MenominiyoU becomes beacon for tribe

Efforts to reclaim Menominee language and culture were born out of the recent coronavirus pandemic, and one program is seeking to teach it to the adults currently part of the tribe.

MenominiyoU sees a sickness on the reservation, according to Ron Corn Jr., one of its founders, and language is the cure, he revealed during a Wisconsin Act 31 event Aug. 18 at Menominee Casino Resort. The program started as an online language classroom through Zoom, since people could not meet face-to-face for much of 2020 on the reservation.

“Nobody knew what was going on, and things were touch-and-go for a little bit,” Corn said about the early days of the pandemic. “It was a little bit scary, watching it come across the ocean, and the next thing you know, they’re shutting down schools. That’s when I knew something was going on.”

There are more than 9,000 enrolled Menominee tribal members, but less than 0.0006% are first-language Menominee speakers, making the tribal tongue an endangered language. When the pandemic brought his work life to a halt, Corn knew the time was right to reverse the trend and keep the language from fading into the mists of history.

He and a friend, Burton Waupoose, who is the executive director for MenominiyoU, had been discussing doing something that reintegrated the Menominee language, but finding time to do it was a factor. That changed when the pandemic shut down everything.

“We were talking on the phone, and he was like, ‘If we were ever going to do this, all this stuff we’ve been talking about, now is probably the time. If we don’t do it now, we may never do it,’” Corn said. “It started out simply as creating an online platform to teach and learn and communicate in the Menominee language.”

Although the primary purpose was the language reintegration, the MenominiyoU group on Zoom quickly became a family, Corn said.

“I was taken at what that social connectivity meant, to be seeing and talking to people,” Corn said. “The language seemed to be getting transmitted, even though it was digital. We did it a couple of times, and then we realized, ‘Whoa, we may be really on to something here.’”

Once realizing the potential for reigniting an almost-dead language, it became a beacon for the Menominee tongue, Corn said.

“On reservations, we have a few holes in the canoe,” Corn said. “There are needs; not just one need, but there’s lots of needs in our community.”

He noted there are a lot of social ills like alcoholism, drug addiction and domestic violence that plague reservations, and he believes the return to Menominee ways — including speaking the language — can serve as the medicine that saves the people.

Corn noted that he didn’t have an education beyond high school, and he opted to study the Menominee language, culture and history instead. Even though modern society frowns on not pursuing higher education, he said, being able to develop MenominiyoU because of his alternative study is just as rewarding to him.

“That’s worth fighting for, to me,” Corn said. “The language hasn’t had safe space for a long time. From 1887, when John Adams declared no Indian talk at the schools as a means of assimilation and knowing that allowing us to keep speaking the language we would never fully assimilate, we have not had safe space since.”

Now, MenominiyoU has eight staff members eager to keep efforts going. In the summers of 2021 and 2022, the organization has conducted youth immersion programs to get younger generations involved. That effort has helped to form a new charter school the Menominee Indian School District is starting in September, which will incorporate Menominee language and culture.

MenominiyoU has helped Michael Waupoose, formerly working for the tribe to help children in crisis and provide youth services, find a renewed focus. Now the organization’s director of operations, Waupoose said the pandemic showed something was missing in his life. Being able to speak his people’s language again was, as Corn had said, the medicine Waupoose needed.

“Typical Menominee, I was late,” Waupoose said. “They were about six months into their first cohort, and I just sent a simple message online asking if they had any language resources for me. I got a message back asking if I had anything going on in a half-hour, saying ‘We’re having a Zoom meeting, but if you like, you can join.’”

Waupoose said his experience as a participant gives him a unique perspective, and having the language back has really helped his life.

Corn noted that he has a 4-year-old grandson who is already a bilingual learner. However, the language cannot thrive until everyone is able to speak it again, he said.

“At the end of the day, it makes no difference if Ron Corn knows every single word in the Menominee language. That doesn’t save the language at all,” Corn said. “Language cannot be revitalized without you, and that’s the message we want to leave with you. Be a part of something bigger than yourselves, and get that language back into the community.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com