“We were, for all practical purposes, a welfare state.”Īll that is different today, due in large part to the tribe’s ability to run gambling operations. “The tribe subsisted wholly on federal and state programs,” said Lowe, who served as the Ho-Chunk’s top political leader in the early 1980s and again in the mid-1990s. There were no tribal businesses, and debt stirred talk of bankruptcy. His people, the Ho-Chunk, were impoverished, like most of the nation’s Native American tribes. 28, 2014.Ĭhloris Lowe remembers how it used to be.
Gannett’s John Ferak, editor of the project, discusses highlights with Frederica Freyberg on Wisconsin Public Television’s Here and Now, Feb.
