Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Mike Williams

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in November 2001, Yupiaq Nation Chief Mike Williams discusses his fervent commitment to his people's subsistence way of life and how he runs the Iditarod dog sled race every year to promote sobriety, healthy lifestyles, and education for Alaskan children.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Williams, Mike. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Spokane, Washington. November 2001. Interview. 

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Mike Williams is a Yupiaq Eskimo born in the small village of Akiak, Alaska, in 1952 to the late Tim Williams, Chief of the Tribal Government of Akiak and Helena Williams, the sister of the traditional Chief Joe Lomack. As a child, Mike went with his family from camp to camp during the year with subsistence hunting and fishing, gathering food for the family and also for the dog teams. It was very hard but a good life, he recalls. Everything in the village was taken care of by a tribal council. Mike Williams learned the geography, the names of the rivers and landmarks and how his people had existed in earlier times from his grandmother. He grew up speaking only the Yupiaq language. He had two sisters and six brothers. All his brothers died due to accidents in the river or falling through ice. Mike is dedicated to telling the local and global community that accidental deaths can be avoided and that an alcohol and drug free life can be realized by his people. After boarding school at Wrangell Institute in southeast Alaska he attended high school at Chemawa Indian School in Oregon where he excelled in athletics, football, track and field and basketball. But sports alone did not satisfy him. He ran for and was elected student body president. A lifelong interest in politics and the rights of tribes was sparked at Chemawa where he was able also to build friendships with young people from many different tribes. One of his advisers, a Rosebud Sioux, saw his leadership potential and sent him to a summer leadership training institute. After high school Mike was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in South Korea. Returning to Alaska, he worked as a mental health counselor in Bethel and continued his education in Behavioral Science at Kuskokwin Community College. Mike Williams is a dedicated public servant of more than 30 years working with both Native and non-Native organizations. Today he is chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. He has been vice chairman of the Alaska State Board of Education and held offices with the National Congress of American Indians, the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Native American Rights Fund. He has served as the Director of the Alaska State Governor's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Advisory Board. Mike has been honored with the Most Inspirational Award in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Among the other honors he has received are Alaska State Legislature Award of Honor for Sobriety Advocacy and the Citizen of the Year Award of the National Social Worker's Association, Alaska Chapter. He is passionate about protecting tribal governments, the rights of tribes and building economic self-sufficiency for Alaska Natives. Dog mushing is his culture and it is his tradition. He runs the Iditarod Dog Sled Race to promote sobriety, healthy lifestyles and quality education for his people. Mike married his wife Maggie in 1976 and they have five children. His wife and family have always supported his mushing career. Without their full hearted support he maintains he could not lead the busy life of an advocate for tribes, mental health counselor and runner for sobriety. He also continues subsistence hunting and fishing and enjoys reading and karate. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Mike Williams in Spokane, Washington, November, 2001."

The several worlds of Mike William's childhood

Mike Williams:

"Well, when I was a little child my role model was my father of course and he was an avid dog musher and also a subsistence hunter and fisher and a good one. And I wanted to be the greatest hunter and fisherman that ever lived in our lands and to provide for my family, to provide a good home and to manage our resources. So in terms of wanting to do something for the community, I think my parents were really advocates for learning the White man ways and the words as much as we can and that was very important for them. For my dad to tell me that I have to learn as much as I can of the words of the White man and that I would need that western education to protect our resources. So I think that...he did a good job in terms of keeping my identity intact while sacrificing me to this new education and I think he wanted me to know both worlds and I think he did a very good job."

On keeping the Yupiaq language intact, different approaches of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the missionaries

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think the missionaries came to us and the Moravian Church at that time. They came and they advocated for us to keep our language intact and I think it was the BIA schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, that discouraged speaking of our language in the classes and they are the ones that washed my dad's mouth with soap and my mother's mouth with soap for speaking in our own language in our schools. But the missionaries for some odd reason advocated that our language should be intact and that our culture and the dance should be intact and it was our own people that did it to ourselves with our Yupiaq dance. Missionaries for the most part wanted us to keep our way of life intact. One of the missionaries by the name of John Kilbuck was a Delaware Indian and he came from the Delaware Tribe and came up to us as a missionary to our community in Akiak. And he's the one that spoke to our people about establishing reservations for people and to keep our language intact and to keep our culture intact and he, I think, was a big influence to the missionaries that came to our communities. And he was a big advocate for to claim our land. And in the long run I think the missionaries tried to help as much as they can in keeping our culture and our languages alive. And they have done a lot of translating of the Bible to our language and we have a written language. And they have done a very good job of...my grandfather and my grandmother were involved in translating the Word and they translated the whole New Testament from English to Yupiaq so they did a very good job of that. And right now they're translating the whole Old Testament from English to Yupiaq, word for word. So they're doing a very good job. But all in all I think for the most part the federal government or the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to assimilate us into who we aren't and to the melting pot of the American society and that our way of life can be better and that our way of life can be better in terms of our living conditions and our ways of doing things. So I think for the most part the education program tried to change us into who we aren't."

As a child and teen, boarding schools contrasted with the traditional life Williams had known

Mike Williams:

"My older brothers were the first ones to go to boarding schools in Chemawa, Oregon, and some of them ended up in Chilocco Indian School and Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka. So at age 14 I was removed and put in a dormitory and all the rules and regulations and the haircuts. It was a very tough change from living in Akiak with loving parents and community and no running water and no electricity and no television and going into Wrangell Institute was a big change when there was television and there were phones. And I remember this guy, one of the teachers, teaching us how to use telephones. ‘And this is a telephone and this is how you dial.' That was a very big change. We never thought about watching television, we never grew up watching television and there we watched, the first time I seen a football game and other programs as TV shows as well. nd that was a big change and having to live with rules and regulations and with others. It was a big change and we were homesick and we wanted to go home because it was a very strange environment. I just questioned why my parents allowed this to happen. We would go home in the summers and then Chemawa Indian School came around and again our parents sacrificed us saying that, ‘education is very important, you need to learn the White man ways and get Western education.' So off we went to Chemawa Indian School. Again it was a very big change from going to Wrangell Institute to high school. And I think that was one of the best parts of going to an Indian school is I have made many friends from all over Alaska and other tribes and all over northwest and in the Navajo country. It was a hard adjustment from a loving family into a dorm life and at a very young age. But again, I think our parents keep telling us or keep writing to us that, ‘education is very important, that we need for you to learn as much as you can so... there are going to be some issues coming up with our lands and our resources that you need to fight on.' So encouragement by our parents to go on and the sacrifice they made for the children to go on was very difficult for us but I think it was... they felt it was necessary and they knew our language was intact and our culture was intact but they felt that we needed to learn the other ways as well. I think that was a very tough experience but I think it was a very good experience in terms of establishing contacts with the people in the northwest and the Navajo country and to see tribal governments in operation at first hand and getting involved in school politics as well. So I think that was a very good experience in terms of playing sports as well. We've seen some football games on TV but we wanted to play. A lot of us Eskimos came down and we've never put on uniforms to play football and we just seen excerpts of football games when we were going to Wrangell Institute. And I never dreamed that I would be playing football and there was several of us Eskimos that put on the equipment. And one memorable experience that I've seen was the hip pads that came along with the equipment. We were discussing the Inupiat and Yupiaq people and the coaches didn't tell us how to put on the equipment but we had to figure that out. And we put on our shoulder pads and the hip pads were very, the hardest one to figure out because of the tailbone or tail guard that we were wondering what we needed that for. But we put on the hip pads and we figured that it was to protect our private parts. So we Eskimos, we turned it around and we thought that tail guard was for protection of our private parts. But that was the most uncomfortable feeling after putting the pants on and a lot of us were running outside to practice but it was very uncomfortable in running and we were wondering why the coaches didn't tell us what those protections were for. That was for tail bone protection. So we reversed it and that was a little more comfortable. But I think with all those changes, those were very interesting and learning experiences for us. It was a big change, a major change from living in a small community and the school was four times big as my community. It was, I think the transition was pretty rapid but again we were homesick, we wanted to go home and hunt and fish and to live that life in the wilderness. I really missed hunting and fishing and that was the hardest part."

Learning politics and leadership at Chemawa Indian School

Mike Williams:

"I've had three years of sports but politics sort of interested me. I need to do something different, I need to try politics so I ran for student body president and I didn't know...I organized my campaign and had a campaign manager, which I picked out a popular guy in our school and he eventually delivered but I didn't know anything about Robert's Rules of Order and how to run meetings period. I was very green in terms of running meetings and politics and budgeting and setting policy with our schools. I didn't know what I was getting into. I think that was the best move that I've ever made in terms of establishing myself and leadership skills into the future. Of course sports were there but I seen myself not becoming a professional sports person, playing football or basketball. I wasn't tall enough to play college basketball or become a professional athlete. So I seen the opportunity with politics and that was the first time I was prepared for leadership positions where I had a real good adviser that was from Rosebud and he's a Sioux and he was a very knowledgeable adviser. He pointed me in the right direction and went to summer leadership institute and getting me away from fishing. And I went to St. Louis, Missouri for the summer to learn about how to become a leader and that was an institute for student body presidents, which all the presidents, the majority of presidents were from all over the schools in the country, from New York, from Florida, from all over. I think it was a very good experience for me and I learned how to run meetings and to know about Robert's Rules of Order and how to conduct meetings and to provide, how to provide leadership. It opened my eyes during that one summer when I would go there and participate with other leaders or school student body presidents. And it was a good learning experience on how to be a leader."

Alaska becomes the 49th state in 1959

Mike Williams:

"I was seven years old when Alaska became a state and I was 17 years old when Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed in 1971. At that time many of our people were out hunting and fishing and gathering and many of our people did not participate in the statehood movement and I think there was only one Alaska Native in that first constitutional convention that they gathered. Our people for the most part weren't involved in the shaping of our state constitution and it was for the most part people from the outside that established the State of Alaska and our people for the most part did not participate in that because of the remoteness of our communities. But there was news in 1959 that Alaska became a state and without any consultation or without any input by our Native people. And after that I think the state keep selecting lands or taking lands and people keep getting land and that's when I think Morris Udall said, ‘Gee whiz, people are keeping taking land here and there. We need to have a land freeze.' And the oil was discovered in the North Slope and that I think prompted the land to be settled and without any settlement. The pipeline couldn't be built from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and everybody knew there was oil. And again our people during that time were not fully participating and there was no consent by the tribal governments at that time."

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed by Congress in 1971 eliminated 90 percent of Alaska Native land claims in exchange for guarantees of 44 million acres and a cash settlement

Mike Williams:

"And I was in Chemawa Indian School in 1969, '70, '71 and '72 and graduated in '72. But in 1969, '70 and '71 we took the land claims class and we studied the land claims and we were wondering why Alaska Natives were giving away our rights. Our aboriginal title was hereby extinguished; our hunting and fishing rights were hereby extinguished by the act. And all these extinguishments, we were wondering why Alaska Natives are agreeing to this. And being a junior in 1971 after studying the land claims with my peers we disagreed with the act and we felt that it was in the way terminating our rights, our lands and that we rightfully have and especially our aboriginal title to the land that people agreed to. Again we didn't have any say so being a very naí¯ve and very young person but I had strong feelings and my position was that Alaska Native people, our people should not agree to this bill or this land claims bill that diminishes our existence as people and that way we felt that it was a termination process for our people. And we tried to voice those concerns to our representatives and to people in Congress but it fell to deaf ears and we know it was crafted by the lobbyists that had interest in oil development and also by Congress. Congress convinced the Alaska Natives that we had a better deal of 44 million acres and $1 billion that was going to be going to our people to settle the land and that we would finally have land, our land. But I think we lost a lot in that, the land claims."

After military service Williams decides to train himself to be an educator and a politician

Mike Williams:

"After high school, I always wanted to be a coach and to involve myself into politics. And my thoughts were to become a teacher and to involve myself in making my people stronger in terms of getting ready for land claims and the land settlement. And also the problems that I've seen in the Native community that I wanted to do something further with our young people. And that is one of the reasons why I have been focusing on educational programs in Alaska. My brother and I were the last ones to be drafted into the United States Army. And I know I could have gotten deferment but we were the last ones to be drafted in the draft era and my brother ended up in Vietnam and he was there prior to my entry to the U.S. Army. And they couldn't send us both to Vietnam so I ended up in South Korea. And while he was serving in Vietnam I was serving in South Korea in the Army. That was one of the best experiences that I had in terms of learning more about discipline and about the protection of our country and the importance of services and being in the service. And my thinking at that point, ‘Well, I'll go along with the draft and further take advantage of the GI bill.' After my service in South Korea I became disabled and lost one eye and got out on a disability and decided to come back home. My brother and I came back home at the same time and he came back from Vietnam alive and I came home the next day. So we had a real good reunion at home. And we were finally, the family was finally together. But unfortunately after three months of stay by my older brother he overdosed on alcohol. And he survived the bullets in Vietnam but he didn't survive alcohol at our home. And that, I just felt, why [did] that happened? But I think he really had a hard time adjusting from the Vietnam experience into Akiak where he was not comfortable and he went through Post Traumatic Syndrome. And we had to deal with that in the three months that we were home and we had to deal with that and the only way that he could numb some of that terrible experience that he's gone through in Vietnam that the only way he could numb himself is through the use of alcohol and other drugs as well."

He begins advocacy for sobriety in the mid 1970s

Mike Williams:

"I decided to get back into the education where I wanted people to change or to avoid the terrible effects of alcohol. And I think that was the beginning of my advocacy for sobriety. And that was a terrible experience that we've gone through and we decided to advocate for sobriety. My dad was one of the first people that advocated for sobriety. So I decided to advocate for mental health programs and also substance abuse programs for treatment of people with problems."

Williams and his wife decide to raise their children in Akiak. He becomes active in the movement for tribal sovereignty.

Mike Williams:

"I was working full time and going to school full time for the two years and started mental health programs throughout Alaska and also substance abuse programs and saying that, ‘we need to take this problem to our own hands and deal with it.' And from there I think that my advocacy for running our programs started in terms of developing our own programs the way I think will work for our people. And at that time I took classes and kept going to school. That is when I met my wife and I decided to, after establishing mental health programs and my college education in Bethel that, and we got married and decided to raise our children back in Akiak, back in our village. And she had gone to school and taken business courses and became a bookkeeper for a very big corporation there in Bethel. So we decided to go back after getting married and raise our children in the village and that was our choice. There I became involved with our tribal government and to reassert our sovereign status and that was...well, when I began the tribal sovereignty movement in our communities and eventually I got elected to the tribal council and as a young man I have been involved with the tribal councils ever since and became, eventually became the chief of the village and of our tribal council. We began the movement at that time that we need to retake our programs and we needed to assert our rights as sovereign governments and despite the Native corporations, both regional corporations and village corporations under the Native Claims Settlement Act and that we need to keep our sovereign rights alive despite the efforts to terminate our rights in Alaska."

Based on the powerful grassroots actions of tribes Congress passes the National Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978

Mike Williams:

"And one of the major issues that we took on at that time, there was the tribal child that was removed by a state social worker and at that time we said, ‘We're tired of seeing many of our children being removed by the state social workers and put them into non-Native homes.' And at that time in 1975, '76, when that child was being removed that we objected to that permanently removing that child from a Native mother to a non-Native family. So we put a stop to that and it was Indian Child Welfare Act at that time and we got this lawyer guy by the name of Bert Terse from New York. and we knew that he was a lawyer from going to meetings, attending NCI meetings and other meetings that go around in the country and we began talking to Bert. We asked who would be a good Indian lawyer that would help us in our community to get that child back and we were very successful. Eventually that child came back to our community. I think that was a significant move by our tribe and that our children will never be removed without our consent or without the agreement of the tribal council, that we really wanted to keep our families together and keep our children in our communities. And I think that was one of the first major work that started in Alaska and we were the major players in asserting our tribal government's rights or keeping our children within the families or relatives in our communities. So that was significant work that we started up there and eventually this kid grew up in Akiak and went to high school in Akiak and during his high school years he became a heavyweight state champion. So I think I love to tell that story where one of our children we protected that eventually became a successful heavyweight champion of the state and he beat the guy by the name of Superman, his last name is Superman. So I think I like to tell that story because it was one of the success stories that we've seen and the significant victory that we had as tribal council in the state. And right now I think the majority of the policies in Alaska before children are being removed that they have a real good working relationship with the tribal governments with the state social service system. So I think that was significant and we also established a Yupiaq Nation where we are sovereign tribes and we want to tell the whole world that we haven't given up our rights and we started the Yupiaq Nation, which we, that despite the land claims and our other rights that were eroded or being extinguished that despite all that we want to keep our rights intact that we still have jurisdiction over our land and we still have jurisdiction over our members and we still have jurisdiction of our resources, which are the moose, the caribou, the fish and everything. And I think under that Yupiaq Nation charter we keep our rights intact."

In 1975 Congress passes the Indian Self Determination Act giving tribal governments more control over their tribal affairs and funds for education assistance

Mike Williams:

"And another significant issue that we took on was the education, the BIA program. And in 1980-85 we decided to contract those educational services to our K-8 program. And we used the Self Determination Act to contract with BIA. When we first started that, BIA said, ‘No, you can't do the contract, you can't do that because you've never ran the education program before and you're not qualified to do that.' We said, ‘Well, according to the Indian Self Determination Act we could do that and despite your objections we're going to do that. Here's the resolution.' And low and behold the Bureau of Indian Affairs said, ‘Okay, let's negotiate. Let's get the budget going.' And so from 1980-1985 we contracted the education program within our community and we hired and fired our administrators and our teachers at will. And that was the first time that we ever had total control over our educational program. And that was significant in a way that after the BIA told us that we could not operate that we went ahead and did that. So those are the two significant movements or efforts that we made at our tribal government level is the protection of our children and also education of our children."

How to prepare for difficult and adversarial situations

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think you have to do your homework and I think with...you have to do a lot of reading and preparing yourselves to really answer the questions that may arise beforehand. And I think with that effort, with the establishment of mental health programs, I think I did a lot of convincing to Indian Health Service and the negotiations. And we ran those programs and we convinced Indian Health Service that we could do that. We convinced that our kids can be protected and we did our homework with that. And also with the establishment of our educational programs, we also did our homework in convincing the passing of the resolution and establishing the school board and then getting the curriculum going and hiring our teachers. I think it takes a lot of planning and it takes a lot of meetings with our community members and we have engaged our tribal members in that process and whatever they mandated us to do we went ahead and did that. So when there is a mandate and when there is a charge for us to carry out something I think we need to be really prepared and have that blessing from the community to do that. And I think for the most part you need to have help from people that have done it before. During the Indian Child Welfare issues that we dealt with we collaborated with the south 48 tribes and we weren't the only ones that were dong that in terms of protecting our kids and there were other tribes from throughout the country that expressed some of those concerns that they had in terms of removal of Indian children from the parents and putting them into non-Indian homes. So we had collaboration going with that as well as the education programs. There were contract schools going on throughout the Indian Country from south 48 so we were collaborating with the Indian tribes that were doing contract work with the educational program. And I think you need to really collaborate with the other people that have done many of those things already so that's what we did and getting the best Indian lawyers we can find and the best people or finding people who've done it before."

Urban and rural issues and conflicts in Alaska

Mike Williams:

"For the most part I think the urban Native and the rural Native in terms of subsistence resources are together. Regardless of where the Alaska Native lives, we feel that that person has all those rights still intact that they can hunt and fish and survive the way they have done for thousands of years. We support that. But in terms of oil development I think that is the real, another real tough issue where the Inupiat people want to have oil development in the Anwar and the Quechan Indians wanting to protect the porcupine caribou who herd in that Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to protect from that development to occur."

Tribal governments, regional Native corporations and nonprofits make a complicated environment for getting things done

Mike Williams:

"We have 229 federally recognized tribes in Alaska and we have 12 nonprofit corporations within each region and we have of course 12 regional corporations and a 13th regional corporation outside of Alaska so it is very unique situation that we are in Alaska and I think in dealing with all those other organizations it makes it more complex. If we had one Indian Country and no corporations it would make life a lot easier in Alaska and do away with Native corporations and nonprofits and just have tribal governments. That would make life a lot simpler and we could do economic development, still run our casinos like the lower 48 and the land and trust issues and healthcare programs and BIA education programs. I think it would make life a lot easier if we had one organization."

Alaska Native subsistence fishing rights were upheld in the Katie John case

Mike Williams:

"For the most part I am a hunter and a fisherman. I am a subsistence hunter and fisherman. I depend on the fishing and hunting to survive and I practice what I preach. And that I will always have and that I will always practice and that I will always do that. Just before coming to NCI I had to really quickly get some fish and I'm trapping fish underneath the ice and I have to fish during the summer and put away and live as I did, as I described growing up in earlier years of my life and the way I was taught and I'm going to live that wonderful way of life that I still enjoy today and having dogs and everything that I need to survive. But the Katie John case, I think the issue has been with us for over 10 years and Katie John is a very good friend and the grandmother of all of the tribes in Alaska as we have gotten to know her and her lawsuit to keep her fishing rights intact where she has always done in Batzulnetas where she always had that fish wheel. She was told that she could not do that where she always filled so she was told that she's got to go way down to the river to get her fish not where her family always have done in Batzulnetas. I think over the years that we've been in court we've become, she has become well known in Alaska and I think the decision for Governor Knowles not to appeal the case was one of the most significant decisions that the governor did in not appealing this case to the United States Supreme Court and that was the major victory by Katie John and that State of Alaska was no longer going to fight her in court and that there was too much risk going in to the Supreme Court that the state might lose and Katie John might, it might become a lose-lose situation instead of a win-win situation for all of Alaska. And I think the governor did the right thing in not appealing the case to the Supreme Court."

Williams service commitment includes work for tribes on the local, regional and national levels

Mike Williams:

I'm currently the Chairman of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, which we enthusiastically organized in 1992-93. And I think we did the right thing in organizing the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, which we have 187 tribal governments membership just on tribal governments and we just have that membership. And I've been involved ever since in 1970s, 1980 tribal sovereignty movements and organizing of the United Tribes of Alaska and Alaska Native Coalition and then eventually the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. And currently I'm chairman of that for; I think I'm on my third year now. It's been never a dull moment in that organization and also our involvement with the National Congress of American Indians and I just have been serving my first term as Juneau area vice president for NCAI and I think that is a very important organization that supports tribal sovereignty throughout Indian Country at the national level. I'm in my last term with the Native American Rights Fund Board of Directors. I'm on the executive board right now and I'm on my last year and my last term and I've served for five years and it has been a wonderful experience working with John Echohawk and with the tribal sovereignty issues that we are dealing with throughout Indian Country. I think there's a lot more work to be done in the future with the protection of tribal governments or tribal sovereignty initiatives that we are working on right now. And I think with all that time commitment that is necessary and resources, sometimes I wonder where I'm finding all the time to do all that plus running the Iditarod and that takes more time and seems to...I don't know how I've done it before with full time work. I decided not to work full time anymore because I don't have the time to hold down a job but with the public service commitments that I've made I think that's one of the things that my dad taught me to do is if you believe in public service then do it. And with the support of my family and with the support of my tribe that I'm able to do the statewide organizations that I'm in and national organizations that I'm doing. My tribe has allowed me to do those things as well as my wife and children. So they strongly believe that in order to make a difference you need full support of the tribe and especially your family. So I'm fortunate to have a wife that really supports in what I do and she really believes that what we're doing is because of our future and because of our children. And I think that is what they see as what Chief Joseph did and see what the other warriors did to protect and do things for our future. So I think that's what I'm doing and I feel like I'm doing and I feel like I'm committed to do what is best for my children and for my future. And I have two grandchildren that I think need to be protected. For many years that I've been involved I have seen erosion of tribal sovereignty at the Supreme Court level and I've seen a lot of wars or I've read about all the wars that I've seen in the Indian Country ever since, for the last over 500 years and I feel that those issues are very important right now and we need to continue that battle."

Social, environmental and political dangers that Alaskan tribes face

Mike Williams:

"Well, I think the greatest danger that we face is again, like I've said, is the alcohol and substance abuse that are killing our people up there and suicides that I'm seeing at a very high level and the health programs or the health problems that we are seeing; cancer and diabetes and health problems that are deriving from the mineral development or environmental problems that we are seeing. I think that is the greatest threat I see is our people dying from all the diseases that were brought from the first contact. We had great deaths from influenza, tuberculosis, small pox and other health problems but the industries that develop our resources also has affected environmental problems as well as the changes that are made very quickly with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, especially our people changing real fast and changing overnight from being hunter/gatherer into the society where we're depending on cash and that transition problem going too fast. And then our people committing themselves, hanging themselves and shooting themselves and especially our young men. Also the erosion of our rights, the hunting and fishing rights and the erosion of tribal sovereignty in Alaska and the threat of being terminated completely as tribes and as Native people there. For many years the State of Alaska under its constitution and its statement that tribes do not exist in Alaska, there was no tribes in Alaska until the last time or this past year that the governor of Alaska finally recognized that there... tribes exist in Alaska. And also selling, the individual Native allotment owners selling their land to the highest bidder or the person that wants to buy it and that has... that's one of the biggest threats is of the loss of our lands and the control over our lands in Alaska."

Education and the protection of tribal self-governance will be Mike Williams' call for years to come

Mike Williams:

"We are intact and we need to make sure that that is protected and regardless of any administration both in federal level or the state level that we keep our tribal sovereignty intact and our sovereign rights intact at the statewide level. And I think we need to continuously educate the public, the organizations, our own Native corporations, our own people, our own backyard where we continuously educate the new people that are coming up from the lower 48 to Alaska and to continuously educate them about our issues and the importance of subsistence hunting and fishing rights and the importance of protection of our lands and protection of our resources. There are a lot of the industries; the oil companies, the mining companies and everybody that wants to take all the trees and everybody wants to come and develop and make the fast buck and go away and leave all the mess to us. That we don't want to see and that we as tribes benefit from that as well. We live in the richest state in the Union but we still live in the third world conditions and we're still trying to get funding from the Department of the Interior for a program to run our programs but we are so rich in our land but we are so poor. We still live in the third world conditions and we need to improve that."

Poverty and tragedy in Native communities and the need for the federal government's response

Mike Williams:

"In our Native corporations I've seen $20 in thirty years out of my Native corporations and that's how much we've seen as shareholders -- $20. Not everyone benefited from that and a lot of small Native, village Native corporations are on the verge of bankruptcy. So we haven't really seen any of the benefits and we still live in the third world conditions. And despite the oil development and despite the dividend program, despite the pipeline and those tribal communities within the pipeline, still haven't seen a dime and we still live in the third world conditions despite all the billions and billions of dollars that we generate. We still haven't really seen the benefits. With the issue of the September 11th disaster, I think our people have gone through that and personally I went through that in my own family in losing six brothers and more of my uncles and my relatives dying of diseases and dying of cancer and dying of what has been brought to our communities. And with the issue of that disaster on September 11th people need to realize what we as Native Americans have gone through or Alaska Natives and we were highly populated once but there were great deaths and that affected by people from the outside bringing in diseases to our communities and loss of our lands through these settlements. We've lost so much and people think that these health programs and education programs and these other programs think it's a free program. No, we paid for it big time already through the loss of our lands and through the people that have died along in the process. So we've had our own disasters here. And when the airline industries are in trouble the federal government just, $5 billion right there and... What about the housing issues and what about the healthcare problems and highest...? We have lowest per capita income in the country. It just...when we keep asking for by resolutions about more funding and better housing, water, educational program, healthcare program, all we hear is budget cuts. And that I think, here our people are dying, what are you going to do? Are you going to give us relief? And we haven't seen that. I wish the government would treat us as they treated the airline industry or the savings and loan scandal, when the banks are in trouble then the federal government comes in, ‘Here, we'll bail you out,' and I think we need that kind of treatment instead of having the lowest bottom of the totem pole getting that kind of money for tribal programs. So I think if we're going to be treated as governments and here we have our problems, we need to have that government to government relationship intact and people need to know that so we can have the American dream that everyone has in this country. A lot of our people still dream of that, the American dream where we live in the richest state of the Union and they can make, the government can make all kinds of weapons but what about our people. When we ask for improvement in the healthcare, improvement of our life and prevention of health problems that, why don't they give us the full resources and instead of fighting our tribal sovereignty which we always had and we have always had that inherent tribal sovereignty ever since, even before the contact, even before Columbus landed on this continent, we had our tribal governments intact and we took care of that. And I think this country owes us a lot and we just don't, we shouldn't be in a way fighting for every red cent to run our programs. We should have the full funding and full assistance from this very rich country."

Running the Iditarod for the health and future of his people

Mike Williams:

"Ever since the deaths of my six brothers, I decided to become proactive and take the story to the community. And of course I've been involved in the sobriety movement in Alaska for this past decade and ever since the last... My first brother died in 1973. So upon coming back from Vietnam and then right after that my brothers keep dying from accidental deaths and I keep advocating for sobriety and, ‘hey, let's prevent these from happening,' but in that process my brothers keep dying. At the end even though I was advocating I keep advocating for sobriety they keep dying. But I've been involved with the sobriety movement in Alaska and running the Iditarod and mid distance races to raise the awareness that we don't need this alcohol, we don't need these drugs and that we need to live a good life. And my message has been that once we are sober and educated we can do anything we want to do. We can protect our resources, we can protect tribal sovereignty, we can protect healthcare, we can improve healthcare programs and we can improve our education program and we can become really involved in making a healthy community for ourselves once again, as I have seen when I was growing up. So running the Iditarod has, it's a 1200-mile race through Alaska and what I've been doing is promoting sobriety movement and getting pledges over the years. And so far I have garnered over 60,000 sobriety pledges that people have said they're going to be sober for a year. And I think if 50 percent of those 60,000 pledges have succeeded then that next generation will succeed and it has a small snowball effect. And I've been trying to raise funds for advocacy programs and have been very successful in raising funding. But I have not been very successful personally in terms of raising funds to keep doing the Iditarod and I'd love to keep doing what I'm doing but I need some help. But I've raised enough funding for other programs and getting the awareness to the level that it has gone but personally I still need help to keep running that program."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Bill Hess – Photographer, Wassila, Alaska
Mike and Maggie Williams

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Roy Sampsel

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

Institute for Tribal Government Director Roy Sampsel is convinced that tribes have unique skills as natural resource managers. Sampsel often serves as a bridge between tribes and federal, state & local agencies. His past positions include Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Interior for the Pacific Northwest Region, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Policy, Department of Interior.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Resource Type
Citation

Sampsel, Roy. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. 2004. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Roy Sampsel has had a decade's long fascination with fish, water, forests, oceans, wildlife and the rights of Indian tribes. More than a fascination, he has maintained a steady and creative commitment to the sovereignty of Indian Nations and the protection of their natural resources. As a policy advisor to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission he has worked to protect, enhance and implement the tribal fishing rights of the Warm Springs, Yakima, Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes. Convinced that tribes have unusual skills and abilities as resource managers, he has worked behind the scenes and in front of the scenes to make sure tribes have a very solid seat at the table in the complex natural resource negotiations among federal and state agencies, tribal nations and other interests. Roy, who spent his early years in Broken Bow in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, is both Choctaw and Wyandot. His is a member of the Wyandot Nation. When his father went into the Navy in World War II, the family stayed with Roy's grandmother, a storyteller and a savvy strategist in conducting business with tribes on the reservation. She would often take Roy down to a tribal gathering place, one of the old creeks on the reservation on whose banks Roy says, ‘still stands a huge cottonwood tree.' The Sampsel family moved from Oklahoma to Tulane, Louisiana, then to Portland, Oregon, where Roy got the spark for public service from professors at Portland State University and from Oregon political leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties. After working at the Oregon Legislature, Roy had the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. where he served from 1971 to 1976 as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior for the Pacific Northwest Region. He was responsible for assisting the Secretary in developing and implementing departmental policy for federal resources and for a liaison with tribal and state governments and federal agencies throughout the region. From 1977 to 1979 he served as the first Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. He returned to Washington in 1981 serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs for the Department of the Interior. In this position he worked on Indian rights protection and natural resources policy including timber, fish, wildlife, oil, gas and minerals. He also worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on putting into action the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act of 1975. He relished participating in a great time of legislative accomplishments on behalf of Indian people. Roy Sampsel is known as a generous, openhearted leader. Helping people figure out how to solve problems is a pleasure for him and he will often say in reference to periods of challenge, difficulty or accomplishment, ‘I can't even tell you what an absolutely wonderful time that was.'"

Roy Sampsel's family lived in Broken Bow and Tahlequah in his early years. When his father went into the Navy for World War II, the family stayed with Roy's grandmother

Roy Sampsel:

"My mother was the youngest of 13 children and I was the youngest of all of the grandchildren so we had a great sort of time with my grandmother. She had a great deal of influence on my life at the time. She was a great teacher and spoke all of the Indian languages for the civilized tribes in Oklahoma: Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Chickasaw. She was an interpreter if you will for a lot of people who were trying to figure out how to do business or have dealings with the individual tribes. She was a fascinating woman. I can still remember her asking me how old I was as I was getting to be tall and taller than she was. And so I can remember when she took my hand, and I didn't think very much of it at the time, but kind of pronouncing that I was a man now, I was no longer her little boy. Of course that was the youngest of all of her grandchildren that she'd had. I had a lot of uncles that were gone before I was ever born of course because they had died in the first World War and I can remember granny saying to me that two of the saddest things that had ever happened was one, losing me as a baby cause I was now a man, and living longer than most of her sons."

Roy's father became a psychiatric social worker and the family eventually moved to Portland, Oregon. Roy had a variety of school experiences from Broken Bow to Portland.

Roy Sampsel:

"When we were in Broken Bow it was an Indian school in Tahlequah. I'm not sure if it was a state school or an Indian school but it was all Indian students. And then in New Orleans we lived in the student housing section at Tulane, which was a relatively wealthy section of New Orleans at the time. So it was not unusual to go to school in New Orleans and have classmates delivered there in their family limousine. So it was relatively...I wish I could remember the, there was a Mexican student. Anyway, he and I fought every morning with all the other kids. So it was kind of fun. Finally got a teacher who said, ‘that's not really a cool thing to do.' Franklin High School was a place where I decided; it's where I kind of developed my political student government interest, that type of thing. I was always better at politics and student government than I was at school itself, which was one of the things that was fun about Franklin. It was a place in which I got a lot of encouragement both from other student leaders that had been there prior to me getting interested and a faculty that was encouraging folks for that type of participation."

Roy learned from his professors at Portland State and from political leaders like Senator Mark Hatfield and Oregon Governor Tom McCall

Roy Sampsel:

"Dr. Garboni had one of the greatest and funniest lines about me ever. There was a student/faculty committee that they were appointing students to participate with faculty on the committee and he was advocating that I be one of those students and he was talking to his other faculty members at the faculty meeting and said, ‘Roy Sampsel is the smartest C student I've ever had.' That was kind of the classic reference to me. I was always the smartest C student that a bunch of these guys had ever had but we had a great time together and we got to be very, very close friends. And the University and the students that were there at the time had that opportunity to have that great sort of dialogue of politics and public service and communication at the same time."

After honing his skills in a job at the Oregon State Legislature, Roy went to work for Secretary of the Interior Roger Morton

Roy Sampsel:

"In the early part of the Nixon administration and he'd been the first kind of easterner that had been named Secretary of the Interior and we had...so they were looking for somebody that had a little bit of public affairs experience but who also understood some of the Western politics to work with him and Roger C.B. Morton. So Rog Morton was the Secretary of Interior starting in '71. He had actually got...I guess he started in '70 but in '71 they said, ‘We'd like you to come and work as part of his communication team,' and that was done primarily because of the political context. We did not know each other. We'd never really met. But some of the western Republicans were a little bit nervous to have this east coast guy running the Secretary of the Interior. And that was a great opportunity for me cause it kind of reintroduced me back into Indian affairs at a political level and at a level in which we had a lot of changes taking place. So here I was this basically Indian kid who had left Oklahoma, came out to Oregon, got involved politically in those types of public affairs types of discussions, had gotten involved politically both in terms of Democrat/Republican politics, now going to work for a Secretary of the Interior who had huge Indian issues on his plate. At the same time you had U.S. v. Washington taking place. So those were very high profile Indian treaty fishing cases. At the same time you had Wounded Knee going on, Alcatraz, the takeover of the BIA building in Washington, D.C. A very good friend by the name of Louie Bruce who was the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. Louie Bruce was...ended up being a very great friend but was a person who had...they teased him when he first got in by saying that he was the only Republican Wall Street Indian they could find. Louie had worked in public affairs and worked in advertising and kind of the fame and fortune of creating the slogan for Miller Beer, ‘The Champagne of Beer,' was very well written and had been successful both financially and business wise, came in to be the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the time as the Commissioner when it was exploding with AIM and Wounded Knee and ended up being perhaps the only person during that period of time that could have held things together. He ended up...he's passed away now but he ended up being a great friend and everybody remembered him as probably the Commissioner of the 20th century for that period of time."

Major fishing rights and environmental issues came to the fore in the early 1970s

Roy Sampsel:

"So the environmental issues were huge. Legislative wise, you're at a period of time in which a small, relatively small group of people are working with a Democratic Congress to figure out how you're really going to implement, NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act because it had just been passed a little bit earlier and now you had huge issues like what was the NEPA requirement to build something like the Alaska pipeline? Well, part of the excitement of the time was that with all of these issues, all of which touched each other, the environmental issues touched each other, the treaty right issues had tremendous implications to what it would mean in terms of the fishing relationship between Canada, the United States and Alaska because you had those fisheries all of which went into the various jurisdictions, none of which had been resolved yet. You had major pieces of legislation that were being passed. Indian Self-Determination and Education, the Nixon administration came out with a major Indian policy, hadn't had one in literally decades and it said, ‘Indian self-determination without termination reversed the termination policy of the ‘50s; major, major policy statement of fact. But with everybody kind of struggling about how would you implement that, what did it mean in relationship to AIM and the real poverty and problems that are taking place on Indian reservations? What did it mean in relationship to those environmental concerns that are now becoming very, very sensitive and key both to the treaty and legal obligations that the United States had for Indian tribes? So we were passing things like Endangered Species Act, same time frame. Clean Air, Clean Water Act, implementation of NEPA and then how are you going to co-manage between tribes and non-Indians, major resources like the fishery resources that had been in the courts. So it was within that sort of context that not only did I get the opportunity to work with the Secretary of Interior but with the other assistant secretaries that were dealing with these issues, all of which were pushing this sort of environmental Indian awareness climate together with some very significant changes that were taking place both within the Congress and within the administration. So an exciting five or six years."

The excitement of converging issues, Native treaty rights, the environment, economic development

Roy Sampsel:

"I think it was the sense that there was great change taking place and that no individual change, act or personality was insulated from the other. Nat Reed was an assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Nat had kind of an Ichabod Crane character about him because he was thin and came out of Florida and he had wealth. He essentially was one of those people who had served on a number of commissions and a number of positions in government basically for a dollar a year because he had this great sense of social responsibility. And so in this Nixon administration he came in with this wonderful sort of environmental ethic that had been gained during this period of time. I can still remember Nat trying to understand the relationship between the Native rights in Alaska and his concern for building parks and refuges and how was he going to do that with this Native Indigenous subsistence right. It didn't seem to fit. So here was this wonderful person wrestling with what his job was in relationship to this overriding responsibility that he had...you couldn't learn it in school, you hadn't been taught it, there wasn't a place to easily pick I up, with an administration who said, ‘Hey, Indians have rights and Indians have their right to be self determined and educated.' This sounds a little silly to be doing that in the latter part of the 20th century but in fact this is when it was starting to come together or back together again in this sort of awareness. You also had a political climate in Alaska that said, ‘We don't want reservations. We don't want this settlement of this lands issue and the building of this pipeline which is very, very important to us economically to be hampered by the fact that we're creating reservations in this state.' Therefore you ended up with something called the Native Claims Settlement Act which essentially changed the character of Native people by creating corporations."

The Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 was a money-land settlement with Alaska Natives establishing regional corporations and terminating certain rights

Roy Sampsel:

"Thirteen regional corporations, village corporations, that would be given land and resources from the oil revenues as the means by which to insure that there would be success or assimilation of Native people into the broader society without what was perceived to be the inherent failure of the lower 48 reservation Indian situation. So when you asked what was there, you had all of this coming together at a time in which it hadn't been sorted out but you knew that this was, that period of time was in fact going to be a major change and if you can get involved with pieces of it maybe you could help make some of those changes better."

As special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior he had frequent contact with tribal communities

Roy Sampsel:

"In Alaska I probably went to I would say at least half, maybe 60 percent of all the villages and it was a timeframe that was just absolutely fascinating. I had not spent any time in Alaska before doing that so getting a chance to meet the tribal leaders, getting a chance to meet all the people that was very, very exciting. In the lower 48 the answer is, yeah, I got to spend a lot of time talking to tribal folks about a range of issues and the...I think probably some of the most tense times were when we were dealing in Sioux Country around the Wounded Knee timeframe. Up in Red Lake; that was during a period of time in which all of this was taking place. You had Roger Jordain under a tremendous amount of fire from the dissention within the tribe and its own people. So yeah, I spent a lot of time with a lot of folks. The difference in doing it at that particular level is that you were essentially talking to leadership about a issue of the moment as opposed to where do you want to be in a few years, where do you see the change taking you and that was kind of the exciting part about dealing with specific issues cause you could actually sit down with the folks that were involved in the fish commissions or getting involved in the fish commissions in the later ‘70s. And they had a vision of where they wanted to see things go and what they were trying to fight and protect for."

