Seeking Kiash Matchitiwuk (The Ancient Ones)-The Menominee Struggle for Ethnic Identity

FAIN: HB-267584-20

David Frederic Overstreet
College of Menominee Nation (Keshena, WI 54135-1179)

Writing an archeological monograph describing the pre-history of the Menominee nation of northern Wisconsin.

Vintage archaeological investigations on the Menominee reservation in northeastern Wisconsin linked the resident population to local prehistoric sites, a construct that supported oral traditions and the Menominee creation narrative. The tribe has been historically associated with wild rice harvesting as their Algonquian-derived name implies. By the turn of the 21st century this traditional framework was challenged by a new paradigm stating their claimed homeland may have been elsewhere, but retained their purported life-ways as hunters and gatherers. Multidisciplinary research by the Menominee tribe utilized archaeology, ethno-history, soil science, oral traditions, agronomy, and geography to construct a new paradigm in support of its traditional ethnic identity and culture history. The new model moves the Menominee tribe across history’s doorstep into the past they claim, but with a previously unrecognized adaptation of sustainable organic agriculture.