[gentle music]
- Heather Hanlon: Hi, I am Heather Hanlon
with the Sheboygan County Museum.
Thank you all so much for being here today.
I know a lot of you and a lot of you are members,
and it means a lot to have you here
for the Badger Talk
about Wisconsin's tribal nations with Annie Jones today.
I'm just gonna intro the museum for a moment,
and then I'll give you some background on Annie.
The Sheboygan County Museum has been collecting,
preserving, and educating about Sheboygan County history
for over 100 years.
The campus includes four historic buildings
and a modern museum with over 20 exhibits in total.
And each school year, we welcome elementary school students here
at the museum for full day education programs,
and we also go out to middle schools to do that.
And all year 'round, we offer public programs like the one
that we have this weekend, the Plank Road Rendezvous,
which we are having Annie Jones as a special addition
to that this year.
She'll be giving background on the first peoples of our area
who played pivotal roles during the fur trade,
which is what the Rendezvous is about.
And who played pivotal roles long before that
and continuing today.
Professor Annie Jones is an organization,
development, and tribal nations specialist.
She works through UW-Madison's
Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.
Her hometowns are Oconto Falls, Wisconsin, and Kenosha,
and she works with UW--
She has been working with UW-Madison for 25 years,
serving in a variety of capacities,
including Associate Dean,
Special Assistant to the Dean for Strategic Directions,
and a county-based community development educator.
Her areas of research include Indigenous method--
Indigenous methodologies, like the use
of Native American medicine wheel
and cultural teachings to enhance planning and evaluation.
She specializes in participatory
and community-based action research,
and we're very excited to have her here
doing that with us today.
So please join me in welcoming Annie Jones.
[audience applauds]
- Annie Jones: Thank you. - Heather: Thank you.
- Annie: Posoh mawaw new weyak!
An Manie Jones mokiman newihswan.
Kaehkenohamowekow Awaesaeh Omaeqnemenew newihswan.
Omaeqnomenew netawem.
Netomaeqnomeneweqnesan maenawac.
Awaehsaeh netotaem.
Nekiah Joan Lord, Kesiqnah eneq s'kew wekeyan.
Hello, everyone.
You'll be delighted to learn
that I'm not going to try to give the entire presentation
in Menominee,
because that would take a really long time,
and I would make a ton of mistakes.
I said that my name, English name, is Annie Jones.
That's short for Anna Marie.
And my Menominee name is Kaehkenohamowekow Awaesaeh.
Really easy to say.
And that means "bear who teaches."
And I'm an enrolled member of the Menominee Nation.
And in our way, we introduce our family members.
And my mother's name is Joan Lord,
and she lives in Keshena, Wisconsin,
and she just had her 90th birthday in July.
And I'm also delighted to be joined today by my sister,
who is in the audience, and many of her friends.
So, really looking forward to talking with you today.
Today, we're gonna be talking about Indigenous ways of knowing
and a little bit of background and introduction
to Wisconsin's tribes.
So, that's pretty much what we're doing.
You may have noticed already
that I've started to use some words seemingly interchangeably.
And the reason I put this slide up here is
because often, there's some confusion
about what to call Native Americans.
And so, you'll hear me refer to sometimes clans or bands.
And we also refer to Native Americans
here in the United States,
I think, is typically the most commonly used.
And in Canada, they may say Indigenous or First Nations.
In Australia, they'll say Aboriginal.
Here in the United States,
you will often hear Native Americans
refer to themselves as American Indians.
That's actually how we designate ourselves on the census
when we're filling out the census form.
That's our designation, American Indian.
So you'll hear
Native Americans refer to "Indian country."
We even have a newsletter called Indian Country News.
So, I think, if you hear us refer to ourselves as Indians,
that's okay, too.
But the purpose for putting this slide here
is to let you know that you are absolutely safe
to ask me anything.
We'll save the questions for the end.
But one of the most commonly asked questions
that I get is, "What should we refer to all of you as?"
So that's my reason for putting this slide there.
