Oskēh-enāēnīw mesek
Oskēh-metāēmoh

Our Young Men and Women
Buffalo hooves pattern
Learning Through Caretaking

Beginning in 2023, Medicine Fish has piloted a youth internship and cohort model that centers Menominee values of respect, relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility. These opportunities create space for young people to reconnect with traditional life ways through hands-on caretaking of the land and water.

We want to recognize the creativity, knowledge, and work ethic our Menominee youth carry. They bring love for their families and community and, in turn, help us deepen our collective understanding of their important role as future leaders and caretakers of our homelands.

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Medicine Fish youth interns building a fence

Youth Internships

The Medicine Fish internship began as a small pilot supported by local partners and has grown into a year-round journey for Indigenous youth leadership. Many participants have gone on to share their experiences in community events, public presentations, documentary projects, leading to informing their college and career pathways.

Each season, youth work alongside elders, cultural leaders, and conservation partners to learn about prairie and Buffalo restoration, native plant and medicine gathering, and the role of fire, soil, and water in ecological balance. They take part in restoring traditional prairies through invasive species removal, planting and tending native species, maintaining Buffalo fences, and observing how Buffalo shape the health of the land.

Interns also have opportunities to engage in nonprofit leadership. They learn how community projects are built and sustained, from communication and budgeting to storytelling and education. Through reflective journaling, talking circles, and mentorship, they explore how their cultural identity and personal gifts contribute to the wellbeing of their people and ecosystems.

I am thankful

to [the internship] for introducing me to the non-profit world, and doing so in such a manner that inspired me to want to develop and create my own non-profit one day. The mentors made something that was otherwise unnatural to me — reflecting, sharing, and vulnerability — a normal and healthy thing. After being exposed to such an environment, I realized how much healing my community needed.

Intern, 20 years old
In researching my generation

I learned that we are very socially aware and more likely to come together and share similar ideas and act on those ideas than any other generation. So with my generation, we understand this is our home and we realize how much damage we’ve done (as people), and so we are coming together to address that and save the Earth.

Intern, 18 years old

Youth Cohorts

The Medicine Fish youth cohort is a community of young people who come together during key life transitions to learn, to spend time on the land, and to support one another. Distinct from our internships, the cohort youth learn about what it means to be Mamāceqtāwak, or Menominee people.

Our ancestors had the wisdom and foresight to understand the importance of remaining on our ancestral homelands, particularly at Namaewak Mawaw-Cēsenituaq, the place where the Sturgeon gather, at Keshena Falls, which is the center of our Reservation. Therefore, it is our commitment to help our young people be in relationship with our forest, waters, and lands as the foundation for their identity, purpose, and wellbeing.

Our youth cohorts engage in traditional and contemporary Menominee cultural and seasonal lifeways, including fly fishing, harvesting, and community engagement. We also value learning from and sharing with youth and Elders from other tribal communities. Together, these experiences support identity, responsibility, and readiness as young people move toward healthy adulthood and future pathways.

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Medicine Fish youth
We are important.

Our perspectives and different ways of doing and moving not only brings out our own gifts, but our own ways of filling the room. We’re here and will make a really big impact because of these things. We shouldn’t be looked over or forgotten.

Medicine Fish youth, 17 years old
As a young person

I watched the trauma of colonization ripple through our community in many forms of grief. Today, we are working to repair that. We brought our Buffalo home, and now we see our community coming back together around something positive. What once were ripples of grief and trauma have become ripples of healing, identity, and resilience for the next generation.

Pilar Gauthier
We give our youth

the courage and encouragement to be themselves, to think and create, to find their gifts and purpose. If you see something and want to make the change, make it yours; do it, so you can add yourself to this place and to the land. You’ll be here always when you do that. We help them to realize who they are inside.

Donavan Waupoose Sr.
“I feel safest with Medicine Fish because it feels like home.”

– Medicine Fish youth

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