This Wisconsin county has the highest rate of food insecurity. Here’s why, and how volunteers help

Marla Bellanger wanted to try something different after spending years helping to feed her community on the Menominee Reservation.

But her career change didn’t give her the purpose she had felt when working at the tribe’s food pantry.

“I always wanted to come back,” Bellanger said. “It’s really important to me because I’m serving my people directly.”

Menominee County, with its borders following almost exactly the Menominee Reservation, is the least populated, and one of the most impoverished, in the state. More than 16% of its people are also food insecure, according to the 2024 Map the Meal Gap study by Feeding America, an organization which helps provide food assistance to the tribal food pantry on the reservation.

Bellanger and her team work every week to serve their neighbors

Bellanger came back to work for her tribe’s food distribution program a few years ago, which now serves 234 households and more than 500 people and is open for food assistance every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Along with Feeding America the tribal food pantry also is supported by a federal program called The Emergency Food Assistance Program.

Bellanger helps lead a team of five warehouse workers who unload the food trucks every week, store the food and pack food into boxes to give away to recipients.

She said every box contains at least three family meals with basic food necessities, such as canned vegetables and fruit, rice, pasta, nuts, beans, fish, seafood, meat and any other donations.

“We could always use more,” Bellanger said.

Bellanger said families usually receive their protein as five pounds of chicken quarters or two pounds of pulled pork, but sometimes what’s delivered are foods that Menominee don’t typically eat and don’t desire.

For example, she said a weekly food truck might deliver boxes of canned red salmon, Pacific shrimp salad or catfish.

“We’re not really catfish people,” Bellanger said.

And during the holidays from Thanksgiving through Christmas she said the pantry does receive a limited number of popular foods to distribute, such as turkeys, hams and all the fixings.

But these are claimed quickly and there’s never enough for everyone.

“It’s sad,” Bellanger said. “I wish I could feed everyone.”

She also to make sure that some households aren’t picking up double their share of food for a week, so that there might be enough for other families.

The process to pick up a box of food from the pantry has been simplified. An individual will fill out a short form to self-attest their income eligibility.

Bellanger said sometimes another member of the household may come to pick up food and not know someone from their home already picked up a box.

“But we’re a small community, so we kind of know who’s in whose household,” she said.

Holidays get a lot of publicity, but the real need is summer meals for school children

While the holiday season is supposed to be a time for families to come together for meals, Bellanger said much of the food need for the community is during the summer when children are home from school.

Children can receive free meals at school and many can receive meals for part of the summer.

“There’s a time before (free meals) and a time after that I worry about, that kids are eating,” Bellanger said.

She said Feeding America often helps fill the gap during those times by offering kid-friendly treats, such as cereal bars.

Bellanger said more families on the reservation are struggling this year because the cost of food has risen, the cost of living has increased and families that are on the Food Share program have had their benefits reduced since the COVID pandemic.

She said many people also have additional family members to care for because of the nationwide opioid epidemic that has hit the reservation particularly hard.

Grandparents are having to care for their grandchildren because of the epidemic, Bellanger said.

Menominee Nation struggles compounded by loss of sovereign status, despite its return

The cycle of addiction and poverty from intergenerational trauma passed down through the years from loss of land, loss of culture and forced assimilation has affected all of Indian Country.

But the Menominee Nation also was afflicted with poverty through federal termination, which it’s still recovering from.

The tribe’s sovereign status and federal recognition ended in 1961, meaning federal supervision, financial and trust responsibilities ended, as well. It was the only tribe in Wisconsin to lose this status.

Some legislators believed that Menominee Nation’s sustainable lumber mill would be enough to support the county, but it wasn’t, especially without much of a tax base in Menominee, and as a result schools closed, a hospital closed and roads became in disrepair and services suffered.

Tribal leaders eventually won their sovereign status back, but the damage was done and the county has never fully recovered.

Want to help? How to donate to Stock the Shelves

During October, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin newspapers and Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin are working together to raise enough money from readers and donors to provide 750,000 meals to Wisconsin families through the annual Stock the Shelves campaign. Each dollar donated equals about four meals, or $10 in food.

The campaign will support communities served by the following newspapers: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post Crescent, Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter, Oshkosh Northwestern, Fond du Lac Reporter, Sheboygan Press, Wausau Daily Herald, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Marshfield News-Herald, Stevens Point Journal, Door County Advocate and Oconto County Reporter.

Donations will help support people in the same community where the donor lives.

To donate online, visit feedingamericawi.org/stocktheshelvesdonate.

To donate by mail, checks made payable to Feeding American Eastern Wisconsin, ATTN: Stock the Shelves, should be sent to 2911 W. Evergreen Drive, Appleton WI 54913.

Enclose with your contribution the donor’s address with city, state and ZIP code for internal processing, a notation of whether the donation should remain anonymous, whether the donation is in the memory of someone special. Also list the donor’s name, as it should appear in a thank-you advertisement to be published in the Thanksgiving editions of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin’s daily newspapers.

For a list of pantries supported by Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, visit feedingamericawi.org/find-help.

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Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at [email protected] or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Menominee Tribal food pantry volunteers talk food insecurity in county