“All of us are descendants of tribal people who were spiritually intimately in love with the natural world.”

– Miskobineshii

In 1970, Miskobineshii and her children returned to the Ricing Rails country, its close-knit communities filled with kin, its landscape familiar and sustaining. She became active in keeping her culture alive, and raising her own children with traditional ways of life.

First, she got a grant-funded position in the tribal schools so she could work with kids, including her own. She was eager to spend as much time together as possible because she felt like barely saw them at times while they were all living in Minneapolis.

Later, she helped a friend get her children back from foster care, where they had been placed with a white family. In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, and Miskobineshii was hired to educate court officials in Polk, Barron, Washburn, and Douglas Counties about the new law.

“The essence of the law required that Indian children placed in foster homes not be placed in white people’s homes because the language, culture, and customs were being lost,” she wrote.

In 1973, Miskobineshii married Ben Skinaway, who everyone called Chief, a man she had known since they were both children. The couple launched into nurturing their people’s language. At the time, the Ojibwe people were still reclaiming their culture after the devastation of colonization, and keeping their language alive was an urgent matter.

Today, the language remains endangered, with about 50,000 people who speak it living across the United States and Canada. But there are Ojibwe immersion schools and camps, and even a smartphone app. At the time Miskobineshii and Chief started their work, there was little support for their efforts.

“The public schools weren’t ready to accept us, and we were trying to keep the language alive,” Miskobineshii recalled.

She and Chief got certified to teach the language at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and then they started hosting language classes in Ojibwe community centers, and taught on many reservations. Her grandparents who raised her had solely spoken their native tongue their whole lives; the language and culture she had learned from them was carefully remembered and repeated.

After years of illness, Chief passed away from complications of diabetes in 1996. Miskobineshii kept teaching, and speaking for her people’s way of life — work she continues to do.

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In a pavilion between her house and the lake she lives on, Miskobineshii hosts “Grandma Misco’s Rice Camp” each year, when she teaches the young ones of her community about both the old and new methods of harvesting and processing manoomin.

It’s just one part of her life’s work to teach her people’s ways to the youngest generations. 

The ways Miskobineshii has kept her culture alive have received broad acclaim. For many years, she and her sister Margaret traveled the country to make and sell traditional objects like moccasins. In 1998, they went to the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. and again in 2002, when the Smithsonian purchased a pair of moccasins made by Margaret to add to its collection.

In 2004, when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington, D.C., it included moccasins made by Margaret, who had passed away earlier in the year. Miskobineshii received an award for her support and was invited to opening, and asked to bring a copy of her memoir to place in the archives.

In 2019, the South Dakota-based First Peoples Fund presented her with its Community Spirit Award for her moccasin making.

“Each of us has a purpose and a reason for existing on this earth,” said her friend and fellow culture keeper Lee Obizaan Staples at the time. “Miscobinayshii is a prime example. May she make many more moccasins.”

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Today, Miskobineshii’s descendants have multiplied. Her six children had twenty-two grandchildren, who had thirty-eight great-grandchildren, and now, two great-great-grandchildren. And, she smiles when she says, “more all the time.”

Those are just her biological descendants. She has also adopted many people, typically those who have no other family nearby. 

“She’s Grandma to a lot of people,” daughter Susan says.

“It’s important to have a sense of belonging,” Miskobineshii explains. “Native people always were a family.” They try to care for each other. 

People who keep the old ways alive, like Miskobineshii, create cohesion, connect their people to their place and their past. They show that they belong to a proud society that has persisted despite many difficulties. But it is getting harder to hold people together.

“Money has changed it,” Susan says.

Like tuberculosis once tore through the tribe, these days Fentanyl, alcohol, diabetes, and other ailments are hurting many members. 

The St. Croix Tribe is trying new things. Last year, the tribe installed new health vending machines at its community centers. These machines dispense everything from smudging materials to gun locks, from STD tests to overdose reversal medication. They put life-saving medicine within reach of anyone at any time.

They also recently purchased a large house on 800 acres near Turtle Lake to use as a healing center, to help tribal members recover from addiction.

”In our community, we’ve had so many overdoses,” Miskobineshii says. “I’m hoping the healing center will help the young people who are addicted to drugs.”

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Miskobineshii has been known by many names in her life. Her father put Susan on her birth certificate. Her grandmother named her Gogabekwe, but her grandfather called her Chibebe (Big Baby). He had a lisp from missing teeth so it came out Tibebe, and everyone except her grandmother called her Tibby. When she started school, Miskobineshii picked Eileen for her white name because she liked how it sounded. When she was seven, a Medicine Man performed a ceremony and initiated her into the Great Medicine Dance Society, and named her Eshwasoogabowekwe (Eighth Woman Standing). 

Twenty or so years ago, she had a dream. She dreamed of a golden eagle and a scarlet tanager and many other things. The eagle gave her the name for the red bird, Miskobineshii. It is how she has been known ever since.

Like her grandmother, Miskobineshii now spends a lot of time sharing her knowledge with younger people. She teaches the Ojibwe language to several students, translates books for authors, and attends annual language camps held by tribes around the region.

One early December afternoon, Miskobineshii was at her kitchen table, looking out toward the lake, sewing. She still sews everyday. Her phone rings frequently. Many people come to sit across the table from her, to learn the language, to seek her stories, to request advice. She occasionally enjoys visits from nosy writers.

Later in December, Miskobineshii was going to Danbury for a meeting of tribal elders from across Wisconsin, and was bringing gifts and raffle items. Moccasins were stacked by her suitcase, including a pair featuring Green Bay Packers fabric.

Last fall, Miskobineshii spoke at two local library events in celebration of National Native American Heritage Month. In Turtle Lake, she referred to wars currently happening around the world, and said, “I always think it’s because people don’t understand each other.” In Webster, she talked about how in the hardest of times, the land had kept her people alive.

Miskobineshii is today one of a few native speakers of the St. Croix Tribe’s specific dialect. While the Ojibwe language is spoken far and wide, the Ricing Rails have what she described as an “accent,” a certain way of pronouncing specific sounds. She is still steward of a great deal of knowledge.

The traditional way of teaching traditional ways is done in the course of daily life. Miskobineshii and Margaret developed a way of teaching Ojibwe words while they demonstrated moccasin making, showing how the language and the culture are connected. Like her grandmother, Miskobineshii teaches by doing, and including young people in everything. It is how her ancestors have passed down important information, through close-knit connections of family. Miskobineshii’s whole life is a lesson to younger generations.

“You show them, it’s just the way you live,” she says. “Children can decide if they want to live that way as an adult.”

***

That’s all for now.