Photo by Dale Kakkak/CMN

On a bright, windy day, the scent of the flowers, trees, and moist earth is heavy in the air on the Menominee Nation reservation. The College of Menominee Nation (CMN) in Keshena, Wisconsin, is an intersection of educational services and community programs. On this day, the college was having an “enrollment extravaganza” for programs ranging from Head Start to jobs training and college enrollment.

Because of the heavy forest, Menominee people have lived in relative isolation from mainstream society. Their reservation is unique because it shares its coterminous boundaries with Menominee County, and the village of Keshena serves as both the county seat and the tribal headquarters. The reservation has approximately 360 square miles of land, and 95% of it contains heavily forested lands. It is the largest single tract of virgin timberland in the state of Wisconsin.

CMN offers avenues for community members to connect in different ways. The campus can be a place of transition: a point of departure and a point of return. High school students and young adults can begin their education here. And older students, including veterans of the armed forces, can return here and make a transition from the outside world back to their home communities. Like so many other tribal colleges, CMN offers our veterans myriad opportunities and honors them in a variety of ways.

“Coming off the reservation and getting involved with people from different places was a culture clash for me. The anxiety some people feel during a transition like this can be overwhelming,” says Carey Wayka, the student achievement specialist at CMN and a veteran of both the Marines and Navy. Photo by D. Kakkak/CMN

CAREY WAYKA grew up in Neopit, Wisconsin, one of the northern villages on the Menominee reservation. Currently, she is the high school student achievement specialist at CMN. Her job is to motivate high school students to attend a tribal college, guiding them to CMN in particular. Carey joined the military at a young age. Initially, she enlisted in the service because she liked the uniform, but the service turned out to be a way for to find her own strength and career opportunities, and to overcome some hurdles in life.

“When I graduated from high school, I felt like I wasn’t smart enough even though I was on the honor roll. I just felt like college wasn’t for me. I felt like I didn’t fit in,” she says. Many Menominee children living in villages on the reservation don’t have very much contact with the outside world.

Before enlisting in the service, Wayka attended Northwestern Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for one semester. She wasn’t sure about what she wanted to do. Then, one day she went to a powwow and saw someone wearing a uniform. “Nothing heroic. I thought I wanted to see if I could wear that uniform, too. Then, I did it,” she recalls.

Wayka is a veteran of both the U.S. Marine Corps (1994–1998) and the United States Navy (2000–2005). As a young woman, she knew she wanted to do something to help people. She says the Navy helps the Marines with medical and dental care so, after leaving the Marines, she enlisted with the Navy. While she was working as a Navy recruiter, she saw an opportunity to take training to become a dental assistant. After five years working as a dental assistant, she felt that wasn’t what she wanted to do.

“I was all over the board, jumping at opportunities to try and find something that I felt comfortable with and to help people,” Wayka says. She went to nursing school and tried several different courses of study. She eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

Wayka went on to serve as an administrative assistant for CMN’s Vocational Rehabilitation Program (VR). It was then that she knew where she needed to be. She was encouraged to enroll at San Diego State University and get a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation for Native Americans.

From her experience of leaving the Menominee reservation to go to a technical college, and then entering the military, Wayka realized how big of an impact culture shock can have on people. She found that it’s important for Native people to learn to walk in two worlds. “Coming off the reservation and getting involved with people from different places was a culture clash for me. The anxiety some people feel during a transition like this can be overwhelming,” Wayka observes. Native people have a different sense of humor and a different way of seeing things. “It took a while for me to fit in,” she says. But, after she got comfortable, she made good friends there and came to value the structured military culture and the skills she obtained.

During boot camp, people get training because they have to learn a job. “We didn’t get as much time to learn our materials as college students get in school. You’re just given a bunch of material to read and you have to know it. So, I thought if I can do this, I can do college,” she explains.

Veterans are in a perfect position to become college students. They are accustomed to structure, schedules, fulfilling responsibilities, meeting deadlines, and working with a team. But they have a few hurdles to overcome in college. CMN offers their VR program and coordinates services with the local Veterans Service Office to help returning veterans make a transition back to their home communities.

“You can’t come and just turn that switch off or take out of them the things they saw or experienced. So, we have to find ways to reintegrate them back into society, and education is a good one,” explains Bruce Wilber Jr., a CMN graduate and a Veterans Service Officer for the Menominee Nation.

BRUCE WILBER JR. is a veteran of the U.S. Army. He graduated from CMN in 2004 with an Associate of Applied Science degree in counseling. Wilber began his college career in 2002 by participating in CMN’s Veterans Upward Bound Program after being laid off from his job. He is a first-generation college graduate. Currently, he is the Menominee tribal and county Veterans Service Officer, which is funded by both Menominee County and the Menominee Nation. He says veterans need some help with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) issues and someone to talk with who understands what they’ve been through.

“When veterans come home, they bring a little of the war with them. One of the things we want to help veterans with is their PTSD issues. You can’t come and just turn that switch off or take out of them the things they saw or experienced. So, we have to find ways to reintegrate them back into society and education is a good one,” Wilber explains.

Like other Native servicemen and veterans, many Menominee people also experience a big culture shock when they enter the military, especially if their reservations are distant from urban centers and if there’s not a lot of interaction with people of different cultures and heritages. The Menominee people have a distinct way about them, from their Indigenous features to their hand gestures, lyrical accent, sense of humor, and their perceptions of the world, society, and each other.

