As a member of Wisconsin’s Menominee Nation, Leo Tebeau’s grandfather was forced to attend “Indian schools,” where teachers made Native American children cut their hair and beat them for speaking their ancestral languages.
“My grandfather always said, ‘Don’t hold a grudge — it hurts your soul,” Tebeau recalls to a reporter. “Learn to live in the white man’s world, but don’t forget where you come from or who you are.’”
Tebeau, a Menominee, and his wife, a Ho-Chunk, were among hundreds of Native American tribal members and their supporters who rallied at the state Capitol Tuesday afternoon to protest a bill that would loosen the protections on sacred burial mounds.
Wisconsin is home to a large number of effigy mounds, which are often shaped like animals, but many have been destroyed over the years by agriculture, development and natural erosion.
The bill from Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Rep. Robert Brooks (R-Saukville) would require the Wisconsin Historical Society to establish the presence of human remains before cataloging a burial site on private land. Under the bill, property owners would be allowed to use “ground-penetrating radar, other imaging technology, or archaeological excavation and examination.”
The bill has some powerful supporters, including Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association and Wingra Stone Company, which owns a quarry near McFarland where the presence of burial mounds has prevented mining. Wingra has engaged in legal battles with the state and the Ho-Chunk Nation to remove protection for the mounds, with the company arguing that the site no longer contains human remains.
Brooks said in a statement Monday that the bill will bring “common sense” reforms to the state’s burial site preservation law, adding that he does “not believe that the State Historical Society has applied the law correctly and has not had the ability to resolve private landowner issues.” But tribal members and supporters say excavating the mounds to prove there are remains defeats the purpose of protecting the historic sites.
“It’s sacred ground,” says Tebeau, who traveled from Wisconsin Dells to take part in the protest. “It would be like taking down a church and building a parking lot.”
Nearly 90% percent of professionally excavated Native American mounds in the Upper Midwest are known to contain human remains, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Citizens representing a number of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes, including the Menominee, the Ho-Chunk and the Ojibwe, braved single-digit temperatures to demonstrate against the bill. Some traveled by bus from the northernmost parts of the state.
“We’ve learned that [the tribes] have to unify to get anything done,” says Brenda Neff, a Ho-Chunk member and Madison resident. She says the bill cuts to the heart of the historical oppression of indigenous people.
“Natives have been pushed off our lands, forced not to speak our native tongues,” she says. "All we’re saying is, ‘We should be able to keep our ancestors.’”
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) is a supporter of private property rights, but he says it’s unlikely that lawmakers will vote on the bill this session, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.
Vos says the legislation "requires a lot more study."