I like to dedicate all of my presentations
to survivors of boarding schools.
Here, you'll see a picture of a large boarding school class.
This is the Carlisle Indian School.
This is dated around 1890.
And this was in Pennsylvania.
They called them Carlisle Indian Industrial Schools
because they were supposedly going to teach industrial arts
to Native American children.
So we'll talk a little bit more about these,
but basically, Pratt is the person who said that,
if these worked in Canada,
if the United States would allow him
to build 180 boarding schools,
he could solve the Indian problem.
And the Indian problem meant
ways to be able to remove Indians or Native Americans
from their land and through a boarding school process.
This was heartbreaking and devastating.
Here we have a plains boarding school,
and you'll see the teepees and tents out front.
Families were so devastated by their removal,
children's removal to boarding schools,
that they would often camp outside of the boarding schools,
which kind of made them sitting targets, if you will.
And there were about 12 boarding schools here
in the state of Wisconsin.
And I am old enough to have gone to a boarding school.
They didn't stop here in the United States
until the 1970s.
Fortunately, I did not go to a boarding school,
but my family members did, including my mom.
I believe this photograph is from somewhere
in Wisconsin, in Lac du Flambeau.
And these are tiny handcuffs.
So this is to illustrate
that children were not taken willingly.
In fact, you can still see hiding areas
in and around the Lac du Flambeau Reservation,
where children were instructed to go hide
if they saw people from boarding schools
or from the churches or neighboring farm families
coming around to look for them.
So not only were-- I think many of you
will have heard stories of how clothing was taken from them
and their hair was cut, their language was taken,
but even their names were taken.
So, here in Wisconsin,
there are instances where people would have
had their names taken from them and assigned a letter
and a number instead of their actual name.
So, really devastating.
It's just horrific to see these tiny handcuffs.
So, that dedication over,
it won't all be sad stories today.
We're a resilient and thriving people.
But I did wanna provide some framework of some
of the policies that systematically sought
to exterminate the Native American population,
or at very least, its culture.
And the story of Native Americans
here in the United States is, of course,
one of land dispossession.
In the areas in blue,
you see areas that were around the time
that the United States was becoming the United States.
These were Native American-held lands.
And the areas in red are the reservation and trust lands
that we have in the United States here today.
So you can see, in Wisconsin,
we have a bit of a substantial area.
In fact, Wisconsin has the most Native nations
east of the Mississippi.
So, those removal policies kept moving them further
and further west, with Oklahoma as an obvious standout
and other places in the west where tribes were sent to.
These removal policies, treaty policies,
boarding school policies
had a devastating impact on population.
So this is a simplified illustration of population,
Native American population, here in the United States.
So it's estimated that, in 1491,
a year before Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
that the Native American population here
was about six million.
And you can see, at the height of the boarding school era,
from the late, mid to late 1800s to the mid 20th century,
that that population was estimated at about 237,000.
Now, we have a resurgence.
And The New York Times last year published an article
with some research that confirmed
what Native Americans had been speculating for a long time,
and that is that these numbers may not be wholly accurate.
So, in that middle era where
the population declined to about 237,000,
the safest thing for people to do
was to not claim their Native American heritage.
Especially if they had children
that they didn't want to have to go to boarding schools.
When the census taker came along,
if they could pass as white, they would try to pass as white.
And now, I mean, I know many Native American families,
and they're not producing children
at a remarkably higher rate than the rest of the population.
So, this 4.3 million number can be attributed
to a couple of different causes as well.
So, Ancestry DNA test, 23andMe have revealed
that, "Oh, I do have some Native American heritage here."
So, on the census, they may be reporting
that they are Native American.
Or they may have heard stories, family stories of grandparents
who were Native American.
And maybe they just weren't claimed.
Again, for safety purposes, they weren't claiming
that they were Native American at the time.
So, these numbers are very general,
but provide a good picture of population and the impact
that these removal and termination policies had
on Native Americans in the United States.