Tribal leaders of the recent past, Roger Jordain, Red Lake, Chippewa Cree; Wendell Chino, Mescalero Apache; Bob Jim, Yakima; Lucy Covington, Colville

Roy Sampsel:

"Respect for each other but they disagreed a lot on a lot of things and they were grand leaders of their time. They were cutting edges in a time in which the things that they had had to fight for were changing a little bit. They were very distrustful of government and what it was trying to do but also very demanding that government had a responsibility, that those treaties meant things, that there was a trust obligation of the United States that extended beyond the Bureau of Indian Affairs and that it wasn't just based upon the land, the treaties talked about education, it talked about healthcare, it talked about those things that were a piece of the federal trust responsibility. Yeah, they were very articulate spokesmen and they had visions for their people. I don't know that anybody will ever really understand what Wendell Chino did but he was a rock and there was no question about it, there was that sort of presence. When he was there to make a comment and to talk about things, you knew it was worth listening to and you knew it was serious. There were a number of people during that same period of time that we're going at. Yakimas had a...Yakima tribe in Washington had Bob Jim. Bob was a wonderful, strong Indian leader. When the Native people in Alaska were wrestling with how they were going to deal with the Native Claims Settlement Act, Bob Jim went to his council and said, ‘We need to help these people.' The Yakima tribe loaned the Alaskan Native leadership $250,000, which was a lot of money in those days, a lot of money today but a lot of money in those days, so that they could get organized to deal with the federal government because he believed it was that important. I was dealing with a water rights issue at the time because I was working in Interior. And we called all of the tribal leadership and tribal attorneys together to deal with this particular question and a lot was going on, it was a two day meeting. We were into the second day and I can still remember Bob Jim standing up and saying, ‘Well, Roy,' he said, ‘I really enjoyed the fact that you've been doing this today.' He said, ‘I'd like to ask all of the non-Indian folks that are here just if they wouldn't mind leaving for awhile so some of us Indians can get together and talk about this a little bit.' He was very courteous about it and at the end of that they...of course people started picking up their things and leaving cause they respected Bob Jim's desire. And about...as they were starting to leave he said, ‘Now, Roy, I want you to stay.' He said, ‘I want you to stay.' So he got in there and he shut the door and he said, ‘I want you to understand what water means to me and what it means to...' and he went around the room because he said, ‘I think you're dealing with this in too much of an abstract legal sense. There are attorneys to deal with it legally but this is what water means to us.' It was dynamic and these were people who understood what it meant to be Indian, understood what it meant to be Indian in a time of conflict and controversy."

The Indian Self Determination and Education Act of 1975 gave tribal governments increased control of their affairs and funding for education assistance

Roy Sampsel:

"What I think the legislation that changed the character, that represented a major shift if you will in federal policy was the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act. Not because of the detail of the act but for the recognition that tribes were in fact not going to go away. That the termination and the assimilation era that had been in the ‘50s and early ‘60s was not where we wanted to be as a nation anymore and that there was a recognition that tribes had the ability to not only run but operate their own form of government. So the significance was this major change. The other piece that was significant about it is that this came about during the timeframe in which you had guys by the name of Forrest Girard who was working on the Indian committee with Senator Scoot Jackson of Washington. Scoot Jackson had been one of the architects of the termination period and here was this man, chairman of this committee, with Forrest Girard an Indian person working on his stand, working with the administration to create this piece of legislation. It was a significant turnaround and Indians seizing upon that as the means by which to identify how they chose to do business with the federal government and how the federal government were going to have to respond to them in the future."

Working in the administration of President Richard Nixon

Roy Sampsel:

"It would be wrong to characterize him as a person who had this great passion for Indian self-government and the rest of it. What he did is he understood that there were people who did and he let them move forward in a way that I think speaks well for his overall leadership. It was a time that it may have happened anyway regardless of who was president. I don't want to give too much credence to some of these things that just are necessary and are evolving anyway. So if you look at the Nixon timeframe, he did things like return Blue Lake to the Pueblos, his tremendous culturally significant event because he knew that Indian self-determination and the right for tribes to have this sort of... required specific actions that would demonstrate there was in fact a change."

Roy returns to the northwest to work with tribes keeping old friends and allies

Roy Sampsel:

"I decided that there were a couple of things that needed to happen. One, I wanted to work closer with the Indian issues on a specific basis and I was fortunate enough to be in the northwest and the fact that you had a few things that had been achieved in the federal courts didn't mean that they were being implemented and the question was, ‘Could you implement a court treaty right? Could you make it work?' And we had the advantage of having some great Indian leadership at the time and some pretty gutsy folks that were sitting around trying to figure out how to make that happen. And tribes had understood that they were gaining in terms of their management responsibility and that they weren't going to go away. A guy by the name of Wyman Babby had been back as a young Indian person working with Louie Bruce. Louie Bruce, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, first chairman of the Nixon administration and he had ended up being the area director for Aberdeen, Wounded Knee, young Indian man basically beat up by that period of time. I brought him on my staff in Portland, Oregon, in the Secretary's office because quite frankly he didn't have any place else to go. He was looking for...he still wanted to be active so I take Wyman Babby and let him go work for Don Hodel. During this period of time Don Hodel says, ‘Gee, there's this treaty thing going on with Indian fishing rights and we're right kind of in the middle of it, aren't we?' And the answer is, ‘Yes.' So this is a period of time in which Wyman Babby, because of his education and the opportunity to work with the Indian people out here, has determined that maybe what Don Hodel ought to do is be the one who leads the charge. So during that period of time on the Columbia River you've got Don Hodel working with the tribes to reach the first agreement between the treaty tribes and Bonneville Power Administration that they have a seat at the table to deal with these issues."

The Columbia River Treaty Tribes, Yakima, Nez Perce, Warm Springs, Umatilla

Roy Sampsel:

"That memorandum of agreement between the four tribes signed by the Bonneville Power Administration really broke things open because it made the state very nervous and very unhappy. So that agreement was then modified and was signed also not only by the four treaty tribes and the Bonneville Power Administration but the Governor of Idaho, the Governor of Washington and the Governor of Oregon. The Governor of Oregon at the time was a guy by the name of Bob Straub, Dan Evans in the State of Washington and Cec Andrus in the State of Idaho. And so during that period of time is when you get the commissioned organized, that's when you get the tribal Indian commissions organized, you get this sort of expansion if you will of that authority, get the negotiation between the Puget Sound tribes on the U.S. v. Washington, the Bolt decision timeframe because the administration wanted very, very much to have a settlement of that court case. So there was a formal negotiation with the tribes, the State of Washington and President Carter had three cabinet officials as part of that team, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Interior. While all of this is taking place within this context about how do we begin to implement a court case and what is the United States' responsibility not only to file the case and to win it but then to implement it to make sure that the intent of that court case is in fact carried out, how much resource in terms of money is needed so all of this is being debated. How much authority do tribes have? What does co-management really mean?"

The strengths of the Pacific Northwest Tribes in the negotiations

Roy Sampsel:

"The one thing you can say about the tribal people at the time is that they never blinked. They knew exactly what it meant to them and they knew exactly what the United States was going to have to do. Now, we're still working to try to figure out what that means on any given day and how it still needs to be applied but during those late ‘70s and into the early ‘80s, there was this sort of commitment that we have won this right in the courts and the federal government needs to now step up to the plate to make sure that those rights are able to be implemented and that there is no further erosion."

Roy served as the first Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission from 1977-1979. The Northwest Indian Fish Commission in Puget Sound had been formed in 1974.

Roy Sampsel:

"I can still remember the meeting in which they asked if I'd be willing to come and be the Executive Director. We were meeting at the Portage Inn up in Dalles and the tribal leadership was up there and our tribal attorneys were involved and I said, ‘Well, let me just think about this for a minute.' And they said, ‘Well, you don't have too much time to think about it cause we've got a lot of work to do.' And so I said, ‘Okay, suppose I said yes, what would my first job be?' They said, ‘Well, you would have to go to Washington, D.C. and get some money cause we have no way to pay you.' And so that was sort of the...kind of the humor if you will about also and the importance of how would you actually put one of these commissions together? The commission in Puget Sound had been operating for a few years and it had gotten started a little bit earlier and we were still wrestling with those issues. Now, in comes the new administration and President Carter wants to try to figure out if they can figure out how to negotiate an agreement, a settlement to the disputes and the court cases in Puget Sound. So while we've started the Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, I'm not its executive director and being asked by the Puget Sound tribes if I will be their lead negotiator in negotiating with the State of Washington and the federal government during the supposed settlement negotiations. It was absolutely a fascinating timeframe. Now, why would a executive director from the Inter-Tribal Fish Commission on the Columbia River be asked to be the negotiator for the Puget Sound tribes? And the reason is because the Yakimas were a party to both cases and saw the need for somebody who they trusted to be a piece of this negotiating team and all of this earlier sort of experience that I'd had doing all these things, there weren't a whole lot of Indian folks that had actually worked in the administration and worked politically and so it was that sort of...all of that background experience now became a useful tool in how could you start to implement a treaty right. And what type of skills would you bring to a negotiating table? Okay, Roy, you can go negotiate but your job is to give away absolutely nothing and the State of Washington had hired a negotiator, a gentleman by the name of Bill Wilkerson. Bill then goes on later in his life to become the Fish and Wildlife Director for the State of Washington. And all of us in those period of times were trying to sit around and figure out how could you craft certain types of agreements that were consistent with what the court had said and consistent with what the tribes wanted and needed in order to be able to implement their treaty right."

Values and strengths on which he drew in these times

Roy Sampsel:

"That's the beauty of grandma and mom and dad who...granny who had that great Indian wisdom, mom and dad who survived the Depression and going to Indian boarding school in the ‘30s. The political teachings of Frank Roberts and all of those folks and so basically the people that had been teaching me how to do specifics had also taught you how to deal with opportunity and controversy and the challenge. The leadership that wouldn't allow you to fear failure or to understand that there was even an option to quit, how could you possible do that with people who hadn't quit in their entire lifetime or in the lifetimes of their parents or their grandparents. This was not something...it was not casual and it wasn't just political, it was very, very significant in terms about the culture and the religion of those people. You could not...you could not not do what was needed. It wasn't allowed. It wasn't an acceptable alternative. So what you didn't know you learned and what you didn't know you created. Blind luck, a lot of it."

Serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs under Secretary of the Interior James Watt

Roy Sampsel:

"He was one of the people who probably did more to damage himself than anybody could have done for him. And I say that because he had a sense of what it needed to be, he didn't really understand what it was and he understood that self-determination was really a piece of how you turned Indian reservations and Indian tribes around was the ability to have great economic independence, greater economic independence from the federal government. He didn't quite understand the relationship between the tribal government doing that and what was necessary. And I have known every Secretary of Interior since Stuart Udall who served in the Kennedy administration and without exception most of the Secretaries of Interior have left their position disappointed that they were not able to do more in relationship to their tribal and Indian responsibility and part of that is I think because none of them truly had an understanding of what it would take to implement a trust relationship with tribes. This particular Secretary that we're dealing with now in this administration, Gale Norton, working for the Bush administration inherited a hundred year old failure of federal government to deal honestly with trust assets of individual Indians and tribes. Now, how...can you imagine that happening in any other avenue of society in the United States of America in which you would have 100 year of failing to deal with fiduciary responsibilities associated with dealing with individual Indians and tribal resources, cash, real dollars going to real accounts not being able to be tracked or understood? Gale Norton didn't do that but she is the lady in charge of that department now. So for 100 years Secretaries of Interior in the federal government fail Indian people. And when you get back to an individual Secretary, they each understood pieces of it but never understood it enough to take it seriously as a responsibility to fix the deficiencies which allowed for...Jim Watt speaking about the need to create Indian wealth while his department was managing billions of dollars of Indian monies and not being able to figure out that that was a primary responsibility that he had as Secretary. So pieces of this are still weaving themselves together into a fabric that I think will speak well for where Indians end up at say the mid point of the 21st century."

A perspective on tribes from the future

Roy Sampsel:

"You have to remember the time and schedule that tribes are on are a little bit different than the tribes and schedules that others might be on so they're going to be here for a long time and as many of my Indian friends will tell me, we're not going anywhere. We have our homes, we have our lands, our reservation, we have our homeland that we're...so you can change, society can change, it can change but we're going to still be here. So these sort of fixes that we're talking about will in fact take place. We don't know exactly what the picture of Indian America will look like another 50 years from now but I will tell you there will be an Indian America and the picture will be brighter than it is today, perhaps even superior to other societies that have failed to live with both their culture and their religion and their beliefs."

Leadership in Indian Country and the examples of the late Joe de la Cruz (Quinault) and Lucy Covington (Colville)

Roy Sampsel:

"I think Indian leadership will be enhanced by understanding that there have been previous great Indian leaders and that the ability to see that may encourage people to pursue it. I guess I would say the same thing about...Indian leadership is part of a tribal political process as well as a cultural process and if you're well grounded in your roots and the culture and the history of your people and your tribe, then you have to make a decision about whether or not the politics of it is something that you want to pursue and endure. What makes a great United States Senator? I would be hard to draw that profile. What makes a great President? Maybe the fact that he or she was a great Senator or a great Congressman or a good Governor or maybe it's just the events in which they find themselves and how they respond to the crisis of the moment. Would Lucy Covington have such an important place in my sense of history if she hadn't jumped off that tractor as a farmer in Colville and decided there was no way they were going to terminate her tribe? I don't know. If they hadn't been trying to terminate her tribe, would she have jumped off the tractor? So when you start looking at pieces of this, part of it is events and part of it is the fact that there is this sense of responsibility. And I don't know how an individual tribe or an individual person emerges to take on that level of responsibility but it's a personal thing. It's something that they are willing and want to do. Joe de la Cruz who was...there was never a meeting that Joe de la Cruz wasn't willing to go to. He was willing to participate at all levels because he was in some sense afraid not to for fear of what might happen if there wasn't that presence there. But I don't think there is an easy way to say, ‘What is...why did certain tribes have great leaders at this moment?' Well, they may have had spectacular leaders 200 years ago and we just don't know about it."

Tribes and Washington, D.C. politics in late 2002

Roy Sampsel:

"I don't see this administration being in a position or having as a priority great changes that would increase dollars and wealth to Indian Country and Indian tribes. Nor do I see it in a position in which it would be advocating additional resources for natural resources types of issues that Indian tribes are concerned about. I think the greatest sense that I see about Indian tribes and this particular Congress that's coming up and with this administration is that you have the growth of Native American caucuses in both the House and the Senate who are increasing in membership and are bipartisan. Now, that tells me that there is an understanding that the federal trust responsibility to Indian tribes and that special relationship is better understood now than it has been in the past and it is bipartisan in nature, not partisan in nature. I don't know of a Democratic or Republican way to improve Indian housing, to improve Indian health services delivery. There are ways in which it can be done but for the most part it's pretty well understood that those are responsibilities that need to be met. Now will the resources be there? More likely when you have greater money and you probably get a better response out of Democratic Congresses more than Republican Congresses but we'll have to wait and see. I don't see a major change coming about because there is a party in charge of all three. I'm encouraged by the fact that we see a bipartisan approach coming out of both the House and the Senate, Native American caucuses and I think that will have an influence on the budgeting that the President puts forth in future budgets. I think that I am more concerned about the Supreme Court now than I have been but anybody that's been tracking Indian affairs over the last number of years have been concerned about the Supreme Court for the last decade and a half and unless there is a legislative redefinition of federal responsibility and as a result of that the Congress defining the rights and responsibilities of Indian governments, I see continued erosion of that, regardless of which court is in there. But I don't see anything happening positive with this Court now or in the immediate future."

The changes in Indian Country and what's ahead

Roy Sampsel:

"A couple of these may surprise you. I think there are more people willing to say they are Indian now than there were 30 years ago. I think there is a greater personal pride in being an Indian person. There is I think a greater sense that...from the general population that Indians may have a unique wisdom that maybe wasn't appreciated as much 30 or 35 years ago as it is now and that the logic of taking care of the land and the water and the, if you will the cultural and religious significance of that Indian people is having a rebirth in non-Indian thought and pattern. I think that individual Indian entrepreneurship growth in terms of economic self sufficiency and development is what's going to be the most exciting thing to observe over the next couple of decades."

Roy has a reputation for goodwill and generosity: his comments

Roy Sampsel:

"It doesn't have to be big, it just has to be real. You've really got to care that this individual or this action or that type of activity will in some way be of value to something beyond what is now and certainly beyond who you are, that it isn't enough just to be right and to give the speech, it has to work and has to work over time and that requires the persistence and the diligence to make change happen."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
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Editing
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Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
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Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
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Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
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This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government  

 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: LaDonna Harris

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, longtime advocate LaDonna Harris discusses her decades of tireless work on behalf of Indian tribes, civil rights, and world peace. Her most compelling task today is forming new leaders through the Ambassadors program of Americans for Indian Opportunity, the Albuquerque-based organization she created in 1972.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Harris, LaDonna. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. 2004. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"LaDonna Harris, a citizen of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, today lives in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, where she continues a decade's long advocacy on behalf of tribal America. Her activism has also taken her into civil rights, the women's movement, environmental protection and world peace. Raised in rural Oklahoma during the Great Depression by her maternal grandparents, one an eagle medicine man and the other a devout Christian, Harris absorbed the respect that her grandparents had for one another, a quality she models today in her respect for diverse traditions. She went to public schools in Oklahoma and married her high school sweetheart, Fred Harris, who served as a Democratic member of the Oklahoma State Senate for eight years. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1964. LaDonna's public service career began as the wife of Senator Harris and the two were complementary partners in many social justice initiatives. As she gained political momentum and found the strength of her own voice, LaDonna got 60 Oklahoma tribes together and founded Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, an organization that sought to rectify the stifling socio-economic conditions that were impacting Indian communities and other minorities. For her work in civil rights she was inducted into the National Black Sorority. LaDonna worked with leading Democrats including Sgt. Shriver and she campaigned for Hubert Humphrey in his presidential bid in 1968. In her partnership with Senator Harris, LaDonna was able to be a strong force in Congress where she was the first senator's wife to testify before a congressional committee. She exerted a beneficial influence on legislation such as the return of Taos Blue Lake to the people of Taos Pueblo. President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to chair the National Women's Advisory Council of the War on Poverty. In that era she was witness to the gains that tribes made through the Office of Economic Opportunity and the emergence of numerous great tribal leaders. LaDonna ventured into electoral politics herself in 1980. A founder of Common Cause, she was the vice presidential nominee on the Citizens Party ticket with Barry Commoner. Her political work also took her to the streets. In the early ‘70s she picketed the White House for equal pay for equal work. She was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus and still finds time to get together for fun with the Comanche Amazons. She founded the Multi-Tribal Americans for Indian Opportunity, AIO, in 1970, an organization that is a catalyst for new concepts and opportunities for Indian peoples. One of LaDonna's great passions is the weaving of traditional values such as dispute resolution into modern governance systems. In 1993, AIO created the acclaimed American Indian Ambassadors Program which provides two-year fellowships to Native students. The young ambassadors are instructed in tribal values and modes of government and sent to foreign countries to observe Indigenous governments first hand. AIO has partnered with a Maori, New Zealand, group in an initiative to foster the self-determination capabilities of Indigenous communities. LaDonna's international activism is spurred by the conviction that tribal America has a great contribution to make to global social justice. Just as new leaders are blessed with LaDonna's spirit in the Ambassadors Program, in 2003 she passed the executive leadership of AIO to her daughter, Laura Harris, though LaDonna remains strongly involved. She has two other children, Kathryn and Byron and one teenage grandson, Sam Fred Goodhope. LaDonna Harris has been honored with many awards and appointments. Her life and work have given depth and richness to the meaning of public service."

Growing up in Cotton County, Oklahoma

LaDonna Harris:

"I grew up on my grandparent's allotment. My grandmother and my grandfather had land abutting that. He put together, my great grandfather put together several of his children's allotments so he had a large base there and it was at the forks of Cash Creek in Cotton County, Oklahoma. So in relative terms we were well off and my grandfather who was a Spanish captive knew a little bit or recognized the necessity of rich soil so that was why we had...my grandfather was a pretty successful farmer so in relative terms we were well off in Cotton County in those days as you would say. My father went to California looking for work, he was Irish, and my mother went to work for Indian Health and so it was determined I would stay with my grandparents, my sister and I. And it was probably the most wonderful thing that happened to me because they were steeped in their Comanche culture and Comanche values and that was how I learned my value system and really has brought me to this place actually. My grandfather was a...never gave up the old religion. He had some eagle medicine as well as peyote. But grandmother was the second Comanche to be converted Christianity and so it was an interesting value system to grow up in. I really think that grandmother was a beautiful Christian woman but it was because she had Comanche values rather than following Christianity as such cause she was the matriarch of the family after her mother died, she became the matriarch of all of the Red Elk family. So I had a very strong grandmother and a very wonderful grandfather who would take us to church on Sunday and we would go to church and listen to all of the preacher preach and then we we'd come home and papa would sing his peyote songs in the evening as the sun was going down so it was a very rich environment that I grew up in. And grandmother of course still...Comanche was spoken at home. Unfortunately I don't speak it as well, though I understand it very well. But I'm learning, we're taking Comanche classes now, the children and I. So it was a wonderful childhood and you just, you had this sense of belonging to everyone. Grandmother would see elder Comanches on our little county seat, Walters, Oklahoma, and they would just chat in Comanche and I always sat and listened to them and I would ask grandmother, ‘How are we related to them?' cause she would call them by this kinship name and come to find out we're not really blood kin but we had this long family relationship that created this kinship that continued from I think it was like two generations ago our family did something with this family that created this relationship. So I always felt that I belonged to everybody."

Grandmother

LaDonna Harris:

"She had a sense of style about her and we'd go into town with her and go into a little department store that we had in our home town and they would say, ‘Oh, Mrs. Tabbytite, let me show you our new materials,' or whatever. So she was always treated like the grand lady that she was. And so it always gave you a sense of pride. What she really told me, she said, ‘I can't advise you because I won't have ever been where you're going so I can't tell you how to...you should act or what you should think but what I'd like for you to do is to have your own set of values and stay with them.' And she would never, in Indian way you never tell a child, this is what you should, how you should behave or the Comanches didn't anyway. They took you with them and so I would go with her to funerals, to family events and things and it was through those ways that I learned Comanche ways and because I showed interest then she would take me to another learning experience. And it was that combination of her selecting me to go with her to these, for these Comanche occasions like funerals and gatherings and that was...that she recognized that I had some spark or something there that she wanted to nurture and I just assumed that responsibility. It was a wonderful thing. And then also she said that she didn't understand all the things that I was having to learn and all the experiences that I would go through but to set my own pace and so I pretty much did that. And then it was interesting too, there was no conflict between papa's medicine and her ways and papa would say, ‘That's important for her, that's important for her to...that's her medicine way,' he would say, ‘and what's good for her is not necessarily good for me and it's important that you know that about other people.' He said, ‘You should never take their religion, mess with other people's religion or medicine,' as we say in Comanche way. And he said, ‘Because you will hurt them and more important you'll hurt yourself.'"

Relatives: grandparents and politics

LaDonna Harris:

"I had an uncle and really had a lot of different relatives in the military and he would listen to the news and listen to all of the...and he could discuss it. He could tell you, though he couldn't read he could tell you all the events. And my sisters and my mother bought Look magazine and those big beautiful pictures, Life and Look and then he'd call me over and in Comanche he said, ‘Tell me who these people are,' and I would tell him and he would make the association by listening to the news. When Fred would come to visit he would have these, try to have these conversations. He would talk real loud because he spoke in broken in English but he could curse really well in English. But his English was very broken cause he ran away from Indian boarding schools when he was young and never learned to read or write. But he'd have discussions about Truman firing MacArthur with Fred and Fred said, ‘Well, when did papa learn, how did he learn to read? Did he go to Indian boarding schools?' And I said, ‘He can't read.' And he said, ‘Well, how does he know all of these things?' But he could just, he figured all these things out for himself. He had this method so he could keep us up on current events and he was a strong Democrat. So here's my two little grandparents with their braids and shawls and going off and they'd be the first one to vote in their precinct. So all of that I inherited from them and then having married a politician it's just gone on and on and I guess I continue to still be involved."

School years, discrimination and questioning authority

LaDonna Harris:

"School was another thing. That was a whole different story. Turns out I'm severely dyslexic and so I don't learn like other people learn. So I had to learn, study the teacher and figure out how I could satisfy her without having to go through the exercises as she explained them. So I think that's one of the things that gave me a lot of talent of understanding people in office or people that we've had to deal with, the Indian communities had to deal with because I had to do that all my life. There were also forms of discrimination, mostly ignorance; it was more ignorance than it was direct. Occasionally there would be, people would get mad at us and...we rode the school bus into...we had to walk a mile, get on a school bus and then go into town and sometimes we would have encounters with some of the Anglo children there and they'd call us gut eaters. I remember that particular found so hurtful. And I came home crying to Gagu and I asked her, ‘Why would they say that and what did they mean by it?' Of course I had had tripe and as we all ended up eating tripe and most people in the world did, then we quit all of a sudden here in the United States. But anyway I came and was crying to grandmother about it and she said, ‘Oh, they just don't know better, don't pay any attention to them.' She said, ‘Besides they eat crawdads and muscle shells.' That seemed to satisfy me, I don't know why. It took me a great long time to overcome that idea about how to learn to eat oysters and clams, which I thoroughly love now but it was...there were some events like that that were painful. And even teachers, mostly just out of ignorance that were very hurtful. But in the church, the visiting ministers I found very hurtful and very painful about...that our ways had no value and we had to give them up in order to be a good person is really how they...at least that's how it was interpreted to me and the same way in the schools in many ways, that you had to give up who you were in order to become educated. It was always an either/or, they always put it in a position you had to give this up in order to become educated or become a good person or become however they put it ws always an either/or situation. I got some...I think it was all the loving and nurturing that I got that I said, ‘Well, something's wrong with it,' and made me question authority, I think it was mostly the ministers and so ever since then I've never necessarily believed anybody in authority. I always question it and say, ‘Well, they may be a good person but maybe they don't know or maybe they're not a very good person and we should figure out some other way of dealing with this issue.' Growing up like that is I think though it was very painful at the time that it gave me some skills that I still use today."

Dreams as a child and marriage

LaDonna Harris:

"I think I had what most little girls wanted, the picket fence, being married and kids and picket fence and kind of that was my dream. My mother and sister had great hopes for me cause I did get through school with pretty good reasonable grades and they had great hopes that I would go on and do great things. I was the one that was going to be able to do these things. Then I married my high school sweetheart, right out of high school and so they were kind of disappointed. They thought I should go on to college. My mother thought I should be a model. She had thought I was so neat or something, I don't know exactly what. But both of them thought that I was marrying below myself. This is Fred Harris. But we...he and I just, it was a wonderful relationship. We both had strengths and weaknesses and we fulfilled each other's weaknesses and strengths, we complemented each other's weaknesses and strengths and so we became good friends and good partners for many years."

Putting her husband through college

LaDonna Harris:

"Well, with just a high school education it was quite difficult. The first job I had, which I dearly loved was working in the library and all the new publications that would come in I would help put them in the proper place and the magazines and things that I knew what department they went to, it was working with one of the librarians there and working with new publications so it was always exciting to be around those beautiful, wonderful books full of great things. But then a new librarian came and reorganized it and did me out of a job and then I worked for continuing education and reproduced classes. They used to reproduce them by mimeograph machine and send them out to, people would take classes outside of the classroom and that was my job. When Fred was still in law school he ran for House of Representatives in Oklahoma and he was the youngest man to at that time, he was running against...and he lost that...he was running against an older person, a county commissioner and here he was still in college. He lost that campaign which probably was a good thing. It was by a very small, like 42 votes as I remember and so the next time he ran he ran for the State Senate and was elected and so we've been in campaigns ever since school where I'm always stuffing envelopes or doing something. But I was the stoic Indian girl. All this time from all through school and the first 10 or 12 maybe even 20 years of our marriage I was still very stoic, the stereotype of not speaking out and it was a form of protection I recognized later is to not to allow people to hurt me. If I was quiet and would observe them I would figure them out so I could interact with them in a way that I felt comfortable with. So it was a method that I used and it became very valuable in the campaign after that. We were the first people that used television. I was the only wife that would go to the State Senate and be around what was doing. I would go to like all the mental health hospitals and make reports back to him cause he was head of that committee. I would sit in committee hearings and he would ask my advice because he'd gotten dependent on me how I read people, how I saw them or my insights about them. He would depend on my insights about them and then we'd use Comanche to talk politically about, ‘here comes someone, here comes your brother, pay attention or here comes someone that doesn't like you,' not necessarily doesn't like you but you don't get on well so heads up. So we would talk to each other that way and Comanche became very valuable that way as well and Fred himself became a great student of Comanche culture and learned the language and can speak pretty well and he sings, can sing Comanche songs and he still does, still loves...of course everybody just loved him. We would take my grandmother to church. We had lost my grandfather by then and we would take my Gagu to church and I had a great uncle who still preached in Comanche and we would go, Fred would go and I would interpret what he was saying in his sermon. Of course then he learned all the songs and then we would go and have lunch with my great aunt. So we very much we would take grandmother with us every place we went and she even campaigned. She had a Fred Harris shawl, she was a great campaigner, she loved it."

Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity

LaDonna Harris:

"About that same time the University of Oklahoma was having a human relations study and it was going to be about Black and White relations and labor and management. So they'd invited Fred and Fred said, ‘Oh, I'm just out of school, I don't want to go back to a classroom situation so why don't you invite LaDonna and you'll get two for one and she'll contribute and then I'll get the full impact of what it is you want.' And so I went and I said, ‘What about...' and of course I was still in my stoic Indian woman phase and I said, ‘Well, what about Indian people,' when we were talking about Black/White issues and they said, ‘Oh, well, Indians don't have problems, the Bureau of Indian Affairs takes care of that.' So I burst into tears and said, ‘You don't understand.' I burst into tears because I was so inarticulate, I felt so frustrated I couldn't tell them how, what the situation was in that how the Bureau... So out of that frustration I got two major university professors involved and we started, they started coming to Lawton, Oklahoma, to my home and we would gather up the Comanches, mostly relatives, and we'd talk about what are the issues and what do we need to learn that we can be more articulate and make our case better and those kinds of things. And so it was the beginning of Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity. It was actually in my living room and then we started moving out to other towns and eastern Oklahoma and we met, ran into a great deal of resistance at that time. The five tribes of eastern Oklahoma, their chiefs were not elected, they were appointed by the Department of Interior so they didn't even have the right to choose their own leadership. So we caused a lot of turmoil over in eastern Oklahoma but it was a great learning experience. Also civil rights came along at the same time. So one day a week I would spend on integrating our hometown of Lawton and then the next time it would be Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity. Sometimes we would be in both groups and many of the Comanches were a part of that first gathering. We'd work on helping the Blacks integrate Lawton, going to restaurants and just sitting down and having food at a restaurant. It wasn't very...it was at that same time over in western Oklahoma they still had signs ‘No Indians and Dogs Allowed,' but we were in Lawton where I grew up in Walters. We were accepted in a great degree. There was a lot of ignorance but we were accepted but the Blacks were really discriminated against. So we were working on that and then we were working...so all of a sudden I just came into my own, all those skills that I learned came into become very important. And also that gave me organizational skills that I didn't have so the combination of hanging out with friends at the legislature and organizing communities both working with the Black community and the Indian community separately interestingly enough, separately though there were many of us, Indians like Iola Hayden and others, Bill Gover, Kevin Gover's dad, were a part of integrating Lawton cause we saw it as we could relate to what... they couldn't go to the movies, they couldn't go to the restaurants, they couldn't go to the amusement parks and so we integrated our whole town. This was way early, about the same time as the sit-ins in the south. So we learned a lot from that. We organized the first statewide Indian organization in Oklahoma because we had the tribes that were dislocated and forced into Oklahoma and then us plains people. We used to say the Five Civilized Tribes and the rest of us on the western side of the state. So that was a great accomplishment to have all the...there's, I've forgotten now how many tribes we have in Oklahoma but to have them all...and you could almost draw a line, the eastern tribes and the western tribes so to have them all come together and start working together. And then we took advantage of the War on Poverty and started organizing the communities. And Oklahoma wasn't, didn't have...they weren't entitled to funds because we didn't have reservation so that the OIO funds went to the county and the county was supposed to bring everybody in the community and of course they were totally ignoring the Indian community. So we made that case, we changed the policy and we funds into Oklahoma for the Indian community to organize themselves. When we started Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity there was no handbook, there wasn't anything written about how you organize communities. There wasn't anything written about civil rights that you could take say, ‘Well, let's get this book out and see how somebody else did it,' there was nothing to go by. We organized a statewide Indian youth group and then we used people like John Gardner and Sgt. Shriver and Bobby Kennedy all came to talk to our Indian youth in Oklahoma and Fritz Mondale. We gave them a prestigious opportunity because they were seeing people that other people in the school system didn't. But we challenged them that they had to participate in the school activities as well as community activities to be selected to come to OU to hear these men, these very recognizable people to come and participate in that program. So it was kind of a carrot so to speak of them participating as a full, within their school system. So it was a very...it was one of my exciting learning periods and also trying to learn to talk and explain how I felt about things and not only how I felt on trying and experimenting on what can work and being very conscious of cultural differences because we had so many tribes in Oklahoma and then the woodlands people and the plains people. We had all kinds of cultures there and so that made you conscious. And of course we had intermarried with the Kiowas, I had Kiowa relatives and recognizing but honoring. That was one of the things I never had trouble with because working with any kind of people I think being a Comanche, growing up Comanche taught you to say, ‘Well, what is good for the Apache is not good for Comanches,' but you honor their way because that's their way and it's good for them. So that's what I learned about being a Comanche and it allowed me to work with all kinds of people, that their way was different but that's great. You're having experience of a different way and I always tried to tell young people when we were having our youth groups that, ‘Just think that you have your Indian way to look at a...you have two ways of looking at a problem and you can solve, you're so much wiser than most people because you can look at it from your cultural perspective and you can look at it from your learned Western perspective. So you can look at an issue in two different ways,' because I had learned by that time that was what I was doing."

The War on Poverty years and Indian human rights

LaDonna Harris:

"Of course it was an exciting time because we had the War on Poverty going and civil rights was going. It was some real positive things that happened and I always say there were a lot of critics on the War on Poverty but I think the Indian community, most of the people that Gerald interviewed probably had a background somewhat related to... I know that Eddie Tullis' friends and Philip Martin, Ada Deer, all of us came through that door of opportunity. What it did was it allowed a platform for young emerging leaders to come out. The Philip Martins, the Ada Deers, the Joe De la Cruz', all of us and Peter McDonald, Peterson Zah, all my peer group literally found a forum to show some leadership, came through. And what happened was we were able to use that department to break what I call the stranglehold of the colonial dominance of the Department of Interior. They had colonialized us, they'd taken over managing our lands, they'd tell us how governments ought to be run, they were educating our kids. They took control of our, completely of our lives and the leadership that evolved out of the War on Poverty program we organized against the Bureau and we put it...and it lost its place, it's never regained, it's never regained its prominence in our lives because we took control of our own lives and that was the beginning. The ideas and the energy that came out of that group of people, that early ‘60s leadership, was just an amazing reservoir of new ideas. We changed the administration, Ada Deer changed termination when she, not only did she get her tribe back and made it a tribe again but she changed Congress who declared that they would never use termination as a form of governance. So those are the kinds of things that the Council of Energy Resource Tribes...just a few days ago, actually we honored a lawyer who was much involved in helping us get the Council of Energy Resource Tribes organized and once they got started they changed the federal government's attitude about that they would no longer stand for them managing our natural resources. And after CERT got organized the fishing tribes got organized, the timber tribes organized, now agriculture's organized. We organized around natural resources and so we've changed the policies, we've changed the way we do business, we're in control of them and it's just made, nobody could have made as many mistakes in our behalf as we could have...I mean as the government did for us so we certainly would be better to make our own mistakes and learn from them than to allow that to continue. And I think the example of that is this horrible trust lawsuit that's going on, the trust funds lawsuit that's going on. That's a residue of the mismanagement of the Bureau of our resources."

In the Lyndon Johnson era, hearings on Indian problems such as relocation

LaDonna Harris:

"He appointed I think seven Indian leaders and myself, they were all elected leaders like Wendell Chino and all the great old timers of that period, Red Lake, Roger Jordain, Navajo, Peter McDonald, they were members of this...and we sat with the cabinet. I was the only non-elected official. And we hadn't organized Americans for Indian Opportunity and we sat with them and it was a wonderful idea. The kind of power we could have had if that had maintained itself. And of course then the war and Johnson didn't run again and Hubert Humphrey was our chair, that chaired, the Vice President chaired this meeting. So I took on as my responsibility in that group was urban Indians. So I had hearings of urban Indians in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Minnesota, Chicago and it was to say, because we found out in our OIO that we were all moving to the country, I mean to the cities because of relocation for one thing and then the following of relocation people were in great numbers migrating to the cities for jobs. So I said, ‘Well, just because they're not on the reservation doesn't stop them from being Indian and they deserve services,' and that was my whole point was to go and have these hearings. And this was before AIM was ever, I guess they might have been getting started but they hadn't really gotten organized. But it showed me the dilemma of Indian people in the cities like San Francisco and it was a very difficult time taking people from middle of rural Oklahoma or New Mexico, plopping them down in cities. I had cousins who went to Detroit who were relocated to Detroit and they had numbers of suicides. We need to recognize that one of the things we've done here, I've done here...I'm skipping around a little bit. What we have done here as Comanches is to organize to work with our own tribe, with our own community. So we have in Albuquerque, we call, we're the Mountain Band of Comanches because we live over the mountains from our folks and our leadership comes and pays attention to us. They come for election and I think that's a very important thing. I think the Menominees are doing that to their relatives in Chicago. They have a banquet, they recognize their accomplishments, the leadership of the tribe goes and meets with them and I think we're seeing more of the Cherokees come to New Mexico too. So we're seeing some real difference but that was my big first I guess trying to make a difference about our people who were relocated in the cities and had great adventures, there's wonderful stories about those times. I was working with Sgt. Shriver, I was on his advisory group, I testified before Congress, I was the first senate wife to testify before Congress. It was about OIO and to make sure that it got funded and making sure that Indian programs were still in the legislature, a few years I would never have thought I would be able to appear before a congressional committee and testify like that. But it was, those are the kinds of things...and it was different style. Dennis and all of the AIM guys were all good friends. In fact we were all in one building at one time. Kind of their style of confrontation was...my style was different; I would learn to figure people out and try to make it work. Theirs was, cause they were going still through their frustrating stages like I was when I cried and I think that frustrating was this confrontational kind of politic, which also brought us, got a lot of attention. And what it did, people like for our organization Americans for Indian Opportunity, we looked less radical and so therefore they would call on us to do things and we would help AIM get out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. We were always involved in a kind of a different, in a different way but we were all involved in the same thing. And it was mostly because of their calling attention to the American public by their action really helped us to move the issues more effectively so we give them great credit for that."

Navigating roles as a woman, activist and senator's wife

LaDonna Harris:

"I remember campaigning in Oklahoma and women coming up to me and saying, ‘Well, what are you doing out here campaigning,' like it was a bad thing, that I shouldn't have been doing. Fred would get comments from some of the people in the campaign, ‘There's too much LaDonna in the campaign.' But we'd just ignore it because we depended on each other to do things. But when I got to Washington and I had worked in the Black community in my hometown and I got on the board of the Urban League, talk about strange. So I was on the board of probably the most prominent Black organization and very active at that time and I...but I was a token. I was both a token woman and a token Indian and so I had to play those roles. I'm a little older than some of the other women you're interviewing and I played those roles. I recognized I was token but I felt that it was an opportunity to learn, I was going to learn something from them that I could take home and use, I could use in our Indian community if I learned some of the strategies they were using. The Urban Coalition, I was involved in things like that. Of course I got involved in the women's movement. I guess being a little older I wasn't as sensitive to it except I always felt like I was being patronized, I always felt like I was being patronized because I wasn't as well educated as some people but it was really being patronized because I was a woman. And I thought, ‘Well, if they're patronizing because I don't have that many degrees,' but it was really because I was a woman."

Understandings of leadership, culturally and socially

LaDonna Harris:

"What I always recognize is that after we have said something in Americans for Indian Opportunity and it becomes part of the vocabulary of the rest of the Indian community. We may not get credit for it but we're the one who put it forward, the idea forward, the language forward in so many different ways. In Indian culture you're not supposed to put yourself ahead of the group anyway, Comanche culture. But it was perfectly all right for me to, as long as they were carrying on the ideas that was the satisfaction you got. You didn't have to be the one to do it. If it was Peter McDonald who was head of CERT, that was wonderful. They were taking on the responsibility of the idea that I had and that's where the satisfaction came in. I don't have to be the one out front. And it's always been that way. I think it's a Comanche value, a cultural value that we should honor...we say leadership is shared responsibility. If you look at leadership in the dictionary it says control, power over and those kinds of things. Well, you know that that's culturally inappropriate. So you figure out things that are culturally appropriate that make people comfortable in what it is you're going to share with them, they're more able to accept it. And we really believe in socializing people, having like a reception before a meeting so people get to know each other as individuals. My art as a hostess is always to find someone...if someone is standing there, find somebody that would know something that they are interested in and put them together and they always think that they had the greatest party at my house but all of it was putting people together and making them comfortable because I know how it is to be standing off by yourself and looking in and not carrying on conversation when everybody else is."

Strategies for getting things done

LaDonna Harris:

"It's how do you equalize people so that...cause we had become so accustomed of the government coming and talking down to us, talking to us and at us rather than with us and so we set up, everything that we ever set up we set up where it equalizes the people because we believe everybody has a contribution to make. And even the least of us have something to contribute to the thinking of the group to make you understand, we better consider this piece of it because if we don't see the total picture we won't make the right decisions. So that's been kind of our philosophy. And I might say that I've used every method. I've flirted sometimes, I have burst into tears on other occasions. I know that it just horrifies, particularly, I was with the Secretary of Labor and we wanted him to set up an Indian desk. I've forgotten exactly what all the details, and he just couldn't hear me. I would make a little presentation and he just wasn't hearing. I would say it another way, he just still couldn't get it. And Bobby Kilberg leaned over and said, whispered to me to tell him in this other way. So by that time I was very frustrated with him and so I started to say it and I said it in a way that made me feel emotional and I just burst into tears and he just said, ‘Okay, all right, anything you want,' just kind of get me out of the room. I'm not too good to use all kinds of methods that I had because when you run into someone who's going to stop what it is you have to figure out some way to get around them. I don't recommend crying but you need to figure out some way, if you have to get around that person how do you...how can you either influence that person or get around them. So I've had lots of experience in that field."

