Includes records dating back to 1888, assembled and saved by Wisconsin Winnebago Business Committee official Helen Miner Miller. Records document the process of organizing the tribe under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and the governance and welfare of the tribe during the middle decades of the 20th century. There are also tribal newsletters, periodicals, writings and reports concerning the Wisconsin Winnebago. Three microfilm reels contain copies of Wisconsin Winnebago Business Committee files.

Historical documents obtained to support the 1960s tribal organization under the Indian Reorganization Act include a 1901 Wisconsin Winnebago annuity payroll, 1910 census rolls for both the Wisconsin and Nebraska Winnebago with related correspondence, 1913 materials relating to the census rolls and the division of the Winnebago fund, enrollment materials from 1936 and later, several Winnebago meeting minutes dating from 1935, materials related to housing and homesteads beginning in 1888, and a copy of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

The process of organizing, tribal fact-finding, and governance is documented in the minutes of the Wisconsin Winnebago Business Committee, in tribal newsletters, and in documents files on the tribe’s Constitution and Bylaws, elections, ordinances, land ownership and lost lands, finances, etc. There are also records of efforts to obtain and divide the U.S. Claims Commission settlement for ceded lands, and to procure and administer two 1960s grant-funded programs: “Contribution of Community Development to the Prevention of Dependency” and “Program for the Political Development of the Wisconsin Winnebago.” Records of the former include extensive records of a 1963 survey of individual Winnebago families (closed until 2113). In addition, there are materials from the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference, which spurred and supported the Winnebago efforts to organize under federal statute.

Also included are a number of reports, articles, theses, and other published and unpublished writings about the Wisconsin Winnebago. Authors include Nancy Lurie Oestreich, Sister Ruth Gudinas, and Helen Miner Miller. There is information about Native American affairs more generally in materials by the National Congress of American Indians, the American Indian Chicago Conference, William H. Kelly, Patricia Locke, and Ralph Nader.

See Information File (available by request in the Special Collections Reading Room) for detailed information about the contents of individual files, prepared by Helen Miner Miller.