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As a girl, Kris Caldwell, 58, was disappointed when her late father, the former logging boss shown in this photo, refused to teach her the language of their Menominee tribe. Only years later did she learn that her father's reticence stemmed from his own harsh boyhood treatment at an Indian boarding school. Native children from around Wisconsin were sent here to the Tomah Indian Industrial boarding school a century ago. Students such as Jim Caldwell of the Menominee tribe, not shown, learned a trade but were forbidden to speak their native languages. Tribal elder Chloris Lowe Sr., left, didn't teach the Ho-Chunk language to his children, believing that would help them fare better in English-only schools. But today he's teaching the endangered language to his 2-year-old great-grandson, Haakon. The hands of Chloris Lowe Sr. enfold the hands of his great-grandson Haakon as the older man speaks to the boy about earthworms in the endangered language of their ancestors.
Louise Amour, a Menominee medicine woman, was the mother of Jim Caldwell. Caldwell's daughter, Kris, believes her father received especially harsh treatment as an Indian boarding school student because of his mother's association with traditional spirituality. Richard Mann, 60, now the manager of the Ho-Chunk tribe's language division, put off learning to speak better Ho-Chunk from his father and has since had to learn from others. "I'd say 'Next year and next year,' and the next thing I knew my father was gone."    
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