Menominee Tribe approves UNITY youth seats on legislative committees

The Menominee Tribal Legislature has moved UNITY youth representatives from the sidelines into the committee rooms where tribal policy is shaped, giving them a formal role in legislative work instead of observer status. The approval came at the Legislature’s regular meeting on April 6, and the Tribe highlighted it in its April 20 e-News.

The change matters because committee work is where much of tribal government’s day-to-day business gets done. The Tribe’s standing committees include Labor, Education and Training, Health and Family, Housing, Governmental Affairs and Conservation, the same places where issues tied to schools, services, land use and family needs are sorted before reaching the full Legislature. The Legislature itself is a nine-member elected governing body chosen by enrolled Tribal members.

The Labor, Education and Training Committee already shows how the new structure can work in practice. Its page lists Willard Waupoose and Ashaylex Awonohopay as UNITY representatives, alongside Chair Samantha Grignon, Interim Administrator and Menominee Tribal School Principal Kaycee Frechette, MTL member Shannon Chapman and a Higher Education Director. That mix puts youth voices in direct contact with adults handling education and workforce issues, which is where committee influence can turn into policy recommendations.

The Tribe’s Youth Services department also gives the move an institutional base. Joyce Wayka serves as director, with Lindsay Besaw, Lori Besaw, Deidre Caldwell, Natasha Frechette, Jordynne Hill and Camay Lyons on staff. Together, those positions show that youth engagement is not being handled as a one-off program, but as part of a broader Tribal structure that can carry young members into public decision-making.

The Menominee Chapter of UNITY was established in February 2025, and UNITY, Inc. describes its mission as supporting the spiritual, mental, physical and social development of Native youth through affiliated youth councils. In August 2025, UNITY said the Menominee Youth Council attended the UNITY Conference in San Diego for the first time and was formed that February with McKaylin Peters as a co-founder. The April 2026 committee appointments build on that pipeline by moving young members into the process itself.

For a Tribe that traces its origin story to the mouth of the Menominee River and names the Bear, Eagle, Wolf, Moose and Crane clans as part of that history, the decision is more than symbolic. It gives young members a place inside the machinery of government, where they can see how agendas move, how recommendations are written and how future leaders learn the rules before they are expected to govern them.