Menominee

MENOMINEE

MENOMINEE. The name of the Menominee tribe refers to the wild rice that grew in the tribe's homeland, 10 million acres in what is now eastern Wisconsin. Although the Menominees were forced to cede their land in a series of treaties between 1817 and 1856 and were scheduled to be moved west, they negotiated a treaty in 1854 securing a reservation of nearly 300,000 acres in their ancestral homeland. Menominee history is marked by a continuing struggle to keep and protect their remaining land, where subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering were supplemented by gardens of corn, beans, and squash. The people managed village and tribal affairs according to a patrilineal clan system and a hereditary chieftainship that changed to a system of elected tribal officials. Nominally Roman Catholic since their first significant European contacts with French fur traders and Jesuits in the 1650s, the tribe's native religious practices continue among an active enclave of traditionalists.

As they were drawn into a money economy, the Menominees recognized the value of their timberland. They strongly opposed clear-cutting and devised the sustained-yield forestry system now widely practiced. Resisting the

---

federal allotment policy of the 1880s (see Dawes General Allotment Act), the Menominees were the only reservation tribe in Wisconsin and one of the few across the nation to escape its disastrous consequences. Lumbering operations provided employment, financed reservation services, paid salaries of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) personnel, and supported the Catholic-run hospital and schools. The tribe also had nearly $10 million in working capital. Its relative prosperity made them appear "less Indian" than the many poor tribes and a prime candidate for the termination policy adopted in 1953 to eliminate reservations and force dispersal of the Indian tribes. The Termination Act was passed in 1954 over strenuous Me-nominee opposition; however, the tribe managed to delay its implementation until 1961. Meanwhile the tribe's lumber mill deteriorated and tribal resources were spent on a complicated self-management plan and to transfer tax-free federal land to county status for purposes of taxation. The tribe began termination with a $300,000 deficit. Their business operations were dominated by white government appointees, leaving the tribe with less control over their own affairs than under the BIA. Soon the hospital and schools closed, reservation services were abolished, and unemployment and health problems skyrocketed. Desperately needed revenue was raised through land sales. Termination also brought statutory genocide as tribal rolls were closed at 3,270 members in 1954.

A grassroots resistance movement to overturn termination began in late 1970 among urban Menominees, who then rallied the fearful reservation people. With legal help from Wisconsin Judicare and the Native American Rights Fund, the Menominees united as a tribe, developing a successful lobbying campaign that resulted in the precedent-setting Menominee Restoration Act signed by President Richard Nixon on 22 December 1973. But the damage wrought by termination could not be undone by the historic Restoration Act alone. Three decades later the tribe, then numbering over 8,000 (according to the 2000 Census), was still striving for the social and economic well-being enjoyed before termination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Keesing, Felix M. The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin: A Study of Three Centuries of Cultural Contact and Change. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

Lurie, Nancy Oestreich. "To Save the Menominee People and Land." In Approaches to Algonquian Archaeology: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference, the Archaeology Association of the University of Chicago. Edited by Margaret G. Hanna and Brian Kooyman. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 1982.

Peroff, Nicholas C. Menominee Drums: Tribal Termination and Restoration, 1954–1974. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.

Shames, Deborah, ed. Freedom with Reservation: The Menominee Struggle to Save Their Land and People. Keshena, Wis.: College of the Menominee Nation Press, 1995.

Spindler, Louise S. "Menominee." In Handbook of North American Indians. Edited by William C. Sturtevant et al. Volume 15: Northeast, edited by Bruce G. Trigger. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.

Ada E. Deer

See also Termination Policy ; Tribes: Great Plains .