The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.
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I've been able to collect
a lot of photographs of our people,
and once in a while
I would bring them out into the center
and the elders would come and sit
and they'd look at those photos and they'd reminisce.
And the sparkle is what I would see.
The joy in looking at those old pictures
and remembering how it used to be.
I always like to see that.
It was a happy time.
A lot of it was happy times for them,
but then there were also sadness, too.
I always kind of seen our tribe as being
what I jokingly call "the low man on the totem pole"
because other tribes have so many things going for them,
and our tribe always kind of seems to be last.
But we are trying very hard
to retain the things
and the gifts that were given to us by the creator.
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St. Croix History was funded in part by:
Irene Daniell Kress,
Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund
of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region,
Evjue Foundation,
Ron and Patty Anderson,
Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment,
Timothy William Trout Education Fund,
National Endowment for the Humanities,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
[birds chirping]
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- Um... versus Ojibwe.
- Oh, yeah? - And...
My name is Wanda McFaggen.
My Indian name is Biidaabanookwe,
and that translates to Daybreak Woman.
I come from the Sand Lake community of St. Croix.
Mitaawangaa indoonjiba,
my community.
I'm from the migizi clan.
- My name is Mitchell La Sarge, and that's my government name.
[Speaks Ojibwe]
Ojibwe... [Speaks Ojibwe]
I come from the St. Croix
Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin band.
And I work under the education department
as a culture coordinator.
And my traditional name is Bagwaj-inini.
That was given to me when I was still a child.
I can't recall having a ceremony,
but we don't decide them, you know?
It's the manidoo, the spirits, that give us these names.
And what mine roughly translates into is
Man in the Woods, Wilderness Man,
and that's a spirit.
It's a manidoo that we pray to.
He's the keeper of this land we have.
He watches over the land, the woods.
When I'm among my people, I always tell my name, who I am.
That's how I recognize myself.
We encourage our people that have these names,
not just the government names,
because that's how the spirits recognize who we are,
and we become closer with the spirits for help.
They help us in many ways, and...
I always bring up my name, you know,
when I put my tobacco down, my asemaa.
I never say my English name.
- [McFaggen]: We migrated from the east coast.
The prophets told us that we had to move west,
that there was a light-skinned race that was coming
and if we didn't move,
we could potentially be destroyed.
And the prophets told us that
we needed to follow the megis shell,
until we found food that grows on water, and that's wild rice.
So we began our migration, and it took many years.
There's seven stopping places along the migration route
where the megis shell set down
and we did our Mide Lodge.
Our last stop was on Madeline Island,
and that we consider to be the spiritual hub
of the Anishinaabe.
From there, one of our Marten Clans
started to leave Madeline Island
and head down towards the St. Croix River.
We had settlements on Rice Lake in Danbury.
Some settlements down by Lac Wisconsin,
our Round Lake community.
- [La Sarge]: The Marten Clan,
we hold that clan here.
You see, the St. Croix is on the border
of Ojibwe country and the Sioux people.
And at a time, it was said
we were called the border sitters...
because, you know, we were on the edge of our country.
You know, the Ojibwe and any further was the Sioux people.
It was kind of a... maybe a warrior mentality
that we watched for them to come into our country
because Marten is said to be a strategic and warrior clan.
- When the treaties began, the 1837 treaty,
we had a distinct identity.
There were three chiefs that signed that treaty.
And with the treaty of 1842,
some of the same chiefs signed that treaty, too.
With the treaty of 1854,
we lost our identity
in the eyes of the government.
They said that none of our chiefs
were at that treaty-making
and none of them signed the treaty.
But we've done a lot of research,
and we've come to find that our Chief Ayaabens,
Little Buck, signed that treaty,
but he signed it under the Lac Courte Oreilles band.
So because of that we lost our identity as being St. Croix.
And it took about 70 years for us to establish our homeland.
Our people went to a lot of Senate committee hearings
and voiced about our land here.
So eventually the government started to listen to us,
and we got our recognition in 1934
with the Indian Reorganization Act.
And we, our band name then became
the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin.
We chose to use Chippewa
because of our dealings with the US government.
That was the name that was designated to us.
Although we were, in our own way,
we call ourselves Anishinaabe.
But in dealing with the different tribes
a long time ago,
we were known as Ojibwe
because of the style of moccasins we wore.
