Kāēyas Mamāceqtawak

The ancient Movers of Life

Building on the Resilience of our Ancestors

Understanding the challenges our community faces today is a direct result of learning our people’s history, a “his-story” that comes from a society outside of us. Together, with others in our community, we are coming to know how ancestral knowledge and decision-making ensured the wellbeing of our people, lands, and waters. These are the cultural laws that predate federal policy and offer us insight into addressing ongoing socio-political challenges, providing pathways for us to lead and influence from a place of love, empathy, and alignment.

Understanding how “ourstory” intersects with the spirit of who we are is essential to understanding esēhcekan, our way of doing things, in other words, our work. It is our privilege to join the many others in our community in building on the resilience of our ancestors and the wisdom of our leaders to strengthen future generations.

Timeline

A timeline of policy impacts, cultural resilience, and ecological restoration, illuminating why rematriation and restoration is critical for sustainable recovery and Tribal self-determination.

The following timeline traces how federal policy, industrial development, and forced assimilation reshaped Menominee lands, waters, and the lifeways of our people. It highlights why cultural resilience and persistence lead to present-day rematriation and restoration efforts as critical mechanisms for sustainable recovery and Menominee tribal self-determination. While not an exhaustive list, we included historical events that aid our understanding of how our story shapes our present-day circumstances and guides our vision for Medicine Fish.

Pre-1800s

Menominee Nation

Menominee Presence & Caretaking for Time Immemorial

The Menominee people have occupied and governed a vast homeland across the Great Lakes region for thousands of years, maintaining complex governance and social systems, cultural practices, and reciprocal relationships with land, water, forests, and all beings within the Natural World.

1800s-early 1900s

Federal Policy & Law

Treaties, Dispossession & Industrial Transformation

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, federal Indian policy was designed to dispossess Indigenous Nations of land, dismantle tribal governance, and suppress cultural and spiritual life.

Through treaties, deportation through forced removals and land allotment, boarding schools, and restrictions on religious practice, the United States sought to assimilate Native peoples into American society while opening Indigenous lands and waters to settlement, industry, and resource extraction. While treaties are a part of our story, they often represent an interruption to our natural flow of lifeways. Restoration, therefore, is a continuation and return of ways of knowing and doing that predate federal recognition and extend into the present.

1832

Land, Water, and Ecological Disruption

Loss of Buffalo in Wisconsin

Buffalo historically ranged across central and western Wisconsin, including Menominee and other Indigenous homelands. By 1832, the last two wild buffalo east of the Mississippi River were killed, marking the local extinction of Buffalo in Wisconsin as a result of rapid settlement, land conversion to agriculture, and overhunting.

1870s-1930s

Federal Policy & Law | Menominee Nation

Assimilation, Suppression, & Infrastructure

Late 1800s – mid-1900s: Boarding School era
Native children were forcibly removed from their families to suppress language, culture, and identity.

1871-1890: Keshena Falls sawmill was established
The Menominee Tribe, under the control of the Office of Indian Affairs were approved to retain control of their forest resources, including harvesting for dead/downed timber. According to oral tradition, in the mid-1800s, Chief Oshkosh stated, “Start harvesting the trees with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen.” He concluded, “When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun, and the trees will last forever.”

1883: Indian Religious Crimes Code
Arguably, the most suppressive example of religious suppression was the 1883 Indian Religious Crimes Code led by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This Code was formally codified by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1892 and prohibited Native ceremonial activity. Native people were ordered to discontinue dances and feasts and barred from following the influence of medicine men or face criminal penalties, including imprisonment and the withholding of food rations.

1887-1934: The Dawes Act & Allotment Period
The Dawes Act, formally approved on February 8, 1887, authorized the allotment of tribally held lands into individual parcels as a part of a federal effort to assimilate Native American peoples. The policy sought to replace collective land stewardship and tribal governance with private land ownership, agricultural-based livelihoods, and integration into American citizenship.

1892

Land, Water, and Ecological Disruption

Construction of the Shawano Dam

The Shawano Dam was constructed across the Wolf River in Shawano, Wisconsin, by the Shawano Water and Power and River Improvement Company to generate hydropower. The dam permanently blocked Lake Sturgeon from accessing their ancestral spawning grounds at Keshena Falls.

1928

Land, Water, and Ecological Disruption

Construction of the Balsam Row Road Dam

The Balsam Row Road Dam was designed in 1926, completed in 1928, for hydroelectric generation to provide electricity to Shawano, Wis., and, to this day, this dam is the second of two remaining human-made barriers to sturgeon migrating from the Lake Winnebago system to spawn upstream on tribal lands.

1940s-1960s

Menominee Nation | Federal Policy & Law

Menominee Economic Self-sufficiency, Federal Policy Shift & Termination

1940s – 1950s: By the late 1940s, the Menominee Nation became nationally recognized and globally respected for its sustainably managed forest and economic self-sufficiency through the Menominee Tribal Enterprises and tribal governance.

1951: $8.5 Million Menominee Lawsuit
Menominee Nation won an $8.5 million lawsuit addressing federal mismanagement of Menominee resources.

1961: Menominee Termination Takes Effect
On April 30th, 1961 The Menominee Tribe was officially terminated as a federally recognized sovereign nation in the United States by the federal government. The Tribe’s earlier political and economic success made them vulnerable and they were among the first to be terminated, resulting in immediate loss of federal support, self-governance, and control over land & resources. The reservation was converted into Menominee County, becoming the poorest and least populated in Wisconsin because it lacked the tax base needed to provide resources to the Menominee people. In turn, poverty & social and governance challenges continue to affect the community today.

1970s-1980s

Menominee Nation

Resistance, Restoration & Reestablishment

Early 1970s: Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stakeholders (DRUMS) a grassroots movement organizes the community to resist and oppose termination.

1973: The Menominee Restoration Act restoring federal recognition to the Menominee Tribe and return their tribal assets to trust status.

1975: The Menominee are reestablished as a reservation.

1979: Menominee Tribal Government Reestablished.

1981: Largest land Reacquisition by Menominee Indian Tribe
On December 31, 1981 the Menominee Indian Tribe acquired 1071.17 acres of land, its largest land requisition. This was land sold off during the DAWES Act.

2022

Rematriation & Restoration

The Buffalo Return

On November 12, 2022, the first Buffalo were released on the Menominee Reservation for the first time in almost 200 years. This effort was led by a community-based team, several of whom that would become Medicine Fish. In the same year, the Menominee Tribe became members of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, strengthening intertribal relationships and collective stewardship of Buffalo as a relative.

2023

Rematriation & Restoration

Medicine Fish

Medicine Fish was formally incorporated, and the first cohort of youth interns completed fencing across 80 acres of land on the Menominee Indian Reservation, supporting Buffalo care, habitat restoration, and workforce development and land-based learning. [Learn More]