College of Menominee Nation promotes 2026 Menominee Pageant in Keshena

The College of Menominee Nation is promoting “Timeless Teachings,” the 2026 Menominee Pageant set for Wednesday, July 29 at Woodland Bowl in Keshena. The performance is free and begins at 9:00 p.m., placing Menominee stories and dance in the center of the community rather than inside a campus hall.

The pageant carries wider weight because it is listed as part of the Smithsonian Festival of Festivals. CMN said it is the only Smithsonian Festival of Festivals event being held in Wisconsin, and Smithsonian materials describe the Menominee Pageant as a revived tradition of the Menominee Nation. Smithsonian says the production blends pantomime, live music and Native dance, and marks the beginning of Menominee Powwow week each summer.

That connection reaches beyond one night on the calendar. The 2026 Annual Menominee Nation Powwow is scheduled for July 31-Aug. 2 in Keshena, turning the pageant into the opening chapter of a larger stretch of cultural gathering on Menominee homelands. For families in Menominee County, the timing links the pageant to the same seasonal rhythm that brings singers, dancers and spectators back to Keshena each summer.

The 2026 production was written by the Menominee Pageant Players Guild and includes adaptations from “A Sampling of Menominee Legends,” assembled by the Menominee Tribal Historic Office. A Menominee Cultural Museum post identified “The Legend of the Dells” by the late Theresa Wescott as one of the source texts, showing how the stage production draws directly from Menominee teachings and oral history.

Rehearsals were underway inside CMN on July 13, when NEW Media photographed Jeremiah Moses Jr., Cedar Fernandez, Mary Mault and Dawn Wilbur preparing for the show. That coverage, published July 15, framed “Timeless Teachings” as a pageant filling Woodland Bowl with stories, a sign that the revival is being staged as a major cultural event, not a one-off campus presentation.

CMN’s social posts said the production features a new script titled “Timeless Teachings,” and the college also pointed to last year’s “Short Stories from the Elders” as the first new Menominee Pageant staged at Woodland Bowl in nearly fifty years. With free admission, a Keshena setting and a place in the lead-up to powwow weekend, the 2026 pageant gives local residents another public way to see Menominee traditions carried forward on their own ground.