The great advances of the ‘70s

LaDonna Harris:

"Well, there were three things that happened almost one right after the other that seemed, that gave us some successes. First was the Taos Blue Lake, the Taos people getting their Blue Lake back. And Fred got very involved in that. It was during the Nixon administration. I had befriended a young woman who was a White House fellow. This is the importance of one of the things you learn as a Comanche or as an Indian is relationship is all there is. You have to develop relationships with people. Well, I had developed this relationship with this young woman and she was working in the White House. She got me into the Nixon White House. It was so wonderful and we talked to Lynn Garmet there and I said, ‘You had pictures, went all over the United States with the Taos people when you visited them. This administration owes them something,' and said, ‘Couldn't you help us get the Blue Lake back?' And so he called up the leadership of the Republican party and said, ‘Can you work with...would you send staff over and work with Mrs. Harris and Fred on this?" and so we made it a bipartisan effort. Of course a lot of people had contributed to it along the way to even get it to that point but Fred made a commitment to get it through and he helped with all the pieces of legislation coming out of a committee in order that it could get...cause we knew we had the votes on the floor but we didn't have the votes, necessarily know we had the votes in the committee. My role in all of that was to make it a civil rights...it was a human rights, it was a Native American issue. So I would get all these little groups of people that I'd worked with on civil rights to come in and make it a civil rights issue and so we had this...took it from all kinds of angles and got the support to get them to call members of Congress to help us through it and it became a bipartisan issue and it passed. So that was our...and the success of that we all celebrated, all of us that had anything to do with it and there were many people. Of course the Taos people themselves were the most important people. Then came the Menominee restoration. Probably my biggest contribution to that was giving Ada a place to sleep every once in awhile. She would come to town and she would talk to Fred and I about strategy about how she should go about it. Well, I wasn't sure that we could turn the Congress around on termination. Because I saw them but I was not going to tell my sister that this was a lost cause because she believed in it so strongly. By gosh, she went up there and walked those halls and she would find friends like us to stay with in town. We'd haul her into town and she would come back to Fred's office and come back and stay with us. She would talk about different members of the Congress that we might have known or would know and talk about strategy. But basically she did all the hard work on that and then of course Fred got to play a part in the actual legislation. But even more than returning...restoring the Menominees was that she got the Congress to say that they would no longer use termination as a policy. Now that, I'll always hold that up with members of the Congress today so that was... It was not just the Menominees. It was the whole negativeness of termination. So that was a wonderful thing."

The primacy of relationships

LaDonna Harris:

"So I really believe in developing relationships with people that you're going to have to work with and people who can...my daughters tease me and say, ‘You're the only one who goes and gives a hug to the red cap at the airport.' And I said, ‘That's a very important person in my life,' because I'm always going in and out of the airport in Washington, D.C. and they say, ‘Oh, Mrs. Harris,' and they'll take my luggage, they won't take my tips, they take care of me. If I'm running late they'll get me on the plane. So people, all people are important in different kinds of ways and you have to recognize the value that people have. Comanche society says all people have value, all people have value and you have to value them. And if you value them that helps you get things done. And if you truly value them as human beings and develop a relationship with them it works, it's a lot easier that way."

About not giving up

LaDonna Harris:

"There have been times when I've felt so tired from traveling or something that I would think, ‘Well, I'm going to take off a month or something.' But it's something, a responsibility that my grandmother gave me. I don't know if that's part of it. In Comanche society we believe if good things come your way and you're privileged, and I consider myself privileged having had all those experiences, then you're more obligated to give back, that you have an obligation to give back. So that's...I don't see how that could stop with age. It has to continue."

As Senator Harris's wife

LaDonna Harris:

"When I went to Washington I was going to be the perfect senator's wife until I could figure out that I could do other things. And one of them was when we had guests from Oklahoma was to give them the tour of the Capitol building. So I would take all of these wonderful Oklahomans visiting us to tour the Capitol building and we would wind up at the Vice President's office in the Capitol building. And if he was there he would always come out and shake hands and take pictures with us. We became very close friends. We traveled with him to Europe once and traveled also to Korea but one of the...but because...He admired Fred because of all the work he did and like for instance he presided over the Senate and as a freshman senator so that he would learn how the senate worked and so he would know all the rules and wouldn't get caught up and get out maneuvered by some of the older heads of the senate. Some people had admired, cause he was a really hard working person. So when Humphrey, when Johnson said he wasn't going to run and Humphrey was going to run for president of course we supported him. After we had committed to support him Fred and Fritz Mondale were his campaign managers for Humphrey. And after we'd committed to support him then Bobby Kennedy got in the race who was our neighbor around the corner, which made it very difficult. Ethel took it harder than Bobby I think but anyway that happened. But we were very loyal to Humphrey, we felt very strongly about him, he was such a wonderful human being, a great leader, national leader."

Vietnam

LaDonna Harris:

"So it was a very hectic time and a very sad time because we were very sympathetic against the war and we tried everything, tried to pass a resolution at the Convention and oh just all of that...all of that was, that was a part of all that turmoil. Before the war really took on this ugliness, well, we should have stopped it a long time ago but it was civil rights, it was War on Poverty, it was real positive pro-active kinds of things you could do and I got caught up in that. And I think that was one of the things that helped my work in the Indian community too. I could find ways of making it happen and so it was a wonderful time to be in Congress at that time. It's a totally different beast now."

Americans for Indian Opportunity, AIO, begins in the offices of Democratic chairman Senator Harris

LaDonna Harris:

"Of course then he was chairman of the party, a senator. So we had started Americans for Indian Opportunity and he had this big suite of offices, the Democratic party had this big suite of offices and of course we had no money cause we had to pay off Humphrey's and Bobby Kennedy's debt. So Fred was...he was the captain of the Titanic, that was the story. But there was enough empty space in there so he set up, I set up this little desk and office in there and that's where Americans for Indian Opportunity was born in the Watergate Hotel in the Democratic headquarters. So I had a person who worked with me and we just took off and I called all the people to be on the board, who would want to be on the board and this was all after the Bureau of Indian Affairs takeover. Out of my experience in Oklahoma, I'd learned so much and then also having these national hearings on urban Indians that I didn't feel were taken care of and then because there was this great movement in the community, everybody was moving, different levels in different ways but there was all this movement that was happening in the Indian community and I just thought that we could lend another point of view to it and maybe escalate it some. And so that was why we decided coming out of that Oklahoma experience and the urban experience that we should create one and be all inclusive. And then we had lots of people who were striving for federal recognition and things that we learned, so we were wanting to be very well rounded and inclusive and try to carry out a program that way. And that's how we started."

The work of AIO in the ‘70s

LaDonna Harris:

"In the ‘60s and the early ‘70s we were, I always call it we were hanging on by our fingernails and in the ‘70s we pulled ourselves over. Then these regional organizations started organizing and making influences and a lot of federal recognition came out of that, a lot of different kinds of things were taking place. We went through, I think our first initial work was with education in New York, urban Indians and Dallas. We did different kinds of work. Then we had, we did forms of evolution, of consciousness I guess. When we would work in a certain field it would open our eyes to another need and we organized a group of lawyers and then NARF organized and they took off, really did great, Native American Rights Fund. And then we started looking at tribal resource... or economic development was the big talk that was the answer, we always have a answer for Indian causes. Economic development was the answer so that the way that the government was going out they would initiate programs in Washington then sell them out here when many times they were culturally inappropriate. So we did research on that, wrote papers on it and showed that the ones that succeeded...then the government, when the programs didn't work the government would say, ‘Well, see those Indians can't manage anything.' And so we started looking at the kinds of programs and well we found that would succeed were like in Washington State where they were doing fisheries management and things where they were culturally related, they just seemed to have much more success than going trying to plop down an industry in the middle of the reservation. We discussed things at board meetings and in the staff and we'd bring people in and we'd talk about it and say, ‘Why are we the poorest people when we own land and we have some resources.' And I said, ‘How much resources do we own.' We couldn't find that out. None of the federal government could sit down and tell you what resources we own, how much or what. So about that time they were starting the Department of Energy and we said, ‘Well, let's...they can't have energy when we know we've got the largest amount of uranium in the country is on Indian reservation so how can they start an Energy Department and not talk to us.' They were managing our resources and we weren't even getting the going prices for them. We found out all kinds of things and that's why the Council of Energy Resources started and that's how the evolution of that changed. Then we got into the environment. One of the ways to protect those resources is have a good environmental policy so the tribes didn't even have, we couldn't even say the word mostly. Most of us could not even spell it and so we decided we should have an Indian policy statement and we got one where that Indians had the right as a government entity to have the right to say what its policies were. Well, they really fought us and particularly in some of the regions but we got Washington to declare it. The tribal governments had to deal with all of this on a tribal basis so they were messing with this. We still had many of our population who were still internalized colonialization. They had not gotten rid of their colonial mentality and that everything that, they didn't feel totally free of it. They had been victimized so long that they, it was hard. So we found that tribes were having a lot of internal problems and we were looking at those internal problems, we worked a lot with Reuben Snake and the Winnebagos and looking at problems. We decided we wanted to look at what was creating...and what we found were cultural values rubbing up against the way our governments were set up and so we saw these issues and we started working on those. We worked a great deal in tribal governance but nobody was ready to hear it. Neither was the funding sources, the federal government itself and the tribes because they were into economic development, into nation building but they hadn't gotten to governance and we still haven't quite got there yet. Looking at our own governments, they are obsolete, they were never intended to do what we're doing now and so we're always having to patch on new things to our constitution to make sure that we have some entity to take care of these issues, new issues that were...and very complex issues like environment and so forth. So those were the areas that we worked in for several years. We didn't become a nationwide phenomena at that time so we started looking at leadership. Some of the problems of how we'd become reactionary, that we were so accustomed to the government telling us what we should do that we would just react to it so that we had lost, many of us had lost the skills to be proactive. How do you learn to be proactive if you've been so conditioned after so many years, 500 years to be reactive to what's happening to us, to be proactive. So we decided that we should start a leadership program. So one of the things that we're sharing with these young people is how to use their intuition and their own tribal values and use them in a contemporary way. Don't forget them. And these people that talk about living in two worlds, that's nonsense. Everybody says, ‘Oh, we live in two worlds, we live our traditional life and then we have to live with White people.' You can't leave your values; if you're a real Indian you can't leave your values on the reservation and then come out here. It has to be with you every day. I like to think that I think in Comanche ways, I like to think I treat people in the way Comanche values put it forward, build my relationships and take care of my kinships and do the...treat them in the way that they're supposed to be treated. So that if you leave them, and so many of us are in the cities now that we have to find ways of reconnecting."

Indian values, indigenaity and the Ambassadors Leadership Training Program

LaDonna Harris:

"So we all have to think about how do we do this in a contemporary way while we bring our values with us and so I think it doesn't have to change because I think we have so much to offer. The way we communal ownership, the way we view the world, we're interconnected. All these things are...so if we're going to give it up we should just quit and go, all move to town or move someplace and give up our indigenaity or our tribal ways. But I think that they have real value in human life. If we follow those values we would all be better people and I think it's the demand of our younger children who have gone off and well educated and come back and are demanding. They need their language, they need their song, they need their dads to see themselves as a member of that tribe. And so I think that's what's important about indigenaity is how do you live it and maintain it? Culture is not static. I think one of the things that we get tied down is that like we were in the Museum of Natural History with all of the dinosaurs and the distinct animals that were becoming extinct. That's the way that we were viewed and so now here we are, we've turned into be this vibrant community of people while the rest of rural America is going down, here's Indian America is going up. We've gone from the 60s, we've just been on a rise like this and the gaming tribes are just way off the map in development and economic development and the rest of us are all moving along too in different kinds of ways. It's like in the last 30 years we have made such major changes have come into our lives and we, because we have demanded it. Indian people have demanded it and so our lives have changed, we've taken over the control of our governments, we've taken control of our resources and our environment. We're the ones, and our children in the Child Welfare Act and now we in our Ambassadors Program have teamed up with Maoris of all people of New Zealand to talk about how can we talk about this globally, how can we get the Indian world view out because it has great value to social behavior."

Tradition, technology and the conflict management program of AIO

LaDonna Harris:

"The beauty of our ancestors was their tenacity. Where would the Comanches have been if they didn't incorporate the Spanish horse? We became lords of the southern plains and because they utilized what they came across and they did it in great aplomb. So the cultures are alive and vigorous and we make adaptations of things. We've had to learn new words to put in our tribal vocabularies. I have a book of my relative's who were part of the code talkers, Comanche code talkers in World War II so they had to improvise, there wasn't words for tank, an army tank or a machine gun and they had to make up words and so it's that ingeniousness of Indian people who can figure out how to survive in the new environment they find themselves in. And so this is capturing that and making it work for you is kind of the essence of what it is we're trying to do with the Ambassadors Program. And one of the things, you talk about using technology, many of the tribes right now are having all these internal struggles, too many internal struggles. So we were trying to look at that and trying to figure out ways, and we had, we were looking at conflict management and Reuben Snake and John Echohawk and others. We would get together and talk about...so Reuben said, ‘Let's just make up our own, let's make up our own conflict management and see if we can find a tribal way to approach this,' that was our philosophy. We accidentally ran onto this mad Greek, this wonderful Greek Dr. Cristofus who, he didn't call it conflict management, he called it issues management and by taking the word conflict out of it, it became, it's an instrument to use to get your issue, work on your issues. Because what we found when we were working with all these different tribes and looking at what was happening internally that we would focus on, not the fringes but the outward manifestations of it. Say like alcohol, instead of looking at the root causes we were looking at the, we were focusing our attention on these things rather than trying to figure out what's creating this problem. And so what Dr. Cristofus and his colleagues had found, a method by using a computer and it was allowing a group to get to consensus. Well, guess what, we are consensus people and we're systems people. So they had this wonderful system, they had developed a computer system to help you, it just escalates the time of allowing you to come to a consensus and it's a way of allowing everybody to contribute and you honor their contribution, you can't bad mouth anybody's contribution. You know how we get sometimes; we get and criticize somebody's contribution. Well, you can't do that in this system. So we adopted it, we Indianized it. We made them sit in circles instead of tables. We had prayers depending on where we are, whose homeland we were in, they would have ceremonies. And he came to recognize that they were just, these non-Indians were reinventing an Indian system by governing by consensus. He borrowed from us and we borrowed from him and we call, what we call an issues and management system. So we were invited to go internationally to Crete this year to show how we use the system to make decisions that allows us to use our Indigenaity, our Indigenous world view in our decision making while using computers and all the high tech knowledge-y aspects of it but we're still bound with our traditional values in the meantime. So this was a great exploration and then we had the first meeting on the internet about the internet. Was it going to be another form of colonialization, would it take us over, we should jump right into it. It took a little longer than I'd hoped for us to get into it but we said, ‘Well, this is the first time we get to say who we are by using the computer. Here we have an opportunity to communicate directly with government, with our attorneys, with the agencies, with other institutions that we need to,' so it's changed our world and then we can communicate internationally as well so it's changed our world. But we can use it for our own, we can do, we can map our own tribal lands out, we can have all of that information that we need, instead of getting it from the Bureau that we can develop our own information database, we can do all kinds of things for ourselves by using this equipment. That's why I say...you don't have to give up your Indianess to do, your Indigenaity to do this. It's just another tool like our ancestors used from time to time to get them, so allowed them to continue as a people and that's what I see all the technology is just as we're using this camera today to record our history and to maintain our identity and making our history a part of American history. We still have Indian studies and we're still marginalized. We're not a part of the real textbook; we just continue to be marginalized. That's what the importance of your work is. So we have to accept, we have to embrace the technology and make it ours not letting it use us and I think we can do a lot better job about that than we have in the past."

The Citizen's Party: LaDonna looks back on her venture in electoral politics

LaDonna Harris:

"The Democratic Party seemed not to be able to know what it stood for. All of the things that brought us to it like grandfather, after the Depression, the rehabilitation of the country, the war and all of those things, it seemed to have lost its mission. And so I was asked by these people if I would be interested in being the vice presidential candidate for the Citizen's Party by starting a third party and Fred was out of the senate and was here teaching at the University of New Mexico. And I thought, oh, I'm not sure that I really wanted to do it. And they were pretty persuasive and Fred said, ‘Well, you'll never forgive yourself if you don't do it, why don't you do it,' and so I did. I wasn't running for the vice presidency, it was running to start a third party like the Greens have been successful in doing. It was a fascinating, I would never be a candidate again for anything but I liked the idea of starting the third party and right now, what's happening to us right now, I feel like the Democrats really need some strong leadership. I think they have just kind of let all of their responsibilities go and the President has taken over and again, we need to have some new direction. We have no real cause that we need to get onto. In the ‘30s the Democratic Party was like a religion and it was a social action, people got involved and were doing things so they were helping themselves and helping others, that kind of idea. ‘60s that was the, we felt that way and then in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s, in that particular time, we felt like we lost...we seemed to be going backward on civil rights. And the reason I use the term Indigenaity is that we need a new vocabulary to describe who we are right now, not only Indian people but the whole Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement. We've been kind of overrun, the language we used in the ‘60s don't work for us now. People don't understand the terms that we generated during those times. So we need to find a new language and that was what we were trying to do. We were trying to start a third party...and mostly focused on the environment."

Dealing with disappointments and setbacks

LaDonna Harris:

"Well, my family always says that I never seem to remember the negative aspects of it. Well, I have...as one of my board members Charlie [Charles Lohah] would say, ‘We've created some Frankensteins in our days.' We've created things that didn't work. I just, I guess as my Comanche way I'd say, ‘well, the time's not right, it wasn't meant to be right now. So I'll put it on the back burner for awhile and then when its time comes it'll be all right so go ahead and do something that you can move with it.' That's the basic philosophy that I run on that sometimes I get disappointed in people and I say, ‘Well, maybe I won't call on them to help or I won't call on them to work with us because they're not dependable or some other reason,' I just put it in a category. ‘All right, this time they're going through a hard time and I've asked too much of them,' so that's the way I manage disappointment if you'd call it that or setbacks. And I've had some real setbacks. We were going to start it way back when, In OIO we were going to start an Indian Peace Corps and that was a total failure but we learned so much from the experience. And again it told you there are certain cultural things, if you don't pay attention to them, whether they're Anglo cultural things or departmental culture. Like the Department of Interior has a culture that it operates under or with internally and if you don't understand that you're not going to be successful in what you're doing. And that's what happened to me. I didn't understand the culture of the Peace Corps directors and the people in it. So we had to let that go. So now I'm kind of revisiting it with the Ambassadors Program as we're doing some, now looking at doing international work."

Passing the mantel to the next generation, American Indian values, the Ambassadors Program and global interactions

LaDonna Harris:

"Because everything is global now that we also as Indigenous people have to be a part of that global interaction, that our world, as comfortable as we've been on the reservation and in our little urban dwellings that we have to pay attention either economically or socially or politically, we're involved in it and we've always been a part of it but we just, we haven't...we've been on a survival mode. Now we have the time to be philosophical about looking at who we are and what we have to contribute, our relatives in Latin America, looking to work with them. We developed this wonderful relationship with the Māori because they were at the same place at the same time we were and it was like magic. They have now taken our Ambassadors Program and now they've started one and within a year's time they're just doing all these things and we're having this wonderful interaction and we're figuring out now how do we work with other Indigenous peoples and let them start their own leadership program rather than being Lady Bountiful going down to Latin America, we're going to solve their problems, that's what's always, that's what's took us so long to get where we are because people were always going to solve our problems for us. It is when we decided we were going to solve our own problems that all of this wonderful things have happened to us. And that was what was so beautiful with the Māori people, is we were thinking at the same time. We don't think in victimization, we're not victims anymore, we have something to contribute, we want to find a way to contribute it and that's where we are now. And I think that's throughout Indian Country, we have passed the survival stage. Through all the miseries and everything that we got to get here we still have cultural and political autonomy and that's what we have to share, that's one of the things we should share with our other Indigenous peoples. And so that's why we came up with our word we're sharing our Indigenaity."

Current concerns about United States priorities

LaDonna Harris:

"It is scary because we would, for instance we would be presumed in our work in Oklahoma and, well, the work in the ‘60s would be terrorists, if the AIM people would be labeled terrorists and thrown off to jail with no rights at all under this administration if we got that Homeland Security bill passed. That's a very scary position and I think if you talk to Indian people they recognize what we did in Iraq was inappropriate. If you look at the people who are serving in the Armed Forces are people of color and that's going to be the ones who serve in this horrible situation we find ourselves in. Just recently the Navajo Code Talkers came out against the war. So I think we need to think about sending messages to our government and to our representatives that this is a war that was absolutely uncalled for. I feel very strongly about that. There are so many questions that come out of this Homeland Security thing and as a person of color and people of color I think we ought to think about it. And those prisoners in Cuba in that Air Force base down there without any rights whatsoever. It just seems totally violation of everything we say we are."

LaDonna's most rewarding work

LaDonna Harris:

"Well, I think the work in Oklahoma for the first cause it opened my skills that I...I come to recognize that I had something to contribute. That was probably the first consciousness that I had something major to contribute and then the Ambassadors Program. These young people, ah, I tell you. it's so amazing to watch them. It's just wonderful. As Eddie Tullis said, ‘We feel like our future's in good hands,' when you see them operate."

The legacy she would leave

LaDonna Harris:

"That I was a good Comanche woman. I didn't mean to get emotional because I'm really excited. It's not sadness, it's an excitement about what the future, what we can do as Native people. I think it's limitless, I think it's going to take a lot of creative thinking and a lot of collaboration and so we certainly have the minds and the mental and emotional power to do it. I'm still excited about what the possibilities are. I think that's what I would like to leave with people is that I still have that excitement and the possibility of working internationally with other...with our people, our Native people working with other Indigenous people is what keeps me vigorous and gives me my vitality."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Family of LaDonna Harris
Americans for Indian Opportunity

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: John Echohawk

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in July 2002, Native American Rights Fund (NARF) co-founder and Executive Director John Echohawk shares his journey as a leader in Indian Country. A powerful voice in cases supporting Indian rights throughout the U.S., he has won numerous awards for his achievements.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Echohawk, John. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. July 2002. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund, NARF, today oversees multiple lawsuits on behalf of Native tribes in a more than 30 year career of correcting century's old injustices through the legal system. NARF, a nonprofit organization located in a rehabilitated fraternity house in Boulder, Colorado, provides legal representation and technical assistance to Indian tribes, organizations and individuals nationwide, a constituency that has historically lacked access to the justice system. Echohawk has been with NARF since 1970 and served as Executive Director since 1977. Born and raised in New Mexico, John Echohawk is a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. From a family that emphasized education, he is one of three siblings out of six that grew up to be lawyers. After attending Farmington High School he received his BA from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and was the first graduate of the University of New Mexico's special program to train Indian lawyers. He was a founding member of the American Indian Law Students Association while in law school. His years of study coincided with a time of national tumult and social change, when the inequitable treatment of African Americans and other minorities including Native Americans was coming into vivid focus. His studies also coincided with a crucial period in federal Indian relations when the federal government had been systematically dismantling reservations through legislation. The Ford Foundation which had also assisted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a grant to California Legal Services for an Indian Legal Defense Fund. From this the Native American Rights Fund was formed. The organization was then moved to Colorado to be more central to the tribes it represents. In his years with NARF John Echohawk has worked with tribes throughout the lower 48 and Alaska on crucial and often contentious issues of natural resources, tribal sovereignty, human rights and ancestral burial grounds. His rule of thumb if, "˜Never give up.' Twice recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States, Echohawk has opened doors and forged many alliances in his work for Native tribes. One of the boards on which he serves is the National Resources Defense Council. He believes that Native Americans and environmentalists ought to be natural allies. He also serves on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development. In 1995 he was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission. One of the most sought after experts on Indian issues, John Echohawk has received numerous awards over the years including The Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association. On behalf of the Native American Rights Fund he accepted the seventh Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize in 1992. Echohawk has been married almost 40 years to his wife Kathryn whom he met in Farmington where the two grew up. He has one son, a scientist at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico and a daughter who works at the American Indian College Fund in Denver helping Indian colleges grow. John and Kathryn Echohawk also enjoy spending time with their grandchildren. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed John Echohawk in Portland, Oregon, July, 2002."

The war on poverty initiative and the beginning of the Indian Law Program

John Echohawk:

"I was one of the participants in the first Indian Law Program started by the federal government to develop some Indian attorneys that had been realized by the federal government at that time through their Office of Economic Opportunity, the War on Poverty that occurred during the 1960s, that there were only a handful of Native American attorneys across the whole country and that perhaps one of the best strategies to try to fight poverty in Indian communities was to get some Indians who were professionals like doctors and like lawyers. I checked with the University of New Mexico Law School for scholarship assistance and they told me that they had just contracted with the federal government to start this Indian Law scholarship program so I was just in the right place at the right time and accepted one of these scholarships and became part of the first class of Indian law students to start studying law under this new federal initiative."

The impact of the social movements of the 1960s on Echohawk's life work

John Echohawk:

"The Civil Rights Movement was something that I was able to put into context by going to law school. Of course I learned about the legal process and how that system works and basically I found that through the use of law in litigation that people could have their rights recognized and enforced even though they were politically unpopular and that's what was happening during the Civil Rights Movement. The courts were doing cases that provided equal protection and equal treatment for African Americans in this country for the first time and even though that was not politically popular this is what was required by the laws of this country if there was to be equal treatment of all people in this country. And so I saw how that happened through the use of the litigation process and when we started thinking about how that impacted Native American people we saw that we needed to utilize that same strategy. There had never been Indian law taught in the law schools and so the professors started pulling together the materials relating to Indian treaties and federal statutes relating to law and the treatises that had been done on Indian law and so the first time there was a body of materials that could be studied about Indian law. And when us Indian law students started reading that we saw that our tribes had substantial rights in the treaties and in the federal laws that were really going unenforced and the reason that was happening is because this legal process requires you to have attorneys to assert and protect your rights and if you don't have attorneys then it doesn't matter what it says in the treaties and the statutes. You don't have any rights. The tribes did not have lawyers cause they didn't have any money. They were poor and so we knew that what needed to be done was to get lawyers for tribes to assert these rights that tribes had. And that's when we decided that we needed to start the Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit organization that would raise funds, hire lawyers expert in Indian law and make them available to the tribes around the country. We knew this would be something that would be beneficial cause we had seen at the same time we were in law school the start of civil legal services programs funded by the federal government being put out into poor communities around the country so that poor people could have lawyers. And some of these programs were started on Indian reservations. Of course the federal government didn't have enough money to put legal services lawyers on all the reservations so it was really present on only a few of the reservations but where they were active they were able to do many things in terms of enforcing Indian laws for the benefit of Indians. So we saw the formation of something like the Native American Rights Fund as being able to take the provision of legal services to tribes on a national basis and help many more people."

Native American Rights Fund attorneys modeled their efforts on the NAACP in building up their organization

John Echohawk:

"Well, again, we learned from the Civil Rights Movement how that was done. We looked at where the lawyers for the African Americans was coming from that brought the Civil Rights litigation and their counsel most of the time was the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and that was a nonprofit organization that raised money and then hired lawyers to represent these African Americans in these important Civil Rights cases. And the funding, primary funding for that NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund came from the Ford Foundation in New York City. So we made contacts with the Ford Foundation in New York City and started discussions about forming a national legal defense fund for Native Americans and they were interested and ended up making a grant then in 1970 to start the Native American Rights Fund in that same model as the Civil Rights organization for the Blacks, they provided the counsel. We began as part of the California Indian Legal Services, one of these federally funded Indian legal services programs I talked about and we were a project of that organization for a year until we were able to incorporate separately and establish our national headquarters in Boulder, Colorado."

The priorities of the growing Native American Rights Fund

John Echohawk:

"Well, we started with the three lawyer program but we quickly got overwhelmed by requests for assistance from throughout Indian Country to help and with that we sought additional funding that came through from different foundations and the federal government through this legal services program and we were able to expand in a very short time to a staff of about 15 attorneys and we were able to do a wide variety of cases under the direction of an all-Indian Board of Directors. That established us as priorities cases relating to the protection of our tribal sovereignty, our existence as tribal governments, secondly the protection of our natural resources, our land, our water rights, our hunting and fishing rights and thirdly protection of our human rights, our rights to cultural and religious freedom and expression."

The historic Menominee termination case

John Echohawk:

"And one of the first cases that we undertook was to try to reverse the federal Indian policy at that time which was one of termination of tribes. The federal government had decided that the best policy for tribes was to quit being Indians and to have their tribal governments terminated and to be forced to assimilate into the larger non-Indian society. And this was the existing federal policy at the time when the organization was founded in 1970. So to do away with that termination policy we undertook to represent the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, one of these tribes that had been terminated starting with an act of Congress in 1954. And of course at the time the Congress told the Menominee people, 'this would be good for you, this is going to help you,' and of course what happened as a result of that is exactly the opposite. It nearly destroyed the Menominee Nation. They lost a lot of their land through that process, many of their people ended up instead of being productively employed ended up on the unemployment rolls and it just devastated that community. So we helped the Menominee Nation go to Congress and develop a bill that would restore the Menominee Nation's tribal government and tribal status and eliminate this termination of the tribe. We asked the Congress to basically look at the record and admit that this termination policy was wrong and to change it and to their credit Congress did that. They said, 'Yeah, this was clearly a mistake, this was not good for the Indian people so we need to change that.' They restored the tribe and that set up restoration of all the other tribes that had been terminated during that same period and of course that's happened over the last 30 years since that first Menominee restoration in 1973."

Changing federal policies toward sovereign Indian governments

John Echohawk:

"Since 1787 when this nation came into being and adopted the Constitution, what's the relationship between tribal nations that of course pre-existed the start of the United States government and the United States itself and of course in the Constitution this nation recognizes that tribal governments have sovereign status, that they are governments like state governments and like foreign governments and that there's this government to government relationship between the United States and between the tribal nations that's governed by the Congress. For a long time that was done by treaties and then later it was done by federal statute. But essentially it's a relationship between sovereigns, between governments and from time to time U.S. policy in dealing with tribes has been rather one sided and they haven't listened to what the tribes have wanted to do and they have basically forced their own version of what they think is good for Indian people on Indian people through the passage of these laws. And one of them was this termination policy that reflected really the paternalism of White America about what was good for our people without really even asking them and they were basically saying, 'You're better off not being an Indian,' and that was the crux of the termination policy but again they never asked the Indians about that. And when they did, the Indians said, 'We want to continue to be Indians, we want to continue to exist as tribal people, we want to continue to govern ourselves through our tribal governments and exercise a sovereignty that we've had since time immemorial and control our own affairs and continue the existence of our tribal nations.' And of course that's what's become the policy now that the termination philosophy was rejected and this Indian self-determination policy accepted by the federal government. Of course that's now been in place about 30 years and I think it's helped our tribes tremendously as we've finally been able to put a stop to this termination policy and start governing ourselves once again."

Finding allies in Congress for a reversal of termination

John Echohawk:

"We had gone to the Congress looking for representatives in the Senate and in the House who would be supportive of this tribal position. And it's been so long ago I can't remember all of the players but there were some champions there that came through for us. I think on the Senate side Senator Abourezk from South Dakota was very helpful in particular and on the House side Congressman Morris Udall from Arizona was very supportive as well. But Indian people generally have been able to rely on champions like that beginning in the '70s, into the '80s and through the '90s and here into the new millennium too to basically stand up and fight for tribes and support their rights under new laws and the Constitution of this country."

The unique situation and challenges of Alaskan villages and tribes

John Echohawk:

"Well, I mentioned this termination policy that had been in place. The version of that for the Alaska tribes was this Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that was passed by the Congress in 1971. The tribes in Alaska had never been able to get the attention of the federal government and to make treaties with the federal government to have their claims to tribal sovereignty and their aboriginal title to their lands and waters and hunting and fishing rights recognized by the federal government. They had just been in limbo all this time clear up until 1971. But the Natives finally got some leverage with the discovery of oil on the north slope of Alaska and they wanted to put the pipeline down through the middle of Alaska and transport the oil that way. Well, the Natives saw a way to get the attention of the federal government by filing lawsuits to block the pipeline until such time as their claims to that land were settled. That was their aboriginal land and the Congress refused to deal with that issue. But when the Natives threatened to stop the pipeline through this lengthy litigation then Congress finally was forced to deal with land claims of tribes in Alaska and that resulted in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The tribes came away with recognition of title to land of about 44 million acres, about 10 percent of Alaska and about $1 billion in compensation for their other claims. But the strange part of the legislation was that this land and money did not go directly to the tribes. Congress again in the final stages of this termination period in an experiment set up Native corporations and put the land and the money into Native corporations and the Natives became shareholders of corporations. And so their land and money was held in a different way than tribes in the lower 48 where it's held by tribes. What that left open then was whether tribal governments had jurisdiction over that land in the same way that tribes have jurisdiction over their land in the lower 48. Is that Indian Country over which tribal governments can assert jurisdiction since it's not owned by the tribe, it's owned by these corporations that are owned by the individual tribal members? That was the question presented in this case brought by the Native village of Venetie where they sought to generate some revenues to support their tribal government by imposing taxes on people who lived and worked on their land and some of those people were non-Indians and they challenged the authority of the Venetie tribal government to tax them saying they didn't have authority to do that and the question was, is this Indian Country just like in the lower 48 and even though we won the case in the lower courts the Supreme Court reversed our victories and held that there is no Indian Country jurisdiction in Alaska, that the fact that these lands are held by Native corporations and not tribal governments makes a difference and that we have no tribal authority over our lands in Alaska because of this corporate status."

The impact of the Supreme Court reversal

John Echohawk:

"Well, what it means is that the tribes in Alaska don't have the same authority over their lands as the tries in the lower 48 and that means they're under state jurisdiction and with tribal governments being a distinct minority in Alaska they have difficulty controlling what happens in their own communities on their own lands and this is something that they want to correct and they've started discussions with the State of Alaska and with the Alaska delegation about this and they've started to make some inroads in getting the authority of Alaska tribal governments over their lands addressed. So even though the case was lost it started a discussion and a dialogue up there that started to result in change where tribal governments in Alaska are starting to be recognized as having the same powers and authorities over their lands as the tribes in the lower 48 so again it's another come back from this termination policy that had plagued us for so long."

Some of NARF's cases have roots deep in the past: the Trust Funds case

John Echohawk:

"The Trust Fund's case described as this case brought by Elouise Cobell as the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is a case that had really been out there for a long, long time that we were aware was out there for a long, long time but we were hoping wouldn't really ever have to be brought. Of course we had questions whether we would ever have the resources to bring it since it is the largest case that we've ever gotten involved in. But it starts with the fact that Indian lands are held in trust for Indians by the federal government. In that sense it's different from ownership of land that most people are familiar with in the United States. Generally speaking the title to tribal lands and individual Indian lands on reservations is not held by the tribe or by the individual Indians, it is held by the United States but it's held in trust for the benefit of the tribes or the individual Indians and that makes the federal government a trustee. In the beginning the land started out of course as land owned in common by the tribes. Initially that was the way that the federal government and the tribes established their relationship. But beginning in the 1880s with the Indian Allotment Act, Congress adopted a new policy part of this assimilation mentality that they had trying to force Indians to assimilate into the mainstream. They took some of this tribal land and divided it up and gave some of it to individual Indians, members of the tribe. And so individual Indians on some reservations for the first time got individual ownership of land but that land was still held in trust by the federal government for them. And of course as trustee then, like any bank, well, what that means then is the trustee when the land's to be leased for timber development or oil and gas development, the trustee signs the leases, collects the money and keeps it in an account for the beneficiary, the individual Indian. So the United States as our trustee became our banker and they were supposed to do all this for individual Indians who got these individual allotments beginning in the 1880s on many reservations across this country. Well, the federal government over all that time has not made a very good banker. They didn't keep track of all of these records and all these accounts and all of this money on all of these leases. This became evident pretty early. Beginning in the early 1900s there were starting to be reports of how the government was not managing these individual Indian money accounts for all these individual Indians that had these leases that the federal government was administering. Complaints were made to the Congress and to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and unfortunately nothing was done about them and even though these complaints would regularly be raised in the Congress and in the administrations all throughout the 1900s nothing was ever done about it. The latest effort was led by Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in this lawsuit that we're talking about. She got an act of Congress passed together with many other people in 1994 called the Trust Reform Act and what this did was put a special trustee into the Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs to clean up this mismanagement of the individual Indian trust funds. Well, it turned out to be politics as usual because promptly after 1994 the administration never asked for any money to implement this law and Congress didn't give them any, didn't provide any itself so everybody passed this law and kind of promptly forgot about it so it was business as usual. So we made a determination at that time that the Indian trust funds mess was never going to be resolved politically by the Congress and by the administrations, that we had to enlist the aid of the federal courts to do that and to enforce this clear federal trust responsibility and make them account for all of this money for these individual Indians that everybody knew had been mismanaged but nobody was ever going to fix it. But by enlisting the aid of the court, the court could enforce the trust responsibility and make the Interior Department reform the trust and do an accounting. That's what we asked for in the lawsuit that was then brought in 1996. The courts have responded magnificently. They've read the law, they see that the Congress has accepted this role as trustee through the enactment of all of these laws relating to our people that the federal government has a clear responsibility that has to be carried out by the Interior Department and the Department owes all of these individual Indian money account holders now estimated to be as 500,000 an accounting of their funds going back to the 1880s. And the federal government has resisted the efforts of the individual Indian money account holders at every step of the way since 1996 but again the courts have ruled in favor of the Indians at every turn and we're still waiting for this accounting of funds."

The conditions of Indian tribes and the obligations of the federal government

John Echohawk:

"Even though the federal government has taken on substantial obligations to tribes through the treaties and through the laws they have never lived up to their responsibilities. That's why we've got such poor social and economic conditions on Indian reservations. We're at the bottom of the ladder on virtually everything. We've been able to make substantial inroads into that in the last 30 years during this self-determination policy when we've taken more of the control ourselves but still we have a lot of catch up to do. There's not only neglect in the management of the trust funds of individuals and of tribes but in education, in health, in roads and infrastructure on Indian reservations, jobs, income, whatever it is we're at the bottom of those statistics and much of it is due to the fact the federal government just has not provided the assistance and support that they promised the tribes through the treaties and through the statutes. Much of that comes down to the appropriation process where Congress appropriates money to carry out the treaties and its responsibilities and even though all of our tribes have worked very hard to get the necessary appropriations to implement those laws we just haven't been able to get the kind of funding that we need and that's why tribes through the exercise of their authority as tribal governments have worked so hard in developing their economies and prioritized economic development because unless we're able to provide for ourselves it's unlikely that the conditions on our reservations are going to change very much cause the Congress, the United States of America just has not done a good job of fulfilling its responsibilities to Native people."

The public is informed about trust funds mismanagement but the problem continues

John Echohawk:

"I think this case has gotten a lot of widespread publicity across the country. We've worked very hard at doing that hoping to be able to force the federal government to enter into negotiations with us and settle this case but all of that exposure has really not worked in the sense that the federal government continues to resist, continues to deny that it has any responsibility for the mismanagement of these funds and continues to resist us at every turn. But thankfully we have the support of the federal courts and I think it's one of the most difficult cases they've ever had trying to force the executive branch of government to do what they're supposed to do, which is to follow the law. And it's gotten so bad now that we've asked the court to hold federal officials responsible for the trust reform in contempt of court for not complying with court orders and to put these officials in jail and assess fines against them personally. And we've also asked the court to basically take these responsibilities away from the Department of the Interior on a temporary basis and to have the court appoint a receiver that would carry out the trust reform under the jurisdiction of the court until such time as we got it fixed and then got the Interior Department people trained in how to administer that trust and then turned it back over to them once they demonstrated they're able to do it properly. These are extreme measures but again they're prompted by the fact that there has been extreme reluctance on the part of the executive branch to carry out the law of this country."

What the injustice over trust funds has meant for tribal people

John Echohawk:

"Well, we think as a result of the shoddy mismanagement of these Indian trust accounts that our people over the generations have really been defrauded and have lost a lot of the money that was due them under these leases that were being managed by the federal government. And of course interest is due on all of that money that we should have had too. So as Elouise Cobell likes to talk about, she thinks a lot of the wealth that our people had in these lands has been dissipated, lost by this mismanagement. And if we had had that money the conditions of our people over the last few generations would have been better. But that should be made up by this accounting when we I think basically determine that there have been billions of dollars that have been lost through that process and together with interest there are billions that are owed to these account holders and that's the part of the case that we're pressing forward on right now in 2002. The next phase of the case after we get this trust reform effort underway to stop the bleeding to fix the system now and that's to get to the accounting part of the case and to have a trial on that issue and establish that there should be billions of dollars in these accounts and the accounts should be restated to reflect that. Like I say, we didn't expect it to go on as long as it has. We thought the federal government would use this as an opportunity to settle what's clearly been recognized a long time as a mess."

How John Echohawk has maintained the strength of his commitments for more than three decades

John Echohawk:

"As a lawyer with tribal clients I take those responsibilities seriously and I represent my clients to the best of my ability. It's very interesting work, very rewarding work. We haven't been able to win all of these cases but we've won a substantial number of them and I've seen where that's made a difference in our Indian communities as we've talked about the change in Indian policy from termination to self-determination here over the last 30 years and the gradual improvement of social and economic conditions amongst our tribes even though we've got a long way to go and we're still pretty bad off, it's a lot better than it used to be. So it's been rewarding. I see the kind of work that I'm doing as something that really falls to each generation of Native people in this country. Reading the history of our people and all of the legal and political struggles they've been through since the founding of the nation in 1787 and even before then, each generation of Native people has had these issues that they've had to deal with. What's their relationship with the United States and what kind of conditions are they going to be living under today and what power do they have as tribal nations to impact that? And these are issues again that past generations have had, that our generation now has and the future generation of Native American people are going to have as well. I think that's why it's good to have programs like the Institute for Tribal Government do these kinds of projects where we can educate younger Indian people and Americans across the board about the history of tribes, the current issues and the future issues that are coming along that impact tribes and to get the younger generations of Native and non-Native people ready to deal with these issues because they will go on. The status of Native American people in this country has always been an issue in this country and it will always continue to be an issue in this country."

