Keshena, Wisconsin - Faculty brought their old computers, cell phones and medicines an Earth Day collection at a Wisconsin tribal college helping a federal Great Lakes basin challenge that has surpassed its collection goals, while younger students cleaned the reservation and whitewashed gang graffiti.
An Earth Day 2008 electronic waste and medicine collection went smoothly at the College of Menominee Nation in Keshena.
Over 23 pounds of medicines were turned in including 100 bottles of pills, more than 25 computers and dozens of related components like hard drives, printers, keyboards and speakers; televisions, radios, DVD players, 12 cell phones and over 100 small batteries.
The collection is among numerous Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin (MITW) projects that are part of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes 2008 Earth Day Challenge that runs through the end of April. EPA officials on Friday said that preliminary results show that the challenge has far exceeded its goals of one million pounds of e-waste and one million pills.
Gang graffiti was whitewashed from a skateboard park wall near the tribal school by K-8 students. The MITW youth honored Earth Day and replaced graffiti with positive Native American symbols.
"The younger students put their hands in paint and made flower hand prints on the wall," said teacher Beth Waukechon. "All week students have been cleaning up the reservation, and one student was so inspired she wants to start an Earth Club."
On April 25, over 180 students finished cleaned up litter around Neopit, one of four communities on the 234,000 acre reservation known for its thick forests and 24 miles of the federally-protected pristine Wolf River.
"The students are giving thanks to Mother Earth for all that she had done," Waukechon said. "They are taking a moment each day to do that."
"We know that Mother Earth can shake us off at any moment," she said. "We are the ones that need her, she doesn't need us."
"Clean up the Rez Day" was held on April 24 at the tribe's Youth Development and Outreach program. The Menominee Teen Court Panel and volunteers cleaned up garbage, said Claudette Hewson, MITW Restorative Justice Coordinator.
The teen panel, ages 14 to 17, is a peer review for youthful offenders sentenced in tribal court who "need to learn healthy behaviors," Hewson said. On May 2, at-risk teens will paint over more reservation gang graffiti.
Sponsors include the tribe's Community Resource Center, Menominee County Police, Menominee Tribal Police, Tribal Clinic Wellness Program, Maehnowesekiyah, Probation and Parole, Community Recycling Project, Recreation Department and the U.S. Post Office in Keshena.
Earth Week tribal school classes applied subjects like math, history and others to different aspects of the life cycle, biology and value of the sturgeon, an important fish to the Menominee tribe.
Overseeing the pharmaceutical collection was Heidi Cartwright, a part-time Manawa police officer and college police science instructor.
While hosting the collection, the college's Implementing Sustainable Development class found out they won the National Recycling Coalition Bin Grant through Coca-Cola, said professor William Van Lopik, Ph.D.
"One of premises of the class is to do things, not just talk about what we are going to do and how the world is going to be changed, but having students do things," Dr. Van Lopik said.
The grant pays for 50 recycling bins.
The MITW held curbside pickup of electronics during Earth Week. A couple thousand pounds of electronics were turned in at the MITW transfer station since April 1. The total is expected to reach several tons.
Native American students recently created "Garbage Monsters" out of bottles, paper and other items found in their trash in a project at the Keshena Public Schools, said Diana Wolf, MITW Solid Waste/Recycling Coordinator. After naming their monsters, the students explained other uses for the garbage.
Operating with an EPA grant, the non-profit Earth Healing Initiative is a "coalition of American Indian tribes, churches, synagogues, temples and faith traditions who goal is to heal, protect and defend the environment," said founder Rev. Jon Magnuson of Marquette, Michigan.
"The Menominee tribe in Wisconsin and other tribes in Michigan and Minnesota are an important part of this earth healing project," Magnuson said. "The EPA challenge was just the beginning and the tribes have many things they can teach faith communities about respect for the earth."
A Lutheran bishop, who has worked on several Native American and interfaith Earth Day recycling projects, said "people of many spiritual dimensions resonate to this work because this is a good project for us to be involved."
"Native Americans and people from many faith traditions who are spiritual reflect upon and think about creation," said Northern Great Lakes Synod Bishop Thomas Skrenes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.. "We think about the lakes and the streams and the forest and all of the rest that God has produced and making things new again."
