The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
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>> 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.
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
was funded in part by
Irene Daniell Kress,
the Evjue Foundation,
a charitable arm of
the Capital 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.
>> Bozho.
[speaking Potowatomi]
My name is Mike Alloway, Sr.
>> 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.
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
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,
Bodéwadmi.
That's what our name
originated from,
Bodéwadmi,
Potawatomi.
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 [speaking Native language],
which is the spirit of you and I
at the present, living.
The term Odawa
originally meant daawaa,
to sell something,
or to trade something.
They were to be the people that
kept the trade routes alive
along the michigami,
which we refer to ourselves
as the original people.
All of our language
is pretty close,
but there are some differences.
[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.
They called it Three Fires.
As long as they're maintaining
their individual fires
we're still together.
>> It is said that when we
split up, up in
Sault Ste. Marie.
The Ojibwe traveled westward
through Madeline Island, and
today much of them reside in
that general area.
The Odawa pretty much stayed
near the straits, and are now
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 wakweshe.
Wauwatosa is another one.
It's wauwautaesie,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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, gokmeskinan,
we say, is sleeping,
so some of the sacred stories
are told then.
The moon of the bear, mko gises,
or February, mko gises.
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,
ceremonies,
our language.
My mother told me
that once we lose the language,
we cease to be Anishinaabe,
which is Indian.
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,
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 shkwedenesi,
the fire spirit.
One who tends a fire
is known as bodwewnene,
and that's always been
within the families, that
have carried on that tradition
among our people.
>> The social powwows
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
wear their moccasins.
They're dancing around.
The creator looks down and,
oh, they're still down there.
[laughs]
[vocable singing]
?
- To learn more about the
sovereign Indian Nations in Wisconsin,
visit WisconsinFirstNations.org.
>> Potawatomi History
was funded in part by
Irene Daniell Kress,
the Evjue Foundation,
a charitable arm of
the Capital 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.