Here & Now

Wisconsin Native Languages Shift From Silence To Celebration

Frederica Freyberg:
At the state Capitol, budget writers are at work fashioning the two-year spending plan with Republican leaders now declaring an impasse in negotiations with Governor Tony Evers. One of the items in the Evers’ budget allocating $11 million in tribal gaming revenue for Native American language revitalization. For a look at that work, “Here & Now” reporter Erica Ayisi spoke with Menominee and Ojibwe tribal members who are bringing their Indigenous languages back from a past policy of silence. This report is in collaboration with our partners at ICT, formerly Indian Country Today.

Trinaty Caldwell:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
Trinaty Caldwell is learning how to speak Menominee, an Indigenous Native American language.

Trinaty Caldwell:
The ability to talk in the language freely, that to be able to do it now today, is a blessing because our elders weren’t allowed that freedom.

Erica Ayisi:
Caldwell’s Native ancestors spoke languages that are now nearly extinct.

Trinaty Caldwell:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
Adult language learners at the Menomini yoU language campus are on a mission to revitalize their Indigenous language from a past of systematic erasure.

Trinaty Caldwell:
Like even just saying “Posoh” wasn’t always the most comfortable thing right away.

Erica Ayisi:
Really?

Trinaty Caldwell:
Yeah, it wasn’t ubiquitous. I didn’t really hear it a lot.

Trinaty Caldwell:
[speaking Menominee]

Ron Corn, Jr:
[speaking Menominee]

Ron Corn, Jr:
There was no meaningful social or community access to the language.

Erica Ayisi:
Ron Corn, Jr, director of revitalization for Menomini yoU, says their doors opened in 2024 after creating a community of Native language learners online.

Ron Corn, Jr:
That means if you’re not looking to be a teacher or be a student, there was no place for you in revitalization.

Erica Ayisi:
The adult learners earn a stipend to normalize speaking Menominee on the reservation.

Ron Corn, Jr:
When we go and patronize any of the places here on the reservation, or do our business, be it at tribal offices and or anywhere else that we might see people who have taken their opportunity to join this revitalization and do that same business in the language.

Alexander Medina:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
Alexander Medina says he’s now exposed to more conversational Menominee vocabulary that his non-Native stepfather dissuaded him from learning as a child.

Alexander Medina:
Sometimes it was kind of heavy-handed and kind of bad how, how much he didn’t want us to basically just be “Menom,” be Menominee like, use rez slang. We’d get in trouble.

Erica Ayisi:
But now as you’re learning the language, does it have an impact on your self-esteem and your identity?

Alexander Medina:
Absolutely. It kind of clicked to me that it’s not illegal. It’s not banned anymore. So we should do what we can to salvage the culture we have left.

Ron Corn, Jr:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
Language revitalization efforts stem from a troubling past.

Ron Corn, Jr:
The boarding school experience was very effective in what it set out to do, which was to “kill the Indian, save the man” and every man, woman and child. Our ancestors, three, four generations over had this horrific life experience.

Erica Ayisi:
For over 60 years, there were at least 11 federal Indian boarding schools across Wisconsin, including two here in Menominee Nation in Keshena. These schools were designed to culturally assimilate Native American children into American culture by forcibly removing them from their families and banning them from speaking their native tongue.

Sasha Maria Suarez:
The most common thread that you see in conversations about language loss really begin in the 19th century, and it often revolves around federal Indian boarding schools and Indian schooling in non-Native institutions.

Erica Ayisi:
Sasha Maria Suarez, professor of History and American Indigenous Studies at UW-Madison, says the federal Indian schools across the state were managed by religious institutions which colonized Native American children and prohibited their language.
What was it to be replaced with?

Sasha Maria Suarez:
English. Even if they went into federal Indian boarding schools with no grasp of the English language, that was really the only language they were permitted to speak.

Erica Ayisi:
Severed ties to Indigenous languages has been a generational issue for all tribal communities.

Sasha Maria Suarez:
For over a century, these kinds of policies that have tried to diminish and disrupt Indigenous language use.

Trinaty Caldwell:
My great grandma, she spoke Menominee. There were some things that were passed down and some things that weren’t and the language just was not one of them.

Erica Ayisi:
Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Oneida, Ojibwe, Stockbridge-Munsee and Potawatomi are some of Wisconsin’s Indigenous languages.

Ron Corn, Jr:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
Suarez says Wisconsin’s Indigenous languages did not completely lose their voices.

Sasha Maria Suarez:
Those elders who had been to schools, who maintained an awareness of their Indigenous languages, started using education to teach their languages to the next generations.

[drumming and singing]

Erica Ayisi:
In Bad River, for a new generation of language speakers and singers, Dylan Jennings of the band Bizhiki wants Ojibwe traditional sounds to be a part of the modern music scene.

[music and singing]

Dylan Jennings:
We’re, you know, expressing ourselves and making things that we like. But another part of it too was using our platform to normalize our, our sounds, our style of singing and our language.

Erica Ayisi:
Their song “Unbound” is about preserving Bad River waters.

Dylan Jennings:
We just have to remember to utilize our language and all those tools that we’ve been given.

Erica Ayisi:
And today, all federally recognized Native tribes in Wisconsin offer Indigenous language learning opportunities.

Sasha Maria Suarez:
The founding of revitalization efforts in those decades following World War II demonstrates really clearly how boarding schools failed in terms of trying to dismantle and disrupt Indigenous languages.

Erica Ayisi:
In 2021, Governor Tony Evers issued an executive order formally apologizing for Wisconsin’s role in the Indian boarding schools era. Through state and private funding, language revitalization efforts at Menomini yoU plan to continue.

Ron Corn, Jr:
I don’t have an education beyond high school, but I have a resilient spirit that’s willing to give all that it can to see through the revitalization of the language.

Ron Corn, Jr:
[speaking Menominee]

Erica Ayisi:
In Menominee Nation for “Here & Now” and ICT, I’m Erica Ayisi.