What Came Out of the Takeovers: Women's Activism and the Indian Community School of Milwaukee

Abstract

Alcatraz, the Trail of Broken Treaties, Wounded Knee—these are the well-known sites of "takeovers" by American Indian activists, mostly members of the American Indian Movement or aim, in the 1960s and 1970s. aim began in 1968, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, when urban Indians organized to protect their rights and preserve their traditions. Indian activism spread across North America with other takeovers, sit-ins, and demonstrations. Recent studies of American Indian activism have been welcomed for their contribution to our understanding of a crucial period in recent Indian history. Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior's history, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee and Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne's edited collection, American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, in particular have prompted discussion and re-examination of events, participants, and causes of recent Indian activism.1 However, most of these studies have focused on the very visible, public figures of the Red Power movement, virtually all of whom have been men. Women's activism, while less visible, has been crucial to sustaining Indian communities, particularly in urban areas, and to maintaining the momentum begun in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s. We need to look more closely at the contributions of women to those activist movements.2 In this paper, I examine the role of women in the 1971 takeover of the United States Coast Guard Station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by supporters of the American Indian Movement, and how women parlayed that takeover into a longstanding community organization: the Indian Community School. Leaving the political issues largely to men, the women [End Page 533] turned their attention to the needs of their children, ultimately creating a center that is now funded by Indian gaming and serves the entire urban Indian community of Milwaukee. Their success is not acknowledged by aim, and the Milwaukee takeover itself is rarely mentioned in histories of Indian activism. The Milwaukee Indian Community And The Indian Community School Wisconsin's Indian population includes seven tribes: Ho-Chunk or Winnebago, Menominee, Ojibwe or Chippewa, Oneida, Potawatomi, Stockbridge-Munsee, and a small group known as the Brothertown Indians.3 The Oneidas were the first of Wisconsin's Native peoples to move in large numbers to urban areas, particularly Green Bay and Milwaukee. They came primarily seeking employment, beginning in the 1920s.4 Census figures indicate a rapid increase in Milwaukee's Indian population in the last eighty years. The 1930 census reported 291 Indians living in Milwaukee, with 1,939 by 1960 and 3,717 by 1970. More recent estimates have ranged as high as 6,000 in 1973, and 8,000 by 1980.5 The urban Indian population in Milwaukee today is probably about 10,000, but it defies accurate estimation, due to its shifting and transient character. Many Milwaukee Indians maintain strong ties to their home communities, and there is a great deal of visiting between the reservation and the city.6 As more Indians moved to Milwaukee, a need grew for support groups within the urban setting. In the spring of 1937, several Indians living in the city joined together to form the Consolidated Tribes of American Indians, an organization to provide aid to newcomers and a focus for social activities. This remained the sole Indian organization in Milwaukee until the late 1960s, when other groups began to proliferate. United Indians of Milwaukee, Inc., organized in the summer of 1968, with members of each tribe in the city electing representatives to the new group. Other intertribal organizations emerged, with different purposes and constituencies, ranging from social service agencies to religious groups, and including the Indian Community School.7 The school began quietly in the fall of 1970, when three Oneida mothers, Marge Funmaker, Darlene Funmaker Neconish, and Marj Stevens, started holding classes for ten Indian...