Here in Wisconsin,
we have 11 federally-recognized tribes, and one tribe that
is still fighting for federal recognition to be restored.
And that's the Brothertown tribe in the Fond du Lac area.
And I always like to ask,
which county do you suppose has the highest number
of Native Americans living in it?
And a lot of people will guess Menominee County
because of the geographic area.
It seems like it would be a large percentage.
Actually, it's Milwaukee County,
followed by Brown County and Dane County
and some other urban areas of the state.
And again, that's because of some policies
that restricted economic activity on reservations
or on trust lands
where people were forced to move to other areas of the state
to be able to find work.
So, about half of Native Americans in Wisconsin
live on the reservation or on trust lands,
and the other half lives off of the reservation,
and a substantial portion of the population
living off of the reservation lives within about 50 miles
or so of the reservation.
So here we have the tribes listed,
and you can see Brothertown there in the Fond du Lac region.
And we have these 12 Native nations.
We have six Indigenous languages
from three different Indigenous language groups.
So we have the Brothertown and Stockbridge-Munsee
and Oneida, who came from out east.
So that Brothertown tribe that I mentioned
is still fighting for its federal recognition.
They had their federal recognition taken from them
because they refused to move for a sixth time.
And they said, "Every time we move, we lose people."
And they said, "If we're going to die,
we're going to die right here."
And happily, they lived to tell the tale of refusing to move.
But in return, the federal government
took their federal recognition from them.
So they're still fighting for that.
And the other tribes in Wisconsin,
the 11 federally-recognized tribes, are working with them
almost at a yearly basis to fight for that restoration.
So, they're the Iroquoian language group.
And then, we have the Ojibwe tribes
and the Menominee tribes,
Menominee tribe that speaks the Algonquian language.
The Menominee and the Ho-Chunk are the two tribes
that have their origin stories here in Wisconsin.
So, when you talk to Menominee and Ho-Chunk people,
they will say that they have known no other place
that they have lived.
And the Menominee have their origin story around Marinette,
where the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin meet,
and the Ho-Chunk have their origin story really close by
at the mouth of Green Bay, or what they called Red Cliffs.
So, two different language groups, however.
The Ho-Chunk speak a Siouan kind of language,
and that is more associated with plains
and a little bit west of the Mississippi.
I always like to point out
that the University of Wisconsin-Madison
teaches all of these languages, and in fact,
they are the reason
that I'm able to introduce myself
in the Menominee language.
I was able to audit three different semesters
of the Menominee language.
And I've also taken classes with Menomini yoU,
a wonderful nonprofit organization on the reservation
who offers online and in-person classes too.
And I also like to point out some of the seals here,
and you'll probably have a tough time seeing them.
But sometimes I think that seals can tell the story
of value systems and value sets.
So, in our seals from the Native nations here in Wisconsin,
you'll see lots of references to the environment,
to clan animals.
I see some medicine wheels up there, and also feathers.
And feathers are important
to our culture for a variety of reasons.
And one of those reasons is the use of carrying prayers
up to the Creator.
So, as they're burning sage and tobacco and other medicines,
they're using that feather to carry the prayers,
the smoke of the prayers up.
Think of that very related to incense in a Catholic church.
That smoke is carrying the prayers up.
So, lots of different images here and value systems.
And then, I compare that, as Wisconsin moves
through its history, and you can think about
the different flags and images in our Wisconsin state seal
that convey images of economy and mining and forestry
and that kind of thing, farming, agriculture.
Earlier I mentioned that we have 11 federally-recognized tribes,
and I would like to talk a little bit about
why federal recognition is so important to tribes here
in Wisconsin and throughout the United States.
There are about 565 federally-recognized tribes here
in the United States.
And tribal sovereignty.
So, if you're federally recognized,
you have sovereignty, and sovereignty,
very simply put, means the absolute right and authority
to govern oneself.
So, we have three branches of government,
very similar to the United States government
and state government.
In fact, you may know from your history or your civics classes
that much of the United States Constitution
is modeled after some Native American ways
of governing,
including the separation of powers
and different branches of government.
