Former Manitoban serving as media bridge for Texas Mennonite community during measles outbreak By: John Longhurst Posted: 1:40 PM CST Thursday, Mar. 6, 2025 Last Modified: 2:41 PM CST Thursday, Mar. 6, 2025 Updates

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This article was published 06/03/2025 (575 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A former Manitoban is at the centre of helping to explain the largest outbreak of measles in Texas in 30 years.

CNN, NPR, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press have all called Tina Siemens of Seminole, Texas, to learn more about the Mennonite community in that area where more than 150 people, mostly children, have caught the highly contagious virus and one child has died.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services, has called her twice.

“He wanted background on the Mennonites in Seminole,” said Siemens, who lived in Arborg with her husband and son in 1988 and 1989. She operates the West Texas Living Heritage Museum, a valuable source about Mennonites who call Seminole home.

During her conversation with Kennedy, she explained the history, culture and religion of those conservative Mennonites, who are descendants of families who left Manitoba and Saskatchewan for Mexico in the 1920s.

About 6,000 traditionalist Mennonites, often called Old Colony Mennonites, left the two provinces in 1922 for new homes in the Cuauhtémoc area of northern Mexico. They left because they felt the Canadian government had betrayed them by breaking its promise to allow them to run their own schools.

Faced with a shortage of land and harsh economic conditions in Mexico, some began to migrate north in the 1970s, settling in the Seminole area. The community has a population of about 35,000.

Siemens is a descendant of the group that left Manitoba, and her family was among those who moved to Texas about 50 years ago; she was eight years old.

She said she regularly speaks with reporters, because the conservative Mennonites at the heart of the outbreak are reluctant to talk to the media.

“I am a voice for them, a bridge.”–Tina Siemens

“I am a voice for them, a bridge,” Siemens said, adding she is helping local health officials by translating information about free vaccines into Low German, the language spoken by Mennonites in the community.

She frequently finds herself correcting misinformation. Many reporters think the Mennonites in Seminole are like the horse-and-buggy Amish.

“They are technologically advanced, winning awards for their modern farming methods,” she said about Mennonites in the area, noting they have been recognized for their work in water and soil conservation.

Many also own businesses in Seminole, selling farm equipment, running lumber yards, health-food stores, automobile garages and others.

“It’s like it is in Steinbach or Winkler,” Siemens said.

About half the Mennonites are U.S. citizens, she said, adding the others seek legal status. She holds dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship because of her family’s origins in Manitoba more than a century ago.

There is a mix of conservative and more liberal religious practice, she said.

“They can’t all be painted with the same brush,” she said.

Many are reluctant to vaccinate their children against measles, but they’re not alone; about 17 per cent of the children in Seminole-area public schools are unvaccinated.

Many older Mennonites had to get vaccinated when they became American citizens, said Siemens, adding she is vaccinated, as is her son.

Some in the area believe they should be able to make their own family health decisions.

“It’s not for religious reasons,” she said, noting there is nothing in the Mennonite faith against vaccinations. “No pastors are telling them not to get vaccinated.”

“They just want the right to choose their own way.”–Tina Siemens

As is the case with other Americans, it’s about personal choice, she said. Texas is one of 16 states in the U.S. that allow people to opt out of vaccines for purely personal beliefs, rather than religious or medical reasons. The pandemic broke trust with government for a lot of people, she said.

People in the community aren’t rejecting vaccines to be defiant, she said.

“They just want the right to choose their own way,” she said, adding many also worry about negative side effects from injections — some believe the scientifically discredited claim that vaccinations cause autism.

Mennonites in the area also tend to be self-reliant. Many avoid doctors and prefer home remedies to deal with health issues, Siemens explained, noting they use cod liver oil and vitamin A as remedies for those who have contracted measles.

“They prefer their children get it and develop antibodies against measles,” she said, noting that was the way it was before the measles vaccine was created in 1963.

But others — although she suspects a small number — are choosing to vaccinate their children.

“That, too, is their choice to make,” she said. “I respect whatever choice people make.”

Since Mennonites in Seminole tend to travel a lot between Mexico and southern Manitoba, where they have relatives, Siemens is aware this could be an issue if they carry the virus.

“But with the outbreak going on for four weeks, by now if someone comes to Manitoba from Seminole they shouldn’t be contagious,” she said, noting that Mennonites in the area like to plan travel around holidays. Easter falls on April 20.

“I think we are at the tail end of it,” she said.

In an emailed statement, the provincial government said there hasn’t been a secondary spread of measles infections in Manitoba since recent cases were identified.

If the virus is discovered in the province, public health officials work to identify contacts and exposure locations and offer the vaccine to people who are high-risk contacts.

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