♪ ♪ PBS Wisconsin original
>> I'd like to say welcome. I wanted to share a little bit
of information about the center here, why it exists.
I'm hoping that we can get more people to start learning.
That's one of the things we see here in our community
is a lot of people are not wanting to learn,
to learn their language. I really hate to say that,
but our language is in danger. We're forgetting who we are.
Here at the museum, school groups come here,
and that's something I always try to convey
is that real story. Because today in America,
schools aren't really teaching about our history.
They're not talking about treaties that were broken
with the tribes. They don't talk about
the boarding schools, how our ancestors
were put in these places, beaten for talking their
language. They're not talking
about removal, that Potawatomi trail of death.
It's sad for me to talk about that.
Wisconsin. It's sad for me to share that.
I'm hoping we can get more young people involved.
You know, this is the real story about our people.
This is what this building is all about,
is telling that story.
>>Potawatomi History story.
was funded in part by Irene Daniell Kress,
the Evjue Foundation, a charitable arm of
theCapital Times, Ron and Patty Anderson,
the Wisconsin History Fund with support from
the National Endowment months.
for the Humanities, and the Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
ads are just over that little >> Bo sho.
[speaking in native language] My name is Mike Alloway, Sr.
issues. >> My name is Jim Thunder.
I'm a member of the Forest County Potawatomi.
Right now, I do a lot of teaching of the language and
other things as I'm asked to do.
I talk about the history as it was told by my people.
I think those of us that do that have all this responsibility.
disclose it. If somebody wants it, we're
there, or try to be there. I thought at one point by this
time I'd be actually retired and traveling.
As you can see, I'm not. [laughs]
>> Part of the stories that I've been told was that at one time
the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa, we were all one large
tribe that split up in the 16th century near the
Straits of Mackinaw. These old stories were passed
ads. down to me from our elders.
According to them, each tribe,
when they came to be, were given tasks.
The Potawatomi were to be the Keepers of the Fire,
--. That's what our name
originated from, Bodewadami,
Potawatomi. viral.
The Ojibwe were given the task of Keepers of the Faith.
In fact, that word Ojibwe as we know it, refers to a term
known as --, which is the spirit of you and I
at the present, living. Michigan's lieutenant governor.
The term Odawa originally meant --,
to sell something, delegitimize it. And so by
or to trade something. They were to be the people that
kept the trade routes alive along the --,
which we refer to ourselves as the original people.
All of our language is pretty close,
but there are some differences. not.
[recording of native language] [repeating native language]
>> If you're raised up speaking like I do, you can understand
a lot of it, most of it. I never had to really try
to learn it or anything. I just understand it.
Even if I've never heard it I know what they're talking about.
Our ceremonies pretty much remained the same,
except Odawa are a little bit more removed than we were
because they were more dominated by the white people,
and Ojibwe, to a certain extent. They're a separate entity.
They still had their alliance. regulate.
They called it Three Fires. As long as they're maintaining
their individual fires we're still together.
to them. >> It is said that when we
attention to the race, and these split up, up in
to misinformation. Sault Ste. Marie.
The Ojibwe traveled westward disinformation out there,
through Madeline Island, and today much of them reside in
that general area. The Odawa pretty much stayed
near the straits, and are now truth.
located up in Upper Michigan. The Potawatomi went further
southward into lower Michigan, parts of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin. A lot of those towns that are
located down in southern Wisconsin bear the names of what
were once Potawatomi villages. Waukesha, in our language
that refers to a fox, which is --.
Wauwatosa is another one. It's --,
meaning firefly. A little further south
is what we now know as the city of Mukwonago,
Muk, meaning beaver, beaver den.
There's a lot of history of our people along the western shores
of Lake Michigan, all the way up towards Washington Island.
At one time that was called Potawatomi Island.
According to some of our elders, they still go up there and
collect medicines up there. But our history seems to be
difficult to talk about at times because of the removals
that were made back in 1837, I believe, when a lot of tribes
were being moved westward. Some moved into Canada.
They kept going northward. During that removal too,
it's said that some Potawatomi went southward.