So, our three branches, again, very much the same.
We have an executive branch, and that's an elected person.
Here in Wisconsin, we can either refer to that person
as a president or a chief.
And in the southwest,
they'll even refer to that person as a governor.
So, different names depending on the tribe.
And we also have an elected legislative branch
to make laws and create policy.
And then, we have the judicial branch.
And the judicial branch includes our own court systems
and our own tribal police.
So, once in a while in the news,
you'll hear stories about struggles over jurisdiction
and who controls the roads,
who can arrest people, and that kind of thing.
You may also be familiar with, especially in the 1980s,
various different treaty wars where the,
you know, back in the boarding school days,
they would say, "Kill the Indian, save the man."
During those protests, during spearfishing,
the protest signs would say things like,
"Kill the Indian, save a walleye," for instance.
This is an image of my tribe, Menominee.
During the Eisenhower administration,
the tribe was terminated.
And they were selected for termination
because it was felt that they had enough
economic activity on their reservation
to be able to survive termination.
They were selected with another tribe out in California.
So, during the Eisenhower administration then,
the tribe is terminated, and in order to survive,
they have to sell a lot of their land off.
And this is how Legend Lake is created.
Through the work of an organization called
Determination Rights Unity for Menominee Sovereignty,
which had branches on the reservation,
in Milwaukee, and in other parts of the state,
and the work of Ada Deer, for instance,
you may have heard of Ada Deer,
another Menominee woman who is a contemporary of my mother's,
they worked very hard to have the tribal
restored to reservation status.
So, she actually was able to make some inroads with Nixon.
And, basically, as his parting gesture,
literally at the last moment of his presidency,
restored the Menominee tribe to reservation status
so that they would again have federal recognition
and tribal sovereignty.
So, we've been talking about all of these ways, you know,
of policies and removal policies here in Wisconsin
and in the United States.
I would like if you would shout out a couple
of different responses.
I'll repeat them.
When you think about Wisconsin and Wisconsin culture,
what kinds of words or phrases spring to mind for you?
When you think about Wisconsin culture,
what do you think about?
Cheese, I heard cheese out there.
That's one of the big three.
Beer, cheese, beer, and...
- Audience: Green Bay Packers.
- Annie: [laughs] Green Bay Packers.
Put brats up there also on the list.
And we can think about our culture really lovingly.
I think about beautiful lakes and streams
and clean air and rolling farmlands and barns
and these beautiful ways of being here in Wisconsin.
How about some negative things related to Wisconsin culture?
Can you think of anything?
Closely related to beer.
I would say, if you follow social media at all,
you'll see from time to time
these maps of the 12 drunkest counties
in the United States, and 10 of them are here in Wisconsin.
So, we have a strong Tavern League here with,
I guess, comparatively fewer consequences
for drunk driving, so...
And also, the Annie E. Casey Foundation
has called Wisconsin the worst place
to be African American here in the United States.
And that is because of the amount
of segregation and disparities,
criminal justice disparities, health disparities.
At one time, we had the highest
African American infant mortality rate.
I will tell you that Native Americans
are incarcerated at a higher rate
per population than any other population.
By numbers, of course, African Americans
are incarcerated at a higher rate.
We've also been adopted out at higher rates.
And Menominee County, my own county,
has a really devastating poverty rate,
not just here in Wisconsin,
but if we're looking at the United States as a whole.
So when we think about these ways of knowing about Wisconsin,
we have to keep in mind
that these are relatively new ways of knowing about Wisconsin.
We know that humans have been in Wisconsin
for about 14,000 years.
And we know that because of my hometown, Kenosha, Wisconsin,
where a farmer was out farming
and came across this mammoth-sized bone, and indeed,
when they researched,
it was a nearly fully intact woolly mammoth,
and it had tool markings on it.
And they were able to date those tool markings
to about 14,000 years ago.
So that's how long people have thought this place was special
and a good place to live.