The preservation of Native religions and culture

John Echohawk:

"Well, our people are not only governments, nations but we're also people with different cultures and religions and that's I think the most important thing to our people is to continue to live the way that we were brought up by our mothers and fathers and our ancestors before that and to be able to follow the traditions and cultures and religions of our people and having the sovereign status as nations, as governments allows us to do that, to be able to make decisions that protect our tribes, our ways of life, our cultures and our religions and traditions. So along with protecting this governmental status we want to make sure that we can protect our culture and religious rights as much as possible, that's why this is one of the priorities that we've worked on at the Native American Rights Fund over this time. One of the areas we worked in quite a bit has been in the religious freedom of Native Americans. So many people in this country don't understand that many tribes have their own religions and in our view these religions are entitled to the same protection in this country as other religions but so many people just do not understand first of all that we have our own religions and then too they have trouble understanding that these religions ought to be accepted and protected on the same basis as other religions in this country so we've got a lot of work on that concept. The Congress passed the Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978 which was a declaration of policy intended to help all Americans understand that tribes do have their own religions and they're entitled the same respect as other religions but actually getting that implemented across the board has been difficult and there's been many cases on that. We've been involved in a number of them and it's still a very difficult and contentious issue."

Protecting Native sites, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act

John Echohawk:

"The whole country at one time basically being Indian Country we have inhabited the whole area since the beginning of time and we have burial sites all over this country, not just on the lands that we have left called reservations but on all of these lands and as this development occurs they are unearthing many of our tribal burial grounds and for so long under this termination policy most of America thought that tribes were extinct or disappearing and so when they did unearth our ancestors they hauled them away as if they owned them and that we as tribes didn't have any control over the remains of our ancestors. And we finally got Congress to pass a law in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that stopped that practice and recognized that our tribes own and control the remains of our ancestors and their burial goods and that they can't be taken away by other interests and that they do belong to us. So we've been able to stop that process and start reversing it by repatriating the bodies of our ancestors they've taken to the museums and all of the burial goods that they've confiscated and to return those to our people. And that has been a significant development."

Indian tribes and environmental issues

John Echohawk:

"The environmental movement really started about the same time as the Indian self determination movement in 1970. The environmental movement resulted primarily in a number of federal environmental laws that protect the environment across the country by setting minimal environmental standards that are to be met to stop and manage the pollution that has occurred. Under these federal laws most of them are carried out by states that contract with the federal government and then follow these federal environmental standards and implement them in the states. Well, of course as we've established in this Indian self determination era going back to the treaties, the jurisdiction on the Indian lands is the combination of tribal law and federal law based on this federal tribal relationship and state law does not apply on our lands unless that's been made applicable by a treaty or an act of Congress. These environmental laws did not give the states jurisdiction to enforce these environmental laws on our lands. That's still a prerogative of the tribal governments so what we've been doing as part of this Indian self determination and environmental movement is having the tribes develop their own environmental laws under the federal environmental statutes to take care of the environment on Indian lands. The environmental organizations that have been involved in overseeing this whole process like many Americans have not really been familiar with tribes and tribal governments and tribal authority so it's been important to reach out to them and explain to them why on Indian lands these environmental laws are implemented and controlled by the tribal governments instead of the state governments. I think they've become learners like American people generally about the existence of tribes and tribal governments and tribal authority and tribal nations and have been supportive of tribes regulating the environment on tribal lands. I've been one of several tribal people who have been involved in outreach to the environmental community about these issues and I've found it very interesting to see their reaction which is generally positive after they learn how all of this fits together under this legal system we have. But at the same time I've benefited from working with environmentalists to learn more about the environmental threats that do exist around the world and in this country and on our own lands too and be able to work with them to address these environmental problems that we have on our lands."

Individuals and foundations nationwide who believe in the protection of Native rights support NARF

John Echohawk:

"We've been able to establish a network of 40,000 individual contributors across the country that help us raise funds every year. In recent years too we've also seen tribes because of the increase in the ability they have to generate funds to help their people and their social and economic development be able to contribute part of that back to organizations like the Native American Rights Fund that have helped them do that so we've seen tribal contributions grow in recent years. I think even though we've been able to sustain the Native American Rights Fund at this level of around 15 attorneys for this 32 year period that we've been around, we haven't really despaired too much because the major development that's occurred during that time has been the number of tribes who are now able to afford their own attorneys. Thirty-two years ago there were only a handful of tribes that could do that but these days because of the progress that tribes have made most of the tribes today have their own attorneys. Maybe not as many as they need but they at least have some legal assistance available to them and that's helped them tremendously because I think tribes have learned so much of what's involved in protecting your tribes is dealing with the legal and political systems in this country and that for better or worse requires the use of lawyers. And our tribes now have a lot of legal counsel today, many, many more than they had when we started back in 1970 when together with Indian Legal Services we were about the only legal counsel available to tribes."

How to deal with setbacks

John Echohawk:

"Well, you try to figure out what you can learn from that and then how you can move forward with basically the same issues and try to change the outcome. In other words, never give up."

Never giving up, using the cases to educate the public

John Echohawk:

"I think really a process of starting with the United States Constitution, which is to say you talk about the American system of government and how tribes fit into that system. Even though that's really very basic so many Americans don't really understand that. It should be taught in our public schools and in our civics courses but unfortunately it's not addressed. And so we end up with the vast majority of American people not having any idea about the existence of tribal governments in this country today and the fact that it's based on the Constitution and treaties of this country. So it's a process that me and other Native Americans are involved in all of the time, it's a continual education process. It's particularly critical at the congressional level when these issues end up before Congress cause we end up with so many of our elected representatives really not only in Congress but the state level too not understanding the basics of American government that includes tribal governments. So we talk amongst ourselves about having to do an Indian 101 course like in college when you talk with federal and state leaders cause so many of them don't have any idea about our status as governments."

Educating around misconceptions about Indian issues, especially gaming

John Echohawk:

"Well, you have to talk about the Constitution and the treaties and the fact that tribes are governments like the states and like the federal government and that tribes like other governments have a need to raise revenue to provide services and just like the state governments do who operate games of all kinds to generate revenues, tribal governments are able to do that too under tribal law and that even though tribes have that option not all of them exercise that, that not all of the tribes are involved in gaming. There are 557 recognized tribes around this country. Less than half of them engage in gaming. Of the ones that do engage in gaming only a handful make a lot of money off of it because of their location and because of their business skills. The rest of them have fairly marginal operations but the revenues that are generated provide services for their Indian communities and very few Indians get these per capita checks that some people think we all get and that we're all rich and that's just not the case. And again, it's a continual process of educating people about that cause some of them pick up the wrong information, get the wrong impression about things so it's a continuing education campaign that many of us are involved in."

How tribal governments are impacted by the federal budget emphasis on national security

John Echohawk:

"So much of the budget is starting to be deferred over to these national security issues and what that's meant is that the difficulties we usually have trying to get appropriations for Indian programs are made even more difficult by this competing priority of funds for national security. It's made things even tougher and we're seeing that in this appropriation cycle now. We're barely able to have appropriated the same funds that we have appropriated last year before this national security crisis hit and it's very, very difficult, very tough going to ask for increases in all these programs that are woefully inadequate to start with."

The most beneficial piece of federal legislation for tribes in the past 30 years

John Echohawk:

"I think it has to be the Indian Self Determination Act of 1975 because that really implemented this Indian self-determination policy that we had all been pushing for and got Congress officially onboard that concept and what it means. It was really a change in Indian policy because under the old termination policy that of course self determination replaced the thinking of the federal government and the policy makers was that Indian affairs were to be managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the federal government on our lands until such time as we were able to manage for ourselves. And when that happened then we would be terminated and the federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs would leave the reservations and our tribal governments would be eliminated and we would come under the authority of the states. That was their prescription for us. But with the Self Determination Era what happened was we would accept the Bureau of Indian Affairs leaving the reservations or taking a back seat on the reservations but what would come forward was the tribal governments and that's been the biggest development here over the last 30 years has been the growth of modern tribal governments where our tribal institutions have stepped up and began governing our reservations in place of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And the Self Determination Act facilitated that by providing the funds that usually went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to govern our reservations and to get those funds over to the tribal governments so the tribal governments could govern our reservations."

Planning for the struggles ahead in light of recent Supreme Court decisions

John Echohawk:

"Well, the Tribal Sovereignty Protection Initiative is an effort by tribal leaders across the country to address what I think is the biggest threat to Indian Country today and that is the big change that we have seen in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court as they affect Native American rights. Throughout this whole 30 year period we've been talking about tribal progress has been driven by and large by favorable decisions of the United States Supreme Court upholding tribal rights in this country. In the last 10 years or so that has changed dramatically as the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed and it's become more conservative. Now the tribes lose virtually every case that goes to the Supreme Court. It used to be that they would take cases that we lost in the lower courts and decide them in our favor or take the cases that we won and affirm them in Supreme Court opinions. But anymore what they do is take cases that the tribes have won in the lower courts and then reverse them and come out with new interpretations, limiting interpretations of tribal rights. And this trend is of great concern to tribal leaders particularly because of two cases that came out last year that established that tribes have virtually no sovereign inherent authority over non-Indians in Indian Country whether it's on fee land owned by non-Indians within Indian Country or whether it's on tribal lands now. The tribes have virtually no authority over non-Indians in our territories and of course this is going to have a devastating impact on our ability to control public health and safety on our lands. It's going to impact our economic development and all of this comes at a time when of course we thought that we had clearly established what our authority was to control things on the reservations and now we find through these recent Supreme Court decisions that we do not have this governmental authority over non-Indians in Indian Country that we thought that we had. And tribal leadership has determined that it's not a good future for our tribes without this authority over non-Indians and it's so grim that we need to do something that's going to be very difficult and that is we need to go to the Congress and share with the Congress our concerns about these Supreme Court decisions and have the Congress reaffirm tribal authority over non-Indians in Indian Country so that we can protect the health and safety of everybody on the reservations and we can also continue to develop our tribal economies in a way that benefits our people and non-Indian people as well. This is going to be a very difficult issue cause it raises of course the basic question of the status of tribes in this country and their authority in this country but it's something that we have to do because the Supreme Court has basically decimated the tribes in terms of their authority over non-Indians on the reservations. We understand that the concern of the Supreme Court primarily has been how the tribal governments treat non-Indians as they exercise authority over them particularly in our tribal courts and the laws relating to the tribes basically empower those tribal courts in past years to decide these issues relating to non-Indians but the court has withdrawn that authority now because of their concern that these tribal court decisions are not subject to review by the Supreme Court, by the federal courts and the court has said as much. They want an opportunity to review all of these decisions of the tribal courts and that's the only way they can insure that non-Indians get treated fairly in our tribal courts. So part of what the tribal leaders are ready to do is to talk to Congress about having their authority over non-Indians restored and in return the tribes are willing to subject their tribal courts to federal court review of their treatment of non-Indians. It's just a very difficult issue that tribes face. Some of them are ready to do that, some of them are not ready to do that just yet."

The need to address not only civil jurisdiction but also criminal misdemeanor jurisdiction

John Echohawk:

"The crime statistics in Indian Country are abominable. While the crime rates across the country generally have gone down, in Indian Country they've gone up and that's primarily because the tribal governments don't have any authority over non-Indians in the criminal context and any prosecutions have to be done by federal or state authorities. And of course they're not really there in our Indian communities so much of the crime that happens does not get prosecuted and the tribes are powerless to do anything about it. So the tribes, many of them want this misdemeanor jurisdiction authority over crimes on reservations so that they can address the crime problem themselves so all these issues are going to Congress because we are not going to win these issues in the Supreme Court. They have basically denied our authority to do that so we have to get Congress to recognize our authority to do that."

Extreme cases have stirred minority descent

John Echohawk:

"In one of these cases last year when the court basically extended their interpretation of the limited authority of tribes over non-Indians on non-Indian land those same limitations over to now jurisdiction over non-Indians on our own Indian lands. They said there's virtually no difference between tribal authority over non-Indians whether they're on non-Indian land in Indian Country or whether they're on Indian land in Indian Country, it doesn't matter who owns the land, the fact of the matter is they're non-Indians and tribes have very limited if no authority over non-Indians anywhere in Indian Country. And this surprised three of the justices so much that six of the justices would all of a sudden announce this interpretation of Indian law that we had virtually no authority over non-Indians even on our own Indian lands that three of the justices in a very vigorous descent said the court has gone way too far in basically ignoring all of their past decisions relating to the authority of tribal governments over non-Indians back to the earliest days of the nation and all of a sudden announced this new doctrine, this new rule of law that takes away from the tribes authority that they have always had that we have to object. We have to descent vigorously and tell the majority of the court that they have made a really wrong decision, a bad decision and a decision judges should not be making because it's not the law of this country, that's not the law of tribal sovereignty. The opinion was written by Justice O'Connor supported by Justice Breyer and Justice Stevens."

The project ahead with Congress

John Echohawk:

"It's going to be a long process, there's going to be a lot of debate involved on all sides about the status of tribal governments and what kind of authority they should have over non-Indians and the impact on the states and local governments and non-Indian people. But it's one that has to be done because otherwise tribes face an uncertain future lacking control over a lot of things that happen in Indian Country that they need to be involved in."

The role of familial support

John Echohawk:

"Well, I've got a wonderful wife and family. They've been very supportive of me in my work even though it takes me away from home quite a bit traveling throughout the country on these cases and various issues. They understand it's important work and that my workplace is basically the whole country and I need to be at my workplace and it's not always in my office at home, it's different places around the country. So they've really been very supportive of me in that regard. I couldn't do it without them."

The values that underpin John Echohawk's work

John Echohawk:

"Well, I believe in the fairness and justice in this country and under the American system and even though our people don't always receive that sometimes we do. And it's really great when we're able to win something and make some progress for our people. And when that fairness and justice doesn't come through then it's very disappointing but at the same time we never give up and we figure another way to try to get the point across and get this fairness and justice that we're due under this system."

Education about the history of Indian nations for both tribal youth and non-Indians

John Echohawk:

"Well, I try to take advantage of every speaking opportunity I get in front of college classes and Indian youth in particular. But on a broader scale we're trying to impact the education systems on or near reservations so that tribal governments get involved more in that. And through the involvement of the tribal governments then they can modify the curriculums and what happens in the schools so that the existence of modern day Native Americans can be taught and appreciated in these schools and so that people come to learn about the history of our Indian nations and our legal status today as Indian nations. And again not only our Native youth but also the non-Indians involved in those same systems that our neighbors come to understand that too."

The greatest contribution of Native Americans to the country

John Echohawk:

"I think it's remarkable that our Native people have been able to maintain their sense of spirituality throughout all of this time that we've had dealings with non-Indians in this country and despite all the terrible things that have happened to us. Our people are still I think very open and caring and that's why they try to preserve their way of life and also continue to try to reach out and share with non-Indian people and try to deal with non-Indian people fairly too in recognizing the place of the human being in the larger universe and in this environment and our obligation to recognize that environment and our place in it and our obligation to take care of it."

The thread in Echohawk's own story he would extend to youth

John Echohawk:

"Well, I think the same thing that my parents engrained in me and my brothers and sisters that education is important. It really helps to understand the world around you and how it works and that you need to have that information to be able to take care of yourself but also to be able to help in your communities and that you have an obligation to do that. Our youth sooner or later at some point in their lives will come to understand those things and I think the earlier they understand that they need this information, they need this education for themselves and for their families and communities the better off they will be. So many of them resist the idea of education but I think once they see how it helps them personally and how it helps their families and communities the better off they're going to be and I think the easier it will be for them to open up and be receptive to educational opportunities."

The legacy Echohawk and his generation will leave

John Echohawk:

"I think I was raised in an era where I'm part of the first generation of Native American people who became professionals in this country, lawyers and doctors and we're able to use that knowledge then for the benefit of our people in a way that never had been done before. I think the assumption was always if our people got educated then we would be like White people and that has not proven to be the case. All of us have used the knowledge and education that we've gotten to benefit our people in our own terms and to continue our Indian ways and I think that has really surprised the American culture generally and has basically given our people a future where we see that our tribes are going to be able to exist in perpetuity."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
John Echohawk
NARF
Anthony Allison
Joseph Consentino
Thorney Lieberman
Gary J. Thibault

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: W. Ron Allen

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, conducted in June 2003, longtime Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Chairman Ron Allen discusses the role he played in his tribe gaining federal recognition and his work with the National Congress of American Indians. Allen thrives on challenge, greatly expanding the economy of his own small nation while simultaneously working on the national level with NCAI and other intertribal organizations.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Allen, W. Ron. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government. Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. June 2003. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Ron Allen, a citizen of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe was born in Sequim, Washington in 1947. With his three brothers and parents he enjoyed a small town life full of the outdoors and sports. Ron notes that he was a wild child during his teens and was not overly fond of school but he also had a curiosity about people and a zest for work and eventually developed a zest also for studies earning accounting and technical engineering degrees from Peninsula College and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of Washington. Ron Allen's interest in his tribe was sparked in the mid "˜70s when he was unable to get a replacement tribal ID card. He had not really been following the tribal story or its politics. Trying to get his card, the tribe told him that the Jamestown S'Klallam was no longer a recognized entity by the federal government; but S'Klallam means "Strong People". Ron decided to pitch in with the effort to make the tribe's strength a present day, not just a past reality. He was asked to serve on the tribal council and by 1977 had become chairman. Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe was restored to federal recognition in 1981. He became its executive director in 1982 with responsibilities for the tribe's programs including education, health and housing, economic development, natural resource management and cultural/traditional affairs. He remains chairman and executive director today. In the tribe's quest for self sufficiency Ron has led it in establishing enterprises that include a seafood operation, art gallery, construction company and a tribal casino. Profits are plowed back into the tribe and the local community to create jobs, school improvements and health services. But one tribe alone cannot meet the many challenges Indian nations face. He is committed to alliances such as the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. He is one of four U.S. commissioners on the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Commission. The organization he holds to be most crucial to tribes is the National Congress of American Indians. He has served as president, vice president and treasurer. Not shy to speak and speak out, Ron has provided congressional testimony numerous times and has actively engaged in media and public relations to educate the public about tribes. On all levels Ron Allen is passionately driven to protect and fight for the sovereignty of tribal nations and treaty rights. He was a leader in a 1994 historic White House meeting with President Clinton and tribal leaders from across the nation. In his home state he helped develop the 1989 Centennial Accord between Washington and its 26 tribes. The University of Washington awarded him a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2001. His travels have taken him not just to tribes around the U.S. but to other parts of the world. The condition of Indigenous people internationally is a growing concern. Though he thrives on his work and calling he is also dedicated to his two children, his garden and his wife whom he says has exerted a strong influence on his life and work. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Ron Allen in June 2003."

Parents, brothers and childhood

Ron Allen:

"My early childhood was primarily just a small town, rural, middle class community. My father and mother were as middle class as you could probably get. My father was a mechanic; my mother was a waitress. So they were definitely very people-oriented type of personalities. And we grew up in Port Angeles in very small neighborhoods. When you think of the Norman Rockwell kind of childhood, that's kind of what my childhood was about. My mother was just as outgoing a personality as you could ever imagine, classic waitress and everybody loved... She knew everybody and she was just a veracious reader. Even though she didn't go, neither of them went beyond high school, she was just incredibly bright and we'd get into almost any kind of conversation that we wanted. They were very avid Democrats, even though they weren't active type of Democrats but they were just as loyal to the Democrat Party as you could possibly get. And when I went into college and I ended up shifting more into Republic philosophical perspective. My mother had the hardest time with that. That was kind of an interesting development. But as far as values go, we just lived a very classic life, a classic rural life I guess and I just enjoyed it thoroughly. I just have nothing but fond memories from grade school all the way through high school.

Ryan's parents and the world of Indian issues

Ron Allen:

"My father experienced a lot of racism and my father was more on the fair skinned side as an Indian. And it was always interesting; as he grew up he ended up buying booze for his friends and relatives because he could get it with less hassle than his colleagues. My mother was Scottish-Irish so half of my heritage is from my mother's side. They just weren't very active. My father's father, my grandfather was very active. He was a former chairman of my tribe and very active with the lands claim settlement and so he was very much a part of that aspect of the tribal politics. But my dad just didn't get into it and neither did his brothers. He comes from a large family and there were seven of them. But none of them got interested in it, dad never got interested in it. I was always interested in it when I was a kid. My grandmother was one of the last speaking S'Klallams in our village and I remember her speaking it and I was asking her to try to teach me the language but she had absolutely no interest in it. She felt very firmly that it was dying and that I just needed to learn English well and that was her attitude towards it. So they just weren't active. My mother was very interested in it. She used to listen to the stories that my grandmother used to share about the experiences of the village and her memories of her mother and father, my grandparents of course."

Preparation for leadership did not necessarily begin in Ron's youth: Play, work and the Vietnam issue

Ron Allen:

"We used to party and drink a lot and basically do those kinds of things so I was...I think I was known as a bit of a wild child in high school days. In fact I was such a wild child that during high school I basically got picked up a great deal, a minor and possession. It ended up being one of the reasons why I did not go into the military. When I graduated in 1966, actually '67, '66 is when I was supposed to graduate, I was always in so much trouble by the time '66 came around most of my colleagues at the time were graduating, moving on and the guys were all going to the Vietnam War. And of course I had one more year to go and '67 we were still immersed in the Vietnam War and by that time I'd already been picked in minor possession 19 times and I had a couple of assault charges, getting into fights and things like that. Often they weren't necessarily fights that I incited, they were just things I was defending people that were friends of mine, and you're at the wrong place, the wrong time. And that was a lot of my story back in the high school and post high school years. And so I was not really being much shaped as a leader. I was always interested, I was always vocal but I was not necessarily shaping my leadership skills at the time. And when I got out of high school and of course the Vietnam War was moving along and I got my draft notice. I remember going in and passed the physical fine and then you have to sign up all this stuff that you did and I had to tell them all these minor possessions and the assault charges. And I remember the recruiter was looking at it and kind of going, "˜What is this?' And I said, "˜Well, you know, I kind of had fun during high school.' And I put all the stuff down because I was not really interested in going to Vietnam. My friends wanted to go there, paratroopers and what have you, and I was not interested in the war at all. I did not like it, I did not feel good about it, everything I read about it I didn't like it and so I told the guy, the recruiter, I said, "˜I'm not interested. If this keeps me out of the military, fine.' And I got a notice months later that gave me a 4F and a little note on the side attached to it and the recruiter says, "˜Well, bub, this is the best I can do for you.' So that kept me out of the military. I always had mixed feelings about that as I grow older and think about my friends who did serve and sometimes I wish I would have and did, I wish I did do that but I just didn't. And that's just the way it goes and I don't think twice about it and don't look back at it and think lesser of myself because I didn't do it. I am proud of my friends and those who have actually served in the military and am very appreciative of them doing that. But after high school then I started getting, I tried to go to college and it didn't work. I was not interested in anything, I couldn't stay focused, my grades were just terrible cause I just...I was not interested in school. I was always, all the way from grade school all the way through, well, my whole life; I've always been a worker. So because we were really a poor family, we didn't have much, anything that I wanted I had to work for. So I remember even as a teenager when I was 15 and 16 years old, I went up to Alaska and fished on a commercial seiner up in southeast Alaska and I'd come home with a lot of money. I had a lot more money than most of my friends just cause I had a little connection and I worked hard and I made money and then when I was in high school I always worked. I remember working as a mechanic in a bowling alley all the way through high school. So I'd go to work at 7:00 or 8:00 at night and not get off until 1:00 in the morning and then go to school the next day. So working was never a problem for me. As a matter of fact, when I was grade school and junior high I used to have three paper routes. They didn't want you to have three paper routes but one paper route wasn't making enough money for me so I figured out a way...we had three different papers at the time so I had all three routes in my area so I'd make a few more bucks. So I was never...I was always working and never was afraid of working."

The 1960s: Skills emerge in the counter culture experience, as does a fascinating with people

Ron Allen:

"So then my organizing and management control skills started emerging. I was always the one who handled the money for all my friends. If we were going to do anything, if we were going to...just manage everything from the household responsibilities to special events and we lived on a big farm out in the field and we would throw these small little mini rock festivals. I was the one who organized it, I was the one that put everything together and organized getting the beer and getting the bands and making sure the bandstand was all organized and figuring out how to hook up, make sure all the electricity was there and so forth and orchestrating who could park where and that's pretty much the world I came out of. And I was searching for something higher and searching for understanding of life without really knowing it. And then I was driving a logging truck and making pretty good money and all of a sudden I found myself reading a lot of magazines. I was just kind of fascinated with what it took to understand the people around me and people's personalities "˜cause I was always fascinated by people and wanted to understand what made them tick and why they acted and responded in a certain way, where their disposition led them as people. So I was trying to understand those issues. So then when I started reading and studying these different topics I just realized that driving a logging truck was not going to be a good enough deal for me. That was not the kind of vocation I was interested in. I was interested in something much more than that so I decided to go back to school."

Playing basketball in Indian tournaments, Ron gets carded

Ron Allen:

"I would always at the rebound and that was my main job, go get the ball and then get that thing out in the fast lane and I'd rough people up pretty good. And then pretty soon people were wondering about me cause I have fair skin, probably taking more after my mother, the Scottish-Irish side of my family. And they kind of went, "˜Who's this White guy out here? Is he really Indian?' I'm going, "˜Those are my brothers over there. You're not questioning them,' "˜cause they were more darker skinned than I was. And so they said, "˜We don't care. We want to see your ID.' And of course I didn't have it because I'd lost it on a fishing trip. I just loved basketball too much, I wanted to play so I went back to the council and said, "˜I need my ID, can you get me another ID?' And they said, "˜Well, actually we can't. The BIA has decided to no longer recognize our tribe and we are in the middle of reestablishing our standing as a tribal government and being recognized as a tribe.' That was the mid "˜70s, like 1974 pretty late in the fall cause we were playing basketball. So I was going to school and I was playing basketball and then all of a sudden that's when my whole career with the tribe emerged. I says, "˜Well, what's the deal with...how do we get the cards?' And they said, "˜we have to get recognized and there's a process called the Federal Recognition Process that they're...and we have a lawyer that we've hired,' through an organization the tribe was a member of called the Small Tribes Organization of Western Washington.'"

Ron is invited to fill a slow on the tribal council as he continues classes at Peninsula College

Ron Allen:

"So the guy says, "˜Well...' I said, "˜What does it mean?' And he goes, "˜Well, you just sit on the council and help us make decisions on what the tribe needs to do in terms of getting recognized and try to build up our ability to serve our people.' I went, "˜Okay, so I'll do that. If that means I can help get this card,' and that's all I was interested in was getting the card to go back and play basketball. So they appointed me to the chair or to the vacant council member in 1975. And then I started working with the lawyer and the anthropologist in terms of putting together the petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Meanwhile I was going to school at Peninsula College and all of a sudden those two simultaneous tracks started in my life, which kind of changed what I was doing. All of a sudden I became interested in what the tribe was doing and started asking questions, "˜What do we do, how do we provide services, where do we get our revenues?' We didn't have a land base. We didn't...we would meet in people's living rooms or at the VFW in Skwim and so that was kind of how we would orchestrate ourselves. Our files were...whoever was going to keep the files in their trunk and bring it to the meeting and that's pretty much how we handled business. The second two years at Peninsula College I was much more interested in politics and I became the president of the student body and then became only the second person to ever be the president two years in a row and was just very active on the campus and got more and more active with the tribe. And next thing I know by 1977, I was well into the engineering program up at PC, into the politics, and by that time I got elected the chairman of the tribe. Then all of a sudden my tribal career took off."

Jamestown Village was a cohesive community, which Ron got to know through his grandmother

Ron Allen:

"She always wanted me to come down and stay with her and so I did. I used to...summers I would go down there and stay for weeks on end. We used to have this little tiny hut on the beach. It was basically a two room place with an outdoor toilet and it didn't even have a shower. You had this little tiny bathtub in it. I mean it was the dinkiest little thing you could ever imagine. It's a good thing I was small back in those days. But I used to spend time with her on the beach and so I knew the community quite well. In those days what we referred to as the Jamestown Road was just all Jamestown people with a couple of non-Indian farmers around us. Today, because it's such a beautiful beach, it got bought up by a lot of very wealthy people and eventually pushed out a lot of our people. The prices of land taxes went up and it got exorbitant for many of our community. And so we really only have about a dozen or so of our members that actually still own land down in the original Jamestown Village. We're working hard at preserving more and more of that property and picking up pieces here and there to try to restore it as much as possible, but it's pricey for us. So we're doing that. But I was down there and was very much a part of the village. I didn't really realize that we were not an organized tribal entity. Before I became aware of it, I knew that there was a tribal police, there was actual IHS, Indian Health Service assistance that was made available down there, we had our own Shaker Church and it was just a very organized village and I guess you just didn't think about it. So I never thought much about it either and then all of a sudden all those factors became factors with the petition."

Juggling school, work and the rules of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Ron Allen:

"Cause I pretty much had exhausted what educational assistance I could get from the tribe I had to basically earn my way through. So I used to work on a graveyard shift from 11:00 to 7:00 in the shipyards as a ship fitter. I worked down at Lockheed and there was one other company I worked for early on but basically that's what I did for four years. Then I would go to school during the daytime and then I would run over and deal with the tribe in the afternoon, come back usually on the ferry at night. So I'd go over the Skwim two to three times a week and come back and basically it was one of those sleep fast kind of periods for me where I just had to figure out where I could find 15 minutes to sleep, on the ferry. It's one of those things, you're exhausted so you just sleep that half hour and somebody's knocking on your window telling you to get off the ferry. And so it was kind of intense for me. But I had high energy and so I just kept chipping away at earning a living, making sure I had money to pay for school and living expenses with myself and my wife -- I got married in 1981 -- and going over to the tribe and managing the tribal affairs. During that time when I went to the University of Washington in '79 we were finally getting to where we got a handle on the federal recognition process and so the BIA, cause part of our problem was the BIA kept shifting the rules, kept shifting the standards, which you had to meet; the criteria, standards and criteria that you had to meet in order to be qualified, to meet their criteria and be recognized as a legitimate government. And we had full support, we'd gotten full support from our sister tribes, Lower Elwha S'Klallam Tribe and the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe and then also the surrounding tribes. So the support was really, was well established. When the process actually emerged they actually moved us up on the wait list, and so we went from I think #19 up to #2 behind the Grand Traverse Tribe up in Michigan. And so that was a fast track for us. That happened in 1980 and then all the anthropologists and all the BIA teams started coming out and visiting us and going through our documents and visiting the tribe and making sure that we were "legit". So we got recognized in February. We passed all their tests and criteria. And February 10th, 1981, we were recognized. The summer of '81 we got a $30,000 grant from the BIA to help set up our governmental operation. By October of '83 we received $180,000. So now we were opening up shop. We had opened up a small little two-room office in Skwim, in this place called the Boardwalk Square. And so that I was coming over and actually dealing with tribal affairs; I was hired as the executive director in the summer of '82 and that's when I became the administrative head for the tribe. So that was the pattern. And then in '83, a year later, while I was working half time as the administrator for the tribe I finally graduated so just everything kind of happened. In the summer of '83 my wife and my newborn baby, my oldest son Joe, we moved back to Skwim. And during that time we were able to also secure a HUD grant. So we had put together a HUD grant and bought a little two-acre piece of property. Couldn't do it in Jamestown because Jamestown was designated a flood plain zone so you couldn't spend federal dollars there. So we ended up finding a site near one of the other village sites on Skwim Bay, it was the best we could do and we said, "˜This works.' And so that's how we actually got located where we are because we had to move fast and we found a site that worked on the Bay. And then on that particular site was a little house and I moved into it and just basically lived the tribal politics ever since then."

Response of surrounding communities to the tribe's restoration

Ron Allen:

"Indifference; indifference without a doubt. I think that the local community really didn't pay a whole lot of attention to us. The local Skwim community knew us as the Jamestown Village and knew the families that lived there and lived in the Skwim community. They didn't pay any attention to us. They didn't ever even think of us as a government. It just never crossed their mind. They were just "those Indians" who lived on the beach who were here forever and we like them. Most of our people were very likeable people and if you asked some of the old pioneers of the community they would say, "˜Yeah, I knew the Jamestown. I knew Lyle Prince real well, I knew Bill Allen real well, I knew Bill Allen's dad Joe. Yeah, I remember him.' County commissioners, they didn't pay much attention to us at all and just shrugged their shoulders. There was actually...there wasn't all that much engagement with the Lower Elwha S'Klallam Tribe and they just didn't pay much attention to them. So they weren't going to pay attention to that reservation that was well established since the 1930s then they certainly weren't going to pay any attention to us. And so we were not on their radar screen for many, many years. I think that when we first got on their radar screen was after the settlement. There was a settlement in 1985 for the land and we purchased some property and one of the pieces is actually where our casino is at right now. But on that property we ended up selling fireworks and that got their attention. Okay, now there's this Indian fireworks stand. So that's the first time they really started resonating that, um, we've got to deal with these Indians and that respect that they had no control over what we did on our property. That annoyed them but we were still so small, we were only a tribe of 250 people, they didn't pay much attention to us. And as we started developing businesses, I think that they started developing a confident level of who we were and how we interacted with the local community. They looked at us...I think many would look at us with a jaundice eye or a little bit of a skeptical eye but many said that, "˜Well, actually they're doing quite well and they're taking care of themselves. They're being very resourceful and very independent,' which is a very strong characteristic that we always took great pride in. S'Klallam means 'Strong People' and so...we took a lot of pride in the meaning of our people's name. So I think the local community actually developed a positive attitude towards us. We were always very progressive and we were never afraid of pursuing businesses off the reservation or out of the area. Often in reservation communities the people want to see the businesses where they actually can see them, they can know where the business opportunities are, job opportunities are, and the idea of owning businesses out of sight, off the reservation is something that creates a bit of anxiety and distrust. We never had that problem at all so we had a number of businesses that started off the reservation, out of the area altogether and we managed them to develop business credibility."

Strategies for economic development

Ron Allen:

"Our fundamental philosophy was to go slow, go after capital intensive businesses, get them solidified and strengthened and then step off of them to go after labor intensive businesses that create more job opportunities for our tribe. And as we moved along we had more successes than failures. We had a couple of failures, disappointing but we had far more successes and we made it work and I think the community opened up to us with strong reception that we are part of the community. I still don't think that they thought of us as a government. I think they thought of us as a business entity, kind of like a little association and that they have this unique authority to engage in businesses as an association. That's the way I read their attitude towards us. So I think it worked quite well and as time went along our businesses became more and more successful and all of a sudden we became one of the stronger employers in the community. Then we raised the eyebrows of the political sorts and the general public realizing that we made a huge difference. But also at that time we started raising the attention of those who were basically the anti-Indian sentiment, the people whose mentality was, "˜We defeated these Indians, why do they have these special rights, why do they get these special opportunities and why do they not pay taxes.' And so all of a sudden you started seeing, people started throwing rocks at us because of jealousy and envy."

The 1855 Point No Point Treaty made clear that the signing tribes retain the right to fish, hunt and gather. The 1974 Bolt decision affirmed equal fishing rights

Ron Allen:

"We're fish people. We grew up being fish people. We lived on the rivers, we lived on the beaches, fish and shellfish, that's our way of life and that's who we are. And it was true for the Jamestown S'Klallam people too and that is how we basically lived. I remember grandma telling me how they used to go get crabs and go eat Elkin clams and load it up on a wagon and actually take it to Port Angeles to sell to make a few bucks. So when we got recognized then it became evident to me that first things first, we need to make sure that we intervene in the Bolt decision, that we have equal fishing rights. So that was a huge issue. The Point No Point was the vehicle that we should be organized to manage the fishery and enforce the fishery and provide the fishing opportunities for our community. And of course the Northwest Indian Fish Commission was the collective entity that the 20 signatory tribes, including us at Jamestown, was organizing to deal with the state and deal with the federal government. In those days there was just five commissioners. It was organized by treaty area. So there's the five treaty areas: Point No Point, Point Elliott, Quinault and Macaw and Nisqually, Medicine Creek and that's how it was organized. And we had representatives in that forum representing the Point No Point treaty council. Then I started getting involved in that forum as well and became much more involved in reorganizing the Northwest Indian Fish Commission and I got more active in both forums, Point No Point and Northwest Indian Fish Commission reorganizing. So I started spending a lot more active energy in fisheries itself trying to help protect our interests and make sure that we were carving out our fair share. That included we, that Jamestown needed to make sure that we were preserving our unique exclusive areas, which is in front of our village, inside the Dungeness Spit was a very tense and still is a tense discussion because our sister tribes have their exclusive areas, the Gamble Bay for the Port Gamble S'Klallam and Freshwater Bay over there in front of the mouth of the Elwha River in front of the Lower Elwha Tribe."

How to balance work for one's own tribe with work for multiple tribal issues

Ron Allen:

"That's not an easy question to answer. If you're out there in the political forum, whether it's in the local regional level or the state level or the federal level, there are political issues, policy matters, that affect your rights, your political fishery rights, whether they're legal rights or whether they're just policy matters, and you have to protect and/or advance your interests in those forums. Your tribe has an interest but somebody has to take the lead to champion our interest in those various forums. And so when you're doing one you're doing the other. If you're a part of an aggregate that really means that you're championing your interest as a tribe but it just so happens you're wrapped up in the interests of your colleague, your sister tribes. And so that's true at a local level like Point No Point among the four tribes, it's true at Northwest Indian Fish Commission with regard to the 20 tribes, it's true in the Northwest if you're dealing with the northwest issues in the multiple forums. And some of the best examples are the Pacific Fishery Management Council forum where they manage the fishery from Puget Sound all the way down the coast, up the Columbia River and down the coast of Oregon or the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Commission forum where you're dealing with the management of harvest management of fisheries from Alaska all the way down to the Oregon coast and up the Columbia River. So that's a very extensive area and in each of those forums you have an interest because the fish do not know any boundary, they don't know borders, they don't know do they belong to this tribe or to that non-Indian or to this Alaskan and so forth. So what you have to do is you have to go out there and negotiate and try to manage a fair share in terms of even defining what fair means to each respective party and you just get very involved in it. So while you're doing that, you're advancing the interests of the collective good. The collective means you're inside it, inside you're affected by it so you look at that with a very close eye to make sure that your interests are being protected as well. But you happen to be, because you're an active tribal leader in those forums, you're in a very fortuitous position to protect your tribe's community's interest in those forums."

Ron has participated in many fish forums and is one of four U.S. commissioners on the Pacific Salmon Commission, which represents treaty tribes from Washington and Oregon

Ron Allen:

"And actually since 1985, I've been active in the U.S.-Canada Fishery forum and eventually I became active on what's called the Frasier River Panel that actually actively manages the Frasier River Sockeye and Pink Salmon which was a big fishery for our people, the S'Klallam people and the Jamestown people. And so I was very actively involved with that for eight years. And then you take those issues and move them back to Washington, D.C. where you have the Magnuson Act and other fishery legislation whether it's being passed or whether it's being amended or whether it's being proposed and then you have to be back there championing those issues including the appropriation process that allocates budget for managing fisheries, protecting the habitat, advancing enhancement programs and so forth."

In the years of fish negotiations, the most difficult decision

Ron Allen:

"Persuading the tribes that...it basically is two fold. In the PSC forum, Pacific Salmon Fishery forum, in '85 there was lots of people who really believed that this was a bad deal for us, that it was a bad deal for the tribes and I believed that it was a good deal because even back then with limited experience and expertise and knowledge about fisheries and politics, it was evident to me that we were in a fish war and that war had to be stopped and we had to try to...we had to stop the bleeding of the decimation of our fishery. And that treaty was the vehicle to make it happen, to start forcing some actions. So I was pushing real hard to make that happen and likewise it ended up having its problems in implementation and lack of definition. And back in '85 we ended up negotiating another settlement, a revised and amended settlement of that treaty in 1999. And that was very difficult because it was not just the 20 tribes, which included my tribe, but it was the four tribes of the Columbia River that we had to persuade this was a good deal for us and we needed to move it forward and trying to make something happen that satisfied everybody was impossible. There were many others that were similar, shellfish negotiations or negotiations of exclusive areas even for my own tribe among the Klallam tribes. It's about trying to find some sort of common ground. And in every community you have a set of positions that can be the extreme and you can't...you can never settle any dispute on any end of the extreme. It just can't be done so you have to find that common ground and I've done it in countless forums. Sometimes people have accused me of being the negotiator of the middle ground and that that's to the detriment of the interest of the tribes. I don't agree with that at all. I agree that if you're going to lead then you need to lead and provide a path which you're going to be able to build and then if you make adjustments because you were not observant about one factor or another or a key issue then you go back and try to correct it. You work hard at trying to correct it because you now have more knowledge and more information with regard to that matter in terms of making some adjustments to improve it."

How resistance to tribal fishing rights changed over time

Ron Allen:

"The non-Indian community, over the course of the last 20-25 years, really has shifted its attitude towards the tribes as managers, the tribes as experts. The last, oh, gee, 5-7 years it's been real interesting because the state and federal government are essentially robbing our staff in terms of getting better staff. So for...from the "˜80s, early "˜80s all the way through to the mid "˜90s I think that we probably had among the best staff, the best technicians, best managers in the northwest. And then in the mid "˜90s then there became new problems. The ESA Act emerged and other kinds of problems emerged on its heels and there was a need for more and better expertise. And so they started providing the tribal staffers with better opportunities, more salary, better benefits and so forth and we had a tough time competing with them. The good part is that we trained them and they understand our rights and who we are and they have a stronger propensity to work with us. But on top of that, politically, the different organizations who represent different interest groups, the sport groups, the commercial groups and so forth. They started realizing that we are a friend and an ally and that we're really working closer together. And so you found us actually working on solutions in that forum, in the political forum in Olympia and in Washington, D.C. mutually going after resources to do a better job for management, to do a better job for enhancement and habitat protection. The alliances started shifting dramatically. There were still a number of very negative biased and racists personalities and organizations that are out there, they're still out there today. Some are even getting stronger in their organizational capacity and trying to be very clever in how they're spinning their attitude and the general public's notion of the tribe's unique rights."

