Preface: In 1975 I was a college student studying at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an AIM—American Indian Movement—caravan from Chicago of warriors en-route to the Menominee Indian Reservation to support the takeover of Alexian Bros. religious order property by the Menominee Warriors Society stopped at Rhubarb Bookstore on the west side of Milwaukee. Neil Hawpetos—Spokesman of the Menominee Warriors Society—spoke. I asked Neil Hawpetos that evening if I could “join” and he said “yes” and introduced me into a caravan vehicle that dropped us at The Drop-In Ctr. in Keshena on the reservation. That was the end of my formal secondary or college education and the beginning of understanding the vital importance of Indigenous history and thought within the new-left and de-colonization movement. Add the existential threat of climate change—capitalism worldwide ravaging war of exploitation for sheer greed, profits, and expansion—today, and one has a 21st century picture of planet earth in dire peril. The earth does not need human life to be a mass of iron in the universe; human life needs a bio-diversified ecosystem, earth—with uncontaminated freshwater—capable of maintaining plant and animal life to avoid extinction. “For the earth to live, capitalism and colonialism must die.” -The Red Nation.
Remembrance: To have lived in the time of Mike Sturdevant, John Waubanascum, Neil Hawpetos and other American Indian Movement tribal leaders and warriors. Specifically, Menominee Warriors Society warriors, who were willing to suffer personal injury, death, and incarceration for Indigenous tribal treaty rights and self-determination.
Brief History: In 1954, the middle years of the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, many in Washington D.C. saw Indians' tribal governments as fostering communal ownership and values that were just one step removed from communism. Following the 1954 U.S. Congress act that officially called for “Termination” and “Assimilation” of American Indians into U.S. white society and culture the Menominee, as a federally recognized Indian tribe or sovereign nation, was terminated. After years of internal Menominee strife to restore Menominee Indian tribal status and its reservation the Indian “Restoration” act was passed and signed into law by U.S. President Richard M. Nixon on December 22, 1973. But not before Menominee Indian Reservation tribal land had been sold to real estate developers, and the creation of “Legend Lake” recreational and non-Indian community. Under treaty rights the former Alexian Bros. novitiate was legally mandated to be returned to Menominee Indian tribal and reservation sovereignty. The crimes of the U.S. government—European settler-colonialism of Native American lands, violation of signed treaties, the physical and cultural genocide of Indigenous nations, Indian boarding schools and the sterilization of Menominee women—all constitute crimes against humanity. New Year’s Day, 1975, 44 armed Menominee warriors stormed the former Alexian Bros. novitiate, located adjacent to the Menominee Indian Reservation, taking the caretaker and his family hostage before allowing them to leave unharmed. The National Guard formed a perimeter around the novitiate with state and local police, supported by federal law enforcement agencies, and armed local vigilantes funded through the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. LEAA was a product of the U.S. Department of Justice, created by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration “War On Crime” crusade with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in 1968 and followed its Counter Intelligence Program: COINTELPO. A crusade that originally targeted the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement and Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, American Indian Movement, an African-American U.S. insurrection, and middle-class white college student opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War spearheaded by the Students for a Democratic Society and its offspring the Weather Underground Organization. The Menominee Warriors Society occupation of the Alexian Bros. novitiate followed the American Indian Movement armed standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973.
We can’t turn back now.
A group of six stood, a tight circle,
shadows, inside barren woods, a border,
a flat frozen field, directly ahead,
each investigated.
A demon, piercing wind, howled, plagued, dared, the desperate ones,
filling the waxing moon sky with penetrating ice shards, from the field’s surface.
Whipping them violently then suddenly dissipating them, before the tornadoes of ice
crystals flying off the field would loft again.
In the black night,
brilliant white light-beams shown,
star-light, through the broken layer of clouds,
reflected off the swirling ice crystals shapes.
“We have to cross that field."
“Can't see across."
“We could stay to the woods, walk around."
“No, take too long."
“National Guard, sheriff, police, will be everywhere, soon sunup."
“Storm passing, wind dying."
“They'll fly their helicopters."
"No choice."
“Vigilantes find us out there, we’ll be dead meat, nowhere to hide."
Each women carried a heavy burlap bag with a rope tied across each corner.
The three men large backpacks, a side arm, a rifle, walking towards the former
Alexian Bros. novitiate.
At the break of dawn, near the west edge of the field, another thirty feet
they would climb a low ridge back into the woods. Each member of the group
was exhausted, then their feet broke through the surface crust into
ankle-deep water.
The water had collected after the
ground froze, protected from frost
under a layer of thin ice, snow,
at the ridge line.
We can’t turn back now.
Gresham, Wisconsin, 1975