In fact, some of the meanings ascribed to Wisconsin involve
the definition that this is a good place to live,
abundant wildlife and water, and access to resources here.
But when you think about our timeline here in Wisconsin,
Wisconsin became a state about 176 years ago.
We recently celebrated our demi-semi-sesquicentennial,
and, yes, I have been practicing that.
[all laugh] About the same time
that my institution, UW-Madison, became a school.
And that arrow is way at the very end here.
So when you think about Wisconsin and humankind
in Wisconsin, those of us sitting in this room
are a really brief snapshot in history.
My campus, UW-Madison, is considered to be the most
archaeologically significant campus in the United States,
and that is because of the number of effigy mounds
still found on campus.
Those who have been built over and dug over.
But you can see from the map here, the greater number of dots
that we see or the higher concentration of effigy mounds
and conical and linear mounds.
So, there are three types of mounds.
We have conical and we have linear.
And those are about 3,000 years old typically.
And we have effigy mounds.
And those are about 1,200 years old.
And I do this because many of them are in the shape of birds.
So, we have water animals, sky animals, earth animals,
and some sea serpent kind of mythical creatures as well.
These maps always give me a little bit of pause.
You can see up in the northeast there Menominee County.
And I don't think that my relatives were saying,
"Oh, many thousand years from now, we're going to have
"this piece of land here that looks like a rectangle
with a piece of it notched out."
I think there were mounds all over Wisconsin.
It's just that those remaining or still prominent enough
to be able to see are concentrated in that Madison
southwest area.
So mounds were built
on typically hills overlooking water
and built for the spirit world to be able to see.
So, these are the ones that I see commonly on campus.
That's actually my building.
I work in Ag Hall.
So I have an office now
that I am proud to say overlooks two mounds.
We have the Thunderbird Mound out behind my office
and also the two-tailed water spirit.
You can see the images in the upper right there.
We also have a Bent Goose Mound, and that's in the lower left.
And our first state historian, Charles Brown,
did a lot to protect the mounds and excavated some mounds,
and unfortunately put the wings on backwards.
And so, that's how it became the Bent Winged Mound.
And we were, in that area of the state at least,
beautiful oak savanna.
So, you can think of these oak trees overhead,
and savanna means grasslands.
And we had large grazing animals.
How are grasslands maintained?
How are savannas maintained?
By controlled burns.
So we often think of controlled burns
and other practices like that
as being introduced by the Europeans.
But Native Americans were using them in this landscape
for quite a long time.
So, through controlled burns,
we had bison kicking up the soil.
And we have carrier pigeons who were so thick in the sky
that people described it as looking like night
when they were in migration, and they were hunted,
they frightened people, so they were hunted to extinction.
And, but it worked together as an ecosystem,
ensuring that the pigeons are dropping what
they're gonna drop,
the bison are kicking up what they're going to kick up.
And it's a fertile, rich place for people or for animals
to come feed and for people to be able to hunt and fish.
You may have heard of the story of our dugout canoes,
which were commonly, at first,
jokingly referred to as our Wisconsin's first shipwreck.
But these, an archaeologist was out diving in Lake Mendota
and came across what she believed to be a dugout canoe.
And they brought it up out of the water.
And they were hoping that it would be about,
you know, maybe a couple of hundred years old.
And they dated it to about 1,200 years old.
And the following year, they were out diving again
and discovered another canoe and brought it up out of the water.
And there are rich stories that go along with this.
You know, it's a spongy substance
that's floating around the water and eagles flying overhead.
And they thought, "Well,
wouldn't it be great if this was also about 1,200 years old?"
And it was 3,000 years old.
Since then, they have found more canoes
that they're not going to bring up out of the water.
But judging by the types of trees
that were used for the canoes,
they can estimate that some of those canoes
are perhaps around 5,000 years old.
Now, the speculation is that the area
where they're finding the canoes
may have served almost like a park and ride,
or a place where you could, you know, rent bicycles,
but they would need to portage over land
so they would drop off a canoe, they would portage over land,
and then pick up new canoes over on Lake Monona.