The Rafeedie decision, one of the most significant advances for Indian fishers since the Bolt decision

Ron Allen:

"Particularly, in light of the fact that shellfish became the new core fishery program as the fin fish continued to diminish and the market continued to diminish, the shellfish industry for gooey duck and crab and shrimp, sea cucumbers, started to emerge. So that Rafeedie decision was a huge deal for us and now we're still in the middle of settlement. We're just now closing that settlement out in terms of clarifying the relationship between the tribes' rights and the growers who also were acknowledged in the treaty days and so we had to work out some sort of a compromise and we're doing just that. The Bolt decision dealt with only the fin fish, the salmon. It did not deal with the shellfish, the crab and the gooey duck, the little necks and manila clams, which was an introduced clam to the northwest area. And it made it real clear that we preserve 50 percent of the harvest of the shellfish. So that made it real clear to the state that they had to co-manage the fishery with the tribes for those fisheries. Because those products became very marketable and increased stronger than the fin fish, it became more important to the Indian fishermen because they shifted their gear and their ability to harvest from fin fish to shellfish."

Elected officials in the State of Washington: friends and enemies of tribes

Ron Allen:

"For the longest time it was either hot or cold. Either you were supportive and sensitive to the tribes' rights and interests or you just were dead against it and you just, philosophically, did not agree with the tribes' rights. Over the time we've had a lot of different personalities out there. The former senators Magnuson and Jackson, they were strong supporters of the tribe. They unequivocally were supporting our rights and were huge champions, well liked by many tribal leaders and they had a very strong relationship. Then you move forward and then you had a series of different kind of players out there but Senator Slade Gorton was one of our deadly enemies, no question about it. He just philosophically...it's not that he...I don't think he hated Indians. I just think that he philosophically did not believe that the tribes should be dealt with differently and specially and that the treaties did not mean that they have special rights. Philosophically he didn't agree with that and he did everything he possibly could to object to that. From the time when he was the attorney general in the appeals to the Bolt decision and he lost all those appeals all the way to the Supreme Court to the time he became a Senator and tried to introduce legislation. We've had numerous congressmen in the area trying to introduce legislation that would undermine the tribes' treaty rights and they worked real hard at it. Fortunately we had a lot of friends and from the senators, Jackson and Magnuson, to today Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell -- I'll come back to Maria Cantwell in a second here -- but they have been good friends to us and we have worked well together. We've had numerous congressmen led by Norm Dicks who actually used to work for Maggie as the chief of staff and moved into Congress himself and has become quite powerful as a ranking Democrat in the House and has been a very, very strong supportive. We've had numerous congressmen who started off being against the tribes and being supportive of the non-Indian constituency and always being influenced by their contributions to their campaigns and so forth and advancing legislation that was detrimental to the tribes and trying to undermine the tribes' legal standing and rights. They lost a lot of battles and they started realizing that the tribes' political clout and knowledge or skill at fighting political fights in Washington, D.C. was ratcheting up dramatically and we had become, tribes in the northwest, including tribes across the nation, had become very good at watching what's going on in Congress in these different forums and spotting these riders that are being slipped into these various bills and generating support to oppose them or get them removed. In state politics for years and years a lot of the politicians didn't realize that they had absolutely power over the unique federal tribal relations that the authority over the tribes' unique right was at the federal level, was in Washington, D.C., it wasn't in Olympia. And they would try to pass pieces of legislation that was absolutely illegal that would get thrown out by courts left and right because they had no authority over tribes' jurisdiction. One, a Republican Representative currently, a job named Jim Buck, he's from my area as a matter of fact, and he was very much against the tribes' unique rights and thought that they should be changed. But this is where Billy Frank entered into the picture and really persuaded him, "˜Well, read the treaties and then if you still believe we don't have a right, then let's talk about it.' So he did. He actually sat down and read the treaties, read the unique relationship between the tribes and read the Bolt decision and all of a sudden came out, as conservative as he is, he's a very conservative, not a right winger but he's a very strong heavy to the right conservative Republican and he flat out believes that the tribes are right, that they're absolutely...they're co-manager and he's become convinced that we're good managers and that the state benefits from our collective efforts and has become quite knowledgeable about the truth of harvesting and protecting the fishery, which is a high interest of his."

The impact of Washington tribes on the Senate race of 2000

Ron Allen:

"Slade Gorton had been a senator for a couple of terms and introduced countless pieces of negative anti-Indian legislation and we had to spend a lot of energy and a lot of money fighting those bills and those riders that he was introducing and beating them. We finally said, "˜Well, we can either keep fighting him in those forums or we can fight him in the political election and just flat out tell him, we don't like you, we don't agree with you philosophically and we don't want you to be our senator anymore.' And so the tribes got more actively involved in that particular election in 2000 and I was an early proponent of Maria Cantwell. I remember her as a former congresswoman. She'd dealt with the Tulalip Tribe and was very fair and understood their position and was probably a good candidate. There were a couple others out there that we were interested in but she's the one that resonated; she's the one that rose to the top from my perspective. So we did two different things. One, we started generating money for her to help her campaign and number two, we started getting our people registered and we kept convincing our people that we have 100,000 Indians in Washington State and if we can just get half of them, if we can get 40 percent of them in the elections and to vote it's going to make a difference. And so we initiated some vote registration campaigns throughout the different communities, different people took responsibility for it, we held different meetings to get people enthused about it and help with Maria's campaign in terms of getting signage up and doing whatever we could to help the campaign resonate and that worked out quite well for us and we stuck by our guns. I remember that I had conversations with Slade Gorton's chief of staff, Tony, but his comment to us was, "˜Well, we're going to win and when we're done we'll talk about Indian rights and Indian issues.' His comment was, "˜You don't understand us.' I says, "˜Well, actually we do understand you. We understand when you're advancing legislation that is terminating our rights, that is eliminating our unique authority and that's undermining our governmental status,' I says, "˜we know exactly what you're doing. So I don't care how you want to rationalize it, you can do that all you want, but you're against us and we know it.' So we championed that legislation, excuse me, that campaign and we won. And in the end the 2000 votes, we contend were Indians votes. If those Indian voters, we got an additional we think somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 voters out there, if they'd stayed home, Maria would have stayed home too and Slade would still be in office. We chalked it up as an Indian victory, no question about it. Yes, when you're talking about the two million votes that are out there, that a lot of people contributed to it, no question about it, but without the Indians they didn't win the election and we think that was a statement from the Indians to politicians that we're not afraid of you, that we're willing to weather the consequences of any kind of retribution that you may want to levy against tribes. And I remember talking to a lot of my colleagues and they were very, very skeptical of doing this. They thought, "˜No, he's going to come back, he's going to win and he's going to nail us.' And I went, "˜He's nailing us now so what difference does it make, so stand firm, stand strong.' And we've started to get much smarter about that in terms of getting our people out and voting and getting our people motivated to contribute money to campaigns and we're getting smarter about how we contribute. We just don't dump money into a Democratic or Republican Party. We want to know, what is it you're going to do with this money? How is this money going to be able to benefit our community? How are you going to spend money to help us get more of our people registered and get engaged in politics? And how are you going to reach out to the tribes and so forth? So tribal politics has shifted in the "˜90s and now in the 21st century. You're now starting to see tribal people become more players, you're starting to see fundraisers and tribes being much more active. The numbers are rising because the tribes now have money because of the success of the gaming industry primarily, that has made a big difference in our ability to participate in the political process at all levels. I think the Republican Party really does want to try to mend fences between them and the Indian communities and its leadership."

Ron is a moderate Republican who has supported, admired and learned from Democrats

Ron Allen:

"First and foremost, I defend tribes rights, tribes sovereignty, tribes treaty rights. That's the bottom line for me. In college I developed a much more conservative philosophy towards independence of individuals and communities and the laissez faire economic development philosophies. And so I was actually quite conservative coming out of college. Since college and because of my experience in politics, watching how politics works, learning how it actually works and how you work out the differences of opinion about different philosophies and different issues that affect our communities from so-so issues to natural resources to political institutions that are important for us and so forth, it's come to my perception that my notion is still strongly Republican from economic development perspectives but I've become much more moderate. And a man who's really influenced me on that philosophy and approach is Dan Evans. I thought Dan Evans was a fabulous governor for Washington, I thought he was a fabulous Senator. He advanced a lot of legislation that advanced our issues in a dramatic way. And so his approach, his philosophical approach made sense to me. So it wasn't about your philosophy, it is about the objectives...goals and objectives you're trying to advance. And for me, my primary goal and objective was creating a political, legal environment that tribes could pursue their goals and their objectives and become truly self-determined and self-reliant on their own terms and that they could co-exist with their colleague governments that are out there, whether they exist on the same actual political, legal level or not. In other words, we primarily deal with ourselves with the federal government but we have a relationship with the state government. So for campaign purposes, it's about what do you stand for and how does your political position and platform mesh with the tribes' agenda? Are you going to be respectful of tribal governments? Do you believe we exist as sovereign governments and we have that unique relationship? Do you believe that our treaty rights are a very special contractual commitment between the federal government in our communities that cannot be broken, that holds the sacred...the sacred promise of the nation to Indian peoples or not? So the issue is if it's positive then my disposition is that you're a friend."

The need to educate the American public about tribal nations

Ron Allen:

"So I think that we really need to continue to work harder in terms of educating the society and the policy people. It's ever changing. The fundamental knowledge about who Indian tribal governments are or our communities and how we co-exist in the state, is a topic that really is developed in grade school and the middle school years. That's where the seed is really planted and we just have to work harder at shifting the curriculums and shifting the materials so that they more accurately reflect who the tribes are and what our history is because you're dealing with 250, well, actually more, 500 years of history but 250 years of history within this state, within the United States in this political relationship and most of them don't quite understand how we fit. And as you see the changing of the guard in Olympia for the state legislature or in Washington, D.C., it's about people who don't have a good fundamental educational background about tribal governments and treaty rights and the unique relationship between the United States society including Washington society and the Indian communities. So we're very conscious that we have to ratchet up our ability to change the curriculum in the educational institutions but also to work harder through the various other educational communication vehicles. It's using the media; all forms of the media -- the broadcast media, the print media, the magazine media -- every form of media that's out there in terms of getting our messages out there. Not just the controversial stuff, which is easy for them to print and cover, but the stuff that are fascinating stories, spending money to basically cause people to have a better understanding of who we are and how we make a positive contribution to our society and to our economy and to our mutual goals and objectives, and then reaching out to the special interest groups that are out there. It wouldn't matter whether it's associations or organizations of different sorts, whether it's church groups or whether it's Rotary and Lions Clubs and chamber of commerce organizations, you're reaching out to them to cause them to know who you are and staying engaged in that way while you're doing that you're educating. And you don't try to overwhelm them, you don't brow beat them but you just take a very subtle, very soft educational approach. So it's never too late but if we're going to change a society, a cultural attitude, it's more at the grassroots and more at the younger level. That's where you're going to make a huge difference. Indians can't stamp out racism faster than African Americans or Asian Americans and so forth, Latinos. It's just racism is racism out there and it's ugly roots are deep and it's going to take a long time to root them out. We're just a part of it and our focus just happens to be with regard to the Indian communities and our unique governmental relationship that the other ethnic groups don't have that unique relationship."

The extreme importance of an effectively run tribal government

Ron Allen:

"I firmly believe that the success of a leader or the success of a tribe is relative to the quality and effectiveness of their staff. You really need to have quality staff in order to get the job done. We're governments. That means that we have all the responsibilities of governments. Our community depends on it. It's easy to take shots at the governmental leadership and the governmental programs and the bureaucracy, if you will, but the bottom line is, if you're performing, you're not providing the kind of services that is expected. And as governments we have every responsibility that any other government has it just changed in scope relative to the magnitude of the size of your reservation and number of people you serve. But you have to take care of natural resources, you've got to take care of enforcement in court systems to protect the public safety, you need to take care of the educational interests or the healthcare interests, which is a very volatile arena and a very important one for us to focus in on, and housing needs and jobs opportunities and employment mobility and support systems that are important for our community, and all the family and community support systems that's important to strengthen, protecting and advancing your culture and your traditional practices with languages and stuff like that, taking care of your elders, having special programs for your youth so they are very comfortable with who they are. Those are all governmental functions and responsibilities to just mention a few. The Skwim community where Jamestown tribe is set up is very pretty, it's very rural, it's very safe, it's very comfortable and throughout the year and we've been blessed by being approached by some talent, some people who have just some talent. I've been a real strong support of women working in our environment and an upward mobility opportunity for women. So the majority of the heads of my different programs for our tribe are women. If they're the ones that get the job...I have one woman who is a high school graduate and she is just brilliant, absolutely brilliant and we've moved her up, against the objections of some people who have...who insist on higher collegiate degrees and training but this person has been able to do the job as well as anybody. And so we provide the opportunity for those who perform and produce the products that we're looking for, the service that we're looking for. So we've been doing quite well as a small tribe. We're only about 525 people right now. So that makes a huge difference. And then personally, it's about leadership and leadership is about being accessible. I firmly believe that. I've always been a high tech personality. When they first started making portable computers, I remember the first compact computer and it was as big as my suitcase. And I remember having to carry that around trying to get it on the planes and just to be able to get to where I needed to go and to get the job done. I remember Wilma Mankiller, the former chief of the Cherokee, at our big White House meeting that I helped orchestrate, she referred to me as the Cyborg chairman because I was so into technology and producing documents and briefing materials and data. So I had a lot of real strong technical skills. And in those days we didn't have a lot of money so I basically did a lot of work myself. I do a lot less now because I don't have to. I've got too many talented people around me but I review that kind of stuff myself very closely to make sure that it reflects the professionalism. That old notion, you only get one shot at a first impression, I don't even care if it's just a draft document, I want it to look good; check the grammar, check the spelling, check the format, making sure that it looks good. So I pay a lot of attention to that kind of stuff. If people call me then I call them back. If they email me, then I email them back. If I'm busy and I can't get back to them right away, I'll just leave a simple message saying, "˜I'm really, really busy. I'll call you in day or two.' And so I let them know. So they know that I got their message and that I'm going to respond to them. As a general rule I don't have to do that. As a general rule I will stop almost anything I'm doing to deal with my people cause they're my priority."

Ron's paramount commitments and concerns

Ron Allen:

"Sovereignty is the foundation of tribes, it is who we are, it's what we're about, it's our land base, it's our people, it's our culture, it's our way of life, it is the basis for our unique standing in America and it has always been under siege. We have some new challenges today dealing with the Supreme Court and its new political desire to redefine 200 years of law and interpretations of that unique relationship. So that's a new challenge for the tribes without a doubt. There's other issues that are out there that take a higher, they take high profile. Nothing's more important than that particular attack and that attack has got some momentum from the anti-Indian coalitions that are out there that are organizing themselves throughout the nation and you'll see them everywhere. You see them in Washington, Idaho, Montana, the Great Lakes area, down here in Arizona and so forth. So they're organizing and that means that we have to be better organized. I think that the importance of tribes being united is probably one of the most important ingredients to preserve our...preserve and protect our unique way of life in this society and its political, legal, cultural system."

The real tasks for the President of the National Congress of American Indians

Ron Allen:

"I learned a lot of difficult lessons as the president of NCAI for four years. One, if you're going to be the president of NCAI, it's not just dealing with Washington, D.C. and the politics, it's understanding the unique interests and issues of all of Indian Country. The Iroquois Confederacy Tribes have different interests than the Seminoles and Miccosukees in Florida. They have different interests than the Great Lakes, the Chippewas or the Crees over in Montana or the Lakota people in the Dakotas or the Northwest tribes, the Alaska Natives. Those interests and those issues are very different and the California tribes, the Southwest tribes, the Pueblos, knowing the difference with the Pueblos and the Navajo, understanding the Navajo/Hopi conflict. And that's just only just touching, there's many elements. Who knows the unique differences in the Hualapai and the Havasupai in northern Arizona down in the Grand Canyon and up on the ridge of the Canyon, what their unique problems and interests are. My good friend Billy Frank, I say one of his favorite phrases and I love it, "˜It's for the cause. It's bigger than you.' Mel Tonasket, another good friend of mine from the Colville Nation, the guy was just always, "˜the cause is bigger than you. You didn't know it was your time, you just rise to it.' Joe de la Cruz, I couldn't speak highly enough for Joe de la Cruz. Influenced me wholeheartedly about getting out there and getting involved and I used to challenge him about the international stuff. I said, "˜You know, Joe, we've got so many battles here in the United States, we're watching the Congress constantly, we're dealing with the administration and we're dealing with ONB, we're dealing with the White House, we've got to go back up to the Congress, we've got to back out to Indian Country and we've got to deal with the state legislatures, the Association of Attorney Generals, all these different organizations and you're basically covering your bases, you're trying to protect your turf.' And I says, "˜I don't know if we can deal with this international stuff.' And his comment to me was, "˜Ron, these are our brothers and sisters; they don't have what we have. We complain about not having enough support, we complain about not having the right kind of setting, the right kind of conditions because of all the economic, social and political factors that you use to measure the welfare of your society and your people. They're worse. We think that we're so low on that totem pole in measuring that criteria, they're worse, they're worse off. They've got worse conditions. They've got people killing them and genocide going on in different forums. They need our support, they need the exposure.' So I became convinced by Joe that those are things that we have to do."

What keeps Ron Allen going

Ron Allen:

"First of all, I'm always a very active personality. They always refer to the Type A personalities; I'm definitely triple A. So I've always had good energy. I've always been a runner. I've always thought my legs were Indian without a doubt cause I can run, I always could run. That was back in my basketball days cause I'd run the dickens out of them. I may not be able to out shoot them but I'll out run them and I'll beat them that way. And I think of my career the same way. I just have an ability to stay focused and don't worry about...there's lots of stuff going on, there's lots of pressures in all different kinds of forums, lots of things to do and it's just a matter of what's the most important thing you need to deal with right now, what's the most urgent crisis, deal with it and move on to the next, deal with that one and move on to the next. For the last number of years I actually didn't take care of myself as well as I used to. I was always a runner and I took very good care of myself and kept my weight down and then for about five years or six years or so I didn't and got real heavy. So I just now recently over this last year shifted and got my weight back down and started becoming more healthy conscience. I didn't want to trigger diabetes and that kind of stuff. I just felt I could contribute, I really feel I could contribute well into my 70s and 80s. And I saw some of my friends who I think a great deal of... Joe de la Cruz died at 62. Merle Boyd the second chief from the Second Flocks Nation, a good friend, died at 62. And I've had some friends having strokes and heart attacks at early ages and it dawned on me that I've got to start taking care of myself. So that's another issue that caused me to become more conscious of taking care of myself so that I can be a better servant to the Indian people, to my people and Indian people in general. And I just stay motivated; I just love doing what I'm doing. I don't know why. I really think it's spiritual, I think it's beyond me that the Spirit has caused me to have certain skills and I'm just driven by those skills. There's certain things I kind of perceive and understand and I just want to share them and want to provide it. I do have a strong voice and I think my voice should be out there."

In 1988 Congress authorized a project called Self-Governance that allowed many programs run by the BIA to be transferred to tribes themselves. Jamestown S'Klallam was one of the first seven tribes to participate.

Ron Allen:

"In 1987 there was this big brew haw about the federal government's mismanagement of Indian programs, a huge exposé, a whole bunch of hearings and so forth. And out of all that process came a challenge by the leadership in Congress to tribal leadership. And people who I was very motivated and influenced by, the Joe de la Cruz's, the Wendell Chinos from Mescalero Apache or the Roger Jordain from Red Lake Apache and Sam Keggy from the Lumbee Nation and so forth. They were all there. And they said, "˜How about if we just...you tribal leaders go up with Secretary Don Hodel at the time under Reagan and Ross Swimmer who was the BIA Assistant Secretary, "˜You guys go figure out what's the best way for us to better serve Indian tribes and Indian communities.' And we did. We came up with an idea of how that should work. Their proposal was a terrible one. Ours was, "˜Let us move this agenda forward on our terms.' We knew that it had to be on our terms. We were smart enough to know that they were trying to out finesse us and propose legislation that absolved the federal government of its treaty obligations or its trust responsibilities to Indian Nations and we said, "˜Absolutely not! There's no way we're letting you off that hook. But, we will propose a piece of legislation that allows us to negotiate our fair share of the federal programs that serve our community, our share from top to bottom, from the Secretary's office on down to the field, and then we will absolve you of any responsibility with regard to those programs and those services and then if there's specific legal matters then we'll negotiate them too so that we have our legal counsel with us in terms of making sure that we're real clear about how we're going to move this agenda forward.' When it started in 1988, they put out a notice to see who was interested in doing this. They said, "˜Let's get 10 tribes,' and they really wanted big tribes. And I kept, I was with them and I wanted our tribe to be a part of it. Here we were a small little 225 member tribe and they kept saying, "˜No, you're too small.' And I said, "˜No, we're not.' I said, 'Seventy-five percent of the tribes in the United States are tribes that are under 1500. Who represents them?' And so I kept making the case. Well, they couldn't find a 10th tribe so then I was leveraging with Congress and a guy named Sid Yates who was the Chair of the Appropriation Committee back then, they basically said, "˜Let them in,' and so that's how we got in. We were one of the first 10 and we have been a resounding success. And since then I basically was the technician and Joe who was the spiritual leader and Wendell and Roger, they're two characters that just was a real blessing to ever have experienced because they were in your face kind of tribal leaders. They did not back off from anybody and Joe used to always talk very fondly of those two. So we got in and then I got involved. Very early on I ended up being the Chair of the Self-Governance Advisory Council for the BIA. I decided that I was not going to get actively involved in the IHS side, just let somebody else spread the responsibility around. But I still am very actively involved."

Tribes today in the self-governance movement

Ron Allen:

"Today there's about 280 of the 560 Indian Nations that are out there. Like I said, we were one of the first 10 and we've expanded now so it's...self-governance is now being advanced in all the Department of Interior so not just the BIA but all the other agencies, Fish and Wildlife, Parks, Bureau of Reclamation, etc. IHS was hot it's heels and that law got passed in 1994. It's moving very fast forward and it's now moving into other agencies and programs in HHS as well. So it's under a program called Title VI and you see self-governance being advanced in housing, over in HUD as well now. So self-governance is really being a phenomenal success. It's about governments acting like governments. You take responsibility for it. That means if you make a mistake, then you own up to it. It's your fault, nobody else's fault. You can't point to the BIA or point to the federal government, it's their fault. You're in control of it."

The cultural programs of Jamestown S'Klallam

Ron Allen:

"I'm very actively involved with in terms of helping shape out what it is we're doing, helping make sure that we're providing resources and support for people who have an interest in restoring some of the artistic skills whether it's basket weaving, carving or other kinds of practices that have been utilized historically, understanding who we are as a people and making sure the programs are there. It was through my leadership that we just got a book published on the history of the Jamestown tribe. So that was really cool that we've documented it now."

Ron has noted numerous people who embody the spirit that drives him

Ron Allen:

"My wife; always there, steadily. When we got married she knew I was active, she knew how important the tribe was and as we had kids we'd talk through it and I told her, I said, "˜Look, I'm just going to travel a lot, it's just the nature of the game,' and we've got two kids to bring up. But she was always there. Always she has such a practical insight. I would share things with her more or less just venting and she was interested in what I had to say and what was going on. But she would ask some of the most practical questions and throw back some of the most logical, simplistic responses and it wads very helpful for me. I just kind of went, "˜Doggone it, that's the answer.' It was real simple, it was right in front of me and my wife just kind of responded to me and gave me the best answer I needed. So she was always there and I can't speak fondly and lovingly enough because of what she's done to influence me to do what I'm doing."

Grooming future leaders

Ron Allen:

"As far as mentoring goes, I always think about Joe de la Cruz's comment cause he got asked this question a lot and it's not...it's a challenging question and it's a difficult one for people. They kind of want you to take your skills and experiences and perceptions and just give it to some young person who's coming along. Joe's comment was that, "˜you have to wait for the right person and the right person has got to come to you and want you to share that with them and to teach you.' And I remember it vividly in terms of trying to be able to transfer what you know and your thoughts and your approach about dealing with Indian politics at a local level versus all the way up to the national level. And we haven't had a lot of kids who are interested. Today's society is a little different generation than what I grew up out of and I'm still trying to understand. But the good news is that we've got a young woman who is very interested in tribal politics and comes to our meetings regularly just to listen and observe and participate when and where she can. So we're working it out so that she works with me and spends time and I spend time talking to her, talking to her about politics and I have high hopes for her. Maybe she will, maybe she won't become a leader. I don't know. Only time will tell and the Great Spirit will make that decision within her walk. So I think the transfer to the youth and the mentoring is about when that opportunity can happen. That's why I liked the Institute for Tribal Governance program because it creates an opportunity to share your perspectives. I think I've earned respect among my colleagues in terms of being knowledgeable about the political process at all levels and how to interact with each other. I've tried to help solve some of the inter-tribal problems and some were successful, some not successful and you've got to roll with it. If you get too wedded to some of these matters then it's a huge mistake because you...it's too emotional."

The passions that drive Ron today and a look at the future

Ron Allen:

"I guess the passion of advancing strong tribal governance is one that drives me the most, that protects our sovereignty and treaty rights and so forth, that drives me the most, wanting the tribal governments to get stronger and more sophisticated. Some of our colleagues are doing a really good job and very, very impressive and I'm just a tip of the hat and huge smile at them. Some have got a long ways to go and there's a lot they need to learn. So that's a huge issue for me. NCAI is a huge passion for me. I love the organization. I think the world of it. I think that Indian Country doesn't really as a general observation appreciate how important it is to the welfare of our people and to be able to always protect the front lines of where the fight in this war with the American Indians and Native Alaskans with our society. It's the entity that makes the difference and I really want it to get stronger, I want it to develop a presence in Washington, D.C. I really...I have a passion that we're going to develop our own Hall of Indian Nations in Washington, D.C. that people are going to drive by and be very impressed with and want to go in and see. So it's not just the American Indian Museum as if we're relics of the past. We're alive and well and doing well as a political set of entities. So that's a big deal to me. And then personally it's just about my own family. I think a great deal of my kids and my family life. I kind of one of these just strange little backyard gardeners; I love gardening. I'm a gardener. I can go out and spend hours. I can be on trips like right now thinking about plants that I'm concerned about that I planted and I want to make sure they take good root and things I want to do to beautify my little five acre track that I think the world of. So I plant what I like to plant and I know what I think it's going to look like in 40 years. I think about that when I think about those trees. In that same context that's what I think about with the tribe and the tribes collectively, what we're doing. I want to think about what we're doing makes a difference to make it stronger and make it bloom better in 20 and 40 years. In that way you feel like you really have made a difference."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Ron Allen

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from:
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Kathryn Harrison

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, Kathryn Harrison, former chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, shares her tribe’s struggle to achieve federal recognition, her experiences as the first woman elected to lead her nation, and how she helped secure the tribe’s gaming compact with the State of Oregon. Preservation of her people’s history is her core commitment.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Resource Type
Citation

Harrison, Kathryn. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. 2004. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"No series of Great Tribal Leaders would be complete without Kathryn Harrison herself, the host of this series. Harrison, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde in Oregon, served on her tribal council for 22 years and was the first woman ever elected chair of the tribe. Harrison has been profoundly influenced and inspired by members of her family including her aunt Molalla Kate. Harrison's mother, Ella Fleming Jones, was born in Alaska to an Aleut mother and Russian-Italian father. Her father, Harry Jones, was a full-blooded Molalla Indian who was the valedictorian of Chemawa Indian School's class of 1910. When Harrison's parents died in the flu epidemic of the 1930s, she was 10 years old. She and her siblings were separated and she was sent to foster homes. She then attended Chemawa Indian School where she excelled, made new friends and especially loved writing book reports. But she was always lonely for her brothers and sisters. Harrison then married and had 10 children. In the middle of raising this large family she felt she needed skills and went to school. She was the first Indian to graduate in nursing from Lane Community College. Always deeply spiritual she attended a gathering of tribes in Oklahoma in the early 1970s that helped invigorate her faith, especially in her own worth and what she might do with her life. At this point Harrison had been separated from her tribe for a long time. Members of the Grand Ronde had been widely dispersed in western Oregon after the tribe was terminated in the 1950s. In the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, the move to assimilate Indians into the dominant White culture eliminating federal trust relationship with tribes gained tremendous momentum. Termination for tribes meant that all treaty-guaranteed rights they had possessed were abolished. Reservations were terminated, health benefits abolished and tribes lost their best lands. Children in terminated tribes of Oregon could not attend Chimawa Indian School in Oregon. Numerous Oregon tribes were terminated but tribes were organizing in the 1970s to get termination reversed to get their tribes restored to federal recognition. Kathryn Harrison decided to return to Grand Ronde to rediscover her people's history and to join the movement to restore her tribe. Beginning as an enrollment clerk for the Grand Ronde she then became a community organizer. She spoke for the tribe before local governments, historical societies and churches. She became skilled in political craft working with members of the Oregon congressional delegation. When she spoke before Congress in 1983 on behalf of the Grand Ronde Restoration Bill, she was so convincing that the tribe asked her to be their chair. Harrison has represented the tribe's interests in numerous state and national organizations such as Oregon's Legislative Commission on Indian Services, Native American Rights Fund and Spirit Mountain Community Fund. She assisted the tribe in obtaining a gaming compact with the State of Oregon. Harrison has represented the tribe at several White House events and has received numerous awards for her work with tribes on women's issues and historic preservation. She received a Distinguished Service Award from the League of Women Voters and was named one of three Women of Achievement in 1995 by the Oregon Commission for Women. She has received the Tom McCall Award for service to the State of Oregon. A mother of 10 children, a grandmother and great grandmother of many more, she considers her greatest achievement to be her family."

Kathryn Harrison's parents and her Aunt Kate were the major inspirations both in her private life and her public work

Kathryn Harrison:

"Far back as I can remember they were always telling me, ‘we don't have to worry about you. You're named after Aunt Kate.' Not really knowing what they meant, I kind of carried that. ‘I can't make a mistake now because I'm going to hurt this Aunt Kate.' And we used to come and visit her too and she was elderly already and had the age spots. But we always brought her Royal Anne Cherries so for many years I thought she got those age spots from eating Royal Anne Cherries. I think maybe they...all the things looking back now it was almost like they were preparing all of us for when they would leave us and that was one of them. I know she had strength and I would always look at her hand because she was the basket maker and a beader."

Before her parent's death, Harrison attended public schools in Corvallis, Oregon, where her parents were active in the school

Kathryn Harrison:

"We were the only Indian family in school and I can remember in first grade my father going down arguing with the teacher that, ‘If I wanted to use my left hand, by gosh let me use it.' So I'm left handed to this day. But the other thing was there was tryouts for a play for Goldilocks and the Three Bears and I tried out because my father and mother were both musical and we had to sing to try out and I got the part as Goldilocks. I said even then, I thought, ‘Well, way back then my only claim to fame was probably the first Indian Goldilocks they had in the United States.'"

Harrison and her brothers and sisters were painfully separated after their parent's death. She lived in foster homes before going to Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon

Kathryn Harrison:

"My two older brother and sister were sent to Chemawa and the four younger were sent into a foster home right there and they were Indian people, an Indian couple that didn't have children. And then my brother and younger sister both got sick and they took them to the hospital there too. So that just left my sister and I. From there we were sent to another foster home and ended up at Chemawa. But when I went to Chemawa I always like to say, ‘I thought I'd died and went to Indian heaven,' because ran into some of the people I had known earlier when my parents were still alive. It was just like a big family reunion and having been deprived of the social part in those foster homes I learned to lose myself in reading. So I read a lot so by the time I got to Chemawa part of the lessons were to make book reports. And so I used to make book reports for my classmates cause I'd already read all the books that they were trying to read and was willing to read more. And I still do that to this day, try to read a book a week. I think one of the things I always thought the last day when I graduated myself, I can remember standing at that window again hearing that train. I think I said a prayer that said, ‘God, I'm so alone, don't let me be alone the rest of my life.' So here I am. I have 10 children and a lot of times people have told me, ‘You're the grandmother of this tribe.' So here's my family and I'm not alone anymore."

In the middle of raising her own large family, Harrison went to Lane Community College and became a nurse. She had been separated from her tribe for a long time

Kathryn Harrison:

"I kept in contact with people here, most of the elders that knew my parents and it wasn't until I got at Coos Bay and was working there but by then I'd worked in Lincoln County, Lane County and Coos County. I was in the Coos County Council on Alcoholism and was down to two children. Even then there were the monthly trips at least up here to Grand Ronde and would send things up here for their raffles and attend the general meetings and knew they were trying to be restored again. So I finally just made the break and came up here, moved up here."

While working in Coos Bay Harrison heard of a spiritual gathering in Oklahoma with tribes from all over the country. Her urge to attend was so strong that she would have been willing to lose her job if she hadn't been granted the time off

Kathryn Harrison:

"There were tribal people from all over that all came there with their own special problems. And so it was during one of the times that it was my turn, they were asking, ‘Well, why are you here?' You know you always say there's people next to you or run into somebody that has worse problems than you and here I was just feeling so bad because by then I just hated the kid's father so much that it was just...I might as well still been with him cause every day and it was eating me up too so that was the reason I knew I had to go. I just had the feeling I needed to go and pray with some other people. So I got a chance to tell other people and here there was a lady that lost her son but couldn't accept that he was gone, a young married couple that begged me to stay to watch, they wanted to have their marriage blessed and be remarried by the spiritual leaders there. And I thought, I thought I was bad off but it seemed like my problems were not near as big as theirs. So by the time I went in, went in to the ceremony in the sweat lodge and asked for the help that I wanted and then came home. But there was something that happened when I came out and they put the water over you and I guess I must have had this certain look because one of the spiritual leaders said, ‘Well, we didn't say it was going to happen right away, but it will happen.'"

From the spiritual gathering Harrison gained a clarity about her life that served her well as she developed into a leader

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, again I thank my parents because they were always there and I think because I lost them so young it's always a continuation of, ‘Are you proud of me now? What you taught me, I remember all you taught me now and I remember it and I carry it with me.' After I did each one of those things I would wonder, ‘Now I wonder what they would want me to do.' And they gave good examples."

Harrison decided to return to Grand Ronde. She began working with the tribe in its campaign to be restored to federal recognition

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, I moved up here without a job and applied for one and was first hired as an enrollment clerk because restoration had started and we didn't know where our people had gone. They left home after termination and so our job was to look for them and we had in mind to start a newsletter. But there were already people here that had started the restoration efforts and so I just joined that team and went door to door actually with some of the people locally here to get them to enroll and help actually enroll for them, just fill out the papers. And then from there I went and got the Administration for Native American Grant even though I didn't come under that but that gave us a full force to go into the restoration effort. I became the community organizer then and they applied for different grants for me to...I think it was three or four grants but I still got basic wage. But it became my job and responsibility to educate other people around the country of what we were trying to do and why they should support us in what we were doing. It became a justice issue. And I was so surprised to find myself out speaking to audience after audience, churches, colleges, high schools, libraries, historical societies."

In the early days of the campaign fundraising was very grassroots

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, there were a lot of different ways. Bake sales, always bake sales, had a pie social one time, had a basket social and turkey shoot, those are some of the things...turkey shoot had before I came. But there was always raffles, we always had a raffle to draw the people in I guess. But here you were like they said with the bake sale they just bought each other's donations but they were willing to do it. I think a couple of times they passed the hat for postage to send out letters and eventually they got around to a newsletter and we just kept applying for grants. I think those things you look back and everybody sat around after we got the newsletter together and mimeographed that, then stapled it together and we hand addressed every one of them. And even during those days, maybe 2:00 in the morning we'd be finishing up and say, ‘One of these days we're going to have all this and have a machine.' We have that, somebody else takes care of our newsletter, it goes out twice a month. We just prepare or make the news."

The challenge was to let people know the story and the history of the tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, we felt the main thing was to let them know we wanted to be who we actually are. You always hear the statements from the tribal leaders in the past that said, ‘In order to go forward we have to reach into the past and take what's the best part of that.' And learning about how our people had lived here and the harmony that was there then that on the most part after we got here that...and have the entitlements. We weren't asking for a handout, we were asking for what we were granted in those treaties that were signed by our people and having made that awful walk from Willamette Valley in a massive military roundup, we had a duty to come through with what their vision was so that walk would not have been made in vain. And I think having our little walks by the cemeteries, by those tombstones, sometimes you felt pretty guilty and wanted to just kind of sneak by them because there they were and had given their all and thinking that here we were still a tribe."

Non-tribal groups and individuals began participating in the campaign. Restoration coordinator Elizabeth Furse encouraged Harrison to make the tribe known to Congress

Kathryn Harrison:

"We had Elizabeth Furse who later became a congresswoman. We had her as our restoration coordinator and she just had such great foresight that she was the one that said, ‘Well, we need to make some of these trips just to let the congressional people know we're coming,' let them know what we're doing cause we knew they had never heard of us. Everybody thought then the Grand Ronde was in eastern Oregon. And so we would make, I think I still have notes that she made of the trips her and I went to and of course those days it was with, stayed in hotels I guess or what you'd say small hotels with people that were Quakers. You had to make your own bed and there was this nice granola for breakfast and all that. We were grateful then too and I think we walked a lot. I remember Elizabeth doing that. One day it was so hot in the summer we got in front of the Capitol and she said, we still had to go see Lester Coin, she said, ‘Would you like to sit here in the grass in the shade and I'll run over to Lester Coin's office?' I said, ‘Oh, yes.' So she took the message and took it over to Lester Coin's. I could see his building across but it was just so hot and we were so tired."

Harrison reflects on her development as a leader with the Grand Ronde. Her work with the Siletz Tribe, which was restored to recognition in 1977, had been useful experience

Kathryn Harrison:

"Even still today I have to stop and think, whoever thought I'd be in this position. I never thought I would. Looking back I can see and I still say today at restoration that working with the Siletz gave me the kind of a tailor made to come and help my own people but I didn't realize it at the time. So helping my own people here was just like the frosting on the cake. Looking back and talking to some of the people that are still around, I don't think we ever thought we wouldn't win and maybe it showed, maybe we had that feeling because when we went back to testify it was three members of my family including myself, my oldest son, my youngest daughter and myself and of course Jackie Whistler and Marvin Kemsey. It was just like, I think with Elizabeth first too, we just all got to encourage each other I guess and I think faith too. It was a justice issue. This was what we were supposed to be, this is where we're supposed to be, this is taking our rightful place among the family of Indian nations and that's what we were going to do. So to have somebody against us and I know there were a few but that just meant extra, an extra meeting, go on out and try to reeducate them because lack of communication and I think the stereotype of where they always put us. I think the Cowboy-Indian movies didn't help either because we always lost. So I don't ever think of us ever thinking that no matter who it was that was against us...and we didn't expect everyone to support us. Well, I guess we did in the beginning but after awhile you figure you can't...there's always one or two. But I think even those have eventually come around when they see that we've kept our word in giving back, help us and we'll help this whole community."

The many meanings of sovereignty, or tribal self-government

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, to me that's what we've been exercising all these years, even through the 29 years of termination there was always the effort here to hold meetings, to keep track of the deaths and births and to keep the language going, that's sovereignty, and knew where the people were. And when we all came back together for the restoration effort the first thing we did was look for our people. And we know who our people are and then after that of course there was new births and people that were not enrolled, teenagers and people up to 29 years old, that's all they knew was termination so we had to find them. And we put together the constitution saying who was going to be our tribal members, that's sovereignty. We knew where our place was, where our reservation, the land that was given to us. We designated where we wanted, that we needed land. The whole effort, we spoke for ourselves and for our people and held up our right to those entitlements that our ancestors had fought so hard for and that was promised to us in the treaties. That's sovereignty. No one else can speak for you, you speak for yourself and for your people."

On dealing with the complexities of tribal leadership and the inevitable conflicts

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, you have to, otherwise you're not you. You have to come forward with how you feel because maybe your idea is better but you have to be open to say, ‘Well, maybe yours is better too and I'm willing to listen,' because you get the respect that you give out, that's the same that you get back. I think that's the best way to deal with conflict and then there's no conflict once you agree. It's got to be teamwork and with nine people, first it's hard to get everybody together at the same time and then how do you expect us to all agree at the same, on the same thing. You're not human beings if you do. But ours, as a council we have to keep in mind our pledge that we're here to bring up a better quality of life for our tribal members so that's your guiding sign I guess cause you took that pledge."

The restoration of the tribe in 1983 had many impacts

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, it is a wonderful change. Look around...when I come to work every day I just have to kind of take a deep breath and think, ‘Wow!' We had that one little office, that was our office and our borrowed coffee pot and our outside water faucet, outside bathrooms and look what we have today. Each program office has their own little depart...well, they do have their own department but not only that the tribal council has their own office. But we've graduated now I think, from that little office to the depot, the train depot, we were all crammed into there but we still...even that one room office where we started. We held USDA food; we gave out the cheese for the county. We always...I don't think we even worried about confidentiality then and our desks were side by side. No compartments or no divisions or anything."

