So I Started Fighting For My People – John Waubanascum Jr. (1976)

Excerpts from ‘Akwesasne Notes‘, Early Spring 1976, Mohawk Nation Territory

(This statement was written by John Waubanascum II, a member of the Menominee Warrior Society, from his cell at the Shawano Jail, which is dubbed by local white residents as “Hotel Menominee.” It is excerpted from a letter to the editor of the Bugle American, Milwaukee’s alternate newspaper […])

Sitting in this facility, totally mixed-up by Christianity, I was told in so many words that I’d never make it in the White man’s world. Believing that I’d never amount to anything, I was talked into joining the Marine Corps. This was about 1966.

Having a prior record meant nothing to this branch of service, because it would take you if you were half-crippled or crazy because the Vietnam War was at a major stage.

I was rushed through boot camp and my mind programmed with one thought: to kill. They rushed me to Vietnam and I participated in many operations while there. Being wounded three times really shook me up and I realized what crimes I was committing. These crimes came from the top — orders to kill anything that didn’t have roots. They were slapping medals on my chest and patting me on the back and saying “well done”.

I was thoroughly mixed up after I was shot and received my third Purple Heart, and they said I could go home after a little pep talk. They asked if I would like to stay there and offered me certain benefits if I would — they needed a ruthless battle-trained individual who knew the score. I said no because I wanted to return to my people and my peaceful reservation to live out the rest of my life among Indians.

I returned and found my people hurting also. Hurt by the same White government I was fighting for. The same government I was sent by to annihilate this foreign country. The same government that ripped off my people.

I realized how much they had brainwashed me — they had made me think like them.

So I started fighting for my people and now they are labeling me as “criminal.”

Excerpts from ‘Two Warriors Die: But the Struggle Goes On’

On the day after the 1975 New Year’s occupation of the Alexian Brothers’ abandoned novitiate near Gresham, Wisconsin, Menominee warrior John Waubanascum, Jr., told a reporter: “I woke up this morning feeling good. I told the Great Spirit it was a good day, a good day to die.”

He said he believed he might die that day, and if he did, it would help his people. “The community will say ‘Our Young Ones died. Our Young Ones were killed by our white oppressors.’ They’ll know their young ones believed in the Old Indian Way.”

At the end of the occupation, on February 14, 1975, John and the four other “major felony defendants” were gagged and chained to silence them during the preliminary hearings which bound them over for trial. Mothers and sisters were attacked, gassed, and removed by force from the courtroom and hall by an army of sheriffs from four counties surrounding Shawano, where the proceeding was held. A young Menominee photographer, Norbert Miller, whose pictures were evidence of the crimes committed that day in the name of justice, was chased through the street and attacked viciously by a squad of police who were after his camera. He was beaten and dragged along the main street to the jail, leaving a trail of blood in the snow while townsfolk from white Shawano stood watching and laughing.

John Waubanascum was silenced forever on February 3, 1976, killed before the eyes of his wife and children by Menominee County Sheriff Kenneth Paddo Fish. Also killed at John’s home that day was Arlin Pamanet, 27, a Menominee worker for the Menominee Legal Defense/Offense Committee.

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Shortly before his death, Arlin had been working on a newsletter to spread the word, it was to have been called Ho-Naw-Mue-On, meaning “truth” in the Menominee language. The first issue was partly written, and a handwritten manuscript was found on Arlin’s desk after his death:

” . . . If convicted on the felony charges. Warriors Mike Sturdevant, Doreen Dixon, John Perrote, John Waubunascum, and Robert Chevalier could receive more than 90 years each. These charges do not relate to the repossession, but to alleged events in the caretaker’s cottage on New Year’s Eve night [when the Warriors evicted the caretaker and then took over the abbey.] In effect, the State is saying the warriors occupied the novitiate in order to ‘falsely imprison, rob, burglarize, and intimidate the custodian and his family.’ These charges cover up the political nature of the abbey’s repossession. The…”

At this point, the manuscript ends. Arlin did not live to finish it. And John Waubunascum did not live to argue in court the legal viewpoint on treaty rights, which it was his responsibility among the defendants to present. There were many traditional people as possible witnesses, for John had coordinated a solid job of oral and documentary research.

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John talked about treaties: “We have to believe in the treaties. They are strong. They are nation-to-nation law, highest law of this land and of international law. But in another way, they were just land swindles. Our ancestors agreed to the treaty of 1848 with a gun at their heads. Now we have little local judges making treaty decisions every day on our case, upholding the swindles that the treaties were, and denying the international rights and sovereignty that they also are.”

Waubanascum had attended the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay from 1969 until 1973, when he became involved with the occupation of Wounded Knee. He worked with AIM [American Indian Movement] in Chicago, helped to set up AIM in Green Bay, and got married. He and Elizabeth have two children, and John was stepfather to six children that were Elizabeth’s by a previous marriage.

Despite all his medals, John Waubanascum was in trouble with the military. He went AWOL after being returned to the U.S. for a medical furlough, and he was apprehended late in 1973 and taken away to Camp Pendleton, California, to serve five months in a military prison. After that, the U.S. processed a bad conduct discharge against him

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