onsin and returned to their reservation in Nebraska. Within a month, the same individuals were usually already back in Wisconsin. In 1875, after ten years of arresting the same Winnebago over and over again, the Federal Government purchased homestead lands in Wisconsin for the Winnebago, and let them remain there if they wished. As a consequence of this purchase, over half of the Nebraska Winnebago returned to Wisconsin in the late 1800’s and have remained there sprinkled across ten counties ever since. The Winnebago who remained in Nebraska eventually lost a portion of their reservation to whites through the Allotment Policy which took effect in 1887.Currently, both the Nebraska and Wisconsin Winnebago tribes are federally recognized. For this paper, due to their close geographic proximity to myself, I chose to concentrate on the Winnebago tribe of Nebraska. The Winnebago tribe of Nebraska currently operates under a constitution consistent with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska). They are governed by a tribal council which consists of a Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, and nine other elected council members. The Chairman is elected from within the tribal council and acts as the administrative head of the Tribe for a one year term, while other Council members serve three year terms. The Winnebago Tribal Headquarters is located on the 30,647 acre Winnebago reservation which houses 1,204 members in Thurston County, Nebraska. At this time, 3,736 Winnebago Indians have tribal membership in the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Remarkably, unlike many other Native American tribes, the Winnebago still own over ninety percent of reservation lands, despite the fact that much of it is allotted to individual tribal members. The majority of employment available on the reservation is currently provided by “WinneVegas” (the tribal Casino), the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian H...