Harrison reflects on the dangers of prosperity for the tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, yes, there's...especially I think for our young people and something that's on our minds a lot as a council is how do we keep our children in school when they have this money coming in that's being set aside for them. Cause even my own grandson says, ‘Well, how much money do I have now grandma?' We have to prepare them for the future when we won't be here so they can take care of themselves and this tribe. It's quite a concern but also I think those of us my age and maybe a little older or younger, we learned how to work in the fields and I think that's the mistake the State of Oregon made was taking the children out of the fields to harvest the crops because not only did you...you got your fill every day and had a healthy life but you learned how long it took to make a dollar so you were able to better manage your money. And to this day I don't gamble. I think I've got $10 in our casino and I think $5 of that was given to me by my daughter. It's too hard to part with that money cause you know how hard earned it is even though we're pretty well paid here now compared to where we started with a little bit of money and the struggle we made with the different grants. We usually had to comply with those grants to have it coming in the next year."

The tribe decides in the late 1980s to start a casino

Kathryn Harrison:

"When the timber prices went down and we went and looked at other tribes to see how they handled, how they diversified their resources we found that they had Bingo and also casinos so we visited the tribe in Minnesota. They're about our same size and all that and they offered to help us. But we knew then we had to put together a corporation, a corporate board and had some good experiences on that. I think it was the third one around we finally kept and that was only because we had a tribal member that was interested by then. During the restoration effort he had come into our little office there one day and said, introduced himself and said, ‘I'm going to law school and I hope someday to come back and help my tribe.' So he showed up and was really interested in what was going on. It was him that we finally said, ‘Well, why don't you be...' He said, ‘If you'll trust me,' he first said, ‘maybe I can do this.' So we said, ‘Okay.' So that's how Bruce Thomas came into our lives and he had gone as a corporate board member to different trips we had made. Of course from then on he went on other trips and educated himself on what was going on but he was already an attorney, practicing attorney and so the different things that he put together then, what he learned he would come back and present to the tribal council and we had different management companies come and present what they had to offer. But they all wanted so much percent of our earnings and here's a tribe that passed the hat for postage. It's too hard to give away any amount of money that you're going to be running yourselves. And so in the end when Bruce felt he could do it himself and put together his own management company that's where we went with. And so we started the building and we ran into a problem right away even though we'd already had groundbreaking that the land we had chosen had not been put into trust. So we had to go back and find...cause according to the National Indian Gaming Association it has to be part of the original reservation and it has to be in trust by 1988. So we had to go and make sure that one part there was in trust where it is now."

The programs of the Grand Ronde Tribe of which Kathryn Harrison is most proud

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, next to elders I'd have to say education because I think that's something that we have found our place. We have to take our place among our community and humanity and that in order to get along nowadays you have to have an education with the technology as it is and then we have people come to us that wanted to be educated, wanted to go to school and they couldn't. And even the Chemawa School to me was a great loss for our youth not to be able to attend, it's changed too. It's not like it was when we were there, going to school half a day and vocational training the other half. But I think education to me if you can educate your people that's certainly a better quality of life and then next to that I would say the elders to be able to like say not today they're trying to decide where they're going to next month. They've had to count their pennies, still support us all these years and to be able to say, ‘Yes, now you can go where you want to go.' We established a burial fund early on too because as any elder anyplace else they never wanted to be a burden to their children or their family. So that was one of the first things we did and now we offer that same burial to bury their spouse too if they're not members. So I think those are the two, of course I could go on. Next would be the housing. We have housing for our elders too and a lot of the ones that wanted to come home and we have to remember those that wanted to come and never made it because we had a water issue and it took us awhile. But once restoration happened we had people calling, ‘We want to come home once...' but there was no houses and there's no jobs. So I think those are the ones that mean a lot to me. And then of course the buildings I think. Having the education building, that's going to be great."

How she balances public and private life

Kathryn Harrison:

"Well, nothing hard about it at all, I'm still me and I'm just amazed that they think I've done something cause I think all I've done is live by what my parents taught me to not only...of course the Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as you'd like to have them do unto you.' How can you go wrong and I'm just grateful and I've often said I don't know what people do that don't know how to pray or that don't have faith. And I know there's...I worked in the alcohol program again down in Coos Bay and it wasn't until one of the clients asked me, ‘How come you didn't become an alcoholic?' I just, ‘Why would I?' He said, ‘Well, look at your life, your life's worse than mine was.' So there I could say because of my parents. They already instilled in me that I don't care how far people try to knock you down, I'm still me and I'm a human being and I'm worth something. I think I told him once that somebody didn't want to wait on me in the store. I said, ‘I don't care, I'll stand there until 5:00 for closing time until they wait on me cause that's their job and I deserve that.' I'm amazed at what they think I've done. I think I've just lived my life under my best choices. I've taken my share of punishment because I think in my testimony early on some other places I think with all the teachings and the Christianity and religious, when I lost my parents I hated God but I was only 10 years old. And I can remember like I said how they carried out their faith giving helping hands to whoever came to the door, taking their children to church, that was their doing, it wasn't mine. But they were instilling us then no matter how little you have you share it and look how good you feel. So to me that's all I've been doing. But I've had help along the way with different ones being there to say, ‘Yeah, you can do it.' And I think being knocked down for so many years as a woman, my alcoholic husband, I really didn't think I was much and that's what can happen to women that are in abusive situations. You have to have something to reach back long enough to get the courage to say, ‘Yes, I am worth it and I am somebody and my children deserve better.' I think I said a couple of times to somebody, ‘When I meet my Maker, the first thing I'll say is did I live up to what my parents taught me? Are you proud of me now?' And then it would be maybe by the grace of God they'd say, ‘Okay, yeah, you did okay.'"

Some steps the Grand Ronde have taken to strengthen their tribe

Kathryn Harrison:

"I can't speak for other tribes. I just think...with our tribe I think we had foresight I guess or people in place that we could turn a negative into a positive. I wouldn't like to see other tribes terminated but sometimes you have to lose something before you appreciate what you had and I think that's what happened to us. We always said our elders, ‘We'll pay you back whenever we can,' because they was always there for us. They brought the food, they brought their beliefs to us. I don't know, some of the other tribes were terminated the same time. And we were recommended to get to know our state legislative people better. Well, we know them and the second recommendation was to get a lobbyist. Well, we have a lobbyist that's a tribal member and have had one for awhile. And I think that comes from being a terminated tribe to have to go to your community and say, ‘We want your help,' and there again with that statement of, ‘Help us. Help us to help ourselves by helping us and helping this whole community.' We learned how to get along. I think a lot of tribes make the mistake of thinking the Bureau of Indian Affairs owes you or has to provide everything. Ah, they do to a certain extent but you need to stand on your own two feet too and that goes with our casino. We know the casino's not going to be here forever so we try to diversify our resources. Of course we have the timber and with that we made a 20-year agreement to not, we can't ship overseas. And that was 1988 so we're going to be out of that pretty soon but who knows where that's going with the prices like they are."

Harrison's most gratifying achievement

Kathryn Harrison:

"My family. I'm not alone anymore. Yes, my children."

The most important task for the tribe's children and young people

Kathryn Harrison:

"First of all, know your culture, learn your language and who you are and go to school and stay in school and it's a given to go to church. Shouldn't have to tell our people that."

The importance of educating non-Indian American citizens about tribal history

Kathryn Harrison:

"I don't think you should ever stop educating people on your history and the Indian law and all those things because I went through that when I was going to school at Chemawa. We put on dancing, there were seven of us. We went out and sang and each one told our history and then I went to school, got married, stayed in the house for how many years, then when I come out here and get in the politics again it's the same thing. So it's just an ongoing, by the time you get your point across and explain who you are, I know the next generation is going to have to do the same thing. I think until we get the media, it's more being able to include more about our history and who we are and I think until they can be on the same level with us and the movies I think it's going to be an ongoing issue all the time of educating people on tribes."

Wisdom Harrison would impart to other tribes from her tribe's experience

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think good communication. We set up that line of communication telling our story to say why it was a justice issue on the termination and I think the same could be used for any subject. Meet them face to face and be there to answer their questions. But I think along with that you have to say teamwork, you're working together and that's what it is, teamwork whether it's communication or negotiations or grievance, it all has to be teamwork. I think don't be afraid to give and take. I can truly say our council, we've been blessed with what our people have reelected. I know we have a new election year coming. I just hope and pray they put the right people in and when you educate them that's what they'll do."

Her tribe's position on who is an Indian

Kathryn Harrison:

"That's part of the sovereignty is naming your own, who can be a member of your tribe. I know in the beginning and it still is with the Bureau you have to be one quarter but our people voted and they chose one-sixteenth and I think we made a mistake in the beginning that we would take one-sixteenth and then whatever the blood quantum over another recognized tribe. Well, we got...we started having many people coming and wanting to change over to our tribe so now you have to have...we changed that, we have a constitutional amendment and our people voted that you have to have a parent on the roll at termination and you have to be one-sixteenth Grand Ronde blood. So to me that's going to keep our blood line going but even in the long run I hope we don't terminate ourselves again. And to be able to say that, each tribe has to designate their own. We've come under criticism because our blood quantum is so low but look at us, it works for us and they can't speak for us, we can't speak for them because that's sovereignty with the tribal Indian nations."

The legacy Harrison would like to leave

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think for me is if you live your life where any part of it when you're asked about it if you can tell it and tell it truthfully and where your parents and the good Lord, the Creator would be proud of you, how can you go wrong. That's what I'd like to leave. That's what I tried to do. Whether I did it or not that was always my goal and I know early on I learned to speak how you feel. Sometimes people didn't like it but they always know how they stand with you and if you're telling the truth and speaking...after I got into tribal business you're speaking on behalf of your own people to keep in mind that you want them to have a better quality of life than you had. No matter what the changes are you have to go with changes that's better for your people. You can't go wrong. But I think if you pray on everything, that's what I've done, God will answer your prayers. And if it doesn't come right away just hold on, it'll come."

She speaks about aspects of the tribal vision that would benefit the nation

Kathryn Harrison:

"Balance and harmony. Balance and harmony in everything because that's what we learned from our ancestors that when you take something you've got to still leave enough to carry on the species whatever, the salmon, or elk and we try to tell that story early on. There was something that they used every part of the deer for so how could there be waste to leave, how could...if you used all the salmon and took it in the right way and you knew you were going to drink that water, your children were going to drink that water, how could you pollute it? And the same goes with the air. If you're living everything in the right way. And it's a God given gift that you're supposed to take care of it and that's how tribes look at things. This was given to you, this land, this air, these foul, these animals to take care of, let alone their people. Then take care of it and that means balance and harmony."

How Harrison has persevered and kept up momentum for her work

Kathryn Harrison:

"I think I've just been lucky to be in the right place at the right time with the right people, the right parents who knew how to pray. I think there were times when I wanted to give up. I don't say that ever occurred to me. I know one time I was leaving here early in the morning and I was going to go to Washington D.C. with Elizabeth and I stopped at the tribal office to get something and here I had my little, I called it my termination car, and I was driving down that straight driveway and I was thinking, ‘Ah, I'm going on the most important trip of my life, there's nobody here to tell me goodbye or say good luck or anything.' And then I thought, I could see all the...back in those days there was a lot of wood stoves yet and I thought, ‘Oh, they're up,' cause I could see the smoke coming up and early in the morning the smoke would go straight up, it doesn't curve yet. I thought, ‘What's wrong with you? Gosh, you're not by yourself, you can always pray and I know those elders are up, they know I'm going and I know cause they always say we prayed for you.' And I'd say, ‘Oh, I just came... Oh, yeah, we know. We prayed for you.' So I got looking around and I thought, ‘Gosh, you're not alone.' And I think that's the greatest thing I have to offer and what always pulled me through. But there have been times I've been just...Elizabeth got sick on that trip. We stopped and ate seafood at the airport. I don't know what restaurant it was but she got sick on the plane and she came back and told me, ‘You might have to go to that first meeting by yourself.' And I, "Ah, I can't! You'll have to get well.' So the stewardess kept coming back and telling, ‘Oh, she's feeling better. They made her a bed, she's laying down in the back, open up some of those seats,' because in those days as soon as we got off the plane we went to our first meeting. Now we can go and be rested up one day and then go to a meeting but then we had so little money. But she got well or well enough to go to that meeting with me. There were times when I wanted to go back and shake her and say, ‘You've got to get well.'"

Her work will not rest after her retirement as chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. She is committed to keeping the history alive

Kathryn Harrison:

"Oh, it's quite a responsibility being a council member and being a chair. I kind of stepped back already on some of the things but I still enjoy traveling and I still don't mind doing the history. I think it's something that...I've been asked sometime in February to come here to some group and tell the history again. She said, ‘Somebody said you had a good story.' I said, ‘No, it's not a story, it's history.'"

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
Kathryn Harrison

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Jayne Fawcett

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview conducted in October 2003, Jayne Fawcett of the Mohegan Tribe tells of her childhood with her mother’s family, who operated the oldest Indian-run museum in the U.S. As Ambassador of the Mohegan Tribe, Fawcett furthers both her family’s legacy of cultural preservation and her tribe’s economic development initiatives.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Fawcett, Jayne. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Uncasville, Connecticut. October 2003. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

“Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders.”

[Native music]

Narrator:

“Jayne Fawcett, currently the Ambassador of the Mohegan Nation of Connecticut, has served the Nation in many capacities, most significantly as Vice Chair and Public Relations representative during critical transitions in the tribe’s history. Today the Mohegans number approximately 1,000 members. Even though upheavals and thefts of their lands in the past were difficult and disillusioning, the majority of the Mohegan Tribe remained in Connecticut and the tribal members maintained a notable cohesion and commitment to their culture, keeping friendly relations with their neighbors. The Mohegans founded a church on their reservation in 1831. Fawcett grew up on the home site of the Rev. Samson Occom, the first American Indian minister in the United States. Her childhood was spent largely with her mother’s family on the home site. The family also operated the oldest Indian run museum in the United States founded by Gladys Tantequidgeon in 1931, a century after the church was built. The museum today continues to display Mohegan artifacts and teach the culture. Fawcett’s aunt and cultural teacher was Gladys Tantequidgeon, medicine woman and powerhouse of the tribe who was 104 years old at the time this interview was conducted. As a child, Fawcett would often go on speaking engagements with her aunt. She would also learn the tribe’s legacy from her uncle, the late Chief Tantequidgeon. Jayne Fawcett went to the local schools where Mohegan children were accepted. After receiving a BA from the University of Connecticut, she became a social worker for the Division of Child Welfare in Connecticut but then decided to enter the teaching profession. A teacher for 27 years in Montville and Ledyard Fawcett was Chair of the Montville Indian Parent Committee. Education has been a major focus of her life. She has been an instructor on Mohegan culture at Connecticut schools and universities and has served on curriculum committees for the local multicultural school. She was an adviser for the projected Native American Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. In 2001 President Clinton appointed Fawcett to the Board of Trustees of the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development. In the 1970s, while a teacher and a mother, Fawcett became very active with the tribe. In 1978 she became a founding member of the new constitutionally elected Mohegan Tribal Council and in 1990 was elected Chair of the Council of Elders, the tribe’s judicial arm. Shortly thereafter she returned to the tribal council and in December, 1995, took on the role of Public Relations Representative. Jayne Fawcett was one of the key figures in the arduous process necessary for the Mohegans to obtain federal recognition which they gained in March, 1994, becoming the second federally recognized tribe in Connecticut and the 545th in the United States. The day the U.S. Department of Interior made the announcement was full of elation. As one writer has put it, ‘The tribal members had spent 100 years struggling to prove that the world has not seen the last of the Mohegans.’ Since recognition Fawcett has continued her dedication to educate the non-Indian public about the tribe. As she, her aunt and uncle maintain, ‘It’s harder to hate someone you know a lot about.’ Federal recognition has allowed the Mohegans to pursue self reliance and tribal economic development. With its diverse enterprises the tribe has created thousands of jobs for Connecticut. The most renowned project is the Mohegan Sun Casino which pleased even Gladys Tantequidgeon, proud to see so much Mohegan culture and art in the structure’s design. Through all her work Fawcett has maintained solid and joyful family commitments to her husband, daughters and grandchildren. Her husband she says is her champion in tough moments and her own art has not gone unneglected. She is an accomplished organist and pianist and only recently stopped playing the organ at the Mohegan church. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Jayne Fawcett in October 2003 at the Mohegan tribal offices.”

Growing up in Uncasville

Jayne Fawcett:

“I went to school in the local schools and because it was a mill town and because we were all poor we didn’t realize we were poor and the Mohegan Indians were accepted. We were together as a group but we were accepted and I’ve always said it that I think Uncasville was perhaps the best place in the country to grow up Indian. And I attributed that partly, well maybe entirely, well, to the fact that we were all poor but also that my Aunt Gladys and my Uncle Harold had built with their own hands a small museum and all of the children in the community would come to that museum and learn about the Mohegans. And they built it with the theory that it’s very difficult to hate people that you know a great deal about and every school child had the experience of coming there and learning about us and not learning so much about the ways that we were different but about the ways that we were alike. And even going back our earlier festivals, our wigwam festival which was really very similar to a powwow was a homecoming for Mohegans and their non-Indian neighbors. And so there was an acknowledgement of difference and a feeling that this was a different community but there was also mutual respect and love. And I think it’s an extraordinary story and maybe somebody should study why Uncasville was always so responsive to us. I can remember when we were going through the federal recognition period and a gentleman came from another town and was berating the town council and the citizens there and telling them that they needed to oppose us and we were going to do this, that and the other thing. And the First Elect man asked him to leave and I really knew I was home and it was, I think that was a memorable moment in my life.”

The museum today

Jayne Fawcett:

“It is the oldest Indian run museum in the United States and it contains a collection of Mohegan artifacts that were handed down in our family as well as articles that were collected by my Aunt Gladys when she worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Arts and Crafts. Well, I guess it was in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”

On becoming Christianized Indians

Jayne Fawcett:

“As you probably know, we would have had our own Trail of Tears had it not been for becoming Christian Indians. We were given the choice to become Christianized or to be removed. And so it was kind of a double-edged thing but we did become Christianized and the Rev. Samson Occom was the first Christian Indian minister in the United States. He set out to build an Indian school with Eleazor Wheelock and this school, he went to England to get money for this school and he got a great deal of it from a man called the Earl of Dartmouth. And this little Indian school grew to be Dartmouth College.”

The story of Gladys Tantequidgeon

Jayne Fawcett:

“Gladys Tantequidgeon is my 104 year old aunt. She is the medicine woman of the tribe. She never had formal schooling. As a very young woman she had to help raise the younger brothers and sisters but she was a brilliant woman. And when Dr. Franks of the University of Pennsylvania was studying the Indians in the northeast, he became acquainted with her and brought her to the University of Pennsylvania where she worked and studied with him there and actually co-published with him and went on with studies to receive an honorary doctorate from both Yale University and the University of Connecticut. She was offered one by the University of Pennsylvania but the requirement was that she had to travel there and at that point in her life it was too great a distance. But she then worked for the Bureau, I believe she was the first Indian woman to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Mr. Collier and she worked out west with the Sioux and worked to help them restore many of their traditions. And then she worked for the Bureau of Arts and Crafts and so during this period she collected a great many artifacts and these artifacts are in the museum. And then she returned home to run the museum and she would go on speaking engagements and I would go with her. And she was determined that I would go to college and my mother was too. My father was really, girls didn’t go to college and it was a complete waste of money but she really helped in convincing him that it was important that I go to college. Everything, whether it was bringing me stories of operas or when I was a little girl to just constantly bring me with her and talking to me about our history and about our past, she was I believe the strongest influence in my life.”

School choices and the experience of prejudice

Jayne Fawcett:

“I went to a girl’s school, a very good girl’s school and I was accepted by the girls. This was kind of an interesting thing I think. And it was fine pretty much for me to go to parties where there were girls but then as they got older they were co-ed parties and I wasn’t invited to those. They would have a separate party so there was a difference. It was okay for me to be a friend but it was not okay for me to be a potential girlfriend to one of their brothers. I wanted to live away from home and so the only other sure fire thing was the University of Connecticut so I did go very happily to the University of Connecticut. But I think every time I left Uncasville there was always a stronger feeling of difference and always a stronger feeling of prejudice. So that’s why I’ve lived my life here, Uncasville is a comfortable place for me. Even with my husband when people who are associates of his would make remarks about Indians I would be, usually hostile remarks about sovereignty and things like that I would, with the draw, but now I’ve reached the point in my life where it doesn’t bother me at all. I can deal with that and I realize I don’t even have to deal with that so I guess that’s a growth step for Jayne in this process.”

As a teacher, Fawcett worked with the Indian Parent Committee in Montville: it’s work and concerns

Jayne Fawcett:

“I was a member of the Indian Parent Committee then and there were some very interesting issues that came before us. One of them was bussing. And most of our children went to the Mohegan school and were very happy there because there were other Mohegans there. And so they decided, ‘Well, here are all these Mohegans in this one school, well, that shouldn’t be so we should bus them.’ And what people didn’t understand is that where bussing is good for one minority it may not be good for another minority. Indian children frequently in situations where there are so few of them and when they go to another school there may not be any like them, that for them to have a level of comfort it was important for them to stay together in this one school. And so we had quite an issue. We tried to get the law changed but finally it was agreed that we couldn’t get it changed but that it would be overlooked in this situation. I think it’s very important to impress on people that just because something is good for one minority it is not necessarily good for all of the different minority groups that we have in this country. We thought that it was important to introduce again older children. They’d all been to the museum but we wanted to expand their horizons. We would take them to the ‘Heim Museum in New York and to various Indian sites. We would have them meet with the Indian elders and this was for Indian children and non-Indian children because we felt that it was important for them to learn these things together.”

The impetus behind the Mohegans seeking federal recognition

Jayne Fawcett:

“We had a unique history in that in order for us to keep our land we had to become non-reservation Indians because we were originally, someone said, ‘You’re one of the most recent reservations.’ I said, ‘No, we’re one of the oldest reservations. We had a reservation under King George of England before this country was even a country.’ And so then we became a reservation under the State of Connecticut and we were a reservation before they began to have the reservation system nationally. We’re a reservation under the State of Connecticut and the State of Connecticut had overseers who controlled virtually all business aspects and all important decisions of the tribe and one of the things that happened was that they began to take land for friends and for themselves, illegally but they began to do it. And so we realized that this was happening and in order for us to keep our land we had to become non-reservation Indians and hold it in fee land. I live on land today that has never been owned by a non-Indian. So this was the only, then we saw that jobs were leaving the area and we were very concerned that the fee land that our children had and that the young people had was going to be eroded, they would be selling it, there would be nothing to keep them here and we would no longer exist as a people. And so that’s when the impetus for federal recognition came about. I was afraid of federal recognition as was my aunt. She had worked among people for whom federal recognition had had many negative consequences and so it was a double edged sort kind of. You go along with it because it’s the only way we’re going to survive or is it going to, is recognition going to destroy our people in a different way. So we did not want them to become dependent on the federal government. That was a very great concern.”

Choosing the Bureau of Indian Affairs process over the congressional route

Jayne Fawcett:

“The one thing that the Bureau of Indian Affairs did was that there was such a thorough investigation that there really could be no disputing our legitimacy and so we felt that it was important not to take the congressional route and have it approved by Congress just by an order of Congress. We felt it was important to go through, and I guess it was about 17 years, but we did feel that it was important to take that route and so we did. I don’t know whether we were right or wrong but that was the reasoning at the time.”

Aspects of the BIA process

Jayne Fawcett:

“They collected the records that literally proved that we were tribal just because they wanted to know what pictures, who were the Indians, the Indians in the pictures, what were the weddings. They asked the florist, they asked the people in the schools who the Indians were. They asked the mortician, everyone who had had social contact with us in the area they said, ‘Are there Indians here, who are the Indians?’ and they went to church and counted the Indians in the Mohegan Congregational Church and the children. Unless you’ve been through federal recognition you don’t know exactly how thorough it is. And so all of these pieces came together to form a picture and the picture was one of a tribal society.”

Gladys Tantequidgeon’s response to the new developments with the tribe

Jayne Fawcett:

“So Gladys was very happy and Ruth was very happy finally. Some of her anxiety went away but she was always a bit skeptical and then when the casino was built we were all very nervous because it was, we decided to bring them over to see the casino and Gladys I believe was in a wheelchair ‘cause they couldn’t travel around. She was walking then but they couldn’t travel around, my Aunt Gladys and my Aunt Ruth. So we waited because we were really concerned about her verdict and finally she said, ‘When you said you were building a casino I thought you had lost your culture and now I see that you have not,’ because if you’ve been to our casino it very heavily reflects Mohegan culture. Every aspect in the Earth Casino is representative of our past and we tried to take that past and translate it into the future in the Casino of the Sky because we did not want people to feel that we were an anachronism. We wanted them to understand that things Indian can be as much a part of the future culture of our society as things non-Indian.”

Allies and friends in the recognition process

Jayne Fawcett:

“Our allies were all the older families. If you’d been in town for a long time and you were part of Uncasville and part of Montville, you were our ally. If you were a newcomer and we had a lot of people who because of the Naval base and the Coast Guard Aca, we had a lot of people who were military and people who had just moved into town, they brought with them I think some of the feelings that they had had about Indians from other places. So our allies were uniformly I would say the old families in town.”

Response of government officials

Jayne Fawcett:

“I think we have had a wonderful relationship with all of them. Once again we feel that it’s always important to meet with people and go over issues and usually when that happens we find that we’re really not that far apart and so people who initially were opposed to our federal recognition have become our friends. So I don’t feel that in the State of Connecticut I can say that we have enemies.”

Fawcett brought to the table a knowledge about how people outside of Montville feel about things

Jayne Fawcett:

“The other piece I think that I brought to all of this was what Melissa and I both bring and that is a cultural piece and the insistence on having a Mohegan design to our casino. Our backers initially and everyone told us that this wouldn’t work, people would be uncomfortable with this but we said we wanted this to be a place that people knew they were somewhere else, that they knew they were in a different country and we had a very small reservation and the only place we could shout it was in that casino. And so we even now publish a booklet called Secrets of Mohegan Sun and it literally tells you everything that is symbolic in the casino that is part of Mohegan culture, things that you may look at and not even realize a part of it are. And I feel that if there was anything that I did to influence anyone, this was the most important thing that I did. But I think there’s another important piece that I’ve left out that I, oh, I wanted to share because I think it made a difference for Indian Country. When the Mashantuckets built their casino they were not able to get funding in the United States because at that time no one wanted to lend money to an Indian tribe because of the issue of sovereignty. In other words, you couldn’t recover your losses. And so this is something that people don’t understand about Indians. We can do anything just as well as anybody else given a level playing field. Now if you can’t borrow money from a bank and you can’t borrow money from any of the great lending institutions, you’re not going into business, not even a small business because you have to be able to access the money of the world. And so we were the first tribe, Roland Harris who was the chairman and I with our financial advisers went on the road show and we were the very first tribe to access Wall Street. And because we were able to do that, because we were able to give them a level of comfort through a variety of legal means and without giving up our sovereignty, it opened the door for other Indian tribes to borrow money. And I think maybe that’s the thing I’m proudest of because it always makes me angry to hear people say, ‘Well, I don’t see why the Indians can’t do this, why they can’t do that,’ and they don’t realize that you can’t put things, that the conditions of ownership on a reservation are such that while there are advantages there are also some very serious disadvantages, particularly with regard to establishing a business and borrowing money.”

How the tribe, the local community and Connecticut benefit from the Mohegan Sun Casino

Jayne Fawcett:

“We have a wonderful facility that is making a difference in all of our lives, putting our children through college. How could you ask for more than that? Giving us a place to work. We’ve built homes for our elderly, our medical needs are taken care of, we’ve worked very hard to be the very best employer that we can. You may have noticed as you came in a wonderful facility for our employees. They have their meals here, they have medical facilities here, they have gym facilities here, stores, you name it. We’ve tried to be an exemplary daycare, an exemplary employer and we’ve tried to help the town and other Indian tribes. Yes, Mohegan Sun makes a huge contribution to the State of Connecticut. We have about 10,000 employees and we’re a tribe of about 1800, well, 2000. So of that over half of our tribe, let’s put it this way, is under the age of 18 and then we have our elders so that doesn’t leave a whole lot in here, in the middle and we have some people who are in the service and away or have jobs elsewhere. So I believe it’s accurate to say that virtually anyone who wants a job who is Mohegan and wants a job at the casino has a job at the casino and we have them at all levels I’m very proud to say. We have from vice president on down and we’re very proud of that.”

Citizenship in an Indian tribe

Jayne Fawcett:

“There are many urban Indians who do not belong to tribes. Tribes have their own regulations and blood is only part of that. The federal government would not have given us federal recognition on the basis of our just having Indian blood or Mohegan Indian blood. You had to prove that you operated as an entity or as a tribe and so if somebody’s uncle so and so had been a tribal member 100 years ago and it had nothing to do with us that’s not being part of the tribe. And so it’s not, people need to understand it’s more a citizenship issue than it is a blood issue. Yes, you have to have the blood but are you a citizen of this tribe, are you a member, have you been a part of this tribe? So there is that also.”

Fawcett’s husband and children

Jayne Fawcett:

“My husband is an educator. He has his doctorate in education and has worked in the local, in school administration locally for years and years and he’s currently retired. He’s closer I think to his Indian family than he is to his own. And he has been a great protector of me. There are always instances where people are rude and make inappropriate remarks about Indians and he is my champion. He has always been a champion. Our children are both very concerned about Indian matters and both very active in Indian matters. Melissa as an author and Bethany has been very involved in tribal matters and until recently was Vice President of Marketing of Mohegan Sun.”

If there is a down side to prosperity

Jayne Fawcett:

“I suppose there is but there’s such a greater down side to poverty that I think I would really be a fool to say there was. Everyone suffers for some reason or other. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t have or experience heartache or a problem. I can tell you it’s much easier to go through that kind of experience when you’re not worried about every penny."

The casino, Mohegan culture and the church on the hill

Jayne Fawcett:

“We can weave and we can have the church on the hill but we also need a way to be competitive in a modern world and the casino is the one way that we have been able to do this. It’s been very important for us. There have been people who have negative views of casinos. Gambling has been something Indians have done from time immemorial and I honestly don’t understand the problem that people do have with gaming when I think of even the most benign institutions such as the church. More people have died, died in the name of God than have been injured by gaming and any, anything taken to its extreme whether it’s credit card use or too much food, too much drink, too much sex, anything taken to the level of misuse and overuse can be a compulsive habit and be bad for us. So when you go to the movies, if you take the family you probably spend $50 and you come home with entertainment. When you go to the casino, you may spend the same $50, you come home with entertainment if you lose but if you don’t, you may come home with a great deal more. So I don’t understand the prejudice, and I think I have to use the word prejudice, that we have against gaming. I can only suppose that it stems from the gambling for Christ’s robe that the negative connotations to gambling came about. We have negative connotations toward overuse and abuse of alcohol, justifiably so, overuse and abuse of credit cards or anything you can think of but somehow they don’t carry with it this, oh, I don’t know, quasi low life feeling that people have put around gambling and it’s one I don’t understand because if you look at the facilities they’re magnificent, they’re fun. We offer entertainment for old people who can’t get around. This is a place where they can go and have fun. Do some people abuse it, sure. Do some people abuse religion, sure. Credit cards, food, you name it, it’s all in the abuse of the system that the problem lies. And we have been working on restoring that part of our language. We have cultural classes of course so that the traditional skills are not lost. We work very hard, we have prepared an educational program for the State of Connecticut on Indians of the area so that it can be available to schools and it goes through all the levels. It’s really hard for me to remember all of the pieces that all we have put out into the community to help and to help them know us.”

Fawcett is on the Advisory Board of the Museum of the American Indian and has received several national appointments

Jayne Fawcett:

“I received a presidential appointment from President Clinton to the Institute of American Indian Art, a wonderful, wonderful Indian school in Santa Fe. I enjoyed my tenure there and am very grateful to have had that opportunity. And I was also appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury as one of two Indians to be on the Tax Exempt Government Entity Advisory Committee. That was also a unique experience given my relative innocence on tax related matters but it was a challenge, let’s put it that way.”

The United South and Eastern Tribes, USET

Jayne Fawcett:

“I’m on the Board of Directors and the Treasurer of the United South and Eastern Tribes and I’m extremely proud of this group because it is a dynamic example of Indians working together. Our motto, ‘because there is strength in unity,’ has really helped us in meeting with legislators as a group and trying to help them to understand how some issues would negatively impact on Indian Country as well as to understand some of the needs of Indian Country. So this has been important, perhaps one of the most important things. We work together as a group and so do the ambassadors work together as a group. We work together also on health. USET virtually handles, acts as a conduit for a lot of our health issues with Indian Affairs so that, there are very, there’s housing and health and finance, there is a cultural group. I hate to leave any of them out but there are a variety of groups all of which present resolutions to the United South and Eastern Tribes and we then send them to the appropriate authorities with the backing of all of the tribes in the east and that’s a powerful impact. It’s powerful when the leaders or the members of the board of directors go to meet with a congressman or to meet with a senator about an issue. When you represent all of those tribes, you have a voice and we also work financially together.”

Fawcett has served as her tribe’s liaison on environmental issues

Jayne Fawcett:

“I did work heavily during the last council with environmental issues and I think we’ve done some unique things with what we call Knox credits which are things that we do to offset any pollution that we may be creating. But environmental issues have been extremely important to us and we’ve done some very innovative things with them in the casino.”

Electoral politics on the tribal level

Jayne Fawcett:

“We have a great many people who run. When there’s a council election, there are a large number of people who run. We have a tribal council of nine and a council of elders of seven so basically that’s it for the electoral politics. It’s basically the legislative and the judicial branches of the tribe, tribal council being the legislative and the council of elders judicial.”

And partisan politics on the national level

Jayne Fawcett:

“We try very hard to work with both sides of the aisle because we feel that that’s the only way we can have a complete understanding in Congress of what Indian Country’s needs are. We have learned about business and how to be competitive in business and just watch us go, just watch us go.”

The most deeply rewarding work

Jayne Fawcett:

“I have to say family with a caveat because you see the tribe is my family and so we are literally a family, we are all no more than third cousins so family and tribe are really intermingled so that one is really indistinguishable from the other and so it has to be my large family, my global family, the tribe.”

And greatest sadness

Jayne Fawcett:

“I guess my greatest difficulty still is dealing with bigotry. It was a sadness that begins as a child and never leaves. I do see that changing and I’m very happy to see that changing and I think its basis lies in ignorance and as we see a more informed public, as we see a more informed country and a more informed world, we’ll learn what I learned to teach years ago at the museum. It’s not how much we were different but how much we were alike.”

The future of the United States and of Indian tribes

Jayne Fawcett:

“My uncle always said that it was non productive to look back in anger, that if you devoted yourself to feeling sorry for yourself or to be angry about past wrongs that you really crippled yourself from happiness and from doing worthwhile things that make a difference in the future. And I think that’s the direction we’re heading. I think we really are learning. I think we’re growing up. I feel that the greatest threat to sovereignty of tribes are individual interest groups that can influence legislation and slide pieces of legislation in without hearings, without government to government consultation with Indian tribes. I think the biggest plus for Indian tribes is going to be the enforcement of government to government consultation on those issues which involve Indian tribes. This hasn’t happened yet but I think we’re moving down that path because people are becoming more and more aware of them.”

Fawcett loves her role as Ambassador of the Mohegan Nation

Jayne Fawcett:

“Each one of us on the tribal council has an area of not expertise but an area that where we feel comfortable. For example, someone may be very good in development, someone may be in environmentalism. We have someone who does a great deal of social service work. We have another who is very good at business, our treasurer is extremely good at business and has had a business background, as does our vice chair. So each of us takes a piece of council obligation I guess and oversees it.”

The Mohegan Congregational Church and tribal culture

Jayne Fawcett:

“The Mohegan Church is very, very unique. Our minister has participated in a pipe ceremony. We have had Mohegan religious ceremonies at the church. There is an eagle feather that hangs face down above the pulpit which is a symbol of peace and that this is a holy place. We had one minister tear it down and he was dismissed and we put it back up. And so the church has played a dual role. It has been a site where traditional Indian observances are held as well as Christian observances so it’s an unusual place. They aren’t in conflict.”

The legacy she would leave for her tribe

Jayne Fawcett:

“I guess the legacy I would like to leave is that I’m not an individual, I am part of a continuum and we all think of ourselves in Mohegan as part of a continuum, that it’s not what an individual does, it’s what we have all done as we’ve come along that has made the path better. And so I hope that when the Mohegans see this that they will work even harder to be part of that continuum and further our tribe.”

When non-Indian view her story

Jayne Fawcett:

“I hope they will say, ‘I can’t understand what she was talking about when she mentioned prejudice and bigotry.’”

For the celebration of federal recognition, Fawcett wrote a song

Jayne Fawcett:

[Fawcett singing]

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government, PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
Jayne Fawcett
Mohegan Nation

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d’Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Gay Kingman

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Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview, Gay Kingman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe discusses her 25-year career as a teacher, principal and tribal college president. She also discusses her work as Executive Director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association as well as some of her past roles, including Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians and Public Relations Director of the National Indian Gaming Association. Kingman is a fierce defender of tribal rights and sovereignty.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

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Citation

Kingman, Gay. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Portland, Oregon. 2004. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Gay Kingman, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, is the great granddaughter of Chief No Heart and daughter of Violet and Augustus Kingman. Her paternal great grandfather was Dog's Backbone who was killed in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Gay spent 10 years researching her grandfather and the Indians who fought at Little Bighorn. She was greatly rewarded when legislation was passed to establish a memorial in their honor. Gay's parents had high expectations for their daughter sending her to a school run by the Presentation Sisters where Gay was encouraged to continue her education. She earned a BS at Northern State College in Aberdeen, later receiving a master's in education at Arizona State. During her college years she married and had two sons. Her outstanding career as an advocate in Indian Country was preceded by 25 years in the education field as a teacher and administrator. Venues where she served include Pine Ridge, Eagle Butte, Minneapolis Public Schools, United Tribes Technical School and the Scottsdale Public School system. She was the superintendent of Pierre Indian Learning Center in South Dakota and the president of Cheyenne River Community College. Through all her efforts on behalf of Indian Nations, Gay has remained at heart an educator, one who liked to work with the student no one else wanted, the student causing the most trouble. This depth of commitment to social justice, this willingness to take on tough and stubborn jobs has informed every social task she has embraced. After her sons were grown, Gay went to Washington, D.C. accepting a prestigious educational award. President Carter had created the Department of Education. One of Gay's jobs was to see what could be done for Indian people in the Department of Education. She served as president of the National Indian Education Association which meant lobbying, testifying in Congress and fundraising. Quinault leader Joe De la Cruz brought Gay into the National Congress of American Indians and she was quickly installed as Executive Director bringing the venerable old organization from a financial crisis to a state of stability. She learned the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., developing allies in Congress and with staffers in finding opportunities to educate members of Congress who didn't have Indians in their districts. She cultivated many relationships with national Indian leaders such as Roger Jordain. In 1989 a propitious event occurred that would take Gay's life in yet another direction. She issued a call to the Indian community to come in and help her clean the NCAI offices. One man entered the door whose interest was not in clean floors but rather in taking her out to dinner. Timothy Wapato and Gay Kingman married in 1990. Gay a Democrat and Tim a Republican have been a dynamic political couple working both sides of the aisle through many daunting challenges, not the least economic development in Indian Country. In the early 1990s the times were contentious. Senator Daniel Inouye told tribes they had to get together and do some good education and media on gaming and how it could meet the needs in Indian communities. In 1993 Gay was appointed the Public Relations Director of the National Indian Gaming Association and Tim became its Executive Director. Many individuals, not the least Donald Trump, were hostile to Indian gaming and worked hard to limit it with legislation. To combat these efforts Gay created a PR campaign, Schools vs. Yachts which she conducted from the grassroots to the national level. For this campaign she won a prestigious PR award. Gay's human rights leadership extended to the University of Madrid where she was a guest lecturer at a discrimination and human rights symposium chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu. In 1998 Gay left her D.C. career to return to South Dakota to take care of her 100 year old father. Today her sons continue in the path that Gay, her father and her ancestors established. Vernon works with Indian business development and Chuck, a lawyer, is engaged with the National Tribal Judges Association. Gay Kingman is a member of the Policy Board of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Family history: Dog's Backbone and Little Bighorn

Gay Kingman:

"My parents, my mother was Violet Rivers Kingman and my father was Augustus "Gus" Gilbert Kingman. My mother... They were both Cheyenne River Sioux tribe members and both part French because the Canadian French came down on the Missouri and intermarried with the Sioux and so we're all part French as well. My grandfather, I remember very well my Grandpa Rivers was, they called him the Little Frenchman. He was a blue-eyed man and would...he fished in the river and would sell fish so I'd go out in the boat with him once in awhile. My father on my dad's side was a descendent of Dog's Backbone who was killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn and he went to school as a young man at Hampton, Virginia. It was one of the first off reservation boarding schools. It's still in existence today. It's a prestigious Black university. I've been there twice now to do research on my grandfather. So the Kingman name will be honored this June 25th at Little Bighorn and I've worked almost 10 years on doing that research and they'll be laying a warrior marker where Dog's Backbone fell warning his tribesmen that the soldiers are coming and the bullets are coming fast and furious."

Gay Kingman's tribe

Gay Kingman:

"I was secure in who I was as a tribal...a member of the tribe and it was never questioned until I guess I grew up and went away and then I always...then I found out there were other people or other tribes and everything. But we had...the tribe that I'm from is a large tribe. We have over probably around 12,000 members, 12,000 something and our land base is quite large and our leadership is...we have an exceptional leadership all throughout history. So I come from I guess a tribe who I'm very proud of and we have four Bands of the Sioux Tribe at Cheyenne River. And those four Bands, on my father's side I'm Minnecojou and then on my grandma's side I'm Blackfeet Band. I guess...I did get an education growing up on my own culture and traditions but it was not anything out of the ordinary. It was just an accepted thing that happened."

