Category: Munsee

A representative of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribal governments gave the annual State of the Tribes address to state lawmakers and the governor Tuesday at the State Capitol in Madison.

During the speech, tribal leader Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, challenged conservative efforts to change voting laws and limit teaching about racism.

The Stockbridge-Munsee have about 1,500 tribal members, and their reservation is between Green Bay and Wausau, Wisconsin.

Holsey delivered her remarks as some Republicans continue to falsely question whether President Joe Biden won the 2020 election in Wisconsin. But Holsey praised Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) for recently telling some rank and file conservatives that Biden’s electoral votes cannot be taken back.

“I applaud Speaker Vos, who upheld the integrity of this process in Wisconsin with the emphasis on the need to focus on the future,” Holsey said.

However, Vos and other Republican lawmakers are on the verge of passing a slew of bills that critics say would limit voting this year.

Holsey challenged the Legislature to instead expand access to the ballot box. “We should all do more to insure that all Americans, including Native Americans, can exercise this right easily,” she said.

Screen grab from Wisconsin Eye

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Leaders of Wisconsin’s other federally-recognized Native American tribes sit along the wall near the top of this photo. Members of the Wisconsin Legislature are in the foreground.

The Republican-controlled Legislature also recently tried to prohibit Wisconsin public schools from teaching students and training employees about concepts such as systemic racism and implicit bias.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the measure, and Holsey called on lawmakers to now take a different approach. “It is our view as tribal nations that perhaps what is needed is not critical theory, and more critical…

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A message of peace, unity, ecological preservation and the acknowledgment of a painful  history was conveyed through the 2022 State of the Tribes address. Held in the Capitol prior to the Assembly floor session on Tuesday, the annual address began with an invocation and remarks by Sokagon Chippewa community Chairman Robert Van Zile. Speaking both in English and his native language, Zile honored indigenous veterans, and called for calm in Ukraine, where tensions are growing over a potential Russian invasion. Thereafter Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, rose to deliver the formal State of the Tribes address.

Holsey described the address as “an opportunity to examine the current state of our union, and how we can collectively forge a better nation by examining the self and moving forward through triumphs, tragedies of the violence and the inequities involved in continuous evolution of forging a better union, educational foundation, environment and healthy state of mind.” Recalling some of the many lessons her elders imparted to her, Holsey said, “I was taught that we are not given a good life or a bad life. We are given a life, and it is up to us to make it good or bad.”

Sokagon Chippewa community Chairman Robert Van Zile. (Screenshot | Wisconsin Examiner)

She paid particular respect to indigenous youth, “at a time when the nation’s dialogue about identity [is] more divisive than ever.” The Stockbridge-Munsee Band president praised indigenous youth for “using the strength of their cultures to come together and reach out to others and mobilize towards meaningful community change.” For Holsey, youth movements represent a legacy held by Wisconsin tribes, “in the story…

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Shannon Holsey

Shannon Holsey, the president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, will deliver the annnual State of the Tribes address to the Wisconsin State Legislature at 1 pm Tuesday.

In an interview Monday she said she plans to focus on what elected leaders need to do as Wisconsin emerges from the pandemic.

“There’s a lot of people counting on us as elected leaders and we have a lot to do,” she said. “We can collectively come around the issues that matter most, like economic development, investing in our education system, stewarding the land and its protection and looking at civility. There are so many systematic failures that currently exist, especially in communities of color. And we have to look for collective ways to find solutions or bring resolution around that.”

Holsey delivered the State of the Tribes address five years ago and said not enough has changed since then.

“The things that I discussed five years ago, a majority of issues still are here today,” she said. “Even in a pandemic, we still are faced with all of these similar issues.”

Holsey was elected as president in October 2015, following eight years as a member of the Tribal Council. Holsey is the youngest to ever lead the Stockbridge-Munsee, which has about 1,470 enrolled members and is one of 11 Native tribes in Wisconsin. The Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe is the largest employer in Shawano County. She grew up on the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in Bowler, Wisconsin. Holsey also serves as vice president of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council (GLITC), which represents 11 member tribes with a land base of about one million acres spanning 45 counties. She is appointed as the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Special Committee…

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When the Berkshire Museum returned a pair of moccasins and a wampum pouch to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, it was officially deemed a “transfer of custody.” But it was also a recognition of history, a purposeful tracing of the line between a proud but persecuted people and the place they still call home.

