*
[singing in native language]
>> I'm David Grignon, tribal
historic preservation officer
for the Menominee tribe.
We have had a lot of community
support with this museum.
A lot of people wanted to help
any way they could.
We said we wanted a facility
that looked like
the Grand Medicine Lodge
of the Menominee people.
As you can see, that's the way
it looks today.
Because we believe that bringing
the things back that were sacred
to us when our people made
everyday things.
There was a ceremony that went
along with that.
They didn't just go ahead and do
it, they offered their tobacco
and they asked the Creator for
help to build the things that
they did.
Getting this together was
something that we knew that had
to be done.
We had to properly display and
bring forth Menominee culture
and the language here to the
Menominee people.
We just saw the -- flying
over there, the eagle.
He came by and said, you guys
are doing a good job.
At this time...
I just want to say -- to
everyone, on this special day
of our people.
--.
[applause]
>> Menominee History
was funded in part by
Irene Daniell Kress,
the Evjue Foundation,
a charitable arm of
the Capital Times ,
Ron and Patty Anderson,
the estate of Dale Druckrey,
the Wisconsin History Fund
with support from
the National Endowment
for the Humanities,
and the Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
[music and rushing water]
[speaking in native language]
My name is Dave Grignon.
My Menominee name is --,
which means, when the sun
is at mid-sky, or noon.
I was given that name by
one of our elders of the tribe
about seven years ago.
I'd like to speak about the
Menominee people today,
who we are, and why we're here.
Menominee is an Algonquin word.
The full word is --.
It's People of the Wild Rice.
At the time of creation
the creator gave us two special
gifts so that we would always
have that.
Those two gifts were wild rice
and maple sugar.
Throughout the years after that
the Menominee were always in the
midst of wild rice.
It would seem like,
wherever we travelled,
the rice would be there.
If we left that area,
the rice would follow us.
So the neighboring tribes gave
us that name, Menominee,
People of the Wild Rice,
which we still have today.
Our people have another
name for ourselves as
Kiash Mamaceqtaw.
That means, the Ancient People,
because we've been here so long.
We don't have a migration story.
We are the original inhabitants,
the ancient people, of this
land, what is now Wisconsin and
Upper Michigan.
The Menominees were created
about 60 miles east of
here at the mouth of the
Menominee River.
It was here that our creation
story started, our origin story.
It was said that over 10,000
years ago, we were created
at this spot in --,
it's called, and it was here
the Great Bear came out of the
mouth of the Menominee River.
He didn't want to be alone.
He saw the eagle flying above.
He said, "Brother eagle,
come down!
Be my brother."
The eagle descended and
walked with him up the river.
As they continued to walk,
they encountered a moose, wolf,
and crane.
These were the first five clans
of the Menominee people.
This is who the Menominee
descended from.
The Menominees, for centuries,
lived off the environment,
always making sure that we only
took what we needed.
But we always gave back in forms
of ceremonies, prayers and
offerings, asking the creator
and thanking him for
the good life that we did live
in this area.
Our people were called dreamers
also.
When I say that, is that we
could foretell the future in the
dreams that we had.
One of the dreams was that
living down in the Green Bay
area, there would be a huge
wooden boat that would come into
the bay.
Soon after, this boat did come
into bay, and in this boat
was Jean Nicolet.
He was the first European to
come into Menominee territory.
It's interesting to note that
the Menominee say that we
discovered him on our shores,
but the history books say
that Nicolet had discovered
the native peoples.
The Menominees occupied
ten million acres of land, which
is now the upper peninsula of
Michigan and most of Wisconsin.
Within this land,
we've lived for centuries
and called our home.
We are the hunters and
gatherers.
We did occupy certain areas
of that ten million acres
at one time or another.
We were not a sedentary people.
We went where the fish was.
We went where the deer and the
bear were, that things
of that sort.
In certain seasons,
we had to do things.
In the spring,
we had maple sugar,
so we had our sugar camps.
In the summer, we had fishing
and growing small gardens.
In the fall, we had wild rice.
Then wintertime
was a time of fishing again,
and doing hunting.
We followed the seasons here in
this ten million acres of land.
Or course, the Europeans wanted
this land to live on
as they migrated from the
east coast.
Not only Europeans were coming,
but also the eastern tribes
were being pushed westward
into Menominee territory.
Our people didn't have no
concept of selling or buying,
or things of that sort.
We had no word in our language
for boundaries.
We didn't know what that was.
One of the things they wanted us
to do was set our boundaries.
Within this territory we were
free to hunt, fish and gather.
It was a hard concept for us to
imagine.
But we did enter into these
agreements, and through this
series of several treaties we
had to sell most of our land.
There's documentation that
several of our chiefs
were reluctant to do so,
but did do so to fulfill
our peace and friendship with
the United States government.
In this time also, Wisconsin was
a territory and the Menominees
had the remaining lands that
was needed to become a state.