Parents' hopes for their daughter

Gay Kingman:

"They set high expectations and it wasn't anything that they demanded but it's just accepted that you do these things. As my family had been great leadership in the tribe, it was just accepted. And so my parents started me playing the piano at I think I was like five years old and I kept that up through college. They sent me away to school so I could have a better education than I could receive on the reservation. That was all expected and I accepted it and went through with it because I believed that they knew what was right for me. I think those kinds of expectations you put with your children and I know for my own sons I didn't demand it but they were expected to go on to college as well and they did. The Presentation Sisters, and I was the only Indian there in school because as I said it was in Aberdeen, South Dakota and it's off reservation. They encouraged me as well as every student there to go on to school. As far as my tribe, the tribe encouraged us and they had financial aid opportunities for us to go on to school but if you think back in those days that was early ‘50s and girls weren't expected to do as much and it was that way on the reservation as well. A lot of the men were expected to go on to college and do great things but women it wasn't and we were geared into being a secretary or we were guided into areas that weren't as I guess progressive. And so after I got my two-year degree I had gone to Presentation College then for two years and I asked to go back onto my four-year degree and the person in charge of financial aid said, ‘No, you've got your two-year degree.' And so I thought, ‘Well, I want to go get my four-year degree of education so I can teach, not just a two year.' And so I went before tribal council and I remember I was so scared to go before the tribal council at that time and I asked them, I said, ‘I want to go on to school and get my four-year degree,' and one of the councilman I'll never forget, he said, ‘Why is it some students finish in two years and some finish in four.' They just didn't understand the degree and how many years it takes and the advanced degree but they gave me the financial aid and so I was able to go on then to Northern State College in Aberdeen and graduate with a four-year degree in Elementary Education. I finished in '63, 1963 and went immediately into teaching. Meanwhile backing up a little bit when I was 19 I got married and I had my first son in 1960 and I always tell my sons that, ‘You have to go on to school because you went to college before you were born,' because I was having them and I was in college and I was doing education and working too because when you go to school you never have enough money to fully compensate you for all of your needs. And so I worked at Penney's and got very low income. And then next door to Penney's was a Woolworth's and they thought I was a pretty good worker and a good checkout so then they gave me a nickel more an hour so I moved over to Woolworth's. It was really a struggle but it was fun because many of us Indian students were struggling together to get through college."

Choosing education as a field of study

Gay Kingman:

"I liked children and so I think education is a way that, it's a springboard too for any other field that you could go into so I went into education and minored in music because I'd had years of study in music, played in the church...played organ in church since I was 11 years old. I guess it was a springboard for me in my career because after education then I went into tribal affairs nationally. We didn't have a good career counseling either in those days. Today I think young people are exposed to all of, a wide diversity of careers. I began teaching on the Oglala Reservation, Pine Ridge, South Dakota and it was grade school. My degree was in Elementary Education so I taught from like first through third grade and then I transferred to...this was for the U.S. Government. Then I transferred to my own reservation, Cheyenne Eagle Butte and taught there and that also was...I think it was like third and fourth grade and then I moved to Minneapolis and taught there in the Minneapolis Public Schools. I've always been one though that I liked to work with the student that nobody else wanted, the student that was causing the most trouble. I can really relate to them well and they relate to me. And so when I was in Minneapolis, the school I taught in was in the south side and I had students there who came from poverty area and students there who had troubled home life. And the class that I had were those students that nobody really wanted and we had a great time. I think...I have such problem with parents who let down their children because many of the problems stemmed from the poor home life or the parents who were drinking or the parents...I had one child whose mother was a prostitute. I used to have to go get the child out of...in the morning sometimes from her home because she'd sleep in and nobody would wake her. And then I was offered a principal-ship. So I moved from Minneapolis to Bismarck, North Dakota and I ended up actually beginning a school. It's kind of every teacher's dream to put into a school all that you've wanted for children and so I started the Theater Jamison Elementary School at United Tribes which is...it's a college, it's University Today. So I moved to Scottsdale and I had a position as the Director of Indian Education for the City of Scottsdale and we had kind of the reverse from what I'd been used to. When I worked on the reservation, our children were more needy, had more poverty. In Scottsdale we had a lot of needy students but it wasn't because of poverty, it was because maybe their parents were gone all the time and they were neglected or whatever. So one of the things that I did with the students in Scottsdale was set up an exchange program with Chinle, which is a school district on the Navajo Reservation and we would bring our students from Scottsdale to Chinle, to the Reservation and they'd actually stay in Navajo homes and they would be exposed to the family and their way of life and then we'd have Chinle students come to Scottsdale and they'd learn what it was like to live in the urban area. And it was wonderful because when we first got to Chinle the Scottsdale students said, ‘Well, there's nothing to do here.' But it wasn't long and they were jumping in the sand dunes and they were hiking up and down Canyon de Chelly."

The American Indian Movement (AIM)

Gay Kingman:

"I was personally impacted by the American Indian Movement when I was in Minneapolis, that began in the late ‘60s and I saw for myself the reason for the American Indian Movement and there was a lot of persecution of Indians in those days and probably exists today but it's gone more underground, it's more subtle. There was a lot of abuse by the police to Indian people. So my husband, the boy's father couldn't...got involved in this because he couldn't let some of the abuse that was happening and he was well educated as well and so he used his ability to write and to speak out against the abuse that was happening. For example, some of the pregnant woman got beat up...there was...in Minneapolis there's an area where a lot of the Indians lived and the police beat her and there were things like that. So a lot of the Indians got together and they formed what they called then the American Indian Movement and they would take people home from the bars before the police got to them because the police would abuse them. They'd get beaten up. And that's how the American Indian Movement began. And I think it had good intentions and it was the best way to do things at the time and it was the best way to help the Indians. My husband then and I started the school for a lot of the children because the children were being pushed out of the public schools. The school wasn't addressing their cultural needs or their other needs coming from the reservation to the city and so we started the Survival School for those children that weren't in school and my husband ended up running that as I worked for the Minneapolis Public Schools. And it's still in existence today and it's an acceptable school today but at the time we had such a hard time getting it going because people thought that it was something that wouldn't last. But yet we had a lot of success with the students that attended because we could attend to their needs, we could address their cultural needs, language was taught as well as we learned the values in the Indian way. To this day Clyde Bellecourt and the people that began it are still good friends because their intentions and what they did were very honorable. Today they run the...some very good programs for people in Minneapolis."

Life as a teacher, mother and activist

Gay Kingman:

"My own children were part of everything that we did. In the Indian way your children go along with you, you don't leave them at home with a babysitter so they were down with the American Indian Movement at the meetings. I taught in the same schools that they went to so I was there daily with them. My husband and I ended up parting ways at Minneapolis. He remained with the American Indian Movement in the Survival School and I left to go to Bismarck and run the school and begin the Theater Jamison School. I did so principally because I felt that the needs of my children would be better served that way for me to be in a more established position and give them a better home life that way."

Sons growing up, a career change, going to Washington

Gay Kingman:

"For the first time in my life I didn't have my sons and it was terrible. I'd walk down the hall to where their bedrooms were and I'd just get a lump in my throat. There really is an emptiness syndrome. So at that time I thought, ‘Well, if they're leaving home, I'm going to too.' So that's when I went to Washington, D.C. I had accepted a educational leadership position and it was I guess a prestigious award that I got. I was one of 500 that was selected, 50 of us were selected to study policy in the Nation's capital and actually we worked at the same time and then we had classes going on at the same time. So I worked for OMB and my position was the transition team for the Department of Education. President Carter had come in and he created the Department of Education and so when you do a big transition like that in government it's almost an unwieldy situation because education had always been in Health and Human Services, HEW, Health, Education and Welfare and they took the Education out and made it a standalone department. And so one of my responsibilities was to decide what we could do for Indian people within the Department of Education. Today as a result of that there is a Department of Indian Education within the Department of Education and it works with Indian students in public schools and public schools across the United States that have a significant number of Indian students receive funding to assist them with Indian children. And it depends on the need in the community. There's also funding for universities that have Indian students and they can get funding for scholarship programs to set up for Indian students. So that's within the Department of Education and I guess I had a small part in trying to get that set up within the Department of Education. Always people think of the Bureau of Indian Affairs when you think of Indians. Well, in the Department of Education now there's Indian Education.

As President of Cheyenne River Community College, Gay works toward its accreditation. She eventually heads National Congress of American Indians, NCAI, getting it on solid footing

Gay Kingman:

"My career was going and I was working in these various positions. I'd also been asked by people I worked with and I got elected to certain offices nationally and I served...I got elected to a three-year term for the National Indian Education Association and served as secretary and treasurer and also president of the National Indian Education Association. That is an organization of schools and colleges nationwide of Indian Education and when I served as president it meant lobbying in Congress and advocacy for Indian education, trying to get more funds for respective programs. It also meant running our office and so these were going on parallel to my career and it also helped prepare me also for the advocacy and I guess the politics that happen in Washington, D.C. Then I was also elected to a three years term on the National Congress of American Indians. Now the National Congress of American Indians is much broader than the Indian Education Office. It is made up of all of the tribes nationwide who can have membership and it deals with all of the programs that Indians have nationwide such as economics or health and human services or education or it could deal with legislation in Congress, many Supreme Court law cases that have come down, whether good or bad for us and what that means. So when I got elected to the Board of Directors that meant a very wide perspective then that I would have to work with. I served as secretary for the organization and then I was elected as treasurer as well for the organization and served there three years. I remember it was Joe De la Cruz asked me if I would be interested, cause Joe was on the Board of Directors and I said, ‘Well, I never thought about it but I would be.' So the Board met and put me in as Executive Director, National Congress of American Indians. So I went into...I didn't even go back to Eagle Butte because the urgency was so demanding at that point so I went directly to Washington, D.C. from the meeting. And my son was working at home for the tribe as a comptroller for the tribe and so I called him and asked him to go pack up my things. I'd written a letter of resignation and of course the chairman of the tribe was there so they knew my situation and I went to Washington, D.C. to become the Executive Director. And I wasn't prepared totally for what we found. We found a financial mess. The organization was almost on the verge of bankruptcy. Federal grants that the National Congress of American Indians had at that time were in danger of being pulled because no financial reports had been submitted. It was just a real mess. And then the main thing was that there was no credit, no credit for any of the hotels so we couldn't even have meetings. And so I put out the call to some of the tribal leaders at that time and here again Joe De la Cruz and Wayne Duscheneaux, they immediately responded and they sent people in to help. I remember Joe sent in his financial person to help begin sorting out records. Another tribal leader sent in some staff. I believe a tribe in Michigan sent me some workers because we had to terminate, we had to let go the staff that was there. We just didn't have the funds to make payroll. And I called on some of my friends then who were living in Washington, D.C. One, Carol Gipp, whose field is business and finance so she came over and started helping. I called upon my son who is an attorney and an excellent writer and so he came over to help. And so we kind of got by that way and we began sorting out the financial situation and we began making headway and I had meetings set up...I remember [unintelligible] with a tribe in Wisconsin helped greatly with the federal people because we had grants with Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. And so we had meetings set up with them to work out what arrangements we could make to get our grant back in good financial sitting. The years that I was there, the couple of years until my contract was up, I received a resolution of support from the National Congress of American Indians acknowledging all my hard work and that we put the National Congress of American Indians back on a firm sitting again and it was able to move ahead. New people coming on were able to take it from there and keep the progress going. So our old and venerated organization that had begun back in 1944 was on firm sitting again. I especially enjoyed all of the people because I got to meet Indian people nationwide and work with them. I got to know all of the staffers in Congress and work with them and some very, very outstanding, very supportive Congressmen and Senators such as Senator McCain. He remains an idol to me today. If you think all this man has done, he was a POW for seven, eight years of his life and his arms were broken and he can't even comb his own hair, physically he went through so much. And so he stood up, he stood up for Indian people many times. Senator Inouye who is Democrat, again a warrior who's lost an arm in the war fighting for his principles and what he thought and we have him on our side and he's stood up for Indian people many, many times. There's many people like that including staffers that kind of come and go because they're not well paid in the Congress but many of them, we've lost some good people in Congress like former Congressman Elizabeth Furse. We need people like that in Congress to understand where we come from as Indian people."

Sometimes encountering negativity, looking for the good things and meeting Tim Wapato

Gay Kingman:

"With me, the politics that I ran into were Indian politics and I had a hard time because all my life I've always believed to see the good in things and you can do good but when I ran up against some negativity in politics it was hard to fathom and I didn't have...I could not get on that level and deal with it...I'd rather take the high road so that's what I did. But one of the good things that came out of my time at the National Congress of American Indians, it was soon after I got in in 1989 the place was a mess and so I had asked the Indian community in Washington, D.C. to come and help me clean. And so the doors were open and we had people doing floors and dusting and washing and everything and in walked this man I'd never seen before. I thought he came to work so I said...I was going to put him to work and said, ‘Will you do this and that?' and he said, ‘No,' He said, ‘I'm house hunting.' But he said, ‘I'll come out and take you out to dinner later.' And I thought, ‘Sure, just another Indian man, he's making promises he won't keep.' So we were all working and we had the National Congress of American Indians building all spotless and here he came back and he did take us to dinner. That was my first time that I met Timothy Wapato who eventually was to become my husband. The more I talked to him I thought, ‘Well, this man has some intelligence,' and I liked what he did. He was the Commissioner of Administration for Native Americans. I never thought in my life that I'd ever get married again ‘cause I was always so busy and never had time for it. I liked my life. I was satisfied with what was happening. But when I met Tim Wapato, he eventually asked me to marry him and I said, ‘Well, let me think,' and finally it was like a month later we were on a plane together going somewhere, Albuquerque or somewhere and I said yes. So we did get married. We got married...we've been together since 1990 and got married. We called this spiritual man at home Orville Looking Horse. He's keeper of our sacred pipe which is on the Sioux...sacred pipe of the Sioux Nation which is housed on my reservation, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. So I called Orville and told him and he said...he didn't say anything. And of course you don't pressure spiritual leaders anyway so I thought, ‘Well, we'll just pray and see what happens.' And time got closer and closer. So meanwhile Tim had asked some of his spiritual leaders from the northwest and they said, ‘Well...' and it's a seven drum religion and they said, ‘We'd be happy to do it but we feel that we don't want to come into another spiritual man's area and you should start there first.' And so we didn't know what to do and one morning about 5:00 in the morning the phone rang and it was Orville. He didn't say, ‘We're going to do it,' or anything, he just told me what to do, what preparations I had to make to get ready. So we were married on the equinox of summer on June 22nd and Orville performed the ceremony. He brought sage from our sacred area there and green grass, it was a traditional ceremony. It was interesting because the tribe sent one of our cultural people to tape the ceremony and so for the next week or so our wedding played on our reservation and they showed...our wedding is part of the archives now of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe."

As a political couple in Indian Country, one a Democrat, one a Republican

Gay Kingman:

"I think it's advantageous that Tim and I were in different backgrounds, he Republican, me Democrat, he in different areas of expertise than mine because when it comes down to it, when you advocate for Indian people it doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat or Republican or Independent. What matters is that you get for Indian people what needs to get done. The same way with the issues that Tim worked in the past had always been environmental or law enforcement. Mine had always been education and administration. We figured out that we'd been at many of the same meetings but we'd never met. In our careers we could work both sides of the aisle because he being Republican he could work that way for Indian people and I could work the Democratic side of the aisle. Being nonpartisan I think is the best thing I think when things come together for Indian people."

In the early ‘90s as some of the tribes began gaming, some of the governors objected: the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) enters in

Gay Kingman:

"The times were contentious and Senator Inouye was telling the tribes, he said, ‘You've got to come together on this.' It's a time much like today where there's a lot of adversarial problems thrown at Indians not because it's right or it's the truth but because there's a lot of anti Indian sentiment out there. So a friend of mine, Raquel, who was chairman at that time of the Oneida Nation was running for president of the National Indian Gaming Association and in those days NIGA, National Indian Gaming Association was kind of operated out of a shoebox. There was no office, it was kind of wherever the elected leader resided was where the office was. So when we were working for Sycuan Danny Tucker was chairman and they were looking at maybe trying to do some gaming and Indian people are always looking to bring in economic development for the people. So I said to him, ‘Well, why don't you run with Raquel on the National Indian Gaming Association.' I got up and went out of the room to go to the bathroom and here again the board was meeting and when I came back in Tim said to me, ‘You're the new Public Relations Director.' I said, ‘I am?' And he said, ‘Yes.' They'd asked Tim if he thought I would take it and Tim says, ‘Well, I don't speak for Gay Kingman,' he said. He said the right thing. So anyway they'd gone on to other issues and so finally they told me that I was the new Director of Public Relations for the National Indian Gaming Association and this is in direct response to Senator Inouye's telling tribes that they had to get it together, they had to come together and do some good education and media outreach on what their needs were and why they were wanting to go into gaming. It wasn't very long thereafter, I'd say maybe a couple of weeks that they'd asked Tim to be the Executive Director. So together then we remained in Washington, D.C. and Sycuan ended up donating our time to the National Indian Education Association and our mission at the time, the direction that they gave us was to set up the National Indian Gaming Association with an office in Washington, D.C. and the old advocacy and education to Congress and to the media and to, at that time, the governors because we were having such difficulty with the governors. So we moved...we remained in our townhouse. We lived just a few blocks from the capitol and we had our office set up within our townhouse. Our computer was in our living room and our fax was on the dining room table...no, our fax was on the kitchen table, on our dining room table we had some of our other things. But we hit the ground running. We didn't have any time to take a breather because things were happening within each state. There were real problems with the governors, they didn't want the Indians to do gaming, the Indians were saying, ‘Well, we can...within the state you're doing gaming, why can't we.' And there were lawsuits that were going on. Many, many of the states were really having contentious situations. Anyway, this whole scenario was going on and finally the Cabazon case had come down saying that if a tribe...if its state is doing gaming then the tribe can too. So I want to say all hell broke loose and it was, it was just all over then. The governors were complaining to President Clinton saying, ‘You can't let that happen. It's immoral, these Indians can't do gaming, they couldn't regulate, who are they.' So we were dealing with this whole thing and then at the same time Donald Trump through Congressman Torricelli had introduced legislation to deny Indian gaming to the tribes saying that they couldn't. And so we were having to deal with that too. Hearings were set up and the House Interior and Insular Affairs was to hold a hearing so we brought in, we got Indian people to come in. Grandmas came in and elderly and children came in. We just really...people wanted to protect what they had and it wasn't by any means near what we have in gaming today. It was real small scale but yet they knew that they were making money on it and it was good revenue and it was economic development and they needed to keep it. So we set up the hearing and I put...I researched Donald Trump's yacht and got a big picture of it and put it outside the hearing room door and at the same time got a picture of the school at Mille Lacs that they financed with Indian gaming proceeds. And Senator Inouye and Senator McCain came over, here again our star warriors came over and testified in support of Indian gaming and then it was Donald Trump's turn. And the chairman of the committee and that time, it was a Democrat, was Congressman George Miller from California. And Congressman Miller, I don't know if you know him but he's a very strong supporter of Indians and civil rights of people and he's also a very strong personality physically. He's a big man and very articulate and so they...when Trump got up to testify, Congressman Miller started asking him his questions and Trump had a very politically correct speech written but as he listened to Senator Inouye and McCain and some of the Indians testify he was getting angrier and you could just see him. He was writing on the side of his speech and then all at once he just crumpled it up and tossed it. So we didn't know what was going on and here was Donald Trump getting angrier. And so when George Miller started asking him questions, he just let it out. There was nothing politically correct about what he had and he called...he said, ‘Well, those Indians don't even look like Indians,' and he meant some of the Indians on the east coast eluding to that they were mixed Black. And George Miller, you don't fight with the chairman in his own committee and it was the most astounding thing that happened. And after Donald Trump testified, his people pulled him right out because they knew what he had done. And we had videotaped...I had videotaped the whole thing and so when Donald Trump left, the press followed him and Tim and Rick Hill were outside standing in front of these pictures of the School vs. Yachts and they held a press conference. And both Rick Hill and Tim Wapato are very articulate and extemporaneous speakers and they can think on their feet and they held the best press conference. And I immediately took the videotape over to a studio and viewed it and pulled out the excerpt of Donald Trump and him opening his mouth and getting in a fight with the chairman and we put that up on satellite feed and got it to all of the major networks by the 6:00 news and it repeated again on the 10:00 news. We made a seven second video of it. We got that out to all of the areas that had remote stations so they could get it too and it played nationwide. We called the legislation, the anti Indian gaming legislation, we renamed it the Donald Trump Protection Act. And so after that happened, that episode, no congressman or senator wanted to touch it and in fact it failed in committee. We won big. We defeated the anti Indian gaming legislation but by no means were we out of the woods because there were a lot of battles yet. All of the governors were still crying because Indians were beginning to game in their states. It was the early stages."

The National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act had passed in 1988

Gay Kingman:

"Here again we won a lot in it but we lost our sovereignty in the way that...Indians have always been able to game. We've gamed since time immemorial. We've had our stick games, we've had all of our games but when it came down to organized gaming I guess or slots or gaming that the states realized we were going to get some revenue out of then they wanted to deny it. So in the Indian Gaming Act that passed the Congress allowed the states to enter into a compact with Indians to do gaming. It was an erosion of our sovereignty because Indians have always been able to do gaming. Now we had to go to the state and work on a compact to do gaming and in some states they even refused to do that, they refused to do a compact and in some states it wasn't a negotiation, it was a dictatorial relationship like in my state of South Dakota. The governor just said, ‘We're dictating this is how it is, take it or leave it.' And the tribes took it. In my state there's not a lot of revenue out of gaming anyway because we just don't have the market, we don't have the populations. In this state of Arizona Governor Fife Symington, the tribes eventually even had to go to negotiated rule making on getting a compact. Governor Fife Symington would not do a compact with the tribes. This is a time when Tim and I were running night and day. We were in all of the states sporadically depending on where the hot spot was at that time and working with the tribes locally and then we'd do a lot of media outreach to call attention to the issue. We were back in the office and we would get reams and reams of fax papers from the different areas."

Educating Congress on the issue of taxing and Indians; the role of Congressman Hayworth

Gay Kingman:

"One of the other things that happened was Bill Archer, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, decided that he was going to tax Indian gaming so he came out with language saying that he was going to tax Indian gaming. Tim and I happened to be in, I think we were in Spokane at the time and we turned our phone off that night cause we were so tired and that morning when we turned it back on we had like 60 messages and it was all because this had broken just that afternoon which in D.C. was late afternoon and we didn't get it. And so we immediately headed back to D.C. but Tim as Executive Director immediately put onboard two people who were tax experts. We held training sessions for staffers on why Indians don't pay tax and why we don't pay tax is tribes were sovereign before anyone ever came to this United States. After the Constitution was set up based upon the tribes and the confederacy on the east, in there the Commerce clause were in there that you don't pay taxes and it's in a lot of our treaties. I'm from a tribe that has a treaty and this is our land, we gave...we got our land reduced because of the influx of non-Indian people across this United States and the treaties we signed that this would be our land for time immemorial, it can't be taxed due to the Constitution and due to our sovereignty that we've always had and yet this was what Bill Archer was trying to do. And so we tried, we really tried to educate each member of the Ways and Means Committee. Now if you've ever worked with the Ways and Means Committee it's called Gucci Gulch because the Ways and Means Committee handles all of the big money in the United States, the airlines and they handle everything that is huge money and the people that work there, they wear very fine clothes. And here we were kind of a rag tag little group of Indians trying to educate Congress and if they needed something we had a piece of paper telling them that this is it. Then meanwhile Congressman Hayworth from Arizona, this state, was a new congressman and then we said, ‘Well, you can't just educate him, he's got to carry this.' So Ivan Makil who was chairman at Salt River Tribe at that time, a young, astute chairman, really saw the danger in this and so he came and worked with us side by side. Every time Congressman Hayworth would kind of waiver a little, Ivan would be right there because these were his constituency could do it best. So when it came time to vote Chairman Archer had commissioned a report from GSA on why tribes should pay taxes and meanwhile J.D. Hayworth, while Congressman Archer was waving this GSA report on why tribes should pay taxes, and when it was Hayworth's time to speak he pulled the Constitution of the United States out of his pocket and he said, ‘It says right here in the Constitution of the United States,' and he gave the section and everything and he said, ‘that Indians do not pay taxes.' And he slammed it down on the table and he said, ‘I'll take the Constitution of the United States over any old GSA report anytime.' And you're not supposed to clap or anything in the committee but there was applause. And finally it came time to the vote and this was like 3:00 in the morning and so Tim said, ‘I'm going to go stand up there and look them in the eye because if they're going to vote against us, I'm going to see who it is.' So he went up there and he stood like this and looked them in the eye as each came time for roll call vote, which congressmen had asked for and when it came time for the final vote it was in our favor, we had won. Indian tribes would not be taxed and it has not come up again. We had won such a victory in the Ways and Means Committee and...Indian tribes historically don't go to that committee, we go to Education or we go to Interior and Insular Affairs or we go to the Senate Indian Affairs but that's a committee we don't usually work. When we won there and we won big, we were immediately celebrities almost. People were calling us, our phone was ringing off the hook but there were so many issues again."

Gaming, misperceptions and prejudice

Gay Kingman:

"In response to Indians are getting rich I think out of 560 some tribes nationwide there's still only 200 and some that do gaming and of those 200 and some that do gaming there's only a few that have the very wealthy gaming that we hear about. My tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, doesn't have any gaming at all. The tribes in South Dakota that do have gaming like the Oglalas, they're not getting rich. They make just barely enough to make payroll and maybe have a little income to the tribal general fund, the revenue fund. We don't have the population. You've got to have the population and the market to do gaming. This tribe here, Gila River, they have access to all of the Phoenix area, there's a huge population. And in the wintertime when we get all the snowbirds, it nearly doubles. So this tribe here has access to all that population and that market and so I would imagine here that their gaming is very, very...the revenue that they generate is very high. So that's one thing, it's a misnomer that all tribes are rich. But all my life this is what I've had to deal with, whether it's this misnomer about Indians are rich or this misnomer that we're drunken Indians or this misnomer that we're dumb. These are misnomers that all my life that I've tried to educate people on that Indian people are like everyone else, we have our good people, we have our bad people, we have unfortunates, we have wealthy. It's the sprinkling of America and I would love to have the opportunity to talk to people about these ideas that they have that need correction."

Moving to Scottsdale, Gay and Tim take her aging father in

Gay Kingman:

"At that time he was only 98 and he loved Arizona. And he was getting along really well and he'd go out and sit on the patio all morning and watch the birds and he just really loved the weather and the climate. And then after he reached 100 we thought we better move back home and take him back to South Dakota so he could be near his relatives and people could come visit him ‘cause everyone was wondering how he was. This man was getting on up in age and they wanted to see him. So we moved back to South Dakota and I'd had a home there since early ‘80s and so we just moved back and began renovating it and my father was able to visit friends and relatives. Of course at his age a lot of his close friends had moved on. I took care of my father and I was really happy. I'm so glad to have done it. There were some hard times, some things he didn't understand and he couldn't hear and he was getting very, very forgetful, sometimes he didn't know us. Most of the time he was in real good shape. He ate very, very well. He loved his oatmeal every morning and he ate almost around the clock little bitty meals. He didn't like to go to bed. They say as you get older that you revert back to your childhood and he did. He was like a child. He was like my baby. But we had such remarkable times with him too. His bedroom was down one level. I have a level house and one morning he came up and he says, ‘Oh, I made it.' And then he looked at Tim and I and he said, ‘I don't know what I'm going to do when I get old.' And at that time he was probably 103. He was great."

Tradition, politics, concerns for the future

Gay Kingman:

"Well, first of all I think it's only been one world and that's my spiritual world that's kept me strong. The way I was born and raised my parents brought me up to be very spiritual and whether it's the Catholic religion, which I was raised in but also the traditional religion. And so that's been what's kept me strong through everything. Everything else just fell in line with the spiritual way whether it's been the politics or advocacy or working in the non-Indian world, that's all tied in with the spiritualism. We're in a very similar situation as we were in 1993 when we were asked to take over the National Indian Gaming Association. The tone of the country is the same way. There's a lot of anti-Indian movements going on, we're getting beat up in the press. The tribes are stronger I think in many ways and then some of the tribes have a lot of capital to deal with these issues. But with capital comes also a lot of demands and so say for example some of the California tribes although they have a lot of revenue coming in from the gaming, the demands for that revenue have increased. Meanwhile in Congress we still have some of our friends. Senator Inouye is still there, Senator McCain is still there. We might have some new friends but we also have a lot that don't understand Indians that aren't friendly either. I think we need better education of Congress. And a lot that has spilled over from gaming is hurting us like on the east coast some of the tribes that have tried to do gaming. It's spilling over into what we call federal acknowledgement. One of the main problems we're faced with is within our own ranks as Indian people. I think we need to come together better. I don't want to say unity because we're always talking unity but going back to spiritualism and traditions and culture, I'm a firm believer that that's where we need to be. And with money comes prestige and all of the...I think some of the people with money want to embrace right away all the glitz and glitter of the non-Indian world, which is fine but don't lose your traditions and your culture cause that's who we are as a people. I see a lot of our young people who are floundering because they're going into gangs or they're taking drugs or alcohol. If they had their traditions and the cultures and the values that came from...that were taught in those, they wouldn't need that. And so that's I guess some of the problems that I see on the horizon that we're faced with."

Erosions to sovereignty

Gay Kingman:

"Yeah, I think it's a steady drip. I mentioned earlier the demands on the tribe because they now have a lot of money. For example the California tribes, they're small, maybe a few hundred people in a tribe and so the county is coming at them saying, ‘Well, we need money for roads, we need money for law protection,' so the tribes are negotiating with them to do that, which is fine but in a way it's eroding the sovereignty because they don't have to do that. They should be sovereign within themselves. It's also spilling off into other tribes like mine, my tribe because we don't negotiate with the county. We do to the point where we might have a mutual understanding but we don't give up any part of our sovereignty. We have a bill right now that's being floated around in Indian Country. It's called the Sovereignty Protection Act. I'm very fearful of it because what it's doing is...there are several sections in there that aren't very good like putting land into the PILT, the payment in lieu of taxes, saying that if you have trust land which isn't taxed then the United States Government will pay the county or the state in lieu of that land so they still get some money. Well, this is none other but taxation again, an attempted taxation and it's wrong because as I explained earlier it's our sovereign right, that land is ours in our treaties and in our heritage and it's ours, it shouldn't be taxed. But this legislation would allow that and tribes should rise up and deny this and it's floating around within our midst by our own people."

Gay's sons continue the family's legacy

Gay Kingman:

"My sons have followed in the path that was set by my ancestors, which is the responsibility we have to our Indian people. My one son is, as I mentioned earlier Vernon Robertson has his degree in business but he's gone on. He works for the Mille Lacs tribe and he's in there...he's Vice President of the Business and Economic Development, I'm not sure of his exact title. He's carried on. All of his positions have been to make things better for Indian people in the business world. Chuck, my other son, Chuck Robertson, with his degree in law is working also to make things better for Indian people. He's Executive Director of the National Tribal Judges Association and he works with all of the tribal judges nationwide in their respective areas. That was the other thing I forgot in the spiel that I mentioned that's floating around Indian Country that's so bad for us is the...in the legal area, which would provide federal court review of our tribal courts and this is wrong because like my tribe and our tribal courts are just as good or better than courts off the reservation. We'd be the first to jump on our own tribal courts and improve them if something went wrong and so the regulatory factor is very important. So I'm very proud of my sons in that they've carried on the tradition that I've tried to carry on in my life."

Gay lectures in Madrid at a Human Rights forum chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu

Gay Kingman:

"What I learned was that there were other Indigenous people that are in the same category that we're in in our country. On June 25th of this year we'll be laying the memorial for the Indians that fought and died at Little Big Horn. My people, the Minneconjou Lakota, were the people that were totally annihilated at Wounded Knee, men, women and children. The children were followed up ravines and killed. The women were brutally mutilated and raped. For our people to have come through that and to have lived and to have survived is tremendous. And I like to think that my little part of the world where I've worked has had a hand in assisting with the improvement of human rights for Indian people. But I found out that it doesn't have to do with Indigenous I guess, with being a minority within a large majority. You're not respected and you're denied a lot of things. Our school systems on the reservation, if you look at the SAT scores, most of the school systems on the reservation are far below those off the reservation and it's not because the children are dumb it's just that they have less opportunities afforded them. These are all...there's so much to get done. In my life I guess I've tried to work on some of them."

A hope for the future and a legacy that could be shared

Gay Kingman:

"I'd like to see our sovereignty have true sovereignty where we're self-sufficient and our tribes are self-sufficient and our people aren't in poverty. My tribe and some of the tribes in the Great Sioux Nation live in, by the U.S. Census, some of the highest poverty in the United States, the counties that they're in and that shouldn't be in this United States with all of the wealth. When you think that we were self-sufficient here before the coming of the White Man, we had strong values that of fortitude and generosity and all of these things that kept us strong and I'd like to see that shared but until all people in this United States become out of poverty and self-sufficient, that would be my dream."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo Credit:
Photo collection of Gay Kingman and Tim Wapato

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
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Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
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Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Edward T. Begay

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview conducted in November 2001, former Vice Chairman and Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council Edward T. Begay talks about his long and distinguished career with the Navajo Nation, as well as his commitment to preserving Navajo traditions and creating a sustainable, culturally appropriate economy for his people.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Begay, Edward T. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Window Rock, Arizona. November 2001. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Edward T. Begay, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, was born in the Church Rock Community of New Mexico about six miles east of the City of Gallup. The boundaries of the Navajo Reservation extend from northwestern New Mexico into northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The reservation is larger than many states and the Navajo Nation is recognized as the largest Indian tribe in the United States. Ed T. Begay's grandparents encouraged him to get an education in the dominant culture. They sent him to Rehoboth Mission High School rather than a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. He then attended Calvin College and received his degree from Southwest Business College. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate from College of Ganado. After service in the U.S. Army from 1959 to 1960 he came to Window Rock and served as head of the Data Processing Unit for the Navajo Nation. During this time he saw issues that needed to be addressed and thereafter began a long public service career with the Navajo Nation. The structure of the Navajo Nation government has changed over time as the people have taken greater control over their affairs. In the 1860s tensions grew between the Navajo, the U.S. Army and non-Indian ranchers who had settled in the area. Although many Navajos resisted, Kit Carson rounded up approximately 8,000 and force-marched them to Fort Sumner. Several thousands died on the march, the four-year imprisonment and the march home. This episode of misery but also survival is known as the Long Walk. The Peace Commission and the Treaty of 1868 allowed the Navajo survivors to return. The treaty set aside a reservation, a fraction of the original homeland. And in exchange for peace the U.S. Government promised basic services to the Navajo. The tenacious Navajo people built their lives and communities again. In the 1920s a Navajo Nation Business Council was established by the U.S. Government to deal with oil companies that were seeking leases on Navajo lands. Then in the 1930s the first Navajo tribal council was organized. In 1989 the National Council was again restructured. A legislative branch was created and an Office of the Speaker established. The 88 members of the council are elected based on the population of 110 chapters. The Speaker is the CEO of the legislative branch. Ed T. Begay was elected to two terms to the Office of the Speaker, first in 1999 becoming the third Speaker of the Navajo Nation council. Before his terms as speaker he had already built a distinguished career in service of the Nation serving as a council delegate for the Church Rock and Bread Springs chapters for more than 30 years. He proudly served on several committees including Education and Economic Development and Planning. From 1983 to 1987 he served the Navajo Nation as Vice Chairman with then Chairman Peterson Zah. Ed T. Begay is committed to the project of developing the economic self sufficiency of the Navajo people. Government work on many levels fascinates him. Today he serves as a Highway Commissioner for the State of New Mexico. He is also engaged in an initiative that will document Navajo traditions and culture. He has two daughters, Charlene Begay Platero and Sandra Begay Campbell. He is the grandfather of twin toddlers whom he says, ‘really like to use their voices.' The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Edward T. Begay in November, 2001 in Window Rock, Arizona."

The Navajo Long Walk of the 1860s, Kit Carson and the peoples' four-year imprisonment at Fort Sumner

Edward Begay:

"Through my grandfather Jesus his grandfather was the official, he was a Spanish man and he was the official interpreter for the Navajos in Fort Sumner. So by virtue of that my grandfather's grandfathers and mothers they were part of that Long Walk. Well, I guess by reading about them later on in life sometimes it's irritating from a standpoint that there was no human rights in those days. I guess there was but nobody emphasized that so it was more or less on the plunder and conquer approach. Sometimes a bit of resentment but then you have to take it into perspective in terms of history and what was taking place and try to work with the attitude that's in place."

As a child, Ed Begay learned about leadership and the rules of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from his family members

Edward Begay:

"My sisters and I were raised by my grandparents and my dad eventually he moved back to Tohatchi where his family, his mom and dad were. But as...I don't know, about five or six years old my grandfather always talked about different policies that are being placed upon Navajos by Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why he is so astute to that is him being the chief rancher and cattle rancher and raised horses so they always talk about grazing areas and units of sheep and how many you're supposed to be limited to such and such numbers in order to fit the pasture. So as small as I was just listening to the elderly people discuss I became very keen aware that there is an ongoing struggle in terms of federal government's rules that are placed upon Indian people, in our case Navajo people. And my grandfather Tom Jesus was very involved in leadership role. He was...I guess some people nowadays would say he was a headsman of a group in a community. And from there on it stemmed into Navajo chapter government so he was chapter president for I don't know how long. But from the meetings he would always bring back what the government policies are and the programs that they want to undertake -- they, meaning the Bureau of Indian Affairs representatives."

Learning the dominant culture at a Christian boarding school and at home the teachings of grandparents

Edward Begay:

"As I was growing up my grandmother and grandfather they wanted me to get educated in a dominant society. So rather than that they placing me what the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school they put me in private school. It was an interesting experience. Not knowing a word of English and I thought to myself, ‘Let's see how would I do best in learning other language and who would speak to me so that I would readily understand and also be able to maintain it and also practice it?' But I wasn't the only one, there was...at the whole class, the first students in my age group, we were all similar. There was one or two that understood the English language. Of course in those days they taught from the simplest book in pictures. So in that way I can readily relate what they're trying to describe and name names and the action that they produce to get your verbs and so forth. But once in awhile when we would play by ourselves, we would talk Navajo and we were punished, I guess we were disciplined for doing so because the teachers and the people that were advising us, they wanted us to learn and speak fluent English and understand the printed page and so forth. It was interesting. But we paid attention to the discipline that was involved and oh, discipline meaning along the lines of military type of discipline where we'd go to...time to go eat breakfast and lunch and dinner we would all get lined up according to size and we would march not so in military steps but we'd march and go in groups and then we would sit in the dining room. We learned etiquettes of the world. Then also in terms of play you've got to give a fair consideration for the other person. That's a key in terms of getting along with people and in terms of you had to share responsibilities in different areas, in classrooms, keeping the classrooms tidy and not only that but also in the dormitory situation and also in terms of studies and all different subjects. To me ... and learned was that it meant something as a tool, as a tool that you could use in life. It wasn't just something like the temporary stuff. These are the things that one would learn and keep and maintain because I keep going back to grandparents. If you learn something, if they teach you something, you better pay attention and understand and be able to apply it because their teaching was, ‘If you can learn well, then you will be positioned to teach your children later on when you get married and have your own children. And if you don't know, then it will get chaotic.' That was the teachings of our grandparents.

The need for flexibility when operating in two cultures

Edward Begay:

"Learn the phrase, when you're in Rome do as the Romans do and that goes a long ways. I tell you it can even work today. It's just like yesterday I was attending the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission which is to redraw the state legislature boundaries and also congressional down in Arizona, been following it real close. So we had to play their game. That's what it means. You have to speak the language that they use that they can understand and that they pay attention and that's the phrase that it'll go a long ways for. Many people if they could understand that rather than saying, ‘I'm Navajo therefore I can't be open to what the discussion is about or the subject matter that's being discussed.' If you do that then they leave you behind so you've got to keep up with it. There's a constant awareness that one must be aware of."

Learning and teaching discipline in the military

Edward Begay:

"Then I got my assignment in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. I used to train troops for 18 months. The people that, the majority that came through that army camp was Puerto Ricans and they thought that they could just run over me by being stubborn and all that. So I said, ‘Okay, if that's what you want to do, I've got the patience and I'm in shape and we could run and run and run.' That's how I got my point across. They don't want to run, ‘Okay, you pay attention to what I'm teaching.' So as long as I'm on the platform I'm in charge, you do as I say because I know what I'm talking about because these are the things that I got taught and therefore you have to learn the discipline. About the third day I was understood pretty well. They know who's in charge and why. One of them asked, they said, ‘Why?' I said, ‘If you don't learn discipline here, when you get into actual combat you'll be the first casualty.' I said, ‘That's why I'm teaching you discipline to pay attention and understand the commands that are given. When I say hit the dirt you say how hard. That's for your safety. No other reason just for your safety.' Once you put that thought across then it goes a long ways for being understood and provide timely leadership and also surprisingly by the time they finished four weeks or eight weeks, they come and thank you for all the lessons that you taught them. That's gratifying."

Ed Begay began his service with the Navajo Nation in data processing

Edward Begay:

"They thought I was a computer whiz then but then the community that I come from, Church Rock, they have this chapter, local government of the Navajos. I would go to these meetings and I would just sit in the audience and there were some things that I thought they were overlooking, I thought they were elementary so I would address that in a timely manner. So one day they said, ‘Young man,' they said, ‘if you think you're so smart, we're going to put you in as chapter president. What would you say then?' I responded to the gentleman and I said, ‘If that's a challenge, as soon as you vote me in I would provide leadership for you, the community.' I said, ‘Leadership means that I have to tell you what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And then you have to pay attention.' I said, ‘That's what you're asking of me to do, then you vote for me.' So that's how I got elected chapter president and I served, didn't finished my term, three years or so then I got nominated to serve on the...to be candidate for Navajo Nation council delegate."