They kept going south. Today, they live among
the Mexican Kickapoo Indians. >> The Trail of Death,
my great-grandfather was on that march,
and as they were being forced out by the government,
the removal policy, Andrew Jackson.
Somewhere along the line they escaped, several of them,
and my great-grandfather among them.
They joined up with a group of Kickapoo who were
fleeing to Mexico. They fled to Mexico
and lived in Mexico. My grandfather was born there.
After several years the US Army sent soldiers into the interior
electoral electoral college of Mexico to round up
the Potawatomi because they had escaped.
On their first night back after they crossed the Rio Grande
back into the States, in Texas, my grandfather and them escaped
again, a bunch of them. The soldiers were busy partying.
I think he let their horses loose and fled.
My grandfather talks about being up in probably the only tree in
Texas, and the soldiers rode up, an officer and an aide-de-camp.
All the able-bodied men were out hunting.
They left an old man there to take care of the camp.
So they shot the old man. The ladies, a couple of them,
had skillets in their hands. They knocked the soldiers
off their horses. They really did a number
on them. They had to baby them.
They turned their horses loose. They couldn't keep them because
of the horseshoes. They just had to flee
right there. My grandfather, he was a little
boy by this time, he talks about, you know, traveling by
night. They kept pretty still
during the day. They made their way to Kansas.
My grandfather was a young man administrators feel like
when he came from Kansas back to Wisconsin.
A lot of them made their way up to the Sheboygan area,
that had also escaped from the removal.
So as the soldiers got closer, they just fled deeper into
the woods from Sheboygan. They finally moved up into
Forest County there. There were already Potawatomi
living all over, just nobody knew where they were.
Everybody was in hiding, because we fought the soldiers.
>> Around in the late 1800s, a gentleman by the name
of Erik Morstad,
who was a Lutheran missionary, learned that there were
Potawatomi in northern Wisconsin
that were living here and there. He decided to help
the Potawatomi through the Homestead Act.
With that he also worked with other attorneys to secure monies
from the Treaty at Chicago. A lot of that money was used
to purchase lands up here in Forest County.
So we started to organize after the Indian Reorganization Act
in 1934. We officially became
the Forest County Potawatomi in 1937.
>> Where we were raised, upstream from
my grandfather's homestead.
My dad had put a log house up there.
Then later on, more children came, we added a shanty
to one end of it as a kitchen and a dining
area. They all slept in the log house.
They preferred their log houses because they were much warmer.
When the government first came and built these government
homes, frame houses, they almost froze.
A lot of them moved back to these log houses
during the winter. One old man they talk about,
he lived in a hogan all his life,
and the people in nearby towns scraped up some lumber
and built him a house. Then he had a nice barn.
[laughs]
>> The total population here of the Forest County Potawatomi,
I believe, is pretty close to around 1,400,
maybe a little bit more. They say we're the smallest of
all the eight recognized bands of the Potawatomi Nation.
A lot of the bands today kind of look at us as that band
that has retained a lot of the traditions, being that we were
the ones that hid from the removal process.
French whatsoever. A lot of our elderly today are
being called upon by the other bands to assist with their
language instruction. What we do is,
like any other person would do, we try to help them
as much as we can. Because, you know, according to
a lot of our elders, there are probably, right now
in this day and age in this band, probably about
five fluent speakers left of the Potawatomi language.
>> Without our language, we cease to be
Indian. [recording of native language]
[repeating native language] I spent a lot of time
teaching language. Pride comes in, and the old ways
that are being ignored, the respect for each other,
our children. You know, in white culture, you
hear, they teach their children, "respect your parents!"
With us it's respect your children.
>> He passed that language down to our younger generation
so that they can carry that on. U.S. Mexico border.
The Potawatomi language is the very definition of a people.
It is the core. When Europeans came across the
ocean they encountered a unique people that had their ways
of pretty much governing themselves, through clans,
through their language. That language is very sacred
to our people. If it dies off, it is the end
of the Potawatomi. Because when you're not using
your language, you don't know anything about yourself.
You don't know anything about your culture.
criminal. You're outside of it.
>> My mother did not speak English.
My dad only spoke enough to get by.
He didn't care to improve. It wasn't his language.
My uncles and my aunts never spoke it.
