Where can I find #historical information about #indigenous communities in the Milwaukee area? I want to make an Unceded Territory speech at #Thanksgiving dinner, and I want to be as accurate as possible about who lived/lives there and what happened to them. Google is not giving me a useful answer.
@okiekiki Saith Wikipedia: "The first recorded inhabitants of the Milwaukee area are the Menominee, Fox, Mascouten, Sauk, Potawatomi, Ojibwe Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Native American tribes. Many of these people had lived around Green Bay before migrating to the Milwaukee area around the time of European contact."
@DialMforMara Ok, so you've got the starting place. Good. Have you tried looking for each group's website? The larger tribes, at least, will have history sections as well as info on current issues.
I do know off the top of my head that the Fox and Sauk are now combined into the Sac and Fox Nation: http://sacandfoxnation-nsn.gov/ They're down here in OK, but there's another group based in MO/KS: http://www.sacandfoxks.com/
@okiekiki That sounds like an excellent place to start. It's obvious in hindsight that each group would have a website.
@DialMforMara It's something I live with--grew up in the Chickasaw Nation's territory! But it's very easy to only think of the tribes as history, given the ways we're mostly taught and the ways in which they're mostly portrayed in media.
@DialMforMara Also, see if your area's libraries have access to the database American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971 (ProQuest History Vault). Also, there's a multi-volume Handbook of Native North Americans that would likely be helpful.
@okiekiki
Thank you very much.
@DialMforMara Happy to help. Holler if you get stuck again. I can look up things for you over my lunch break or tonight.
@okiekiki thanks! I'm also trying to narrow it down by location. The relatives I'll be visiting live in the Fox Point neighborhood, so I figured the Sac and Fox websites would be a good place to start, but they don't say much about Wisconsin, and the histories I'm finding of Fox Point itself are very white.
@DialMforMara Oooh, good resource!
@DialMforMara Oh, and just fyi, the University of Oklahoma's law school has a specialty in tribal law. So their law librarians might be able to help, if the treaty stuff gets confusing.
Reference Desk
Phone: (405) 325-5268
Email: Law-LibraryReference@ou.edu
@DialMforMara Yeah, unfortunately white-people-names for places are often totally unrelated to whoever actually lived there. You might have better luck with town-level info.
@DialMforMara I'd start with the relevant sections of the following articles on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wisconsin#Pre-Columbian_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Milwaukee#History_to_1820
Then look up more info about the tribes and cultures mentioned.
The bit about Jacques Vieau and Angelique Roy and the Métis community in Milwaukee sounds pretty fascinating.
@DialMforMara Do you already know what tribes you're looking for, or are you needing to know who lived in the area?