Sturgeon in Indigenous Cultures
Indigenous communities around the Great Lakes continue to have deep and abiding relationships with Sturgeon after thousands of years. Menominee and Ho-Chunk were the first early residents along the shores of Lake Michigan as well as Wisconsin rivers and lakes. The Indigenous Nations mentioned were later joined by Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Ojibway, Odawa, Miami People. Sturgeon are an incredibly important connection to the social, intellectual and spiritual fabric of all the communities mentioned, and to those whose names we may never know because of colonization. To all those communities mentioned and others unnamed but not forgotten, Sturgeon were more than a fish. As many Native people with memories and stories of Sturgeon, there are just as many ways for them to be remembered and honored.
The Menominee Connection
Sturgeon remain an enduring part of the mindful, educational, spirtual and social ways of Menominee culture and heritage. Milwaukee is and always will be a vital part of their legacy for generations to come. Milwaukee was and is home to many Indigenous Nations.
The return of Sturgeon to their ancestral homelands is a hard won gift after years of work in the name of regeneration for both our Lands and Waters. We have never forgotten that our Lands and Waters provide us with our teachings, practices and a return to Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Sturgeon reappearing within Milwaukee Waters has created a visible and consistent seasonal moment of remembrance to commit to the renewal of life. We have the honor of representing and protecting the return of Sturgeon, while helping craft the kind of experience and home these great teachers return too during their annual, seasonal migration.
Sturgeon are featured in our diverse traditional stories, games, feasts, ceremonies, religious faithways and artwork. Sturgeon are also represented in dance, like the Menominee Fish Dance held each spring!
“When Sturgeon return home, we should be thinking about what kind of home that place will be. Like us, as Native People, Sturgeon had been removed from their original homelands…so now our relatives are able to return, but return to what?”
— Marin Webster Denning, Sturgeon Clan, Oneida Nation
Lacrosse
Lacrosse is a game that most people know as a sport. But did you know many Nations, like Menominee held Lacrosse in high esteem and would often use it, as other tribes did, as a Medicine Game to help people? There are many reasons why the game is played. For some Nations it is about spiritual, emotional and physical connection to powers both seen and unseen.
In Menominee Culture, Lacrosse was a gift from the Thunderers. In the game of lacrosse, we can see connections to the Thunderers when two sticks strike each other, it is reminicent of the sound of thunder. Sometimes, a part of the Sturgeon us used in traditional games. All of it is connected, Spring, Lacrosse, Thunderers, Sturgeon!
Did you know that Surgeon make sounds like Thunder underwater?!
Listen here: Sounds of the Sturgeon
