Former Ho-Chunk President Wilfrid Cleveland Reflects on Life: Ho-Chunk Reflections
Wilfrid “Willie” Cleveland had two terms as the Ho-Chunk president
by Jonathan Gramling
Wilfrid “Willie” Cleveland was the president of the Ho-Chunk Nation for two different terms, from 2007-2011 and 2015-2019. We sit in his living room in Black River Falls with various forms of remembrance lining the walls. There is a painting of a bear symbolizing his membership in the Bear Clan.
Cleveland is a rather quiet, unassuming person. He’s been a worker all is life.
“I have people who ask if I am still working,” Cleveland said. “And I say, I’m semi-retired looking for the perfect job. I did some ironwork for a little bit. I was an iron worker. They had a program in Chicago for Native Americans to go into iron work. I went there and passed some courses. I went to Louisiana and worked on a lock and dam there for almost two years and then I came back and worked for the tribe. I worked in different areas.”
For a century or more, the aim of governmental policy seemed to be to make Indigenous people disappear or to make them white.
“I imagine that was the way it was, suppressing Ho-Chunk culture,” Cleveland said. “Any type of system that was used to try to change the Indigenous people as a whole into something that they weren’t was a goal back then. It was a ‘Kill the Indian, save the man’ kind of thing.
Native culture was suppressed often through the government and religious boarding schools that tried to change Native children.
“I know very little about the boarding schools,” Cleveland said. “I know that there was one in Wittenberg. I know there was a Niellsville boarding school. My mom told me that she went to boarding school until she was in eighth grade and then she had to come home and take care of her mother. I don’t know how old she was when they took her, but she was there until until she was in eighth grade. That’s all that she told me. She told me a few of the people who were around who were friends of hers were there. As far as how they were treated in the school and punishments for talking Ho-Chunk and all of that, I’m aware that there were punishments, but I don’t know much more than that.”
It has been said that the “Language is culture and the culture is the language.” Stifling the language has happened through several generations of the Ho-Chunk people.
“I always felt that my parents and their generation of people felt that education was important, so they pushed us to go to school. I imagine that they thought that the language would always be there. So there was no big concern of us loosing our language. My parents spoke it at home. Everyone in that generation spoke it fluently. Coming home, we could speak English in the home. The process of losing the language was slow. It didn’t dawn on us that we were losing our language until someone observed that was happening. It was somewhere around 1992-1993. It was the time when we realized we had to pay more attention to the language. From there, we had our language program. We had what we referred to as our eminent speakers. They were tribal members who tried to teach the language. They weren’t educators. But they helped and tried to teach the language, some basic stuff like numbers, colors and animals. But they never got to the point of structuring it where you could communicate with one another. They didn’t have the structured language until 2008, around there. They advanced the education to where it was feasible. They began to make advances with the language program. A lot of technology is used. That’s where it is right now. In my opinion, it doesn’t seem to be picking up that much interest among young people. That’s because my generation of people felt like learning the language wasn’t necessary, so they never learned it. And then trying to get the children to learn the language, they were like, ‘Why are we going to learn the language? Who are we going to talk to if we learn how to speak Ho-Chunk?’ It was hard to get them to learn it. It was a tough battle.”
It seems that the relationship between the Europeans and the Ho-Chunk was one of demanding, taking, and replacing including the Ho-Chunk’s name.
“When Jean Nicolet first landed near Red Bank, we were Ho-Chunk people,” Cleveland said. “And then Winnebago was used to reference the Ho-Chunk. I can’t say who imposed Winnebago on us, but it was imposed. Because of the non-Natives, they just changed us to Winnebago. That was accepted. Even back when they were having the removal, we were referenced as Winnebagos. Our destination in Nebraska was called the Winnebago reservation. But here in the early 1990s, it went from a boiler-plate constitution, it changed to the four branch government that we had. And at that time, we changed our name back to Ho-Chunk. We have Ho-Chunk here. But at the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska, they prefer to call themselves Winnebago.”
And then there was the land. The federal government tried on numerous occasions to remove the Ho-Chunk from their land, which stretched from the Green Bay area to Northern Illinois. But always, some Ho-Chunk presence remained.
“Way back then, there was the push to get the Ho-Chunk out of here because the land was very fertile,” Cleveland said. “It was good land. I always feel that we were fortunate that God put us on this part of his creation. Those non-Natives that came over here realized that and wanted to get us out of here. But we are still here today.”
When the Ho-Chunk were allowed back to Wisconsin — with many settling in the Black River Falls area — there still was a push to separate the Ho-Chunk from their land.
“They never put us on a reservation, but we had trust property that was given,” Cleveland said. “The Ho-Chunk were not aware or knowledgeable about paying taxes, so they didn’t pay taxes. And the county or whomever it was took the land. In this area, we had a lot of those allotments. They never paid the taxes on the property and so the county and the state took that land to pay the taxes. I imagine they resold it. Once they took the land, they could do whatever they wanted to do. I imagine that is how they got it, that it was taxable all along. Our people didn’t know about paying taxes because we weren’t land owners prior to them coming over here and taking over the land and giving our people allotments and then taxing it. Maybe that was the whole plan anyway. They were trying to remove us from the land anyway. I imagine that was all the plan.”
Ho-Chunk land is not contiguous like many reservations are. They have tribal trust lands that are spread out throughout their historical lands. When the Ho-Chunk purchase land, it is added to the land trust.
Even the uniqueness of each tribe was taken away with the imagery of Indigenous people coming into people’s homes through the Westerns shown on TV.
“We’re not all the same,” Cleveland said. “We all have our own ceremonies. We all have our own language. We all have our own history. That’s it in as nut shell. Our ceremonies are connected with God and acknowledgment and the environment and the elements that we have. They are related to that, but they are all different. We all came from different parts of the Creation. Our language is all different. Even the pow wows have different styles. Depending on where you come from, there is different regalia.”