ADA DEER and the world of
social work:
Empowering people
Part 1 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling

    Ada Deer has a wonderful sense of humor, probably because she knows who she is, where she came from and where she is going. Deer, retired from the
UW-Madison School of Social Work and former undersecretary of the Dept. of Interior for Indian Affairs in the Clinton Administration, has also been a social
worker extraordinaire. Recently, the National Association of Social Workers honored Deer as a “Social Work Pioneers.” “I’m probably the first Indian to also be
a pioneer, " Deer joked. Deer is a member of the Menominee Nation.
    Social worker is what Deer is. It’s not so much a profession for Deer as it is a way of life, a way of looking at the world. As we talk about her life, Deer breaks
into thoughts about the social work session. At other times, Deer tells a story, while I am not sure where we are going only to understand completely why when
she gets to the end. Social work is an intricate part of her story as well.
    Deer grew up poor on the Menominee reservation in Northern Wisconsin. Her mother was a nurse who went to work on the Rosebud reservation in South
Dakota because she heard of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “She was totally fascinated with Indian culture,” Deer said about her mother who was
Euro-American. “She started riding horses with them and going to their pow wows. This did not endear her to her colleagues. That was the early 1930s. And
society is always trying to ‘shape up’ the Indians. There actually was an Indian Civilization Fund passed by Congress in  the 1800s so the churches could
continue their ‘civilizing’ efforts. Anyway, I liked what I saw when I was a little kid. People used to come to our house, a little cabin on the reservation. Women
would come and my mother would help them. And then, I am the oldest of five children, so help is not a foreign concept to me. I tell everyone I was born an
adult.”
    Even at that age, Deer was looking for ways to empower herself. While she loved the concept of her mom being a nurse, Deer wasn’t ready to play second
fiddle. “I figured that it was more important to be a doctor because then you get to do more things,” Deer said with a laugh. “Besides, I didn’t want to be told
what to do. I figured that out early in life.”
    Deer was one of those kids whom others around her saw leadership potential, even if Deer wasn’t aware of it herself. In high school, she was involved in
leadership activities by some social workers. And she was appointed to the youth advisory committee of the Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on Human
Rights. “They had Dr. Perelman, a world renowned economics professor from UW-Madison, Rabbi Swarzensky and a mixture of all of the people of Wisconsin.
Our youth advisory group was also a mixture of all of the people of Wisconsin. This is what my exposure to social workers was. They get people together. They
learn together. They have conferences. I had never met someone from China. I remember his name, Frank Wong from Beloit.”
    And as the only Indian present in these and similar gatherings, she was always expected to be an expert on Indians. “They were always asking me these
questions about Indians,” Deer recalled. “I didn’t know anything. I was always supposed to be this expert even at a young age. I remember the teachers in
grade school asking me ‘Well, how do your people celebrate Thanksgiving?’ I looked to see if they were talking to me. What do I know? So I said ‘Well, we
have turkey.’”
    Fortunately, Deer’s school experience was better than her father’s. “My father was placed in this grade school when he was about ten years old,” Deer said.
“The policy of the schools then, no matter what their denomination, was to wipe out the Indian culture, wipe out the language and make the students a part
of the mainstream. So he didn’t learn as much as he wanted to know about all of his traditions when he needed to learn them. It’s very sad that thousands of
people today still suffer from their exposure to the brutality of these grade schools. The grade schools were not a totally bad experience for everyone. People
had food, clothing and shelter. They got an education and learned how to read and write. But there was no real appreciation and respect given to their
Indian heritage. My father spoke the Menominee language very well. When I was a little kid, I wanted to learn it and I asked him about it. He said ‘No, you’re
not going to learn that.’ Later on, I asked him why he told me that. He said it was because he didn’t want me to go through what he went through. I thought
that was a reasonable point from his perspective. But I still feel sad that I don’t know my own tribal language. I came down to the university. I learned
German. I took two years of German and I did well. I’ve taken some Spanish and I could become conversant if I could extract myself and go somewhere."
    After high school, Deer wanted to leave the reservation and see more of the world. She was prepared to join the military, if necessary, to leave. But then a
curious thing happened. She received the tribal scholarship. “They could have given it to somebody else, but they gave it to me,” Deer reflected. “And I think I
have repaid the tribe. It’s very interesting. All of the men came from large powerful families on the reservation and they could have easily given it to one of
their children. I thought it was very interesting that they gave it to me because I didn’t even know there was such a scholarship.”
    So Deer headed to UW-Madison with plans to become a doctor. Unfortunately, after she started taking classes, she realized she didn’t like science or math.
She changed course and took liberal arts courses. “The university was fabulous,” Deer said. “I really enjoyed everyone I met. I learned a lot and did a lot. My
senior year, I decided I needed to decide what I was going to do. One of my advisors who knew me quite well said ‘You’re good with people. Why
don’t you be a social worker.’ I thought about it for a while and I thought that was good. The people who had sent me to camp and put me on these
committees and expanded my mind and influenced me were social workers. And I like the idea of influencing and helping.”
    Deer had been a serious student at the university. When she was a freshman, she had already made plans to attend graduate school. “I thought to
myself that I was going to the best social work school that I could go to,” Deer said. “So I looked around when I was a senior and I said ‘Where’s the best social
work school?’ Everyone said it was the New York School of Social Work. I said ‘Okay.’ I applied and got accepted.”

Next issue: The micro and macro side of social work
Ada Deer is a former tribal chair for the Menominee Nation and
undersecretary of Indian Affairs
for the U.S. Department of Interior.