Students in the Menominee tribal school system feel culture shock when they go off the reservation to school. Some students try going to the public school in Shawano, Wisconsin —a town about eight miles south of Keshena—but will be back home within two or three weeks, he says. It’s like entering a whole different world when they leave the reservation. Those who enlist have a longer time to deal with culture shock in the military and to overcome some culture and language barriers. Then, there’s the journey back home where most people haven’t changed much.

“The other hardest part [for veterans who have been gone for years] is coming back home and re-adjusting to being home again,” Wilber says. “After being conditioned to living so close to people in the military, the other people become like your family. You get to know them so well when you share a room and responsibilities with them. When you come back home, it’s being jerked out of your family again,” he observes.

There are plans to bring back the Veterans Upward Bound Program to assist them with transitioning and finding a new career. Wilber attended a meeting at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay recently where people were talking about reviving that program. “For returning vets, going to college is a good way for them to reincorporate themselves back into home communities. When you come back, you talk different and you have a different way about you than when you left. Some people have a hard time accepting you because you’re different in some way,” he explains.

Veterans have a lot of responsibilities in the service, but when they come home, all of a sudden they may have nothing to do. A tribal college can give them a sense of structure and some comradery again among their peers, whether they are other veterans or tribal community members. CMN encourages veterans to work together on their assignments. Wilber says even other students join in to get help with their homework. However, veterans are usually older and more independent and non-traditional than the typical college student.

The government and the Veterans Administration are becoming more sympathetic to these issues, and there have been big changes to help veterans get the help they need, Wilber adds. “My office will help veterans apply for their VA benefits, their GI Bill, and then help them get started in school,” he says. “With the Veterans Upward Bound resurgence, I’ll be glad to refer veterans to that program because that’s where I got a new start in a new career.”

“One important thing CMN understands is that Native American veterans prefer Native American healing methods, and CMN is willing to work with veterans’ organizations for that,” says Dennis Kenote, a member of the Veterans of Menominee Nation.

DENNIS KENOTE is a Navy veteran and member of the Veterans of the Menominee Nation. He is often called upon to help the college with special events and is one of the few remaining Menominee people who speak the language. But because he was off the reservation for a long time in the military and working in Green Bay, he lost most of his native language. It wasn’t until he went to the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point that he learned the language again. Now, Kenote often gives the invocation at graduation and other events at CMN in Menominee.

Kenote says the Veterans of Menominee Nation helps CMN promote awareness of the Vocational Rehabilitation Program among other veterans. “A lot of the veterans aren’t aware of the vocational rehabilitation project. Sometimes CMN will contact me and ask me to pass on information to everyone in our veterans meetings. I promote the VR project through telephone calls, handing out flyers, and giving reminders to veterans about the meetings at CMN,” he says. There are lots of ways the VR project can help veterans.

“One important thing CMN understands is that Native American veterans prefer Native American healing methods, and CMN is willing to work with veterans’ organizations for that,” Kenote maintains. For those who need healing, whether it be physical or PTSD, veterans are more willing to go with a Native way of healing, with sweat lodges and other ceremonial practices.

BEING IN A TRIBAL COLLEGE helps Native American veterans see that they can find another purpose in life, create new memories and a new pride in themselves. They can take the things they learned or their resilience to survive and put that into another area, like education, and into finding a whole new career. Programs like Veterans Upward Bound, that CMN once had and plans to revive, can bring veterans together to have some comradery and common goals in college.

Carey Wayka hopes that veterans keep in mind that if they could walk in the military world then they can also walk in the world of being a student on campus. “But, one difference is that as a student they’ll have more independence rather than structure,” she says. In the military, people are taught to be responsible for jobs and to help each other. In college, they see that some students aren’t keeping up and getting their assignments done. That can be frustrating to veterans, but it’s important to remember that not all students are trained to keep a strict schedule or live in a structured environment. “We have to let other people make their own choices and just worry about ourselves as veterans,” Wayka says. If more tribal colleges could appoint students who are veterans as mentors for other students who are veterans, they could help them transition better into college life. Another way veterans and the community have engaged at CMN is through the Theatre Department. In 2016, students worked on a project to revive the Menominee pageants, which had started decades ago but ceased in recent years. Bruce Wilber’s family was involved in the pageants in the early days and again more recently as the students searched for original scripts. During the 1930s, the Menominee people received funds from federal New Deal programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). These funds supported building the Woodland Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater in Keshena. They also helped start the annual Menominee pageants. Wilber’s grandfather had a role in the pageants and saved many of the original scripts. So, when CMN produced “Gems of Yesteryear” in the summer of 2016, his mother brought her father’s scripts from the Menominee pageants.

“My grandfather had boxes full of old 78 albums of the old songs, scripts, and playbills from the Menominee pageants,” he recalls. His mother was so willing to bring that material out and share it with CMN,” Wilber says. He also played a role in the 2016 summer production and plans to continue working on the revival of the Menominee pageants. The revival of the pageants inspired a lot of Menominee people to bring forward their family’s materials from some of the past productions, reviving the tradition and enriching the community.

THE CMN CAMPUS in Keshena sits at one of the main highway entrances to the Menominee reservation. The wooden siding of the earth tone-colored buildings with the big bay windows of the Glen Miller Hall can be seen from the highway and are so inviting. Whether Menominee people are coming or going, they will pass the campus on the way. CMN is a place where students can prepare for life off the reservation and where returning veterans can find answers, reconnect with their roots, prepare for successful careers, and transform their lives. It’s said that a community college is valuable to a community because it brings in resources that aren’t typically available to the general public in a non-college town. For veterans at College of Menominee Nation, this couldn’t be truer.

 Sherrole Benton, an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and a descendant of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, is an award-winning journalist and the media arts coordinator for the Oneida Nation Arts Program.