Native Americans and the Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Service, 1910-1940

The Wisconsin Cooperative Extension Service (CES) began serving Native American communities in the 1910s because Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agricultural instruction was insufficient to help Indians become prosperous farmers, and because progressivism philosophy called for the inclusion of Native Americans into the political and cultural mainstream. In 1915, J. F. Wojta, Wisconsin leader of county agents, attended the Menominee Fair to judge exhibits and discuss farming. Other Wisconsin reservation communities invited Wojta to help them as well. Because Indian fairs contained too many distractions, Wojta adopted the Farmers\u27 Institute approach and held more than fifty such events in Native American communities over the next twenty years. County agents and University of Wisconsin agricultural specialists also visited Native American communities during the 1910s and 1920s to provide farming instruction. By 1930, however, Congress began increasing federal appropriations for Indian affairs. The BIA organized its own extension division and boosted its agricultural and extension activities. By 1940, however, the federal government had once again began to relinquish its responsibility for Native Americans, and the CES again began to sponsor programs in Indian communities