The following article written by Nancy Oestreich Lurie first appeared in the Hocak Worak in 1994.

As we celebrate the “25^th Anniversary of the Wisconsin Winnebago Nation,” we are, of course, celebrating the Nation as it was constituted 25 years ago under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA).  The Winnebago Nation goes back long before that, even before the tribes were recognized as Sovereign Nations under the U.S. Constitution in 1789.  Because of the superficial treatment of Indian history in schools, even at the college level, most of the people in this country have the idea that there are only two sovereign entities; the federal government, which can deal with foreign nations and the states, which have broad authority to determine their own affairs.  In fact, there is a third sovereign entity, Indian tribes, recognized as standing in a special relationship to the federal government on the order of, but different and separate from states.

Over the years attempts have been made and continue to made to erode this special status of Indian societies.  The events of 1963 are important both as an assertion of the sovereignty of the Winnebago in Wisconsin and as an assertion of the fact that the Winnebago also are a contemporary people, desiring amenities and willing to share the responsibilities of modern life.  Organization under IRA represents only the most recent strategy to survive and still maintain Winnebago identity and values in relation to the larger, encompassing non-Indian society.  The warrior tradition has been a central element in the persistence of the Winnebago.  It is worth looking back to understand how the organization that was instituted in 1963 grew out of earlier experiences, models and experiments.

In 1939-1940, the Anthropology Department of the University of Chicago undertook a project to follow up on a study of the Winnebago done by Paul Radin some thirty years earlier.  It has been virtually forgotten and as far as I know resulted in no publications-one of many scholarly enterprises that were put on hold on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, already raging in Europe.  It was never reactivated when the war ended because new projects engaged the interest of those involved.

What survives of the project in the way of analysis is the manuscript of a seven-page paper delivered by Dr. Leo Srole at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association held December 27-31, 1949 in Philadelphia: “The Winnebago and Modern War.”  Srole reported on his recent fieldwork with the Wisconsin Winnebago to document the state of the tribe at the time, in contrast to Radin’s work that was devoted to reconstructing the pre-treaty/removal period culture.  I have no idea why the project did not concentrate on Nebraska where Radin did virtually all his research, although some of his information came from Wisconsin people staying in Nebraska when he was there.

Srole sought data on all aspects of Winnebago life, including relationships with Whites, but when he got back to Chicago, he realized that he had not taken a systematic note of the importance of “the reactions of the Wisconsin Winnebago to American participation in the First World War.”  Srole explained, “In the course of interviewing among all the elements of the tribal population, I had here and there picked up stray bits of information, the full significance of which did not come to me until much later when I was in the stage of organizing and analyzing my material.”  He suddenly got a new insight on data about the traditional culture described by Radin.

War was one of the most important elements…the life of the warrior was the ideal toward which all men strove…it was so inextricably interwoven with social standing in the community and with individual prestige that Winnebago life is unthinkable without it.

Srole observed that the Winnebago he worked with were migratory laborers.  They were no longer organized for the practical purposes according to traditional chieftainship and clan responsibilities; fasting for spiritual guidance had long been abandoned; many ceremonies had become extinct.  “And yet for all this devastation, the Winnebago culture pattern has been left intact at its core, namely in the war complex.”

Srole went on to say that “the remarkable fact is that the war complex has had nothing to feed upon, so to speak, for up to 1917 hardly a handful of Winnebago had been on the warpath in several generations.”  A surprising number of war-bundles had remained active and when a large number of Winnebago men enlisted in 1917, each was given a trophy from his clan war-bundle, “an ancient practice to insure success on the warpath.”  Once at the Front, several took German scalps and “all,” according to Srole, brought back trophies as proof of their bravery.  Victory dances were held.  Veterans were honored in the old Warrior tradition.  They told their stories at wakes.  New compositions were added to the repertory of war songs.  In short, Srole concluded, the veterans, gave “new life and vitality to the culture,” and “by forming a prestige group long extinct, they strengthened the entire social structure.”

World War II helped to continue and reinforce that warrior tradition revitalized by World War I, as did subsequent conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.  Beside the ceremonial aspect, a new dimension was added when the Winnebago Veterans organized under a state charter in February 1949.  It was primarily a social group but also engaged in benevolent activities, e.g., as a burial society.  Although it was supplanted when the Andrew Blackhawk American Legion Post was formed, it provided valuable experience in setting up formal institutions with a constitution and bylaws based on Winnebago values.

Veterans generally were in the forefront of efforts begun about 1948 to take organized action in the tribal interest.  The Indian Claims Commission Act had been passed in 1946 and in late 1948 concerned Winnebago, who had been notified of the Act by a non-Indian friend, Mr. A.P. Jones of Black River Falls, began looking into the factual basis and procedures for the Wisconsin Winnebago to register a claim before the 1952 deadline.  On January 31, 1949, they formally requested that Indian Bureau representatives come to a general tribal meeting to discuss the claim on June 15, at the Winnebago School in Neillsville.  When the meeting was held (the Rev. Benjamin Stucki was chosen chair) tribal officers from the Nebraska Winnebago also attended.  After a lengthy discussion of pros and cons, it was decided to present a common claim since the land in question had been shared by the entire tribe before its division into Wisconsin and Nebraska enclaves.  The officers from the Nebraska group, long organized under IRA, formed a ready-made Claims Committee, but the Wisconsin Winnebago had to elect a Claims Committee:  Members were; James Smoke, The Rev. Mitchell Whiterabbit, Joshua Sanford, Ulysses White, Jean Day and Angelo La Mere.

As everyone knows, the claim dragged on for many years, and the Committee membership changed from to time, but the Claims Committee and the Winnebago Veterans group planted the ideal of the desirability of organizing along nontraditional lines to work in the tribal behalf in dealing with a larger society.  It is interesting that over the next decade, as meetings were called to report on the progress of the claim, they were designated General Councils, and the committee which was first designated the “Land Claims Committee,” decided it had broader concerns and simply called itself the Claims Committee.  By 1952 it was known as the Business Committee.

During the 1950’s the Wisconsin Winnebago began to experience severe financial distress.  Although they had lived pretty much from season to season and often just day to day with their itinerant crop-harvesting economy, they were self-sufficient and independent.

During the 1950’s employment opportunities diminished as crop harvesting became increasingly mechanized.  Where a few years of schooling had been sufficient for crop work, many Wisconsin Winnebago now lacked the education needed for other employment.  When they tried to get help, they were often denied Indian Bureau assistance because of their non-reservation status and were denied public assistance because local welfare offices considered their problem the responsibility of the Indian Bureau.

Nationally, all tribes were threatened during the 1950’s by federal policy designed to terminate Indians’ special status, discussed at the outset, and to lose Indians as a federal problem by relocating them to urban areas.  The major intertribal reaction was the American Indian Chicago Conference (AICC) of 1961.  Indians from across the country agreed that the policies adopted in the 1950’s were unjust and intolerable.  At Chicago they reached consensus about the direction policy should take in the future.  Many Winnebago attended AICC and were inspired to use it as a modal for organizing and working to improve tribal housing, the general welfare, and to help their people get the education needed for decent employment.

Helen Miner Miller, who had served on the All-Indian AICC Steering Committee, was able to draw upon the core of concerned Winnebago-Whiterabbit, Smoke and others-whose organizational experience went back to the Winnebago Veterans Society and Claims/Business Committee to develop a Tribal Constitution and bylaws and apply for organization under the IRA.

Authorization was given on March 19, 1963; providing the Wisconsin Winnebago with the formal structure to coordinate tribal efforts and qualify for programs long denied them to improve their circumstances.