Reading Time: 4 minutes

In a small church off East Oklahoma Avenue, impassioned singing, steady drum beats and the smell of incense emanate from its front doors. 

Brothers Isiah and Avery Nahwahquaw co-founded RedNationBoyz, a powwow drum circle, in 2024. They host their practices at Lutheran Church of the Great Spirit, 3127 S. Howell Ave., during the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle’s crafting Wednesdays. All funding for the RedNationBoyz comes directly out of the Nahwahquaw brothers’ own pockets.

The Nahwahquaw brothers formed the group to connect Indigenous boys, ranging in age from 10 to 20, in Milwaukee to their roots.

The president of the Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, Deanna Porter, invited the Nahwahquaw brothers to join the group for Wednesday nights in their space at the church. The Milwaukee Intertribal Circle, or MIC, is a group dedicated to revitalizing the intertribal community of Milwaukee.

Porter, a member of the White Earth Nation Ojibwe Anishinaabe, remembers when the United Indians of Milwaukee was a central hub for the Native American community in Milwaukee. With the newly formed Milwaukee Intertribal Council, she hopes to emulate their impact. 

“We’re working to reproduce that, to be serving any Native person within the city of Milwaukee or surrounding area,” Porter said. “And it doesn’t matter your tribe, we will serve enrolled members and their descendants. We welcome anybody.”

The drum circle has expanded quickly from a few members to more than a dozen. The group is an intertribal drum circle, meaning anyone descended from any tribe can join. Members come from Ojibwe tribes, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and Oneida and Ho-Chunk nations. 

The RedNationBoyz have performed at several community events, including the Heart of Canal Street event at Potawatomi Casino Hotel.

The name “RedNationBoyz” comes from Avery and Isiah Nahwahquaw’s original drum group from their school days. When Isiah was 14, he was given a big drum from his mentor, and the brothers decided to form a drum circle with their friends. After finishing school, though, life got busy and the group stopped performing together.

Several years later, Isiah was offered a job at Indian Community School in Franklin where he worked as a youth drum instructor. Here, Isiah and his students connected. That relationship inspired him to bring back the name “RedNationBoyz” for this group.

“It was initially a job that turned to a bond and, you know, once you develop the bond, it’s hard to break,” he said. “And when I started being an instructor for these boys, I had to use the name again, because it was technically a family name to us, and we look at them as family.”

“So, that drum right there means a lot. That’s a spirit right there in that drum. It brings us all together, it brings a whole community together,” Avery Nahwahquaw says. 

By joining the drum circle, not only does a member get to learn about their Indigenous roots and play and sing traditional music, they also join a brotherhood. 

“I would describe the RedNationBoyz like family. These young men become like our nephews,” said Avery. “Not only is it singing, but it’s me finding out if you’re doing good in school, or if you got anything else you need help with in life outside of this drum circle.”

The Milwaukee Intertribal Circle hosts a crafting event on Wednesdays when members from the Native American community can come and be immersed in their culture.

The Nahwahquaw brothers spoke of the importance of creating a space where Indigenous boys could come together to be with people of their culture. 

“Our practices are one night a week where they can escape from wherever they’re from, whatever they’re going through, and they can find their culture in this urban area,” said Avery.

Ask the boys why they keep showing up each Wednesday, and the answers point to the deeper pull of the drum.

Jared Dashner notes that even his Native name, “Little Singing Boy,” ties him to the circle.

“I love singing. I love all these Wednesday nights with everybody, and getting these teachings from our mentor, Isiah.  I ain’t gonna never stop coming,” Ethan Shomin said. 

Their commitment underscores the role RedNationBoyz plays for Indigenous youth seeking connection and community.

“We don’t want it to end. We don’t want like five years from now, they’re like, ‘Hey, remember that one guy we used to sing with on Wednesday nights?’ No, we want this to be for life,” said Avery.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

RedNationBoyz: Powwow drum circle inspires Indigenous youths in Milwaukee is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

After a recent government study found that Native people are more than twice as likely to deal with food shortages and lack of nutritional meals than all U.S. households combined, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) made six recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aiming to improve food security. But a year later, the USDA, which agreed with the recommendations, has yet to act on them. 

In July 2024, the GAO issued the recommendations in a report outlining opportunities the USDA could take to address challenges in federal nutrition programs. The report also asked Congress to consider “addressing in statute” the role of tribes in administering federal nutrition programs. 

Barriers to food security vary from tribe to tribe, but commonalities exist, according to GAO director Kathryn Larin. In many cases the rural locations of tribal communities make access to a variety of nutritious foods difficult. “And the costs of the foods are higher than in more urban areas, partly due to transportation costs or other factors,” Larin told Buffalo’s Fire.