A pair of moccasins and a wampum pouch attributed to Mohican Sachem Popewannehah “John” Konkapot, have been returned to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians by the Berkshire Museum.

That place is here in what’s now called the Berkshires, even as the Stockbridge-Munsee are now located in Wisconsin after centuries of broken promises, brutal treatment and forced removal at the hands of the expanding American empire. Not all of our country’s history is pretty, but if we care about any of it we must reckon with all of it. That obligation, often relegated to an intellectual dimension, has a material one, too, as these 18th-century artifacts remind us. That especially goes for institutions like museums. We praise the Berkshire Museum for living up to that obligation, as well as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community for graciously partnering to make it happen.

We must acknowledge that, like these artifacts, so much of our history originates with this land’s first inhabitants, even as the forces of settler-colonialism systematically attempted to erase and marginalize those peoples and their own ties to that history. We can’t change the past, nor can we afford to look away from it. Rather, history must inform our movement through the present. The museum’s return of these items to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians is a small but necessary step on this path…

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PITTSFIELD — A pair of moccasins and a wampum pouch that have been in the Berkshire Museum’s collection for nearly 65 years are on their way home to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians in Wisconsin.

Upon being presented with the moccasins and wampum pouch during an official “transfer of custody” at the museum on Thursday, Bonnie Hartley, historic preservation officer for the Stockbridge-Munsees, carefully tucked cedar and tobacco leaves amongst the items.

“It’s actually kind of similar traditionally to what Sachem Konkapot would have in his wampum bag. He would have had wampum in there or medicine. I just used my own medicine bag to place tobacco and cedar. Cedar is for protection, tobacco is our way of offering prayers. When I take them back to our office, I’ll light sage and smudge them,” Hartley said, referring to the Stockbridge-Munsee office on the Williams College campus.

Taking a blend of tobacco and cedar out of her own medicine bag and tucking it into the items, Tribal Historic Preservation Manager for the Stockbridge Munsee Community Bonney Hartley, begins the process of cleansing, protecting, and welcoming back home a set of moccasins and a wampum pouch from her ancestors. 

STEPHANIE ZOLLSHAN — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE

The moccasins and wampum pouch are attributed to Pophnehonnuhwoh, a Muh-he-con-ne-ok sachem (chief), later known as Chief John Konkapot (a name taken after his Christian baptism in 1735). At some point, Konkapot gifted the items to Israel Dickinson, whose great-great-grandson, Allen Peck, of Pittsfield, donated them to the Berkshire Museum in 1958, said Jason Vivori, collections experience manager at the Berkshire Museum. The items are headed to the tribe’s own museum and library in Bowler, Wis., where their cultural items are preserved.

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In a classroom on the museum’s second floor, Bonney Hartley whispered a quiet prayer over a box containing an ornate pair of beaded, orange and green moccasins and a wampum bag while sprinkling tobacco and cedar over them from a ceremonial pouch.

“Cedar is for protection,” she explained.
“Tobacco is our way of offering prayers. When I take them back to our office, I’ll also light a sage and smudge them. But we just want to cleanse them off and welcome them back home and let them know that what’s happening to them, that they’re returning from here to go back to our community.”

The 17th century moccasins and wampum bag.

Hartley’s name in Munsee is Taheekwundoheet, which means “she has her arms around the People.” She’s the Tribal Historic Preservation Manager of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, working out of a Williamstown office. She focuses on preserving the community’s cultural landmarks, overseeing the return ancestral artifacts and remains from colonial institutions.

The community lived in a vast stretch of the Northeast for centuries before the arrival of European colonists in the 1600s, and were officially recognized as the Stockbridge-Munsee while centered in that Berkshire community in the 1700s.

“Our ancestors fought really valiantly in the Revolutionary War on the side of the new colonial America,” said Hartley. “And for those that did return to the town of Stockbridge, many people’s land had been taken by the Williams family, really notably, and others, and others obviously lost their lives in the war. And so our tribe was diminished, and actually not really seen as having a lot of value or use at that point for our strengths around diplomacy, for example, and working among other tribes during the Revolutionary War.”

