Category: Munsee

Native American tribes in Wisconsin are fighting to protect the natural resources on which they rely while advocating for accurate representations of their culture and Native-centered approaches to health care and social services.

These are just some of the issues President Shannon Holsey, of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, raised during the 18th annual State of the Tribes Address on Tuesday.

Speaking in front of legislators at the state Capitol, Holsey expressed concern about the plans to reroute the Enbridge gas pipeline 5 through the Bad River watershed. She criticized the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for what she — and many residents — feel was an inadequate environmental analysis of the plan.

“Both the plan and the environmental review did not factor in the hazards this proposal creates for the surrounding communities, including the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, as well as the ecosystems of the surrounding rivers and the local drinking water,” Holsey said.

According to Holsey, the pipeline’s proposed route would cross 280 rivers and streams that all find their way to the Great Lakes, which provide drinking water for 40 million people.

Much like the recent efforts to protect the gray wolf, Holsey said safeguarding natural resources is about maintaining Native culture and connection to the natural world — to preserve it for the generations to come.  

“The goal of securing rights to nature is to secure the highest level of environmental protection under which an ecosystem can thrive,” Holsey said.

Representing Native history and identity

Woven throughout Holsey’s address was a thread of Native history. She said that the genocide, forced removal and assimilationist policies endured by Native peoples aren’t easy to share. But they are essential to acknowledge in order to fully understand…

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[]’State of the Tribes’ addresses challenges facing Wisconsin Native Americans | WLUKPlease ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes ofwebsite accessibility Continue reading

MADISON, Wis. — The biggest issues and concerns facing Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes were front and center Tuesday as lawmakers gathered for the annual State of the Tribes address.

What You Need To Know

• Lawmakers heard about the biggest issues impacting Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes during Tuesday’s State of the Tribes Address
• This year’s speech was delivered by Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians President Shannon Holsey
• Each year, the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council chooses a different member to give the address
• The address has been given annually since 2005

From the pandemic response to participation in democracy, the president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, Shannon Holsey, called for less division from lawmakers as tribal nations struggle with infrastructure, discrimination, and civic participation.

Holsey told a joint session of the legislature she learned many lessons from the pandemic.

“I will no longer accept the things I cannot change,” Holsey said. “I will change the things I cannot accept.”

Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians President Shannon Holsey delivers 2022 State of the Tribes address. (Spectrum News/Anthony DaBruzzi)

One of the things Holsey made clear she was unwilling to accept was Republican-backed legislation that would change the state’s election process. Holsey said tribes want to help America heal, possibly referring to former President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to accept defeat in the 2020 election.

“The loss of the right to vote is the loss of the voice in the democratic process,” Holsey said. She went on to tell lawmakers that democracy cannot be defeated.

During last year’s address, tribal leaders called for more mental health resources as many issues were exacerbated by the pandemic. This year, Holsey praised tribes for how seriously they have taken COVID-19 and the challenges they…

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Recent attention to the country’s meatpacking plants has illustrated that when the four dominant companies face disruptions to processing, smaller, independent operations don’t have adequate capacity to pick up the slack.

That’s part of the reason the federal government has decided to invest in upgrades to some of those local shops. Plus, when those smaller businesses are federally inspected, producers will be able to market their own branded meat products across state lines.

Still, it will be a tall order to compete in the marketplace, which several senators allege is already not operating in a transparent and consistently fair way.

The White House has put out a comprehensive plan to improve competition in the meat sector, specifically naming as priorities increasing and diversifying processing capacity, improving farmer and rancher income, and promoting state, tribal and private investment. USDA already has awarded $32 million from its Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grant (MPIRG) program, intended to help meat and poultry processing businesses expand, improve or update their abilities.

“It’s big providing the dollars. It’s not a small action, it’s a big action,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., told Agri-Pulse. “We also need to make sure that folks aren’t violating the antitrust laws that we have in this country.” Tester said industry consolidation that has led to the four large companies controlling about 85% of the beef market is devastating small farms and ranches. “I’ve got cow-calf operators that are going broke because of that consolidation.”

Tester, one of the few farmers in Congress, joined Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in sponsoring the Cattle Market Transparency Act with the goal of improving price discovery and ensuring transparency so the large companies are held accountable. That could mean better prices at…

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The Department of the Interior is now seeking public comment surrounding the word “squaw”

February 24, 2022 6:36 am

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — The Department of the Interior is now collecting name replacements for more than 660 geographic features that use the word squaw.

Leaders called it a historically “offensive ethnic, racial, and sexist slur, particularly for Indigenous women,” in a new report by NPR.

They say it originated from the Algonquian word for “woman” but has been twisted by white people for centuries.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland adds, “Words matter, particularly in our work to make our nation’s public lands and waters accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds. Consideration of these replacements is a big step forward in our efforts to remove derogatory terms whose expiration dates are long overdue.”

Here in Nebraska we have several bodies of water that include the word squaw in addition to a mountain peak and a lodge.

You can weigh in right now by submitting a comment here.

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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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