Menominee Elder and Artist Jim Frechette Jr.

The Menominee have lived here for thousands of years. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network visits a display of these hard carved figures at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, depicting the Menominee clan system,  “The Little Menominee,” were created by Menominee elder and traditional artist Jim Frechette Jr., In the first part of a two part series, Vander Puy talks with Menominee tribal member Mike Hoffman and retired UW Stevens Point history professor David Wrone about the display.   click here to hear a "live stream" broadcast of this story

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The Little Menominee Clans

	To visit the web site of Little Menominee Clans, click here http://library.uwsp.edu/MenomineeClans/

Mike Hoffman and David Wrone describe Jim Frechette’s Menominee clan project because it represents a way for society to handle the necessities of life.

 

The Menominee have lived in Wisconsin for thousands of years.  Their origin story is set on the banks of the Menominee River in northeastern Wisconsin  .  That’s the place a long, long  time ago, a great light colored bear, emerging from the underground and walking near the river, asked the Great Mystery to transform him into an Indian. The bear, who was alone, invited other  animal spirits, to join him. From this grounded spirit and order came the Menominee Clan structure,  the well spring for traditional Menominee  government and social relations.   

 

Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network visits a display of these hard carved figures at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, depicting the Menominee clan system,  “The Little Menominee,” were created by Menominee elder and traditional artist Jim Frechette Jr., In the first part of a two part series, Vander Puy talks with Menominee tribal member Mike Hoffman and retired UW Stevens Point history professor David Wrone about the display.

 

The scene centers on  an ancient council fire…. on the shore in northeastern Wisconsin where the Menominee River meets Lake Michigan. In the background stand  white pine trees and lush, moving in the breeze, wild rice stands. 

 

And gathered around the council fire are the more than thirty  “Little Menominee”  clan members, about a foot tall, the Wolf, the Moose, the Crane, the Golden Eagle,  the Bear,  and their younger brothers, all intricately carved with their tools, and dressed in their regalia. 

 

Mike Hoffman is a Menominee tribal member and a contributor to this display.   He speaks the Menominee language.  Hoffman says the name Wisconsin derives from the Menominee language.

 

“Wiscossic, that’s what the old people said, there was a language teacher, Mercilyn Sanipaw, she quoted that in a National Geographic Magazine when asked the same question,  Wis cos sic, it is a good place, everything necessary for life is here.”

 

Standing next to Mike Hoffman is Dr. David Wrone.  Dr. Wrone taught history at UW Stevens Point from the mid nineteen sixties to the mid nineties.  He  taught Menominee history and helped establish a Menominee language course.   He says the clan system came about as a device to handle the challenges in  life,  building houses, hunting, food gathering, medicine, and government.

 

“When you meet the problem in life one of the problems you face is food, so you have the wild rice and one of the clan structures illustrates how you do that, from the parching and so forth and maple sugar, one of the building clans, one of the clan structures, the crane, the builders, the scientists of the Menominee,  made 250 objects out of wood, made bows, arrows, fish weirs, wigwams, they were marvelously talented.”

 

Before the Treaty Era, the Menominee lands stretched  to the Chippewa River in western Wisconsin, and north to the Brule in northern Michigan.  The Menominee hunted and fished and gathered wild rice throughout this region.

 

Mike Hoffman.

 

“If anyone knows anything about the Menominee they know that we call ourselves Ma match i tow wic,  movers, full of life, Ma match it tow, means he moves with the season, we moved everywhere, sturgeon, rice, others say us harvesting rice and said, Menominee, or mah no min nee, people of the good grain, that’s what Menominee means, so that’s why this rice is a very important part here of the depiction of the clan project.”

 

Hunting the elk, the moose, deer, ducks, and geese, was the duty of the Wolf Clan. The wolf figure wears a floral design vest, a breach cloth, and fringed leggings.

 

“Me wouh, Me wouh, is a wolf. You can see he’s a hunter, a gatherer, when you look at him you can see he has his singing sticks out and he has his bundle open, and he’s preparing for the hunt, and he’s about to make an offering and sing those songs that need to be sung when you open that bundle.”

 

The “Little Menominee” are carved from white pine.  The Menominee forest is renowned throughout the world for sustainable old growth timber.  The Menominee practiced conservation long before the Europeans even thought of it.  The Menominee are a woodland people.

 

“Meta kook kookie, Meta kook kook key, that’s what we call the forest, Meta kook kookie keha, in the forest, that word was taught to us by one of the Menominee elders, to mean  under the protection of our Mother’s skirts, if you look at a great pine, how it comes down in the shape of a skirt, and our mother the earth is sheltered by this skirt ,so    that’s one of the deeper meanings that this word comes from, Meta kook kookie.”

 

To the Menominee the forest, the wolves, the moose, some stones, and many other parts of the world are alive in pretty much the same way as the human beings. No one is superior to the Earth.  Maybe that’s why the Menominee culture has survived all these years.

 

“There’s more to life than a Rolls Royce and a yacht. If people would get back to our original way of thinking and give in some time to evolve in their own mind they’d perhaps realize that perhaps they’re not going down the right path.”

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network

To visit the incredible web site of the Little Menominee Clans http://library.uwsp.edu/MenomineeClans/

 

Superior Broadcast Network Web Design by Sandy Lyon and Jake Vander Puy

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