After years of broken promises…

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President of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians Shannon Holsey presented the morning keynote for Claiming Williams Day on Feb. 3. Holsey delivered a presentation on the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee community, a band of the people formerly known as the Muhheconeew, or Mohican Nation, and the tribe’s forced removal from the College campus and Berkshire County. After her address, which took place on Zoom, Holsey answered audience questions about her role as a community leader and how institutions such as the College can work to build relationships with Indigenous communities and reckon with their past injustices.

Jayden Jogwe ’24, who participated in an independent study during the fall semester titled “Mohican Nation in Williamstown: Past, Present, and Future,” moderated the event. “I just really want to emphasize just how monumental it is to have President Holsey here,” Jogwe said. “This very well might be the first visit, albeit virtually, by a tribal sovereign nation leader to the College after its founding.”

Holsey’s speech explored the 2022 Claiming Williams theme, “Breaking Cycles: Where Do We go From Here?” The day’s programming investigated how to move forward from harmful cycles at all levels — from destructive thought patterns to systemic injustice — that persist in the College community and beyond.

 “It is my hope that today is one of many conversations…that we have as people, as the human race, because we are all interconnected in some form or fashion,” Holsey said. “I want to speak to you and engage you and invite you into the conversation… knowing that there really are no questions off the table.”

Holsey began her talk by sharing her personal history, followed by exploring the history of her tribe. After eight years as a member of the Tribal Council, the main governing body of the nation, Holsey…

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Feb. 6—The city of Roseville wants to rename Pocahontas Park and is prepared to pay select American Indians for their input.

The parks and recreation commission has been considering a name change since fall 2020, when high schooler Andrew Kim, who was serving as a parks youth commissioner, told members “he had heard some concerns about the appropriateness of the name,” said Matthew Johnson, Rose­ville’s assistant director of parks and recreation.

The commission undertook a community engagement process, and “the vast majority of comments that we received were in favor of changing the name,” parks commissioner Michelle Lenhart told the city council Monday.

The Pocahontas story popularized by Disney “is inaccurate and contains stereotypes” that are harmful to American Indians, the city says on a webpage summarizing the comments it received. It also notes that Pocahontas had no ties to Minnesota land or its tribes.

At a joint meeting with the city council this week, parks commissioners recommended paying a stipend for American Indians to participate in the renaming process. The council was open to the idea and directed the commission to continue working on the name change.

The Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors group recommended establishing a committee made up of American Indian groups and individuals and providing a stipend “to honor their time and their expertise in helping to rename the park,” Lenhart said.

Commissioner Darrell Baggenstoss said the payment is no different from when the city hires consultants for their professional guidance “in any other work we do, whether it’s in the city, or in schools or other places like that.”

He said the final product would be “a legacy that stands hopefully for 100 years or more, because we did it the right way this time, which was to bring a voice to the table.”

A dollar amount was not determined at the meeting.

PARK HISTORY

Story…

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In order to fill 320 episodes, Supernatural writers got to explore all sorts of terrifying creatures. So what is a wendigo and when did it get featured on the show?

To understand the monster, we need to take a look at its origin story. The Algonquian tribes saw the Wendigo as more than a mythical monster. It was a cautionary tale of what happens when you let gluttony overcome you.

Let’s take a look at the beginning of the legend and where it shows up in pop culture today.

What Is a Wendigo? 

So what is a wendigo? According to Algonquian legend, these creatures weren’t born a monster. They became one.

A wendigo is the result of a person driven to madness by hunger. This hunger leads them to do something unforgivable: resort to cannibalism.

When they eat human flesh, that person becomes a beast driven only by hunger. The very thing that created them will haunt them for the rest of their lives. They will spend the rest of their time on this earth hungry, only getting momentary relief when actively eating another person. 

Some people who saw the creature believe it’s a relative of Bigfoot. Others think that the creature is more similar to a werewolf.

A wendigo resides in the cold, so sightings mostly take place in Canada and sometimes northern states like Minnesota or in the Great Lakes region. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Algonquian tribes would commonly blame missing person cases on wendigo attacks.

In some accounts, the wendigo uses his swift speed to entrap victims. But his primary…

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