Very interesting.
What I find most touching to me personally
when I think about these canoes is that the people
who built the 1,200-year canoe are the same people
who were building the effigy mounds,
and they are closer in time to us right now
than the people who-- than they were to the people
who built the 3,000-year-old canoes
and the conical and linear mounds.
And when I get a little overwhelmed in life,
sometimes it's really helpful to think about that.
We think of ourselves in these 75, 80-year kind of lifespans.
And if we're lucky, we'll know our great-grandchildren.
And if we're lucky, we knew our great-grandparents.
And there we are in the middle.
But really, Native Americans were thinking about not only
their seven generations that would follow them
and making sure that they had the landscape
and the sustenance to be able to live
and thrive on for centuries.
They were also learning from the teachings
of the seven generations before them.
So, a much larger outlook on the human lifespan.
And that shows in some of their practices.
I like to think of
Native Americans here in Wisconsin
as our first longitudinal researchers.
Sometimes, people will say
that Native Americans were really good
at observation research,
and I'm not faulting observation research at all.
But here, we have evidence of test plots
like an agricultural research station of old times.
This is the Hulbert Creek Garden Bed,
and it's a garden bed that is in Sauk County.
And all roads led to it.
It was about 200 acres,
and they were successful at agriculture
in these forested environments.
Menominee too.
This one just happens to be one that you're able to go visit
and see in Sauk County.
They have found artifacts in that garden
from as far away as South America.
So we know that people were moving around this continent,
both continents.
And perhaps there were people from South America here,
but certainly they had earthenworks
and other artifacts that made their way up here.
And they were using, like, mounded garden beds
and, again, different test plots.
And you may have read recently
that there have been some Menominee gardens
that have extended much farther north
into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
than originally thought.
And they're using
char from burns to help fertilize the soil
and create conditions that you wouldn't think would have been
amenable to agriculture in a wooded
or forested environment.
You've probably heard of the Three Sisters,
and not only are these a delicious combination--
corn, beans, and squash.
I just had a really good salad the other day,
Three Sisters salad.
But these are companion plants.
So, a lot of thought went into
how they could make their plants thrive
in these wintry conditions here in Wisconsin.
So, we know that corn needs a lot of water,
and the shade of the squash
would help with water retention beneath the plant
and help get enough water to the corn.
And then, the beans would crawl up
the pole or the corn.
So, indeed, very much companion plants.
We have two ingredients here, common in Wisconsin,
that have found their way into modern medicines
and modern pharmaceuticals.
In Menominee, our word for tea
is the same as it is for medicine, maskihkiwapoh.
So we have bergamot,
or often referred to as number six.
Numbered as the sixth most important plant.
And where do you commonly find bergamot today?
Does anybody know?
Pardon? - Attendee: In our gardens.
- Annie: In our gardens, yes, certainly.
It also grows wild, but it's in Earl Grey tea.
So, if you drink Earl Grey tea at all,
you're drinking bergamot.
In fact, if you--
You can very easily make your own Earl Grey tea
by picking bergamot, hanging it upside down,
drying the leaves, and along with raspberries,
strawberries, other great fruits and herbs
that you can use in teas.
Another one is mullein.
We call this the grandfather plant,
and many people think that this is an invasive species.
It grows about as tall as me, perhaps a little bit taller.
And it has, like, almost a golden rod on top to the end.
And there are leafy, leathery leafs on it
that can be used for medicines as well.
And again, we find these
in some of our modern pharmaceuticals.
So there was once a pharmaceutical garden
at UW-Madison that looked at indigenous plants
and began to use those in modern pharmaceuticals.
So, I think, my theory of the case
is that, if we had worked to understand
and learned from the people who knew this land best,
who had been caretakers of it for 14,000 years,
wouldn't our life be richer?
And it's not too late.
Rather than having removed that knowledge
to again invite that knowledge back into a learning space
to complement university learning
and Indigenous ways of knowing, community ways of knowing.