Those challenges have led to significant health disparities, including higher rates of diabetes and obesity among Indigenous people. 

The way food is distributed and administered in tribal communities may be contributing to the problem.

After interviewing tribes and tribal organizations in seven states, as well as state and USDA officials, the GAO asked Congress to consider requiring states to consult with tribes when carrying out federal nutrition programs on reservations and in Native neighborhoods. Lawmakers have yet to address the matter.

Currently, tribes can administer several programs, including Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations (FDPIR),  Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), if it’s determined that the state isn’t able to do so effectively.

In some cases, state programs or administrators are required to consult with tribes. “In other instances,” Larin said, “there’s no clear direction as to what the tribal role is. So we’ve asked that Congress address that explicitly.”

Some tribes told the GAO that their members were more likely to participate in programs the tribes administered, which tend to be located on reservations. Non-tribal programs are often off the reservation, which creates an additional burden of traveling.  

“We know people are falling through the cracks,” said Mary Greene Trottier, a Spirit Lake member who serves as the director of its food distribution program and the National Association of Food Delivery Program on Indian Reservations. 

Trottier says her people are struggling with diet, good nutrition and proper access to health services, and she estimates that 60-70% of schools on the Spirit Lake reservation have students in the free lunch program. 

“We know the problems,” said Trottier, on the findings of the GAO study. “We know we can address the solutions.” She said tribal leaders and program directors are “boots on the ground” who just need to be heard and have their knowledge applied to improving food issues in tribal communities. “We know how to run our programs. We know what works, what doesn’t work.” 

Letting tribes take the lead

Like Trottier, Marlon Skendandore is a proponent for having tribes administer more food programs. He sees it as a move toward food sovereignty. 

Before being elected as an Oneida tribal councilor, Skendandore worked as a food pantry manager for the tribe for six years, helping members across Wisconsin get fed “without red tape.” One of the GAO recommendations — that the USDA work to avoid dual participation in both the Food Distribution Program and SNAP and help qualified applicants get enrolled in a timely fashion — addresses what he sees as a “weird caveat” in the current system.

“Say you were on SNAP low income (and) you start building yourself up,” said Skenandore, describing how some SNAP recipients get work or otherwise improve their earnings. “You’re no longer income eligible.” He added there’s then a waiting period of 30 days before someone leaving SNAP can apply for the Food Distribution program. “I don’t know what the sense of 30 days of waiting is because they’re being administered by two totally different departments.”  

The GAO has recommended that Food and Nutrition Service administrators study how switching from one program to another affects food security and then share that information with Congress. 

Skenandore says both nutritious-food access and affordability are issues affecting the Oneida. Besides his work with the food pantry, he launched the Tribal Elder Food Box Program during the COVID-19 pandemic to alleviate food insecurity among Wisconsin tribes.

“We’re now up to making 2,400 boxes every couple of weeks,” he said.

Skenandore said that earlier this year funding cuts to the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program made the Tribal Elder Food Box Program’s future look bleak. But the program has since secured $3 million in state funding, which will allow it to continue for another two years. 

The GAO also recommended that the USDA include national data on Native food security in an annual report and discontinue visual observation as a way to determine race and ethnicity for the Food Distribution Program on reservations. Finally, the GAO wants the agriculture secretary to identify and rectify gaps in outreach to tribal communities and make administering these programs more flexible in ways that support food security. 

The USDA told Buffalo’s Fire in an email that it’s “working diligently” to address the GAO’s recommendations. But when asked about the timeline for implementing them, the press office did not provide one.

In a separate email, the USDA said the department and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are “committed to working with states, tribes, territories, and local government partners” to improve and modernize their programs, while “upholding our responsibility to program participants and American taxpayers.”

“The bottom line is that we feel strongly that the recommendations we made are key to addressing the issue of food insecurity in tribal communities,” the GAO’s Larin said, adding, “That’s why we’re committed to following up with the agency and hopefully encouraging them to implement the recommendations.”

The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.

Self-education

In the meantime, both Trottier and Skenandore say there’s much to teach their respective communities about proper nutrition and health. This means adapting more traditional foods into their diet and scaling back fast food and ultra-processed items that either lack nutritional value or add to health problems. And with some traditional staples like wild rice and berries getting expensive, focusing on community gardens is seen as a way to help offset some of the issues. 

“We have little kids that we’re really trying to instill with gardening and nutrition knowledge so they make better choices,” said Trottier. “We might not be able to change the older generation, but we’ve got a start with the younger generation. There’s always new hope to be found.”

This story was originally published by Buffalo’s Fire.

References

United States Government Accountability Office. (July 2024). Tribal Food Security

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health website

‘People are falling through the cracks’: Congress and USDA have not acted on recommendations to alleviate food insecurity among tribes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.