When we visited we had to use the language, particularly if we
talked with the elders. They didn't understand English.
I would say something to my mother in English and she'd
met her. tell me to talk Indian.
"That is not your language!"
There's a lot of things getting in the way nowadays,
even for us. The ceremonies,
we try to keep alive. Again, that's part of being
Potawatomi, the ceremonies, and the biggest part of that,
listening so you can learn. >> With the addition of the
museum which was built around 1998, it provided a means for
our community to kind of get together more.
It's a place where a lot people can come together and learn
about the old crafts that were back in the day.
We have worked with several people to bring
black ash basket making back into the community.
We've had various classes there, flute making, working with
copper, bead working techniques.
>> There's a lot of things that we have lost.
The great bullrush, I've seen those mats and
the bags they're made out of. My mother, she said they cut it
with a scythe, laid it out on the shore to turn color,
to yellow. Then they were able to pound it
and separate the fibers that they used to make these
mats and bags. She said it was a long time ago
that she remembered doing that. But I didn't quite ask her what
the process was for doing this. Wisconsin.
There's another one called moosewood.
It's also called leatherwood. It's really strong.
You can take little piece like that and you wouldn't be able to
break it. I've showed my people that here.
They were unaware of it. But this is what we learn
by living way back out in the sticks.
>> In every family, there are stories, and all of those
stories are meant to be shared. Last year, we had hosted
wintertime stories here. Some of the general stories
can be told right now, but some of the sacred stories
are usually told in the wintertime,
because everything is dormant. Grandmother Earth, --
we say, is sleeping, so some of the sacred stories
are told then. The moon of the bear, --,
or February, --. We had a lot of our elders
come in an talk about those in the language.
One of the unique things is that after the story in Potawatomi,
they shared it in English. They gave those people in
attendance that opportunity to actually think about
what they were talking about. So that cultural center museum
that is an avenue today for our community
in which to kind of give back. It creates, also, that ability
for not only our tribal members, but that place were local people
are given that chance to learn more about our history.
I think in the past there's been so much controversy and racism
that we had to live through. I remember back as a child,
attending local school here in Crandon,
that it was very difficult. There was absolutely
no understanding, or no knowledge of our history
or anything like that. The impact of Indian gaming
created a better life for a lot of tribal members.
I know that there are things in the past that we wish we could
have done, and now we're able to do it.
You know, we have a natural resources department.
They're actually monitoring our wolf population within the
reservation boundaries. We have them also monitoring
these waters here, ensuring that this is going to be
available for the next generation.
>> Just when you start thinking it's all lost, then you get
people who are really interested in a lot of these things,
prevention couldn't be ceremonies,
our language. My mother told me
that once we lose the language, we cease to be Anishinaabe,
which is Indian. professionals and community
Then she said, the creator looks down here when we do a ceremony
to hear us speak our language. When he no longer hears
that language, post-secondary education, we
or sees moccasin tracks, then he will think about ending
the world again. >> Our elders are doing what
they can to ensure that, you know, what they leave is
going to be picked up by some of our younger generation.
They'll get back to teaching the history, the culture of our
people, focus on a lot of the old ceremonies.
Our belief of why the Potawatomi were given that task
of keeping that fire was that a lot of the ceremonies include
that sacred fire that's built. Some of the old people,
I've heard them talking about that spirit
that's within that fire there. They refer to that spirit
as --, the fire spirit.
One who tends a fire is known as --,
and that's always been within the families, that
have carried on that tradition among our people.
>> The social Pow Wows you hear advertised all over.
People with their moccasins.
They're still making moccasins tracks.
So that has a purpose. That's what my mother told me
when I asked her why they were doing this.
I'd never seen that done when I was growing up.
It was all ceremony. She told me, it has a purpose
now, because that's when young people and everybody
community. wear their moccasins.
They're dancing around. The creator looks down and,
oh, they're still down there. [laughs]
[singing in native language] ♪ ♪
>> 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.
>> Paula. >>Potawatomi History
was funded in part by
Irene Daniell Kress, the Evjue Foundation,
a charitable arm of theCapital Times,
Ron and Patty Anderson, the Wisconsin History Fund
with support from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and the Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.