And I think that we can do that
with a few subtle shifts in thinking.
So here's a map of a region we know very well.
It's the Great Lakes.
And we are so used to orienting ourselves
with a northern compass.
You know, we refer to "up north."
And where is up north in Wisconsin?
But ancient peoples would have oriented themselves to the east.
Why?
Because that's where the Sun rises.
So, home openings, windows were oriented towards the east
so the Sun rises,
and they can make the most use of the sunlight during the day.
Even cemeteries still today are often oriented towards the east.
And that is because, when the Resurrection happens,
it will happen from the east
and people will rise from the dead
and be able to see the Savior coming.
So this is something that was common practice
throughout the world.
So it's this subtle shift in orientation,
just a little invitation to think a little bit differently,
that we can begin to incorporate Indigenous ways
of knowing into our daily lives and into our work.
And I won't read all of these to you,
but I think there are two important things
that I try to incorporate in my work.
And that is, rather than to adapt materials
to be culturally relevant, that we look at inviting people
to bring their own culture into their learning
and into their work, to lead from culture
rather than adapting to be culturally relevant.
It's that mind shift
that makes us think that Western ways of knowing
are the best ways of knowing.
But really, if we're to learn from one another and grow,
I think we incorporate many other ways of knowing as well,
including community ways of knowing.
I think one of the criticisms of the university is often that,
you know, it's an elite institution
that thinks it knows everything, when there are people out
and about in the state of Wisconsin
who have a lot to contribute.
And that's the beauty of why I love working for UW-Extension,
because it's truly
where the university and towns come together.
The other thing I would like to impart is my favorite quote
that I've been using,
even before I started working for the university,
when I was a high school teacher,
and that is that "People don't care how much you know
until they know how much you care."
And this is especially true when learning about other people.
When people offer you invitations
or ask you to dinner
or to ask you to come to an event,
do everything in your power to go and learn
because they're asking you
because they would really like for you to be there.
So, in this way, you can show up without an agenda
and really begin to understand who other people are
and where they're coming from.
So, I have told you some, you know, some sad stories
about termination and boarding schools,
but I want you to know that Native Americans in Wisconsin
and throughout the United States are thriving and resilient,
and they're working on really important issues
like food sovereignty.
Food sovereignty is actually one of my favorite topics
to think about
because, as we removed Native Americans further west
and from their original food sources,
they became more reliant on government commodities
and federally-provided food.
So you can think of the peanut butters and the lards
and, you know, even our own relatives here in Wisconsin
would have been used to those coming out of the wars,
for instance, where things were rationed
and we became more reliant on more mass-produced food.
So, fry bread is delicious,
and you may associate fry bread with Native Americans
if you've ever been to a powwow.
And it is good.
I like it, I like it a lot.
It's not really the original bread
that Native Americans would have been eating, though.
It came about because they made do
with what they were given: lard and other flours.
And so, that's what they would use then to make bread.
But that led to a lot of health disparities
where we have heart disease and diabetes
because we're not eating our original food sources.
Of course, language revitalization
is also important.
Because without language, we're not a people.
So, we need to do everything that we can
to retain our language.
Climate resilience.
Of course, many Native Americans think
that it is Native Americans who will help
people come out of this climate crisis.
And youth development, of course.
And the way that people are resilient is through that
leading by culture and incorporating culture
into their ways of thinking and knowing.
Another favorite quote of mine is from Black Elk.
This is a handy little book that you can read,
and it is wonderful and full of leadership kinds of wisdom.
And in it, he says that "Everything an Indian does
"is in a circle, and that is because
the world tries to be round."
And when you think about it,
anything with a Fibonacci sequence,
bird's nest, seashells, spiral galaxy,
it's all trying to be round.
So there's strength in a circle.
And if you've ever tried
to break out of an unhealthy pattern,
you know how strong that circle is, right?
It just keeps bringing you back in.
But there's also strength in it.
We begin to lose hierarchy in a circle.
