Menominee sawmill workers communicate with sign language developed over 100 years
Menominee Tribal Enterprises sawmill in Neopit, Wis. employees have been using a unique sign language to communicate in the loud environment for decades. Sarah Kloepping/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
NEOPIT — If you’re wandering around the sawmill on the Menominee reservation some morning and you happen to ask a worker what time it is, don’t be offended if he gives you the finger.
He’s just telling you it’s 8 o’clock.
Seriously, what you and I know as the one-finger salute means the number 8 in a sign language that workers use in the Menominee Tribal Enterprises sawmill in Neopit. And no, I wasn’t just being had; the workers have a whole vocabulary of hand and arm gestures, and when two different guys at two different times demonstrate many of the same gestures with exactly the same translations, I can tell I am not being hosed.
The sign language is not a Menominee culture thing; it’s strictly a sawmill thing, although a lot of people throughout the tiny community of Neopit are at least aware of its existence. Mill talk, some of them call it.
It sprung up organically through the force of several generations of workers struggling to make themselves understood in the noisy environment of a sawmill over the last 110 years, and it’s something to behold.
Picture a Major League third-base coach touching the bill of his cap, swiping the length of one sleeve, tugging his ear, patting his belly. Only in this case, the “coach” is inside a glass control booth, and the guy on the floor two machines away from him shakes his head and signals something back. Or a guy feeding 32-inch logs into a huge circular blade takes a moment to execute a string of gestures to a guy who’s inspecting boards as they come off the line, and the inspector laughs and signals something back, and they both laugh and turn back to the chores at hand. That’s the kind of thing going on all day at the MTE sawmill.
And unlike those baseball coaches, these guys can say a lot more than “watch for the bunt” or “get ready to steal.” True, much of the sign language is designed to communicate matters of work concern, like, “What length of board are we supposed to be cutting?” or “The edger is clogged” or “The boss wants to see you.” But it’s not limited to that.
“They can really say just about anything,” said Joe Besaw, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather worked in the mill before him, and whose son Joshua now works at the mill. Joe Besaw is MTE’s sales manager, but he paid his dues on the factory floor and knows the sign language. He is the guy who was assigned the task of squiring a couple of Press-Gazette journalists around the mill on a recent morning.
Besaw took us in to see LeRoy Shawanokasic, the mill foreman, who, with nearly 50 years of experience in the mill, could very well be the foremost expert on the language. People can learn basic, necessary elements of the sign language within a few weeks of taking the job, Shawanokasic says. You won’t last at the mill without picking up at least some of it, he says. But the old timers like Shawanokasic can say more than the basics, which, of course, helps the process of hazing the new guys. Not that there’s any hazing here. You’ll never find a more serious bunch of sawmill workers than the ones who happen to find themselves talking to a reporter.
Shawanokasic gave us a quick showing of some of the signs the guys use, and I recognize a handful of them from stuff that Besaw had showed us earlier. Many of the signs are easily deciphered, not too different from gestures you might make to a friend across a parking lot or street. “Come here” is done just the way you would expect. Pointing at your wrist means you want to know what time it is. A peak formed by two hands meeting at the fingertips is easily understood to mean “house” or “home” and a quick nibbling gesture of the thumb and fingers of one hand means “talk.” Probably the kind of thing we’d all figure out, but all done without the exaggerated mouthing that we tend to do when communicating with each other from a distance, and it’s all done at lightning speed, with no apparent thought.
Many of the mill signs are stuff you couldn’t possibly guess at. Running the palm of the hand on your chest signifies approval. Bringing your forearms vertical and parallel in a kind of shrugging motion signifies “hurry.”
And then, of course, there’s the numbering system, which, while not complicated, is only instinctive up to five digits. One-through-five are just what you would think. A number rocked back and forth instantly doubles. The teen numbers all point sideways, and there are a bunch of numbers performed pointing downward, but it all comes too fast for me.
These guys apparently can sign just about anything somebody might want to say to a co-worker in a sawmill. “Did the Badgers win last night?” “I have to go to the bathroom.” “Can you and your wife come over for dinner after work?” It’s all there, and Besaw and Shawanokasic perform it about as fast as you'd be able to say it.
My favorite sign was the one meaning “drunk.” Make a circle with the thumb and forefinger of both hands and put them to your eyes like glasses, but wiggle them back and forth, like you have goo- goo- googly eyes. That is drunk.
The language probably has changed over time, Shawanokasic guesses. People don’t shoe horses anymore. New terms must have developed to cover new technology, but Shawanokasic is a mill foreman, not a linguist, and it becomes clear that he and his coworkers are not so much interested in the topic of sign language; they just use it. It allows them to talk over the noise, and you don’t have to walk all the way across the floor to find out what somebody wants.
You’d think a professor or someone would jump all over something like this, but the language has never been studied, never committed to a handbook or textbook or anything like that, as far as anybody knows. One of the local newspapers did something about it a few years ago, and somebody from the College of the Menominee Nation once made some inquiries, but that’s all anybody could remember. Several of the millworkers I spoke with said they’ve been to other sawmills in the country and have never encountered one where workers had a communication system anything like this.
While we were talking in a control room, we watch a young man from the floor trot toward us and give us a quick flurry of signals.
“He’s going to get a soda,” Shawanokasic explains. “Man, that kid drinks a lot of soda.”
Besaw seizes the opportunity to do a bit of mill teasing: He gives the young guy a couple of quick gestures, and Besaw and Shawanokasic burst out laughing. Besaw explains: “I asked him, ‘Why are you always so thirsty? You aren’t doing nothing.’”
The young man grins good-naturedly but responds with a sweeping gesture with one arm. Besaw is embarrassed; he doesn’t want to tell us what it means. “It’s kind of like ‘go away,’” he says finally without making eye contact with us.
Yep. “Go away.” A universal sentiment, expressed everywhere else in the world by the Number 8.