milwaukee area
to tell our people about boarding
and encouraging them.
And that's something we'll continue
to do.
We need to educate our people
throughout the year.
And actually as they go through the
school system and I'll be working
with another group in Milwaukee that
works in the MPS that will
work at getting people to vote.
Yeah, well, you know, the lot
of these are anecdotal,
so personally experienced.
So that's why I shared my
experience.
But what we've had in the past where
people went to vote and they told
them weren't registered and they
were, and they insisted and they
weren't, they were told they weren'
registered.
This happened on my reservation a
while back and she was
adamant. Eventually they let her
vote because she was so adamant
and she said, I'm not re-registered
because I registered to vote.
And I know I'm on your list.
They finally found it.
But it depends, there's a lot of
different ways
that have oppressed our
people in voting.
So I'd have to say that the one
thing I could speak to is my
incident because with that,
I literally,
it was horrible, but I know people
have had that before.
Yes, they are.
Isn't that great?
I love it.
Tribal IDs are a valid form.
And so when we're registering
people, a lot of people want to use
their tribal ID, and that's just
awesome. I love doing that.
It's just so awesome.
I love that.
Most people have it.
They get it from their respective
enrollment offices.
So they have to go to their
enrollment office to get it.
But also it's used for
IDs for certain services as well.
So like health services or community
events or something.
So it's really important to have
that tribal ID.
But you know, it's kind of wild that
we are the only culture that have to
prove who we are through a piece
of plastic that
has our number, but it's accepted,
which is really awesome.
That's great.
They do know, we work with the
tribes to get the word out.
So it's kind of a common knowledge,
it seems like when you turn 18, but
we have to educate people too.
We are in the community 365
days a year, well, except
holidays, but we are
out.
We wanna make sure our people
have received the proper education,
that they're aware that they can use
their tribal ID, what other forms
are available.
So it is up to us and
the tribes to educate our people.
And I think everyone's doing a
pretty good job because...
I've yet to encounter someone who
has a tribal ID
who doesn't know they can't use it.
They know they could use that to
vote.
Well, that I really
can tell you that I know the tribes
work with the people to get their
tribal ID.
There's various ways they can do it
by like, for
example, if someone wanted to go to
the tribe can send out
a letter to someone using
the tribal address and
the tribal office address
to them at that address and then
they can use that as their address
for voting.
So other and other times it just
We just keep working towards getting
the people the right to vote with
them who have P.O.
boxes.
It's problematic and it's something
we're working on. We need better
policies for that.
I do know that the voter count is
usually, we say about 70,000
possible Native votes.
That's a number that, you know, it's
hard to calculate, but that's pretty
much what we use.
The U.S.
census is how that number is based
on it, but the census isn't exactly
correct either.
I can give you an example of why.
For example, in Milwaukee,
I talked to someone who worked on
the census, she's in Milwaukee
for 20-some years.
And when she sees the number come
out, she said, we're higher.
You know, they say we're about
8,000, et cetera, but she said
a director also
from an organization said it's more
around 15 to 20,000.
Everyone pretty much goes with 20,00
Native Americans in
Milwaukee area.
So that vote is,
that could vote.
We can't, we can't track all
the registered voters.
It's something, it's
hard to do that with.
current system.
So we use it by going to the tribes
and finding out, but we'd
have to go to the election commission.
Then we have to fit.
It involves a lot that I
really don't I'm not privy to
about how we can access any
registered.
That's actually accurate.
Yes, 70,000 possible voters in
the state of Wisconsin, and that's
about 1% of the population, which
can really have an impact on some,
some votes, some races.
Well, I could give you an example
for the 2023
spring race,
spring election, compared
to 2019 spring
election.
On the Red Cliff Band of the Lake
Superior Chippewa,
the voter turnout was
increased by 130%.
And that's where we're working hard.
My reservation, I was on the
reservation working on increasing
voter turnout during that 2019
in the 2023 span.
And we increased voter turnout by
75% on
the Menominee Reservation.
I'm really proud of that because we
put a lot of work into it.
Exactly, I think one of the key
is the
protecting our
environment is one protecting the
water quality from
Lake Superior to, for
example, the.
Wolf River, the pristine Wolf River
on my reservation.
That's one issue.
Sovereignty, tribal sovereignty,
protecting our rights to
govern ourselves, protecting your
culture.
And what goes with the water
protection is our
wild rice beds.
Our sturgeon and walleye,
ancient spawning, fishing areas.
That's also up, that it's
a big concern for our people.
I think that the
Wisconsin Indian
Child Welfare Act is
another issue where native children
are placed with fit and
willing indigenous relatives to help
them preserve their culture
stability in preventing trauma,
because before they were normally
placed with non-native families.
So again, one of the key is
that we keep hearing is mother
earth is ill.
and we need to take care of her.
We need to sustain our wild rice
beds. We need sustain our ancient
wall-line spawning grounds.
We need protect our waterways.
We need clean and drinking water.
And we've had
people that, I've had tell me
that Mother
Earth is sick, she's throwing up.