We begin to believe that everyone in that circle
has something to contribute.
And I think that, ever since the beginning
of humans' ability to make fire,
we have been sitting together in a circle,
learning from one another and solving important problems.
Another teaching are the Seven Grandfather Teachings
or the Seven Grandparent Teachings.
Actually, the Ojibwe referred to this
as the Seven Grandfather Teachings,
but I learned so much from both of my grandmothers
that I like to call it the Seven Grandparent Teachings.
And here are some universal values
that I think really resonate.
When you think about the people who cared most about you
in the world and what they wanted to impart on you,
whether that's your parents, grandparents, teachers,
friends, mentors,
they were teaching you things like honesty and truth
and generosity and love, and some of these words
that we see up here to help that guide us
as we're out in the world and imparting
our own wisdom to the people that we care about and love.
Medicine wheels.
I use medicine wheels quite a lot in my work.
This is a Menominee medicine wheel.
Medicine wheels look different depending on tribes.
Tribes ascribe their own meaning to different medicine wheels.
They have different colors.
They have different clan animals and different medicines.
But this is a Menominee medicine wheel
with our five Menominee clan animals in it,
with awaehsaeh and truth at the center.
That's the bear.
And in my work, I use a medicine wheel
that's a little bit simplified.
It's spirit, heart, mind, and body.
And when I think about how we can help people lead
through change or difficult situations
or if they just want to create a plan,
we think about spirit or purpose
and how our relationships are going to be impacted.
Our mind, what should we do?
And then, body, how do we go about doing it?
So, again, some lessons to impart with you.
I think about Indigenous ways of knowing
and community ways of knowing
and how we can bring those into our own work
is to remember that everything is interconnected.
You know, we try to simplify things,
but what we do
in our own families or neighborhoods
impacts the communities around as well.
And whomever is in the circle belongs in the circle.
The most important message of the medicine wheel
that I'll leave you with
is that all gifts must be utilized in order
for us to make some positive change.
So, think about how you can incorporate spirit,
heart, mind, and body into your own lives.
And then, I would like to leave you with a video
that is performed by a student at UW-Madison,
and I think really brings home this way of thinking
in her performance.
- Joy Harjo: "For Calling the Spirit Back
from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet" by Joy Harjo.
Put down that bag of potato chips,
that white bread, that bottle of pop.
Turn off that cell phone, computer, and remote control.
Open the door, then close it behind you.
Take a breath offered by friendly winds.
They travel the Earth gathering essences of plants to clean.
Give it back with gratitude.
If you sing, it will give your spirit lift
to fly to the stars' ears and back.
Acknowledge this Earth
who has cared for you since you were a dream,
planting itself precisely within your parents' desire.
Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment
of the guardians who have known you before time,
who will be there after time.
They sit before the fire that has been there without time.
Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.
Be respectful of the small insects, birds,
and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm
we humans have brought down upon them.
Don't worry.
The heart knows the way,
though there may be high-rises, interstates,
checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars,
and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.
The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year,
a few years, a hundred, a thousand, or even more.
Watch your mind.
Without training it, it might run away
and leave your heart for the immense human feast
set by the thieves of time.
Do not hold regrets.
When you find your way to the circle,
to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul,
you will be welcomed.
You must clean yourself with cedar,
sage, or other healing plant.
Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.
Let go the pain you are holding in your mind,
your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet.
Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those
who are heading in our direction.
Ask for forgiveness.
Call upon the help of those who love you.
These helpers take many forms: animal, element,
bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.
Call your spirit back.
It may be caught in corners and creases
of shame, judgment, and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering.
It may return in pieces, in tatters.
Gather them together.
They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.
Your spirit will need to sleep a while after it is bathed
and given clean clothes.
Now you can have a party.
Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you.
Keep room for those who have no place else to go.
Make a giveaway.
And remember, keep the speeches short.
Then you must do this.
Help the next person find their way through the dark.
- Annie: I'll keep my speeches short.
And I want to thank all of you for joining me today.
[audience applauds]