Birthday of Jean Adeline Morgan Wanatee
Dec. 9, 1910
Adeline Wanatee — is shown Sept. 28, 1994, at her home on the Meskwaki Settlement west of Tama. (Lewis Koch/Woodland Indian Traditional Artist Project Collection/University of Wisconsin Digitized Collections)
Adeline Wanatee (Meskwaki) was born today in 1910, an activist for Native American and women's rights, anti-boarding school work, and a skilled textile artist. Wanatee was an artist and tribal leader dedicated to preserving and sharing the traditional culture and language of the Meskwaki. As a child she was sent to Flandreau Indian School, a residential school far from home. After getting her degree she returned to her home community where she worked in children's education, teaching the Meskwaki language among other subjects. She believed Indigenous children should be educated in local public schools under tribal control rather than sent to government boarding schools far from their families, and through her work as a tribal council member and on state and national committees, she helped win that right. Wanatee was a founding member of the Coalition of Indian-Controlled School Boards, an organization dedicated to parental and community control of Indian education. She helped create an elementary school textbook for the Meskwaki language, Mesquakie Primary: An Elementary School Text of the Mesquakie Language.
Asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, “Where I came from. I am proud that my people never left Iowa, never became prisoners. They are the reason I want to help.”
Asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, “Where I came from. I am proud that my people never left Iowa, never became prisoners. They are the reason I want to help.”