Menominee legislator tells her story to help women

Rachel Fernandez, a Menominee tribal legislator, spoke her truth Oct. 16 at the Menominee Casino Resort in the hopes of empowering other women and breaking a code of silence dating back several generations.

Fernandez, speaking as one of the keynote speakers at the Women’s Empowerment Summit and Training, told those in attendance about the abuse she endured in her early years, which contributed to a cycle of alcohol and drug abuse that almost made her a statistic in the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women that has slowly been gaining attention across the United States.

“Speak up, because you’re not alone,” Fernandez said. “I know I’m not alone.”

Fernandez spoke of the love she felt from her grandmothers, but even that wasn’t enough to deal with the childhood trauma she endured. It caused Fernandez, who was raised in Neopit, to become bulimic in her teenage years, and eventually to turn to drugs and alcohol. By her mid-20s, she already had four children and was still haunted by her past, and the drugs and alcohol helped to numb the pain.

Fernandez eventually had her mother care for her children and went to Green Bay, noting that “I’d pretty much given up on life,” and she met a man who wanted to go on a road trip with her.

“I was drunk and high on drugs, so I said OK,” Fernandez said. “They probably just thought, ‘Oh, Rachel’s off drinking and doing her own thing.’ Nobody ever checked up on me like we do now for our sisters and our relatives out there.”

Before Fernandez knew it, she woke up in North Carolina, she said, and she didn’t have any idea where she was. She said she felt unsafe for the first time and needed to go home.

“I realized I could have been dead, and nobody knew where I was,” Fernandez said.

However, it wasn’t that easy to get back home. The man Fernandez had gone on the road trip with drugged and raped her, and she believes other men on the property had violated her, as well. Fernandez was terrified and had no access to a phone. She eventually found herself in Indiana and begged to be returned to Green Bay, saying she’d be quiet and wanted to go back to her kids.

“He took me back to Green Bay, and he left me on Main Street,” Fernandez said. “I took off, and I ran. I never told that story for a long, long time.”

Past traumas have damaged both Native American women and men alike, and Fernandez said that allowing tribal members to hurt one another should not be tolerated.

Fernandez pointed out the boarding school era, where indigenous people were not allowed to practice their traditions or speak their native language, and not being permitted to speak about and process the bad things that happened in life has caused the phenomenon of missing and murdered women to become so prevalent. The United States government’s past actions of “assimilation and genocide,” she said, have damaged the tribal culture and way of life.

“It’s unacceptable to me that we have our people hurting our own people,” Fernandez said. “We can look back at that and ask why. We need to be seeking justice, and we need to seek responsibility and accountability, but why is this happening? Why are our people hurting our own people?”

The tribes had their ways of dealing with members who had done wrong in the past, but once the boarding school era occurred, more and more Native Americans lost their way, according to Fernandez.

“We were taught, don’t talk about that, don’t say anything,” she said, noting that she had heard her great-grandfather speak in the traditional Menominee language and asked him to teach her, only to be rebuffed and told to do so was too dangerous.

She added that, for women, the key to healing is to form sisterhoods among other women — sisters, mothers, aunties and grandmothers.

“When we talk about empowerment as women, we have to look back and acknowledge everything that happened before us and honor those ancestors that endured and went through the pain and struggle for us to get here, for us to have our land, for us to have our language, for us to have our ceremonies,” Fernandez said.

To honor those ancestors, it’s important for women to speak up about the wrongs being committed and standing up for others who are hurting, Fernandez said, adding that women need to be “calling out those who are doing the trauma to us, who are out there, walking amongst us in our community.”

“There’s murderers out there,” Fernandez said. “We need to stand together and call these people out, because it’s not only for our families — our families have endured so much already — but for our community, so we can walk out there in safety, so we can be together safely. We need to stand up, and we need to keep standing up.”

Women need to stand up to violence and toxic masculinity, she added. To do so will provide a better future for tribal descendants.

“I see it on the legislature,” Fernandez said. “It’s unacceptable to me. We don’t need you to take our space. We need to gather in liberation so that we can look forward to our next seven generations and provide a health foundation for our kids, our grandkids and so forth.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com