Finally! After two years my autobiography of my years in Western Colorado and working at the Menominee County Community School and the Menominee Indian Tribe has been published. I have copies in hand that can be found or ordered in bookstores throughout the world and all major online venues like amazon or Barnes and Noble. The book tells of growing up in Delta and Grand Junction Colorado, my love affair with Ethel Mortenson Davis (still happily married after closing in on 59 years), and so much history from the early 1970s that occurred because of the remarkable Menominee leaders of those days, resulting in the Indian controlled schools movement and the restoration of the Menominee Tribe and the start of the dominance of the self-determination era that changed the relationship of American Indian Tribes to state governments and the federal government. I was a participant in what happened, an observer.
Part of the reason I wrote this book is to rescue a part of American education and American Indian history that seems to be in danger of being lost. The Indian controlled schools movement was short-lived, but it was the spark that led to the creation of the tribal colleges and universities, which I have played a part in moving forward all these decades, and the contract schools operated by nearly every tribe in the country. The innovations from that movement are still echoing throughout American education.
The history of the Menominee Restoration Committee and its creation of the contemporary Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is every bit as important since this was one of the major foundations of the Self-Dermination era in tribal and government relationships that changed the arc of American history.
There are also stories about the Menominee Indian Warrior takeover of the Alexian Brother’s Novitiate outside of Gresham, Wisconsin that made international news, the rise of the Posse Comitatus in Shawano County (one of the first major right wing militia groups), and how a handicapped Colorado boy overcame his limitations and insecurities to find love, the strength of Indian values and Indian people, and a small place in the history of this country and its relationship to Native people.
Hopefully readers will find the history informative, the stories exciting, and understand that their lives have been impacted by what happened back then.
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