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Dave Zweifel: Ada Deer's new cause: prison woes

Dave Zweifel  —  3/26/2008 5:54 am

One of my favorite people of all time, longtime Menominee Indian leader and Wisconsin political activist Ada Deer, stopped by the office the other day just to say "hi" and bring me up to date on what she's up to these days.

Ada, the first member of the Menominee Nation to graduate from the UW-Madison, officially "retired" last year from her job as director of American Indian studies at her alma mater, a job she assumed after serving in Bill Clinton's administration as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Her whole life has been a number of "firsts." Not only was she the first Menominee to graduate from the UW, she was the first American Indian to receive a master's degree in social work at Columbia University in New York. She became the first woman to chair the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, and she was the first American Indian candidate for U.S. Congress and the first woman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

I got to know Ada back in the early '70s when she founded and led an organization known as DRUMS -- Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders. It was aimed at restoring the reservation status of the Menominee tribe, overturning a foolhardy federal government program that was aimed at forcing Indian tribes into the "mainstream" economy. The program had led to some incredible hardships for the Indian nation. Many of the tribal members were not prepared for non-reservation life. There were few jobs, and most of the tribe was left floundering with little support.

But Ada's tenaciousness prevailed, and with help from Wisconsinites like the late U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, the feds changed their minds in 1972, restoring the reservation that exists to this day.

She's now 72, but hasn't slowed down a bit.

In fact, she's taken up a new cause: Wisconsin's overburdened prison system, which is consuming so much of the state's resources. She can't understand why our state imprisons so many people, at a cost of more than $30,000 a year for each, when a neighboring state like Minnesota has a prison population less than half of ours.

It doesn't make sense that we continually throw people with alcohol and drug problems in our prisons and do little to help them overcome their demons so that they can become contributing members of society, she says.

No, it doesn't make sense. And with Ada Deer on the issue, we may finally see some needed changes.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.

Dave Zweifel  —  3/26/2008 5:54 am