So the American government came
to us again in 1848 and asked us
to cede our remaining lands
in Wisconsin and move
to Crow Wing, Minnesota.
Our chiefs were very suspicious
of this treaty.
They said that we had to look at
this Crow Wing country,
some 600,000 acres of land.
After a party of chiefs
went over to look and inspect
the Crow Wing country,
led by Chief Oshkosh,
Oshkosh came back with the
chiefs and reported to the
Menominee people that he didn't
like that land over there.
The government said it was full
of wild rice, fish and game.
When our chiefs got over there
to inspect that land it wasn't
what the government had said.
There was two warring tribes.
The Sioux and Chippewa
were in that area,
plus there was not as much
wild game and wild rice
that we needed to live on.
With that, Oshkosh and
a number of Menominee chiefs
went to Washington to talk
to the Great White Father.
At that time
it was President Fillmore.
Oshkosh is quoted to have said
that, "The poorest land in
Wisconsin was better than that
of Crow Wing.
Please let my people stay in
Wisconsin."
Because it was our ancestral
territory.
Oshkosh had told the president,
he said, I know an area
that is considered a wilderness
where no one wants to live.
Let me move my tribe there.
The president listened and
let the Menominee people stay
in the Wolf River area.
That brought about the Treaty
of 1854, that established the
Menominee Indian Reservation.
The wilderness that they were
talking about was the forest
and the rivers and streams
that you see today.
This area that our people had
cherished for thousands of years
was established as a reservation
for us, some 276,000 acres
of land.
Like I said, we were hunters and
gatherers, and we had to make do
in this land, to live, hunt,
fish, and gather.
If you can imagine, we had bands
of Menominees that had to follow
the rules of the treaty and come
to this reservation
from the Menominee River,
from the Green Bay area,
from the Milwaukee area,
all the way down into Chicago,
up over into Eau Claire,
and points in between.
All these bands had to move here
to the reservation and start
a new life in this territory.
During this time there were
several changes that took place
amongst the Menominee people.
And there was always attempts by
the missionaries to convert
the Menominee people
to Christianity.
But there was a traditional
community at Zor
that kept on and clung to
the old ways of
the medicine lodge,
and later the Dream Dance,
or the Big Drum,
which is still with us today.
Our people started to realize
there is value to this land
besides cultural and spiritual
value.
There is economic value also.
This brought about, they started
cutting some of the forest,
the dead and downed trees,
to process that for lumber
for our cabins, for our homes.
But then we had asked if we
could start cutting some of the
white pine and send them down to
the mills off the reservation.
Our chief said that if
we do this right, if we cut
this forest in a fashion
that it will always be here,
let's do that.
Chief Oshkosh came up with the
concept of saying, if we cut the
mature trees, start on the east
part of the reservation.
By the time we get to the west
side of the reservations,
it will be time to start over.
That set up the concept
of sustained yield, which is a
modern forestry practice today.
After realizing the value of
what we had here, the Menominees
started becoming financially
secure in the things
that we needed at that time,
up into the early 1900s.
During this time there was a
huge blow-down, a tornado,
that came to the reservation.
It blew several hundred thousand
trees down.
That needed to be harvested
before it rotted.
Our people had this idea
to process our own logs here.
We asked the government if could
do that, to use our own money
to set up a saw mill.
In this time there was a lot of
attempts of assimilation by the
government on the
Menominee people.
There were the boarding schools
of course, where the Menominees
were taken off the reservation
into a boarding school setting
and were not allowed
to come back home
for long periods of time.
The idea was to take the culture
away, take the language away.
We had two boarding schools
right on the reservation.
One was operated
by the government.
The other one was operated
by the Catholic church.
There was another attempt
to take our culture away
called relocation.
They would send our families off
to cities all across the country
and promise them jobs and work,
and things of that sort.
But when our families, say,
got to Chicago, or Denver,
or New York, of course
they all had a hard time.
Coming from the reservation
and trying to live in a city.
And the jobs that were promised
weren't there.
They had to try to live
by any means in the city.
Most of them came back.
Through all that, the Menominee
people endured, kept our
stories, things that were
past down from generation
to generation, and
the sacred Menominee language
that we still speak
amongst our people.
Through probably about a hundred
years, we were called one of
the most successful tribes
in the United States.
There was a lot of people
that didn't like that
from the government side,
because we were doing so well.
We still had a huge land-base
here on the reservation.
We're also managed by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs,
our forest was, but we always
kept a good watch on them.
In their management practices,
they had over-cut a lot of our
timber and our people knew that.
We hired lawyers with the money
that we had to sue the federal
government for the damages
to our forest.
This was done in 1934,
and it took almost 20 years,
up until the 1950s,
that we won the case.
We won the huge lawsuit against
the federal government
to the tune of $8.5 million.
At that time, that was a lot
of money.
Besides winning this lawsuit, we
had built up a huge amount in
the treasury and we were really
doing well.
There was talk of a senator
in Washington that wanted to
terminate our tribe because we
wanted some of that award money
from the lawsuit, and
we wanted to distribute that
to the tribal membership.