An elder came up and told me that.
She said we have to vote to protect
her.
And then I had another person
tell me Mother Earth's
ill, she has a fever.
She doesn't know what she's doing.
And then another elder told me in
Milwaukee, Mother Earth is in
menopause. She doesn' know what
wants to do.
So we use humor a lot to get
our message across.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, I can't speak to the tribal
federal level because that's not
really what we're talking about now,
but with the state, I
don't think there's confusion.
I think that we have fought for our
rights hard to have our sovereignty
on our reservations and
it's respected.
And we have our governor is very
respective of our tribal
sovereignty.
And like I said, it's not something
that was just given to us.
We fought hard for it.
You know, that's interesting because
we are going out now and going to
the community and talking to the
youth.
And I think that's something that
we're gonna have to make sure we
keep working on because...
As they become 18, some
aren't aware of how to vote yet.
So I've had people say, what do I
do? How do I register?
So we help them register,
but we go into like the tribal
schools. I know they've done that.
They've gone into the high schools
near the reservations.
I've gone in to MPS and talked to
several groups about the importance
of voting and registering.
And we had quite a bit of success
with that.
So I think it's not
only the native people who need to
educate our kids, but all people,
because...
Our children aren't all on the
reservation either.
Some are in like the urban Milwaukee
areas.
But I had hope,
especially because that kid wanted
to pay the vote, you know?
It was sad that he thought that, but
you know, yeah.
What we're doing is we are
actually going to be doing
a lot of visits
throughout our communities,
doing a lot on one-on-ones, which is
the best way to get our
people to talk to us and
understand the importance of voting
if they don't know it.
But now we're having people come to
us when we're out tabling at events,
say like at a powwow or
at a community event where
they're like, you know, scavote
then, that was a slang we use, let's
go vote, scavate then.
And they said, I'm registered or,
you know, one person that went to a
powwow and he said, I'm not going to
vote, it doesn't matter.
Talked for 20 minutes and I told him
why it's important.
And you know again, we are in a
501C3.
So we're very careful, we maintain
that, which actually makes it easier
because we talk about issues.
And we had an event on March
11th in Milwaukee, which was
part of a food for thought type
event we had in Milwaukee.
Bad River Band of Lake Superior
Chippewa and the Menominee Indian
Tribal, Wisconsin.
I can speak to my event, and I know
the other two are successful, but we
all had Native American Rights Fund
Attorney, Alison Ness would
come in and speak.
We had over 50 people in
my event in Milwaukee, and it was
at the Indian Council of the Elderly
who's co-sponsored with us.
And we had people from 10 different
organizations from Milwaukee,
Native organizations, attend the
event, listen to what
the message was.
and they in turn pass it on to their
people. And I work with as many
organizations in Milwaukee as I can,
and then I visit these.
I've been revisiting them as well
throughout the year.
So it just doesn't stop.
It's not just right before the
election. It's all year
long and it's enjoyable.
I feel like I've be preparing for
this job since I left my reservation
in 1978.
Went to Marquette, worked for the
teachers union.
I worked at an Indian health center
for a while, which I'm now on the
board, you know, Chair of the Board
at the Gerald L. Indian Igneous
Health Center. but I've developed a
lot of contacts.
And through that, I've also
developed a lotta skills
and know the culture
well enough that it was brought up
without my reservation by my father
particularly, and how
to speak to people and make
sure we maintain respect
and pride for our culture.
And I'm so honored that I have
this position.
I'm extremely honored that I'm
allowed to do something that I
truly love and I feel very
purposeful.
Thank you.
Thank you, I didn't know about it.
Thank you, thank you.
I think it was the
protecting mother earth, which is
really strong and also tribal
sovereignty.
And he actually filled out a pledge
to vote card and
said he would vote.
So then we put them in our system
and then we do emails to people
and then you send voting reminders
out and we had a tailgate last
summer, which was pretty successful.
We had a donation of a thousand
tickets to the board games.
We had a big tailgate and we had
a color guard with all the tribes
represented and a drum.
And I had people, my one
cousin came up, she said, Annie, I
registered to vote.
I'm gonna vote.
And on last Friday, I met
a woman who said she
wanted me to help her register and I
was helping her and she didn't have
her ID or anything like that.
So she said I could tell she was
nervous. I said, I'll pick you up
and I'll take you to the poll.
Bring your elect, bring a bill and
we'll go to the pole and you can
register and I will make sure you're
okay. I'm not gonna tell her what to
do, but.
I think she was a little nervous, so
if I could help one person out,
I'll do it. If I can help up 30,
great. If I could up more, awesome.
Yes.
It does, and you know,
it's just amazing
that.
we can make such a difference now
for the next seven generations.
That's one of our main lines
is work for the seventh generations.
What we do now, we think about what
we're doing now, how will that
affect the next 7 generations?
And the key is to voting and
maintaining all our cultural
identities and sovereignty
and protecting Mother Earth.
And it's just a blessing to
be able to do this work.
The creators blessed me.
Thank you!