The Perseverance of Menominee Women Artwork

90 Second Narratives

90 Second Narratives is a podcast featuring engaging true stories told by trained historians. Each episode includes a short story interwoven with expert analysis of the story’s historical significance. The concise length and storytelling format of the episodes make history accessible, dynamic, and entertaining. The subjects of the stories are diverse—spanning the globe and ranging from the pre-historic to the modern age. While individual stories stand alone, the episodes in each season are linked thematically and combine to offer comparative perspectives that illuminate connections from across the human experience. Every episode also includes recommendations for further reading. 90 Second Narratives provides a novel way to hear historians share the wonders of the past in their own voices.

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90 Second Narratives

The Perseverance of Menominee Women

January 03, 2022 • Sky Michael Johnston • Season 10 • Episode 3

“On November 20, 1955, David Ames, an anthropologist and research associate with the Wisconsin Legislative Council’s Menominee Indian Study Committee spoke with Phebe Nichols Jewell the wife of Angus Lookaround at their home on the Menominee reservation in Northeast Wisconsin…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Jillian Marie Jacklin.

90 Second Narratives
Season 10: “Seeking Justice”
Episode 3: “The Perseverance of Menominee Women”

Sky Michael Johnston:

Welcome to 90 Second Narratives, I’m Sky Michael Johnston. Today, Season 10 of the podcast continues with a new story on the theme of Seeking Justice. Our storyteller is Dr. Jillian Marie Jacklin, a lecturer in Democracy and Justice Studies, History, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Here is Dr. Jacklin with the story, “The Perseverance of Menominee Women.” Listeners should be advised that the story does discuss violence.

Jillian Marie Jacklin:

On November 20, 1955, David Ames, an anthropologist and research associate with the Wisconsin Legislative Council’s Menominee Indian Study Committee spoke with Phebe Nichols Jewell the wife of Angus Lookaround at their home on the Menominee reservation in Northeast Wisconsin. He interviewed the white woman about her perspectives on the United States federal government’s efforts to terminate tribal sovereignty, recognizing that she had lived among Native Americans for several years and was married to an influential one. Just one of many questions, the researcher wondered what role the Bureau of Indian Affairs had played in Menominee life prior to the onset of the loss of federal trust status in 1954. In response, Jewell explained that the BIA had “performed a greater disservice than a service” because officials had “tried to de-Indianize the Menominee by making them ashamed of their traditional culture, including the sexual behavior of both Native men and women.” She claimed that there was a traffic in Indian women and that U.S. government representatives had supported this practice on the reservation and that “similar to colonial officials in Africa,” they used their political connections as weapons to gain access to Native women. But it was not only men in positions of power, according to Jewell but traveling lumberworkers had actively participated in sexually soliciting and physically threatening Native women as well. She added, “the older women will tell you they used to lock their doors during the spring logging drive” to protect themselves against white men who were rough-necks. Meanwhile, the BIA did little to protect these women and rather encouraged the practice by reinforcing the stereotype that Indigenous people were racially inferior and sexually promiscuous. Indeed, politicians, loggers, and lumber-mill workers all competed for access to Indian women, often fathering children without accepting parental or even financial responsibility. As a result, Menominees looked to the local criminal justice system for purposes of abandonment, though rarely winning their appeals for economic support. Instead, local authorities criminalized area indigenous people, a practice that continues into the present day. Phebe Jewell’s discussion with David Ames is important, because it sheds on the complexities of the termination era as well as the diverse perspectives that Menominee Indians had on their de-tribalization. Although members of the Nation worried about further settler encroachment on their lands and resources, Native women suffered under federal trust status both prior to termination and after restoration in 1968. The movement to unearth the long practice of sexual assaulting, murdering, and disappearing Indian women has roots in this story as well as broader efforts to gain access to indigenous ecosystems and natural resources. As a method of self-defense, Native women have carved out spaces for collective action through social media and public protest in their ongoing attempts to save their communities and secure justice for their lost sisters.

Sky Michael Johnston:

Thank you for listening to 90 Second Narratives, the podcast that brings you “little stories with BIG historical significance.” Please keep listening as Season 10 continues with more stories on the theme Seeking Justice.