History: Menominee — Multilingualism and Education in Wisconsin

Menominee

Name

“Menominee is pronounced "Me-NOH-muh-nee." It means "wild rice people" in Ojibwe. The Ojibwe gave the Menominees this name because wild rice was their major food crop. Menominee and Menomini are both accepted spellings, but the official name of the tribe is spelled 'Menominee.' The Menominee refer to themselves as Mamaceqtaw (pronounced ma-ma-chay-tau)."

Sources:

http://www.bigorrin.org/menominee_kids.htm

http://www.mpm.edu/plan-visit/educators/wirp/nations/menominee

Language

There are 5 remaining native speakers of Menominee.

Language Revitalization Efforts

Ron Corn Jr. leads teacher training for the Menominne Language Immersion Daycare.

“The idea of this place is to speak Menominee to babies and toddlers who are in their most formative years. “The sign of a healthy language is that the language is spoken by children,” Corn says. “There’s no other demographic that makes the language safe. So if it’s spoken even by a thousand elders, that doesn’t make your language safe.””

Monica Macaulay of UW-Madison is working closely with the Menominee on their language revitalization efforts.

“Macaulay, the UW-Madison linguist, has been collaborating for years with the Menominee (and less extensively with the Potawatomi) to help produce dictionaries of both languages and to otherwise support their language efforts. She’s part of a movement in linguistics away from simply studying Native languages and toward putting academic expertise to use for the tribes’ benefit.”

“The Menominee immersion day care, in its second year, is staffed with teachers trained by Corn using a teaching technique called total physical response, in which he demonstrates actions while describing them in the language. The trainees in a class last October were six men and women, ages 21 to 35, tribal members who had taken classes in Menominee language in reservation schools. Corn, whose outgoing style brings a sense of theater to his classroom, acts out movements, sitting down in his chair, getting back up, turning around, writing his name on a chalkboard, drawing a circle around it, walking in an exaggerated way across a classroom, closing and reopening a window, giving it a fake punch.

It’s entertaining, maybe a little goofy, and the students are enjoying the show. “He knows how to keep it lighthearted and to make sure that you’re following it, and that you’re sticking with it and that it’s not pushing you away,” says Tourtillott, the day-care teacher who finished the training last August. “He makes the whole experience of learning immersion language enjoyable and he makes it manageable, because it can be very tough. It’s a very challenging field, but if you let it, it’s so much more rewarding than it is challenging.”"

They have visited Hawaii to research language revitalization.

Listen to Corn Jr.’s interview to learn more!

Menominee Language Lessons

Menominee Language Institute

https://theways.org/story/living-language

Learn Memoninee Words and Phrases!

Posoh — Hello

Wāēwāēnen — Thank you

Menominee Language Resources

Menominee Language

History

Unless otherwise cited, information comes from Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal Patty Loew (2001)

menominee-early-years — Early Years

“Prior to the coming of the French, the Menominee settled in village sites at the mouth of the Menominee River. Their main village, called Menekaunee, was located near present-day Marinette, Wisconsin. Their lifestyle necessitated considerable mobility, with outlying camps and special purpose gathering and processing stations.”
Other tribes fleeing to Wisconsin in the 1600s-1700s caused the Menominee to suffer.
“In 1667, the French began to trade for furs with the Menominee. This encouraged the Menominee to abandon their large permanent villages and instead live in bands that spent spring and summer in semi-permanent villages of several hundred people. […] The Menominees retained strong ties to the French and fought alongside them during the French and Indian War.” They later switched allegiance to the British.
Image Source: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM27675

Nineteenth Century and Beyond

They became involved in conflict with both the US Government and the Oneida, Brothertown, and Stockbridge-Munsee over treaties and land cessions.
“The reservation era brought about new challenges and disruptions. The various Menominee bands could no longer support a seasonal, dispersed band life on their new reservation, so the band leaders chose areas on the reservation and settled there with the members of their band largely living around them.”
Many were wiped out by disease in the mid 1800s, and they too experienced logging disputes with the Pine Ring. “To protect Menominee forests, Congress made a permanent provision in 1890 for the Menominee to harvest their timber under government supervision. Waste, inefficiency, and fraud marred the effort and the Menominee lost substantial revenues.”
“The Menominee underwent Termination early because the federal government felt the tribe possessed the economic resources necessary to succeed without governmental supervision. On April 30, 1961, the reservation ceased to exist and became Menominee County. All tribal property and assets were held by Menominee Enterprises, Incorporated. […] Termination of the Menominee Tribe led to a drastic decline in tribal employment, increased poverty, and brought about devastating reductions in basic services and health care.” Their status was restored in 1976.
Image Source: https://www.menominee-nsn.gov/

menominee-social-structure — Social Structure

“Generally speaking, the Menominee were originally organized into clans which fell into two moieties -- groups of clans -- which were named the Thunderers and the Bears. The clans were exogamous, so individuals could not marry a person of the same clan. Upon marriage, a couple usually went to live with the husband's family.”
Image source: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM55932

menominee-conservation — Conservation

“Today, because of the Menominee Tribes' world-famous sustained yield forest management practices, 95% of the reservation produces the finest old stands of hardwood, pine and hemlock located in the Great Lakes region. Forty-six of Wisconsin’s timber varieties grow and are harvested on the reservation by the Menominee Tribe.”
Image source: https://www.inhabitantsfilm.com/menominee

College of the Menominee Nation

Created in 1994, “American Indian culture is at the heart of the College of Menominee Nation.” They offer several language courses and education degrees.

See the program listing under Post-Secondary Programs

Image source: http://www.menominee.edu/