Meet Chloe Knope

Chloe Knope, a National Breath of Life apprentice for the Menominee language team, found a passion for the Menominee language a few years ago when she began participating in community language classes and programming. 

While studying Menominee as a hobby, she found herself in a supportive group of language learners within the community classes and grew more appreciative of the language as she began to better understand it.

“I love how Menominee can tell an entire story in just one word,” Chloe said. “I’m starting to understand the stories, poetry, and deeper significance behind these words.”

Hoping to more deeply engage with the language, she began looking for old audio recordings, documents, and other records that might tell her more about the language. 

“When you first think of archives it can be easy to think about it as ancient history that has nothing to do with what we’re going through now,” Chloe said. “But then you see a place described, or a name from your own family, you start making connections.”

She never considered she could do something more with this work, until Dr. Monica Macaulay, a consultant for the Tribe’s language commission and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told her about National Breath of Life, a program where she could learn more about linguistics, transcriptions, and working with archival materials. 

“Once I started to get to know some people with a professional interest in archives, preservation, and exploration, it clicked with me that this is something that could be very productive and very meaningful,” Chloe said. 

Supporting the resurgence of Menominee language use is Chloe’s top priority as an apprentice on the team. She hopes to use the skills she gains in the program to contribute to programming, resources, and an increase in language use throughout the tribal community. 

“We talk about boarding schools, the Indian Act, all of these things that affected our people, and it clicks, our ancestors and the people that came before us fought hard for us to hear these words today and there’s a reason they did that,” Chloe said. “We might as well see what they have to say.” 

Menominee language use had been dwindling for a long time, Chloe explained. There are only a few people left on the reservation who grew up hearing and speaking Menominee in their homes, making it increasingly difficult to promote its use.

To more easily preserve and promote the language, the Menominee team has been pursuing a community digitization lab at the College of Menominee Nation on the Menominee Reservation, to build up a safe and secure language database for community members to use for years to come. 

Being able to support this effort and work alongside community members throughout the process has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the work, Chloe said.

Chloe finds support in the National Breath of Life program, through her community mentors, program staff, and other apprentices. Meeting with other apprentices inspires and reminds her that this work is bigger than herself or her community.

“Finding people to connect with who are equally engaged or find as much meaning in this work as I do can be challenging,” she said. 

Although the apprentices come from a variety of tribal communities, speak several different languages, and are in different stages of the documentation process, they still value, listen, and learn from each other.