July into maybe even August and September.

>> At the state capital budget riders are at work fashioning the two year spending plan with Republican leaders now declaring an impasse in negotiations with Governor Tony Evers.

One of the items in the Evers budget allocating $11 million in tribal gaming revenue for Native American language revitalization.

For a look at that work "Here& Now", reporter Erica Ayisi spoke with Menominee and Ojibwe tribal members who are bringing their indigenous languages back from a past policy of silence.

This report is in collaboration with our partners at ICT, formerly Indian Country.

Today.

>> Scott Gaetz, Panchakarma, Co-Chair.

>> Trinaty Caldwell is learning how to speak Menominee, an indigenous Native American language.

>> The ability to talk in the language freely that to be able to do it now, today is a blessing because our elders weren't allowed that freedom.

>> Caldwell's native ancestors spoke languages that are now nearly extinct.

>> Pewaukee Kamala.

>> Adult language learners at the Menominee Language Campus are on a mission to revitalize their indigenous language from a past of systematic erasure.

>> Like even just saying Pozo wasn't always the most comfortable thing right away.

>> Really?

>> Yeah, it wasn't ubiquitous.

I didn't really hear it a lot.

>> Netsky, wakizashi.

>> Shannon Dennis Matsui, comic time where.

>> There was no meaningful social or community access to the language.

>> Rohn Kern RFK, Jr, director of revitalization for Menominee U.

Says their doors opened in 2024 after creating a community of native language learners online.

>> That means if you're not looking to be a teacher or be a student, there was no place for you in revitalization.

stipend to normalize speaking Menominee on the reservation.

of the places here on the reservation, or do our business, be it at tribal offices and or anywhere else that we might see people who have taken their opportunity to join this revitalization and do that same business in the language.

>> So we.

>> Alexander Medina says he's now exposed to more conversational Menominee vocabulary that his non-native stepfather dissuaded him from learning as a child.

>> Sometimes it was kind of heavy handed and kind of bad.

How how much he didn't want us to basically just be Manam, be Menominee like, use rez slang.

We'd get in trouble.

learning the language, does it have an impact on your self-esteem and your identity?

>> Absolutely.

It kind of clicked to me that it's not illegal.

It's not banned anymore.

So we should do what we can to salvage the culture we have left.

>> Martin Ranay is.

>> Schoenike language revitalization efforts stem from a troubling past.

>> Cieri coming.

>> A boarding school experience was very effective in what it set out to do, which was to kill the Indian, save the man and every man, woman and child.

And our ancestors.

Three four generations over had this horrific life experience.

>> For over 60 years, there were at least 11 federal Indian boarding schools across Wisconsin, including two here in Menominee Nation in Keshena.

These schools were designed to culturally assimilate Native American children into American culture by forcibly removing them from their families and banning them from speaking their native tongue.

>> The most common thread that you see in conversations about language loss really begin in the 19th century, and it often revolves around federal Indian boarding schools and Indian schooling in non-native institutions.

>> Sasha Maria Suarez, professor of History and American Indigenous Studies at UW-Madison, says the federal Indian schools across the state were managed by religious institutions which colonized Native American children and prohibited their language.

What was it to be replaced with?

>> English even if they went into federal Indian boarding schools with no grasp of the English language, that was really the only language they were permitted to speak.

>> Severed ties to indigenous languages has been a generational issue for all tribal communities.

>> For over a century.

These kinds of policies that have tried to diminish and disrupt indigenous language use.

>> My great grandma, she spoke Menominee.

There were some things that were passed down and some things that weren't.

And the language just was not one of them.

>> Menominee Ho-Chunk, Oneida, Ojibwe, Stockbridge-munsee, and Potawatomi are some of Wisconsin's indigenous languages.

>> Schimming and.

Waupan.

>> Suarez says Wisconsin's indigenous languages did not completely lose their voices.

>> Those elders who had been to schools, who maintained an awareness of their indigenous languages, started using education to teach their languages to the next generations.

>> In Bad River, for a new generation of language speakers and singers, Dylan Jennings of the band Bizhiki wants Ojibwe traditional sounds to be a part of the modern music scene.

[MUSIC] >> What we're.

>> You know, expressing ourselves and making things that we like.

But another part of it, too, was us using our platform to normalize our our sounds, our style of singing and our language.

>> Their song unbound is about preserving Bad River waters.

>> We just have to remember to utilize our language and all those tools that we've been given.

And today, all federally recognized native tribes in Wisconsin offer indigenous language learning opportunities.

revitalization efforts in those decades following World War two demonstrates really clearly how boarding schools failed in terms of trying to dismantle and disrupt indigenous languages.

>> In 2021, Governor Tony Evers issued an executive order formally apologizing for Wisconsin's role in the Indian boarding schools era through state and private funding, language revitalization efforts.

At Menominee, you plan to continue?

>> I don't have an education beyond high school, but I have a resilient spirit that's willing to give all that it can to see through the revitalization of the language.

>> Macheel.

IL Shaikh.

>> In Menominee Nation for "Here& Now" and ICT.

I'm