LISTENING TO THE ARCHIVES: HO-CHUNK GOVERNANCE, SOVEREIGNTY, AND NATION-BUILDING THROUGH COMMUNITY VOICES

Abstract

This thesis reconstructs a community-centered history of the Ho-Chunk Nation during the transformative decades from the 1960s to the 1990s. This period was marked by formal political organization, the pursuit of federal recognition following years of strategic refusal, and economic expansion. These developments reshaped the Nation’s present-day sovereignty and self-determination, which are most clearly articulated within Ho-Chunk produced records. This study centers these materials, particularly those preserved within the Helen Miner Miller archive, alongside oral histories to foreground Ho-Chunk perspectives on governance and political life, acknowledging that not all aspects of this history are intended for public circulation. Thereby, the archive exceeds the role of a neutral repository and functions instead as a site of community knowledge and political expression. In alignment with a methodology of relational responsibility, long-form interviews conducted with Ho-Chunk community members will be donated to the Ho-Chunk Museum and Cultural Center. Selected excerpts and narrative vignettes are used here in ways that protect culturally sensitive information while still conveying intergenerational knowledge and lived experience. This project demonstrates that history functions as an active tool of sovereignty through which the Nation preserves, interprets, and asserts its political existence. The narratives that emerge demonstrate how Ho-Chunk governance in the late twentieth century was shaped through adaptation, negotiation, and persistence, and how these practices continue to inform contemporary political life.