He said if the Menominees want
to do that, than they should go
on their own, be set free from
federal supervision.
So our tribal leaders found
a way to form a government
much like the other counties
in the state.
The Menominee Reservation
was terminated in June of 1954,
however termination didn't take
effect until May of 1961.
Within this time the Menominee
people lost a lot of our funds
we had in the treasury.
Individual Menominees
had to buy their own land.
There were attempts at that time
to take the forest away from us.
Our leaders formed
a corporation,
the Menominee Enterprises, Inc.,
to help keep this land intact,
which they did.
But we were told that
we were not a tribe no more.
A lot of our people did not want
to teach the language to the
younger ones no more.
There was economic loss
and cultural loss.
There was this huge tax base
we had to pay on the forest,
and we had to find ways
to come up with that.
We still had the saw mill, but
the sales from the mill itself
didn't cover the property tax.
So what the board of directors
came up with was the idea
of selling land again.
On the southeastern side
of the reservation
were nine spring-fed lakes
that they wanted to turn
into a lake development,
and sell these lots
to outsiders, to come in and
build large homes on these lots.
They would pay taxes to
Menominee County, and therefore
help p the tax on the forest.
The lake development
was created,
what is now Legend Lake.
But this idea of selling land
again, the Menominee people
did not like it, because
not more than a hundred years
before we had to sell most of
our land through the treaties.
Why do we have to do this again?
A group of Menominees
got together and said,
this shouldn't be.
Why do we have to sell land?
Why do we have to be terminated?
Termination is totally against
the trust responsibility
that the government had to us as
Menominee, as a sovereign tribe.
Tribal members like Ada Deer,
and Jim --,
Sylvie Wilber,
just a number of Menominees
got together and said
we don't have to accept this.
Let's form a group called
Drums, Determination,
Rights, and Unity
of Menominee Stockholders.
Let's form this group and
fight this lake development.
Let's fight for restoration.
Let's restore the tribe the way
it was before termination.
Within that time, the lake was
developed, sales had started,
several hundred lots were sold.
So there was protests by Drums
at the land sales office
at Legend Lake.
They got an injunction with
a judge to stop the lake
development.
In the meantime, they were
lobbying with senators and
congressmen in Washington, and
also at the state level in
Madison, to repeal termination.
A federal bill, called the
Menominee Restoration Act,
was brought forth
by Senator Proxmire.
The bill was passed in December,
1973 to get restored as a
sovereign tribe once again.
They said we were not a tribe
anymore when we were terminated.
But that didn't stop our
language to be spoken.
Our elders still spoke
the language.
Unfortunately, a lot of them
didn't teach the younger ones,
but we're getting that back
today.
There's a lot of us
in the middle-aged group
that are speaking now.
Our language is taught in the
schools, K-12, and at the
College of Menominee Nation.
Our culture is still intact.
One of the reasons our chief
said, let us live in this land,
where you think it's worthless,
is because of the Wolf River.
It was here, for thousands of
years, the sturgeon would come
up the river each spring
to spawn at Keshena Falls.
Sturgeon is culturally and
spiritually significant to us.
In 1892 the dams were built at
Shawano that prevented the
sturgeon to come to
the reservation.
We were out this cultural
resource for a hundred years,
up until 1993.
Then a group of Menominees got
together and said, we want the
sturgeon to come back, because
we feel it's a cultural loss.
There are ceremonies that we
have to do because our ancestors
told us to do them
with sturgeon.
We can't do them
if we don't have them.
So a group of our young people,
including myself,
wanted to go to the Shawano dam
and take sturgeon.
We thought it was our cultural
right, and treaty right.
They said we'll get arrested
if we do that.
Well, that's the chance
we'll have to take.
We need these sturgeon to fulfil
these ceremonies that we have to
do, that were done for centuries
before.
The tribal government said, no,
you'd better not do that.
You'd better let us talk to the
DNR to see if there's some way
they can bring some up to us.
The DNR finally agreed to
provide so many a year for us
to have a sturgeon feast
and celebration.
Our people still have that sense
of it was something
we had to do.
We believe we were looking
to the seven generations
of those unborn.
We're keeping this land
for them.
Were keeping this river
for them.
We're keeping the language.
We're keeping the culture.
We're keeping the concept
of being Menominee people,
a sovereign nation.
That's who we are
as Menominee people.
That's who we'll be
into the future.
*
>> To learn more about the
sovereign Indian nations
in Wisconsin
visit wisconsinact31.org.
To purchase a DVD of this and
other Tribal Histories programs
visit wpt.org or
call 800-422-9707.
Menominee History
was funded in part by
Irene Daniell Kress,
the Evjue Foundation,
a charitable arm of
the Capital Times ,
Ron and Patty Anderson,
the estate of Dale Druckrey,
the Wisconsin History Fund
with support from
the National Endowment
for the Humanities,
and the Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.