Our moccasins were pucker-toed,
and that's what other tribes called us by, was the Ojibwe.
- My family's always been here, St. Croix.
During my mother's birth, she was born in Cook County,
Chicago, Illinois.
That's when all the Indians were moved to cities and stuff
to try-- you know, they were promised things, jobs.
Good things like that.
So my mother was born there,
and throughout that time we'd always,
my grandmother would always bring them back here
to our reservation where we came from.
Some of the younger ones,
like my mother and her cousins from their age,
it was very different, because in the city there's water.
There's everything there for them, but coming back up here
to the reservations, it wasn't like that, you know?
We had to go down to the lake for water, nobody had water pumps.
We had to work much harder, but...
they're reminded of who they are and why we do these things.
- I tried very desperately to learn my tradition
because I grew up in Chicago,
and my mother would bring us up here during the summertime.
But we didn't stay long enough
to learn a lot of traditional things until we moved back here.
And then I just sought out people
that would be able to help me.
- My grandmother, she was very traditional,
and since I was a baby, I remember her being traditional.
Throughout my high school years,
I kind of veered off track of our traditions.
Other things came into play,
you know, going to a white school, off the reservation.
Sports, you know.
Girls, all that stuff, you know, came into play.
The further I got from my traditions and our ceremonies
and way of life, it seemed to get worse.
It took me a long time to understand that.
I was a very hard-headed person.
And my grandmother, she was someone
that always encouraged me to remember who we are,
and I think the way she went about it helped me a lot
because eventually I did start remembering who I was
and what I'm supposed to do as a person,
as an Anishinaabe person.
I started out by going back to our Big Drums.
- [McFaggen]: We rely on our elders quite a bit.
They're the ones that hold our past for us.
They're the ones that are the keepers of our traditions,
the keepers of our way.
My mentor, Benny Rogers,
he's passed away, and I miss him.
He-- He-- (mournful emotion)
He would tell me a lot of different things that...
traditional things that the people
used to do a long time ago,
and kind of reflected on how things have changed
and that a lot of our young people are
walking away from the traditions and the values.
In my position for the tribe,
I consider myself to be the middle man.
I've learned a lot of things from the elders,
and it's my responsibility to pass that onto the children.
- These past five years or so, a lot of elders have passed that
knew songs, knew the language, and, at the same time,
among our young people, they've been lost sort of.
They release into drugs and alcohol.
It's been running pretty rampant on our reservation.
Overdoses are going crazy.
That's a topic we've been talking about a lot is these
younger people and their troubles.
How we can kind of stop it and guide them on their path,
find what they're passionate about.
There's the AODA department recovery program
that I work with also, and they wanted me to be there
because I'm still young, somewhat.
They think I can relate to
a lot of younger generations coming up.
They want the younger generations to see that
you don't need to be an elder to know these things
and do these things.
I can recall some things
that pushed me towards our traditional ways.
One was my grandmother.
She got pretty sick,
and whenever someone's sick
we usually have feasts and pray for them.
And you know it...
...scared me.
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But, during them times in those feasts, you know,
we'd be smiling.
It's a community effort.
And it made me feel good afterward.
Lightened my heart, and...
every time I feel rejuvenated from ceremonies.
Then she got better.
She got better and she, some years went by and...
I eventually got put on the Big Drum, as a member.
And... my grandmother would always tell me
that's the best thing you could do for your people.
- We are a Big Drum Society,
and that drum was given to us
by the Sioux people, the Lakota people.
And it traveled all through this area,
and they say that how that drum came to be
was because soldiers were killing the Lakota people
and a lady went into the water and hid from the soldiers.
And while she was there, the spirits talked to her
and told her how to make this peace drum.
We're told that as long as that drum sounds
that we will live in peace.
We have that for our spirituality.
We also have the Midewiwin Lodge.
I'm Second Degree Mide.
There's not too much I can say about that.
I can share with my family what goes on with Midewiwin,
but that's all.
- That's how our ceremonies work, you know?
We keep them secret.
And I'm always wary about how to speak on our ceremonies.
You know, it's a sacred thing, it's a spiritual thing,
so some things we can't talk about.
A lot of things we can't talk about...
so I only go so in depth about them.
I don't want something to happen to me because of it.
(chuckles)
- [McFaggen]: We're taught that we always are
supposed to carry our tobacco.
