She helped the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin revive its traditional ways, unwelcomed by many

Marj Stevens' quest in the 1970s to bring back Oneida traditions to the reservation in northeast Wisconsin after they had been lost due to assimilation ruffled some feathers at the time within the established Christian community.

“I didn’t even know people were talking about me like that,” she recalled recently.

Stevens said she learned of the criticism later from an Episcopal priest who came to apologize for some in his congregation.

Stevens, 85, grew up on the Oneida Reservation just west of Green Bay, not knowing much about her culture. At the time, boarding schools were prevalent in Indian Country, as the Catholic Church and federal officials encouraged, and sometimes forced, assimilation on Indigenous peoples. Thousands of Indigenous Wisconsin children attended the schools, starting in the late 19th century and stretching well into the 20th century.

The schools stripped Native American children of their language, culture and customs. Youths were discouraged or forbidden from speaking their languages and forced to speak English. Their long hair, an important part of their identity and culture, was cut short. Uniforms replaced traditional clothing. Many youths reported physical and sexual abuse.

For many Oneida, much of the assimilation was unforced; parents wanted their children to have a Western education and become successful in Western society.

Stevens said her parents knew how to speak the Oneida language, but did not teach her and her eight siblings, nor did they teach much about Oneida traditions. She did learn later that her father had taught at least one of her brothers some of the Oneida traditions, or the “longhouse way,” in secret.

The word longhouse literally meant the type of home in which Oneida traditionally lived. More generally, it referred to beliefs and living a certain way.

When Oneida started arriving in what is now Wisconsin in the early 1800s after being forced from their homes in upstate New York, many had already converted to Christianity. But some maintained the “longhouse way” and were called pagans by the Christians and had to practice their traditions in secret for more than 150 years in Wisconsin.

The Oneida had assisted George Washington in several battles against the British during the American Revolution and were promised by the federal government that they could keep their lands in New York. But with state government being stronger than the federal government at that time, it was the state that forced Oneidas from their homes to make way for incoming European immigrants.

The Oneida in Wisconsin today have more than 17,000 tribal members on a reservation of more than 65,000 acres.

She returned home, and then went on a mission of discovery

Stevens, born Marj Powless, left the Oneida Reservation at 16 after dropping out of school, and moved to Los Angeles with one of her sisters.

There she met and married Ernest Stevens, Sr., also Oneida, in 1955. He was a Korean War veteran. It was a tumultuous relationship, and they divorced after 10 years.

But while in California, Stevens became involved in an advocacy program through her friend at UCLA. This program brought in Indigenous educators from all over the country in an attempt to revitalize Indigenous teachings. It was through this program that Stevens started to learn more about her own heritage.

“It was the first time I heard about the Iroquois Confederacy culture,” she said. “I didn’t know what that meant until I was 30 years old. It helped me find a better life.”

Iroquois is the French term referring to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of five tribal nations, including the Oneida. The constitution of this confederacy served as the basis for the U.S. Constitution.

Stevens soon realized the L.A. scene wasn’t good for her.

“I knew I had to come home because L.A. was a big party town for Indian people,” she said.

Stevens, many of her family members, and many of the Indigenous people she knew struggled with alcoholism, but learning more about her culture, and who she was, made her want to sober up.

Advocates say many of the struggles in Indian Country, such as alcoholism, come from the intergenerational trauma of their people being oppressed over the ages through atrocities, such as genocide, loss of land, loss of culture, boarding schools and forced assimilation.

They also say a strong path to healing and breaking the cycle of trauma is a reconnecting with roots and heritage.

Stevens moved back to Milwaukee in 1970 because that’s where she could find work. To get sober she joined an alcoholism treatment program for Indigenous people started by her brother, Herb Powless.

Powless was an alcoholic who soon found himself in trouble with the law. He was given a choice by a judge to either go to prison or find treatment. Powless chose treatment and eventually started his own program specifically for Indigenous people.

Stevens lived on the north side of Milwaukee with a few other Oneida families. “Our kids would have the hardest time in that community,” she said.

Stevens described the neighborhood as “ghetto” and said her six children would get picked on and get into fights. Stevens said the Milwaukee public schools also would teach that Indigenous peoples were from the past and gone. And when her children would assert that they were Indigenous to their classmates, some would refute that and ridicule them.

It didn't help that many school mascots at the time caricatured Indigenous people, giving other children even more fuel for teasing.

“That’s what society taught them,” Stevens said.

So, Stevens and two other Oneida mothers, Marjorie Ann Funmaker and Darlene Funmaker Neconish, pulled their children out of school and started teaching them on their own in Stevens’ apartment. The second-floor apartment was on top of an office of the newly formed American Indian Movement-Wisconsin chapter started by Stevens' brother.

The mothers soon enlisted the help of another Oneida woman, Joyce Ninham, who had teaching and organization skills. And they soon outgrew Stevens’ apartment and moved to the basement of a nearby Lutheran church. Students from UWM would come to offer their teaching services.

In 1971, armed members of the American Indian Movement led by Stevens’ brother succeeded in taking over the abandoned McKinley Park Coast Guard Station along Lake Michigan, arguing that the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 stated that any abandoned federal property reverts back to Indigenous ownership.

Powless and the other members of the movement argued that the space was needed for the growing Indian Community School that his sister helped found.

They eventually won that argument and the site became the home of the school until 1980, when it moved to another location in Milwaukee.

The school would eventually flourish, as it still does today, but Stevens left Wisconsin again in the mid-1970s for New York and parts of Canada to continue her journey of rediscovering her heritage with the Oneida who were still there.

She was joined by a few other Oneida of Wisconsin, including Artley Skenandore, who is today the principal of Oneida Nation High School, just west of Green Bay. Stevens' son, Ernie Stevens, Jr., who was 11 years old at the time, also joined the quest with other Oneida.

They followed and joined a traditional Indigenous educational caravan called the White Roots of Peace, which sought to revitalize the ancient tradition of the longhouses.

By then, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Oneidas in Wisconsin had started to adapt some of the traditional songs and ceremonies from other Indigenous communities in Wisconsin, such as the Ojibwe and Menominee.

But Stevens and others learned the Oneida ways, with their own style in drums, songs and fancy dances, and brought that back with them to Wisconsin, where the traditions thrive and are growing today. She sees her grandchildren and great grandchildren dancing and performing in the traditional Oneida way during pow wows and other ceremonies.

And the rift with Christians and the Oneida traditions appears to be much smaller locally as members from the Episcopal, Methodist and Catholic churches often attend seasonal ceremonies at the Oneida Longhouse. Stevens also is amazed that the Indian Community School is thriving in Franklin, just outside Milwaukee, with its students often venturing into nearby wooded areas to practice traditional Indigenous methods, such as maple tree tapping.

“I never would have imagined it would go this far,” she said. She is the lone surviving founder.

More: Tribal students in Franklin learn how to tap maple trees like their ancestors

Stevens continued to work for the tribe in its alcohol and drug prevention department for 30 years. She still lives in Oneida, a prominent elder who participates in local Indigenous activism events to promote tribal sovereignty and environmental protection.

Stevens is proud to be a member of the Wolf Clan in the Oneida Nation as she believes that fits her personality. She said one of her traits that represents the Wolf Clan is starting something for the people to follow and then moving on to something else.

The Wolf Clan in Oneida tradition represent the pathfinders who help guide the people in life the way the Creator intended.

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Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marj Stevens helped bring back the 'longhouse ways' to Oneida