And when we see an eagle, we can put our tobacco down.
We can pray for good things.
We can pray for the ones that are suffering in our family.
And the eagle will take those prayers
up to the creator for us,
because he's the only one that can go up that high.
So, we're told that he's our messenger.
And any time we see an eagle, we put our tobacco down.
Any time we gather, anything, we put our tobacco down.
Anything that we take from aki, Mother Earth here,
we are supposed to offer our tobacco.
- [La Sarge]: At times, it feels like a heavy load.
But, that's when I pray, you know?
I put my tobacco down and it helps a lot.
A lot of ways are forgotten.
People forget these things,
how ceremonies go, because they don't go enough
or they really don't go at all.
See, when we're at our Big Drum,
there's a speaker that prays for everyone there.
And when we're there, you know, them spirits are with us.
The drum is spread out across a lot of Ojibwe bands.
One thing I want to do is go to other drums,
and I have been doing that.
And it was a great time, you know?
It was a great experience
the first time I went beyond my own community drum.
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It opened my eyes to how much other people want
to carry on these things.
When I travel to these other drums, you know,
that can help, sit at that drum, sing,
gain knowledge in these legends,
because through ceremonies, they say,
there's elders or people there that know things.
You should say them, you know, these legends of our people.
And through that they get passed down
in a sacred way and a respectful way.
Through my job I want to help navigate,
some of these younger ones with troubles,
to our ceremonies.
I want them to understand that
it can help them throughout their whole life.
- I don't think I've ever attended a feast
or a ceremonial gathering that...
you always see rice.
People bring rice all the time.
When you hurt the environment, you also hurt the Earth.
And our people have always relied on the Earth
for our food, for our medicines, everything.
This lake here is a good example of that.
It used to be abundant with wild rice.
My family riced this lake all the time.
But, I'm not quite sure who thought of the idea to put carp
in this lake to combat another invasive species of this lake.
And the carp overran the lake and damaged all of the rice.
So the rice is all gone here.
My cousin and I became very concerned
about our rice here.
And so we went from tribe to tribe with tobacco and gifts.
We started at Mille Lacs.
We went to Fond du Lac, and just kind of made a big circle.
And we went and talked to all of the spiritual people.
We didn't know some of them, but we would go in the community
and ask who the spiritual people were.
So we talked with all of them, and we asked them to come.
You know, come and hold lodge with us here.
Come and help us.
Pray for our rice.
So they came.
We held lodge for four years in a row.
You know, they would come all the time and help us pray.
We would sing, we would feast and dance
and it was a good thing.
We used that part, but we also used the Western part
because our EPA department, during that same time,
was working with the county here to remove a lot of the carp.
During that time too, our EPA was reseeding the lake.
So we have 80 acres of wild rice that's flourishing.
With our prayers to the creator,
we believe that this lake in the future
will hold rice again for our people.
Rice, to us, is a very special gift from the creator.
- [La Sarge]: I wanted to know who I was, you know?
I wanted to know my identity.
And a lot of people, I think, have trouble nowadays
with psychological issues
because they don't know who they are.
I have a sister, and...
one of her sons is getting a little bit older.
Seven or so maybe.
And we bring him to the Big Drums.
We bring him to these water feasts, blueberry feasts.
When I was growing up, my mother took care of us,
I really didn't have a prominent
male role figure to show me these things,
tell me who I was as a young man growing up,
what my responsibility was.
So, I think that also had a part in my identity,
my crisis when I was a young teenager acting out, sort of.
And that's why I want to try so hard...
to gain what I can for my nephew and my nieces.
I want him to know who he is.
I want him to help other people and carry on these things
because if he doesn't, who will?
Papers?
Documents?
And, I want him to understand why we do these things.
He's very perceptive toward it.
He really likes it, and I'm glad he does, you know?
Because I can see how, with me being there as his uncle,
he has someone to look up to.
He sees the importance of it,
and he told me he wanted to grow up to drum like me.
That made me really happy.
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- To learn more about the
sovereign Indian Nations in Wisconsin,
visit WisconsinFirstNations.org.
St. Croix History was funded in part by:
Irene Daniell Kress,
Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund
of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region,
Evjue Foundation,
Ron and Patty Anderson,
Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment,
Timothy William Trout Education Fund,
National Endowment for the Humanities,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.