He was in the forefront of forming the Navajo Area School Board Association

Edward Begay:

"So we got organized and from all over the reservation and they said, ‘We want to get in that circle where the decision is made, approving budgets, hiring personnel and program changes.' So I was one of the organizers for federal legislation where the Bureau has to recognize a school board membership where they would be responsible for Bureau of Indian Affairs school. So I got elected from my chapter to Fort Wingate High School Board, one of the original and served there and by virtue of that there was at that time 67 schools on Navajo, Bureau operated, funded. Then each of these all had school board members eventually. When the federal legislation came through, we got organized so that we have an area association that oversees these school operations. A lot of work but we got it done, it's in place, it's working."

Meeting resistance to reform

Edward Begay:

"Some people naturally in any society there's always resistance but that just adds a lot of energy that you want to do better and you want to convince them and that's the approach that I took, especially with the people that understood what the agenda was, which was to be properly authorized so that could be in charge of these schools as a school board elected by the community that we come from where we send our children."

The influence of the 1960s on the Navajo people, using their voices

Edward Begay:

"Being out there in various communities, working and also being part of communities in different places, yes, I think Navajo people got swept into those movements and I guess in that way they realized, Indian people realized that, hey, you could be outspoken and be heard and you could write your opinions and like writing to the editor in news media or get interviewed and get your thoughts across. A lot of people would pay attention to what you have to say if you take it a positive way with the human interest in it, yeah, people will pay attention."

He has devoted 35 years to the service of the Navajo Nation

Edward Begay:

"I've been reelected since 1970 up to 1982; '82 I guess I could have continued but at that time, 1982 I was asked by Peterson Zah that he was running for chairman of the council and he asked me if I would consider being his running mate as the vice chairman of the council. So I resigned from my candidacy as a council and came up with the Peterson Zah to seek the nomination and election for primary and general, which we did. So I served as vice chairman of the council from 1982 to 1987. For reelection we lost reelection by 750 votes."

Restructuring the Navajo government following the years of Peter McDonald

Edward Begay:

"I was out of office that period of time. However, as all politicians do that you work behind the scenes to get your ideas and programs in place. So I worked a lot in that period of time in that fashion. And some of the sitting council friends and relatives they were active participants in that. I think they're just...I knew being on the council prior I knew that this was going to come about sometimes. By that I mean that the Navajo Nation council is the governing body and whoever's chairman or president, if they want additional powers to do certain things, they have to go back to the council to receive that authority. During Peter McDonald's term in '87, '88, '89 at that time quite a bit of or most of the power was delegated to the chairman then. So when Peter McDonald came back to regain his seat he knew he had all the delegated authority so he didn't pay attention to what was being advised by the council. He said, ‘I'm duly authorized, therefore you have no say.' So the council said, ‘Okay, we'll test this.' So they stripped him of all the delegated powers and reserved unto themselves. They brought everything back only the position of the chairman and the vice chairman. It came down to they tell him when to come to work and when to quit and what he can do and what he can't do. That's where all the eruption that the council did wrong and that they were abusing their power at allegation and so forth. But that's, to me that's the bottom line. So he had to pay attention to the council. So by virtue of the restructuring, all the powers that were delegated to the chairman then was given...the council took it all back and they did distribute that power to the standing committee of the council. That's the way it is now, which is Title II as amended. And then by virtue of that they created the office of the president and vice president, they created office of the speaker for legislative branch to preside over the council and also oversee the day to day activity of legislative branch. And then of course we have the judicial branch, which is headed by chief justice to do all the activities. So they worked those things out and that's what we have in place now."

The Nation has turned down gaming

Edward Begay:

"I think in the area of authorizing legalized gaming on Navajo I think it's a mix. The elderly people, those that pay close attention to culture, say that it's not the proper thing for the Navajos to establish because it creates a lot of disruption in the family, disruption in the spending pattern and then also disruption of marriages and all the related vices that goes with outright gaming if one does not closely control and monitor. I think that's one of the basic reasons why they kind of, the Navajo people kind of says, ‘Slow down a minute.' And then there's some other segment of Navajo population they like to establish gaming so that we could capture all the monies from other people rather than from the Navajo people themselves. But in order to do that I think education is the key to that."

The place of traditional wisdom in the everyday decisions of life

Edward Begay:

"In my personal life in the early years I was brought up as believing in the practice of Navajo beliefs meaning Navajo prayers, meaning Navajo songs and certain things of doing. People call it rituals but it's just the way Navajo practice their beliefs and practice through the ceremony, that's how I was brought up. But when I got into a Christian school then I was taught about the discipline of Christian practice and to me they are very strict. It's not just hearsay. By that I mean they're in thick books, they're all spelled out and you could, if there's a certain subject matter you wanted to address or find out why they are written you go to those source and they'll explain it to you, detail. Before I lose my train of thought, that's where I would like as a speaker to council now before my term is up I'd like to get those, some of those principles in Navajo practice to print and into maybe a law but the people tend to say you shouldn't do that. But I myself believe it should be written down, you should have books on it so my grandkids that follows me would know what I was talking about, they could go to that reference. The way it is now you have to find some elderly folks to be your reference on those songs or prayers and practice. On the other side, in the Christian faith it's all written down so that there's no room to wiggle ‘cause it's there. But for myself, if you just pay attention to those principles that are written down and then also the principle of Navajo that are handed down verbally we understand I can almost put it together just from my own belief and there's some variations but very little if you pay attention to those fine print. I think that that helped me in life to have a strong faith in myself and also the good Lord above that guides me and provides me wisdom to make all these supposedly hard decisions, tough decisions. But if you have those things in place those are just day to day decisions one makes to survive in life."

The need for real commitment to the task of developing economic self-sufficiency

Edward Begay:

"At the same time we have to pay attention to orderly development in all these different areas because there's so much regulation, environmental protection laws. We have our own environmental protection laws in place now. If one could pay attention to all those I think there's a business opportunity for an entity. The Navajo Nation talks about developing Navajo entrepreneurship but they just say it in words, they need to put it in practice. But at the same time the people, the Navajo people, business people need to have a personal initiative, drive, which means you have to sacrifice to achieve what you're after because nobody's going to give it to you. If you wait for that, there's a long list for handout. The handout just lasts a little bit but if you're in private business I think you have unlimited opportunity that I think which we Navajo individuals yet to grasp fully so I think that's a challenge for not only Navajos but I think it's for Indian communities."

On whether the tribal council shares his views on economic development

Edward Begay:

"I wish 87 other members did, they would be a very dangerous council to work with meaning that they would just blow up the opportunity, that's what I mean. But they express it but when it comes to financing then everybody starts hedging back. Let me just use the word loosely or even the full meaning, they hate to take risk. I feel if anything you want to do worthwhile for yourself or for your family or for your neighbors and your kin folks, you have to take some risk. But you've got to know the risk that you're taking up front rather than just surprise type of thing. I think that's a virtue that people have yet to fully learn."

The Navajo Nation and the U.S. Congress

Edward Begay:

"This might surprise you but the strongest advocate that the Navajo has is a Hawaii senator, Senator Dan Inouye. He's very interested in Navajo language, he's very interested in culture and very interested how we do things. I guess...he says it intrigues him and it also challenges him. Secondly is from New Mexico, Senator Pete Domenici. Sometimes he gets upset with us but I always tell him, ‘Senator, you have nowhere to go. We're here to stay.' So he's very helpful. Senator Jeff Bingaman although he doesn't take our advice at times, but then he too has to pay attention to Navajo. Then you get to the Arizona side it's a different story. By that I mean they tend to take care of the dominant society's interests first, then if there's some left over they might share it with you or support you, DeConcini, Kyl. Then to Utah the Mormons have all these wonderful things for me the people should do but when the pressure is applied they have a tendency to shy away. There again, they take care of their own first and if there's some left over we'll share with the Native Americans. This is in terms of proper funding from the federal government. That's what I'm alluding to and also for ongoing support for economic development. By that I mean if United States government can at the twinkling of an eye can appropriate $40 billion, no argument for some other places they can't even take care of their own here. This is sad. But that's in the real world."

Asserting Navajo sovereignty on every level

Edward Begay:

"That doesn't mean we have to sit down and say, ‘We're going to give up.' No, that just adds fuel to our work and for myself, I get involved in the state legislature, county government, chapter government, United States government and international. Last fall three of the council members we were delegates to United Nation in Geneva, Switzerland. They meet for two weeks. Anyway I was there for one week and then my counterpart Chief Justice Yazzie took care of...sat in the second week so we had full coverage. So that's where in that forum as a government, you have to go there as a government to be effective I learned. But when I gave my statement on some issues all those people turned around and faced the Navajo delegation when we made a presentation because we were there as the Navajo government. Interesting, it was very interesting. And they pay attention to what you have to say and they said they value the recommendation that you present to them. That's a very rich experience in terms of worldwide governance I call it. That's where each Indian Nations of the United States and Canada should be. Hopefully Navajo Nation will get a seat one of these days."

The most important quality in leadership

Edward Begay:

"The key things is your upbringing, putting it to use at the higher level, higher level meaning in the government with the mass, let me just say the mass population of your group. You have to be dedicated. I guess some leaders they want to go for individual achievements. It could be done but they come and go to me. But if you're serious in being dedicated to impact and also improve the livelihood of your people you have to be honest with them. I think a lot of leaders come and go because that's where they fall. They're not honest, the true sense of the word honest with their people. I like to pride myself in being honest and level with the people that I represent meaning that I just tell them just the way things are at and also give them the consequences that might be involved if you continue to...sometimes it's not a pleasant thing to do. To achieve that you have to be honest with yourself in order to be honest with your fellow man."

Edward Begay's family

Edward Begay:

"Right now I'm a widow. I lost my wife 10 ½ years ago. She was Cecilia Damon Begay was her name. She was very supportive. I think one of the reasons is her upbringing and also the educational background that she had. She was a graduate of UNM in health science and she was a registered nurse. We have two daughters, Charlene Begay Platero, a son-in-law John Platero. Two weeks ago they adopted twin babies, a boy and a girl so they are proud parents as I speak. My daughter's a UNM graduate and she has her discipline in marketing. She works for Navajo Nation Economic Development in the area of all these activities marketing. She's an outspoken lady. She's a Rehoboth school board president until she resigned last week ‘cause she has two babies to tend to. She works really well with the state legislature and the State Department, New Mexico and working her way into the Arizona portion, coordinating in the area of economic development and ongoing things. And my son-in-law works, he's a foreman with the giant refinery just out of Gallup so they live in Gallup. My younger daughter Sandra Begay Campbell, she's a structural engineer for Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque and her husband is a mechanical engineer. Yeah, my daughter Sandra got her master's degree out of Stanford University and presently she just last January she was appointed to the University of New Mexico Board of Regents, appointed by the governor and confirmed by the New Mexico Senate."

His daughters did not speak the Navajo language in the home but many years later Speaker Begay and other leaders agreed to utilize it in government activities

Edward Begay:

"Surprisingly they understand but they can't talk fluently back to me. But that was my own fault, my wife and I's own fault. We consciously made a decision early on since both of us did not understand English, speak English when we went to school, as we went through school we had a tough time, at least I did, I had a tough time doing English composition. I always switch words around and I was thinking Navajo instead of English language and so we made a conscious decision that we would talk English to our daughters and that way they could excel. And they did I think, in my mind they did but then they had to go back and pick up learning Navajo and I think they can do that. They understand but it's just a matter of practicing speaking, a conversation with their aunts and so forth. But other than that I think in some cases Navajo families we speak mixed language, Navajo and English, we intermingle then that way you would understand me fully if I spoke to you in that way or the same way with the Navajo. If I spoke to them in Navajo and English to them they would lose the true meaning of my conversation or the idea I'm trying to convey to them. Knowing that, President Begay and I and Chief Justice Robert Yazzie, we said during our term or at least my term be supportive of them and they supported me is that they would preserve Navajo language and culture in all aspects of our governmental activities. That's what we're going with. It's a struggle. They say, ‘What are you saying?'"

Achievements and disappointments

Edward Begay:

"I guess there's several but just achieving the goal of getting educated and also provide leadership to Navajo people, not only the Navajo people but provide leadership to the county. I was a county commissioner for two terms in McKinley County and right now I'm serving as a highway commissioner for the State of New Mexico serving second term, the only individual that was appointed twice. So if I complete my term I will have served the State of New Mexico in that capacity for 12 years. And in that earlier statement I made was that when you're in Rome do as the Romans do and that's what I do best in those settings is provide leadership in that commission in terms of budgeting. But if I could only have that opportunity on the Navajo council it would have been wonderful but on the commission side I just deal with five versus I have to deal with 87 on the council side, that's the difference. I think the other one is achieving to be the Speaker of the Navajo Nation council elected twice, the second term being elected by a commission. So I'm the third Speaker of the Council, which is I think an achievement in terms of it's a new concept and being able to come and being the third one that in itself to me is a special achievement."

The legacy he would like to leave

Edward Begay:

"One of them probably be is just being fair and being honest and always promoting Navajo interests. Then also too is that I've been able to work with any government meaning that I said before that I'm electable in Navajo setting and also getting appointed to a state commission position and do an excellent job for them. That way they reap the benefit of the achievements that I made in those areas."

The dream of documenting Navajo traditions in a lasting piece of work

Edward Begay:

"Under my current term one of my plans was that I'm going to put Navajo Common Law to writing. As we speak one of my staff members is...I just gave them outline and I said, ‘Now you fill in the blanks.' In there it would be a guide, a guide and also a constant reminder for whoever reads this that these are the concepts and the practice that were used by our ancestors and this. But if they do it proper in reverent manner they could never go wrong so we'll have a book on it I hope."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit:
Navajo Nation
Edward T. Begay

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
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Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Governmen

 

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Eddie Tullis

Author
Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the landmark “Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times” interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary leaders who have played instrumental roles in Native nations' struggles for sovereignty, self-determination, and treaty rights. The leadership themes presented in these unique videos provide a rich resource that can be used by present and future generations of Native nations, students in Native American studies programs, and other interested groups.

In this interview conducted in April 2002, Eddie Tullis, former longtime Chairman of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, discusses his tribe's struggle to achieve federal recognition. Today, Tullis remains deeply committed to economic development initiatives that will provide quality education, housing and health care for his people.

This video resource is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Institute for Tribal Government.

Resource Type
Citation

Tullis, Eddie. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times." (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Atmore, Alabama. April 2002. Interview.

Kathryn Harrison:

"Hello. My name is Kathryn Harrison. I am presently the Chairperson of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. I have served on my council for 21 years. Tribal leaders have influenced the history of this country since time immemorial. Their stories have been handed down from generation to generation. Their teaching is alive today in our great contemporary tribal leaders whose stories told in this series are an inspiration to all Americans both tribal and non-tribal. In particular it is my hope that Indian youth everywhere will recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by these great tribal leaders."

[Native music]

Narrator:

"Eddie L. Tullis has been chairman of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians for 25 years. The Poarch Band is a portion of the original Creek Nation that occupied most of what is now Georgia and Alabama. When General Andrew Jackson was elected president, the removal of southeastern tribes to the west became established as a national policy. The brutal walks made by tribes became known as the Trail of Tears. Some Creeks were able to remain in their homeland in southwestern Alabama. The Poarch Band of Creek Indians has kept its Indian identity intact for more than 150 years in spite of decades of discrimination and the lack of federal recognition. It is now the only federally recognized Indian tribe in Alabama. Beginning in the 1940s the Poarch Creek Band made important educational and legal gains led by Calvin W. McGee. Eddie Tullis was growing up when McGee's work was in full force. From his early childhood to the present Tullis has always known what it is to be a community person. He grew up on a farm in a close family. His mother, a midwife, delivered many of the children in the area. After graduating from high school Tullis had a stint in the Navy but had to return home and work after his father's death. He began organizing with the tribe when he was still a young man. Tullis led the long effort to get the U.S. government go recognize the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. Working with other tribal members, Alabama politicians and Washington, DC, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians was declared a federally recognized tribe in 1984 and in 1985 a reservation was established. The tribe today has approximately 2300 members and almost 1500 live in the vicinity of the Poarch Reservation near Atmore, Alabama, in rural Escambia County. Programs of the Poarch Creek are thriving with a community center, senior housing, a volunteer fire department, also youth leadership activities, a sports center, scholarships, tribal police and a recycling center. The tribe sponsors many festivities including the Thanksgiving Day Powwow, one of the top tourist attractions in the southeast. Chairman Tullis heads the Board of Creek Indian Enterprises overseeing the tribe's diverse and growing economic activities from the Perdido River Farm to Bingo halls and restaurants. Chairman Tullis is a model of both a local and a national leader. He maintains strong alliances with other leaders such as Chief Philip Martin of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw and serves as Vice President of the United South and Eastern Tribes. He is on the advisory councils of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail and the Tribal Lands Program of the Trust for Public Lands. He currently serves as area Vice President of the National Congress of American Indians. Past appointments have included the White House Conference on Indian Education and the Native American Rights Fund. Close to home, he is on the Board of Leadership Alabama. While Chairman Tullis is not building community services or new sources of revenue for his people, he might be found at his hobby, building engines. Though he doesn't get out and race himself, he loves car, old cars, racecars. Young people can often be found using his shop. Eddie Tullis has been married for 46 years. He has four daughters and several grandchildren, a family of which he is proud and that has nurtured him through many political struggles. The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Eddie Tullis is April, 2002."

By 1838 most Indian tribes had been moved westward out of Alabama. The Poarch Band today includes families that were both Upper and Lower Creek during the Creek Wars of the early 1800s.

Eddie Tullis:

"The primary reason that the Porch Band of Creeks were able to in lieu of a better word survive in Alabama is we were the closest Band of the Creek Nation to the port at Mobile and the port at Pensacola, realized that Mobile and Pensacola were two of the first settlements along the Gulf Coast and as early as the 1700s we have found records where our people were trading with the Spanish and with the French and everybody else as they came into the Port of Mobile and the Port of Pensacola. So the trade, the commercial activities between our people and the first settlers is a factor that is more determined about the fact that our people were able to exist in their aboriginal homeland."

The work continues to establish the history of the Porch Band of Creek

Eddie Tullis:

"The history of my people is just now really beginning to come together because we're beginning to find that there's a lot more information in Spain and France and everywhere else about the Creeks of South Alabama. The one big factor that contributed more than anything else about the history of our people for the last hundred years has been the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church established a mission in our community in about 1895 and the Episcopals were good at keeping records. And not only has that church been there continuously since then but the Episcopal Church actually bought property in the community to establish a church home and then negotiated with the State of Alabama to provide an educational institute for our people."

Parents and childhood

Eddie Tullis:

"My mother was a full blood, my father was a non-Indian and my father had came from central Alabama to northwest Florida to work there and my mother's family had always worked in the woods. They were always either loggers or particularly for a number of years had cut cross ties for the railroad people. I grew up on a farm, had to walk about three miles to school the first five years of my education and then the next seven years of my education I still walked that three miles but I caught a school bus then and rode a school bus 13 miles. My senior year in high school was the first year that my family owned a tractor to farm with and the first year that my family actually had an electric pump to pump water. Probably my most consistent memories of childhood is my father had a large cow herd and at that time we didn't have stock laws in Florida, you could run your cows, had free roam on your cows. But my father was a firm believer that he wanted to see his cows every week so just a number of Saturdays and Sundays of my life was spent hunting cows and make sure they come home on the weekend. We had our own farm, lived in one of those communities that could really be called a community. It was a community where a majority of the landowners were non-Indians but a majority of the people who worked the land and who worked the timber and all were Indians. I lost my mother November it'll be three years ago at 97 years old so she had been around for a long time and had always been very active in the community, served as a midwife for about 40 years and a lot of people around my age was delivered by my mother. I had a father who had a real what I said was a real trying philosophy about education. My father did not...I could stay out of school anytime I wanted to but my father believed very firmly that if you was not in school you were supposed to be working. I got involved in probably what I consider my first endeavor into politics was the Future Farmers of America. I had neighbors who had tractors and I worked a lot for neighbors when I had spare time and we'd catch up with the crops at home and so I got pretty good at driving tractors. As a matter of fact in 1955 I was the National Future Farmer of America tractor driving champion which used to be a national contest and everything."

The tribe began actively organizing after the passage of the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946

Eddie Tullis:

"There was actually no tribal operations that went on until about, 'til I was well up in my teens, 'til about 1948 I think was the first time that there was really organized activity amongst our people. As you know, Congress passed the Indian Claims Commission and this little school had been built and as they were organizing that school and getting the teachers assigned and all, one of those school teachers brought up the subject that there was a new law out about Indians and that they were going to pay Indians for land and everybody was aware that it had not been but a few years that Indians owned an awful lot of land in that area that they no longer possessed and all. And so it generated an awful lot of activity from 1948 to about 1950 about land claims cases and all."

The Indian Claims Commission Act allowed some tribes to seek compensation from the United States for the value of land given by treaty that the government later took back through force, fraud or mistake

Eddie Tullis:

"It was not a real financial bonanza for us as we come to realize but it was a rallying point for the Creek Indians to begin to reorganize themselves, begin to realize that we were a distinct community that needed to be represented. Another one of those things that I tell people that I've come to realize in Indian Country is you have to be careful because if you don't participate sometimes you get left out but there are times if you don't participate you get elected too. An individual by the name of Calvin McGhee who was one of the more successful Indian farmers in the area served about 20 years as chairman of the tribe and pursued the land claim cases and all without even being there when he was elected and served as a nucleus for reorganizing the tribe there around the community."

In a state that had been Democrat since reconstruction Tullis made a practical, political decision

Eddie Tullis:

"I went down and registered as a Republican and become the first Republican in my precinct. My wife's been a poll worker for the state until we moved out of the state of Florida and has been involved in politics and so we grew up and it's one of the things that I'm proud of my family. I have four daughters. One of them lives in California, one of them in Jacksonville, Florida, one of them in Iowa and one of them at home or close to home but I would not be afraid to bet you that they can tell you who the political system is in their area because they have realized that we consider it as part of their responsibility as a citizen and they're really involved. I tell people sometimes, 'I have to be careful when I have a family reunion or something because I have a daughter who is a very liberal Democrat and I have a daughter who is a very conservative Republican and so we have some real good political discussions around our house sometimes.'

Planned and unplanned turns in Tullis' unfolding career

Eddie Tullis:

"I had fully intended to make a career out of the Navy. It was one of the kind of unique things about my father that he had tried to volunteer during World War II and had been rejected because of his size. So I grew up knowing that I could make my father real happy if I was military and so I joined the Navy, went off and became an aircraft mechanic, had actually made a decision that I wanted to fly airplanes and had went and took all the tests and had qualified to come back to Pensacola, Florida, to go to flight school in the Navy when my father passed away. I was the oldest son, I still had a brother and a sister in school, my mother had never held a job so therefore I woke up one Monday morning thought I was coming to Pensacola in a week or two and they gave me a hardship discharge and sent me home and told me I had a family to take care of. But it worked out. I went to work for the Monsanto Corporation at the big nylon plant at Pensacola. Monsanto proved to be very involved in the local community, was very supportive of employees being involved in the political process so much so that in 1976 they actually gave me a leave of absence to go to Washington, D.C. I had been involved in an organization that had tried to organize some of the tribes along the east coast and they actually gave me a leave of absence, paid me my full salary and let me go to D.C. Another one of my firm beliefs, I think everybody should work in D.C. for a while. We have always made a point of carrying our children to D.C. I now insist on my grandkids going to D.C. because I think it's the most educational town in the world. I think that everybody ought to go and everybody ought to work there long enough to understand how our system works. But that was a great experience for me, heightened my real awareness of politics and created the awareness on my part that those people who make the laws are just like people that are out there doing the work every day and that we need to communicate with them. They don't know everything. They have to act like they know everything sometimes to satisfy the voters but I come to realize that it's an honorable calling. I have over my career seen the caliber of public servants deteriorate a lot I think. I have real mixed emotions about people who buy political office but I have to temper that with the statement that I've kind of seen both ways. I've seen some really good individuals that got involved whenever they almost bought a position but turned out good and I've seen some that bought them just for their own self gratification and did not become public servants. They become politicians and so I have some real mixed emotions. That time in Washington, D.C. gave me some real insight and gave me some real motivation to continue to be involved in politics. By that time I had became involved in the council or in operation of the tribe. One of the individuals that was a member of that council had got well along in age and was ornery enough he didn't want to step down and they didn't want to replace him and all. He started asking me to go with him and to particularly to explain things to him. My first eight or 10 council meetings I ever attended was just as his assistant or just a volunteer to go help him understand what was going on. He passed away and I was offered that opportunity to serve on the council. I had a first cousin named Buford Roland who had volunteered almost like I had with another member of the council but had been elected about a year before I was. Buford and I became the new generation on that council and so my beginning as a tribal official was first as an advisor to a council member and then a member of that council and treasurer and then was elected chairman of the council."

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians achieve federal recognition in 1984 and a reservation in 1985

Eddie Tullis:

"When Calvin McGhee was pursuing this land claims case, a lot of the information that the attorneys kept bringing up and all especially after Buford and I got involved. We'd come to realize that there had never been an official termination of our tribe. Our tribe had never been terminated. Our tribe and what happened was that in about 1918 the timber companies started coming to South Alabama. Major timber companies moved into South Alabama cause there's a lot of virgin pine timber and all there and they started encroaching onto the Indian land, the grant land that had been issued to our people in the 1830s and all. But Indians had no status in Alabama and so in 1920 a group of our people went to Washington D.C. to try to get something done about that, actually wound up in the United States Court of Claims with a lawsuit against those timber companies, got a judgment against those timber companies but never were able to collect that money because the president of the timber company got appointed to the United States Senate and one of his law school classmates got appointed as Secretary of the Interior and two weeks after he was appointed Secretary of the Interior he issued fee patents on all the Indian land in Alabama. And so they won a lawsuit but they lost the war per se. But that stuff was on record in Washington, D.C. and once we became aware of that and all Buford and I and a few other people, in particular some of the attorneys, said, 'Well, this tribe should never have been terminated. This was an administrative decision that carries no force of law. The Secretary of the Interior does not have the authority to terminate a tribe.' He hadn't ever uttered the word termination, he just give all our land away. So we went to pursue a case against the Bureau of Indian Affairs for that administrative decision that was done wrong."

The great advantage of working both political parties

Eddie Tullis:

"Buford and I both had become politically active pretty well. Me in the Republican party, Buford in the Democratic party because there were so many Democrats we knew we had to cover both sides of it. And so we begin to find some allies, George Wallace became a real ally of ours. George Wallace actually went on record saying, 'These people were done wrong,' and that there was no justification for this and actually went so far as to say, "˜This tribe needs to be recognized and their reservation needs to be a reestablished,' and actually offered some state property to accomplish that. We were lucky in 1984 as you know was the Goldwater era. Goldwater swept Alabama and we had four Republican congressmen elected and we had a Republican Senator elected. So almost overnight from a one party system we become a two party system. And so it brought some political clout to our argument that the Bureau should not have terminated or should not have ceased to provide services is what actually happened. And once we got that started and then we formed the organization The Coalition of Eastern Native Americans we begin to have some real discussions about why the Indian Claim Commission didn't do a lot more than just think about the land that had been done and everything. My tribe had great support in Congress. At one time we had all 10 members of the Alabama delegation which was actually split five and five to sign onto a letter along with George Wallace supporting us them reestablishing us as a tribe. But we took the position that we would go through the process if the Bureau would do it because we felt there was others out there that needed to go through the process. So when the Bureau adopted a new process and all we immediately filed a suit or case to go through that process. I think we were the number six tribe to go through that process. It's kind of a good story for us is that they reestablished the tribe in 1984 but they did not at that time reestablish the reservation."

With the assistance of Governor Wallace and the Episcopal Church, the Poarch Creek made another effort to establish a reservation

Eddie Tullis:

"We found that one of the things that kept us from being readily accepted by other Indians was the fact that we didn't speak our language too many of us didn't anymore plus we were not land based Indians. They said, 'You're just a group of people. Where's your reservation?' So we realized that we had to go back and make a real second effort to establish the reservation. Again we went back to George Wallace and George Wallace said, 'Well, look, I done told them I'd give...' We had this 17 acres of land right in the middle of the community which as land that the Episcopal Church had bought one time and entered into this agreement with the State of Alabama that is the agreement said, 'The State of Alabama could maintain possession of this land as long as it had an educational facility there for Indians.' If it did not do that, it reverted back to the Episcopal Church. Well, we got the Bishop at the Episcopal Church saying the Episcopal Church would donate the land to the tribe if the State of Alabama gave up its...went ahead and let it be converted back and everything. So, what I think is one of my political strokes of good luck was that we negotiated with the Bureau and the Bureau says, 'Yeah, we will create that reservation. We need to get this deed all squared away from the state, it'll be a good nucleus.'"

Relationships with other southeastern tribes

Eddie Tullis:

"Now we had good acceptance out of Mississippi Choctaw because as long as I can remember the people in Mississippi, the Choctaws of Mississippi done the same kind of work that most of my people done, either migrant farm work or they worked in the woods. A lot of our people worked with their people and we now know that for the last 70 or 80 years we've had visits back and forth from the communities playing softball and stickball and everything else, same way with the Eastern Band of Cherokees. We had a lot of people that migrated back and forth from Cherokee back into the community and all. So we had good acceptance out of those tribes that had some influence and those tribes that were recognized, that were on reservations. They knew that we were an Indian community."

How the tribe has benefited from federal recognition and a reservation

Eddie Tullis:

"There's been a lot of tangible benefits but there's been some real intangible benefits too. I can tell you that for a long period of time and my mother used to tell me that when she was growing up there was a real effort to assimilate into the general community. The families encouraged their children to marry non-Indians and to go find jobs outside the community. Once we reestablished the reservation, there's been a total reversal of that now. There is a real pride about the fact that they're Indian, has brought about a lot of that intangible benefit. Probably the most beneficial thing I think and it's probably been more beneficial to us both tangible and intangible has been housing for our people. Realize that a lot of our people were sharecroppers so they didn't own their own homes. Then whenever they did get into an economic situation where they got a job or something they didn't have land so they went and bought house trailers and stuff like that. And you also have to realize too that our people done a lot of migrant farm work. It was a good way to make a living. Our people used to leave every year and they'd go to Florida and do oranges and they'd go up to South Carolina and do tobacco, they'd go to Virginia and do tomatoes and go to New York and do apples and go to Wisconsin and do potatoes and back to Alabama and do potatoes. You can actually find some Porch Creek Indians in all of those places if you go now. There's still a few of them there but they're beginning to come home at a much rapider rate now. But the hazard to it is that when you do out work like that you leave the two most in need group of people. You leave the kids at home plus you leave the senior citizens at home and so we found, and one of the real problems that we were conscious of, that we had a lot of extended families. We had house trailers with three generations of family in them. And so one of the biggest benefits that we've been able to address at Porch Creek has been housing. Indian housing has been a real godsend for us. We took it very serious. We started building houses. We built...our first housing project was a project that was exclusively for our senior citizens because a lot of...an overwhelming majority of our senior citizens was having to live with family members that had more than one generation. We built a community of senior citizens. We then started building single family units on the reservation so that that family had a place that each generation could be there. We didn't have to have those extended families together now. Our people are very rural people. Our people were very isolated and therefore did not have access to good medical care. We've built a health clinic and did not depend on the Indian Health Service to build it. We built the clinic ourselves. Housing has created an opportunity for us to improve the quality of life for our people but it has also created a lot of social problems. We've got a lot of people who borned and raised outside the community and never lived communal like they do not and when we started building houses, so some of them could come back and stay at the reservation, they brought all those social ills with them. They'd been living in the big cities and everything else so they brought a lot of those social problems back with it and it's one of those things that I try to tell tribal people about all the time. 'You've got to realize that you're changing not only the quality of life but you're changing the whole lifestyle of some of those people when you bring them back to the reservation.' It's one of the things we see happening right now with some of the tribes that's been successful with casinos that are expanding reservations and creating houses and all. Those people that come back have not had to respect the sovereignty or the jurisdiction of the tribes and all so it's a two-edged sword. It also creates the real need for tribal leaders to look at what you're going to do with those people once you get them back. If you bring them back, just providing housing is not enough. You need to create the economics of the community so that you've got a place for those people to work. It's kind of one of the things that we at Porch Creek are real strict about and it's one of the things that I'm real proud of is that I was able to get my tribal officials to have some serious discussions before some of these things happened. We have a tribal code that if you live in a tribal house at Porch Creek and you don't work, you do not live in that house. Now we have went one step further and said, 'It is our responsible to try to help you find a job,' or we try to create an atmosphere where there's jobs available. And if we offer you a job and you don't take that job, you do not continue to live in that house because our philosophy is we do not run a welfare agency, we run a self help agency and it has worked real good for us. Meetings of Indian leaders I'm constantly saying that we're facing a crisis in Indian Country in the fact that we are now getting so much resources back into Indian Country that we've got to be careful that we don't let our people again slide into that dependency mode again because there are some of the tribes now that are financially stable and all but we don't know what's going to happen next year. And you can't reverse that philosophy of the people as quick as the economic situation can collapse on us. So I continuously tell leaders, 'don't let yourself get into that philosophy, it may come back to haunt you.'"

A core commitment of the tribe is to its youth

Eddie Tullis:

"Education is a real priority at Poarch Creek. We realized a number of years ago that Alabama had not done a good job, Alabama still does not do a good job, of educating its children. We did not have resources to start our own school and everything else so we send our kids into the public schools. But we've put an awful lot of emphasis on the family participating in that education process and we constantly encourage our not only our parents and all and not only our young people but the parents that education is a self perpetuating thing. I'm a firm believer that if you can get one generation to finish high school it greatly enhances the next generation finishing high school or going to college and all. We run a full time tutoring program. We have after school programs for our kids. We joined with the county system. We have a grammar school where about 60 percent of the kids in that grammar school are tribal kids. We have adopted that school in a partnership arrangement where we not only do a lot of things for the tribal kids but we do a lot of things for all the kids in that grammar school so that they realize that we're concerned about the education, not just the Indian kid. We actually have more kids in college today than we had in high school 12 years ago. I think for three out of the last five years we've had at least one valedictorian in the county we're at, at least one of the high school valedictorians has been an Indian and so we now have kids graduated from college. Just a few years ago we didn't have a single attorney at the tribe. We now have six attorneys that are tribal members. We didn't have a single doctor that was a tribal member a few years ago. Now we have doctors that are there. So the educational level is ramping up very rapidly but there is again a real emphasis on us trying to generate that revenue to provide for those kids to go. And what we're trying to do is trying to create a challenge for those young people. We are very conscious of the fact that we're talking about community development, not just economic development. Economic development is just one facet of community development and it's a very critically important one but you've got to keep it into perspective and you've got to be sure that you're creating those challenges for those young kids. If you tell them to, "˜go get you a degree,' you've got to have some way for that child to come back to the reservation and provide some service to the people.

Economic programs, gaming and Alabama politicians

Eddie Tullis:

"Now Alabama gambles on two totally different planes. You've got your more affluent people in Alabama who can gamble all they want to at their country club. You can go to any country club in Alabama on Saturday night and find unlimited stakes poker games or you can go to the football game next Saturday or to the car races where I went this past weekend where there's 189,000 people there and you can see money changing hands at every time...sometimes every time the cars go around the track you see money changing hands. But you also can go to the churches and see games going on and you can go to the fire halls at night or to the VFW and you can see Bingo games going on. But you let the Indians do it and they perceive that Indians and money are incompatible and the politicians use that perception. Now we're changing a lot of that. We're changing a lot of the perception. The Alabama Constitution only says one thing about gambling. It says, 'There shall not be a state sponsored, state operated lottery.' It doesn't say anything else. I think that those politicians then just realized that if the politicians or the state was running a lottery that it would be such a corrupt thing that we wouldn't want it. So there's a lot of hypocrisy in the Alabama politicians. It's ironic how many of us have asked us for donations and we do not look at Bingo or at the gaming issue in any light other than economic development. It creates jobs for our people and it gives the tribe resources to address the other issues. Now I challenge anybody to come to a Porch Creek establishment and find where we do not maintain adequate control. It is the most regulated gaming you will find anywhere."

Dealing with adversaries and prejudice

Eddie Tullis:

"You have so few people in the State of Alabama that realizes the enormous contribution that Indians made to this state and you have so few people that understand just the sheer number of Indian people who were in Alabama that you have to really educate them from a real elementary level. I have spoken to Kiwanas Clubs and to Rotary Clubs and all and I have actually had people stand up and say, 'We ought to go back to the 1924 Act, Indians shouldn't be citizens.' We should go back to the 1909 Act in Alabama that said if you caught an Indian off the reservation you could shoot him. We've got people who will start from that mentality. I always ask Alabama politicians anytime I get an opportunity if they support the Constitution. Do they support the Constitution of the United States or are they totally committed to the Constitution of Alabama. The Alabama Constitution has some terrible, terrible things in it about minority people. But if I can get an Alabama politician to say he supports the United States Constitution, then I ask him if he's ever read the Constitution. And I find that it's just overwhelming that most of them have never took and read it. They think they've read parts of it or they read excerpts from it but they never read it and they don't realize how many times Indians are mentioned in the Constitution. So while it's really challenging sometimes, it is real satisfying sometimes to be able to force people to become aware of things that they should have known before they started the discussion."

Mentors and friends play a crucial role

Eddie Tullis:

"I have had some great mentors, people like Roger Jordain and Joe De la Cruz who have faced some real trying times that a lot of people didn't understand why they were doing what they were doing. To me I think that's a true mark of leadership that people who are willing to do what it takes to have a positive impact on other people's lives without looking at the consequences for themselves. And I tell young people all the time, especially people who want to run for the council and all, 'we don't have any problems now cause we don't have enough money to argue about.' The problems increase directly in proportion to the disposable resources you have."

Challenges for the Creek Enterprises in creating new jobs

Eddie Tullis:

"We've had to face that dilemma for a number of years now that when we talk about creating jobs we had to ask the first preliminary question, do you try to create a lot of entry level jobs so you can get more people to work or do you try to create good jobs so you can have higher paying jobs and you can get the more skilled people back and everything else. We're getting to the point where we can answer that question now and we're getting to the point where we can say the jobs that we need to be creating are the jobs that address both of those issues. I'm real concerned about the female head of household that we've got. Our family structure has not held together as well as I would have loved to have seen it held together. We've got a lot of female head of household. I've got to create some jobs for some of those females so that I can...but I've got to be sure that I provide some day care facilities. We just don't want some place for their kids to be kept, we want to teach those children while those mothers are working."

Environmental integrity is a major concern

Eddie Tullis:

"Being at the head of the river, water quality has become something that our river's not polluted yet because we've got the springs right there but the more we develop and the more asphalt we put down and all the more trouble it is to keep those springs clear and to keep them there. And I don't want my people to be responsible for doing that. I want them to do some planning so that years from now they can still have those springs there and they can still have those lakes there and still make a good living and let those natural resources that we have be a contribution to the quality of life rather than just providing other resources for the quality of life. And it's probably my biggest activity right now. I'm doing more work with the Trust for Public Lands. I'm doing more work with people who want to do things that a lot of people consider small things. We're starting to build trails from our health clinic to our senior's gathering place and we've got some kids that are in our after school program that they know the schedule and they are responsible for showing up at a certain time to walk with those seniors to the health clinic. And it's working good. It gives both of them some real involvement and all."

Setting priorities as a local and national tribal leader

Eddie Tullis:

"It gets to be a real problem setting priorities sometimes but I've been blessed with a whole multitude of good help. I've been blessed with being able to generate some interest on other people's part but I'm a firm believer that I have to set an example. I have to be willing to go those extra miles; I have to be willing to give up some of that time. It's a thing that a lot of people don't realize but I have an awesome appreciation for my wife and my family. Monday was my 45th wedding anniversary. My wife has done an outstanding job of raising four daughters while I've been on the road doing some of these other things. And I had great mentors and I had great examples. Calvin McGhee, he devoted his whole farm and his whole livelihood to the tribe and to the pursuit of the land claim cases and everything."

Issues and problems for tribal governments

Eddie Tullis:

"I think the single biggest problem for tribal governments today is the instability of tribal governments, our internal instability in the fact that we've got so many tribes that change leadership every year. We put such a heavy burden on our leaders that we burn them out and so therefore somebody new has to come in and they don't understand the complexity of it now. But we're getting better now because we've got people who understand the instability and the level of sophistication of tribal leadership needs attention. We've got leadership programs going on now that realize that we can have some real impact if we can find those young people that are capable and we give them both the opportunities and the responsibilities of providing leadership. There's a lot of tribes out there that do not yet have the resources that some of the gaming tribes have so the enemies are hurting all of us. So those people with gaming revenue needs to be fighting the good fight to protect all of the tribes."

In retrospect, the great satisfaction

Eddie Tullis:

"I was in about the eighth grade in school one time, it was assigned to write a report and had an opportunity to write to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and got a letter back from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that said there was no Indians in Alabama, that they had moved all the Indians to Oklahoma. And I'll guarantee you if you go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs now, they know that the Poarch Creek Indians are in Alabama and that has an awesome level of satisfaction for me is that I have had enough impact that not only do my people know we exist as an Indian people now but other Indians and the community know that we exist as Indian people. We have a problem of education again because the President come from a place that did not...that is not noted for its treatment of Indians. Again, it's like Alabama, it does not realize that it has Indian citizens there. It does not do a good job of dealing with the tribes in Texas. Politicians use the tribe in Texas for whipping boys, put their own self interests above the interest of the good of the community and that really bothers me and I think we've got an awesome responsibility to make sure our friends continue to stand by us and continue to use their influence to educate those people who are opposed to us. And the other real positive that I see in Indian Country is that we've got a crop of young Indian leaders coming on now. We've got the most educated, the most committed, the most involved young group of leaders that I've seen in a long time."

In retrospect, what might have been different

Eddie Tullis:

"Kind of one of those two-edged swords. I wish I had got more education. I have a terrible...I'm a really poor writer. I cannot write. I can talk. I'll sit here and talk to you all day but when I try to put something down in writing I am terribly deficient in that area. I wish that I had went ahead and got more education but I know that if I had went ahead to school I would not have been involved in the level I was as it has turned out. I have taken as a personal responsibility to say that if my child or my grandchild has a desire and a capacity, the capability to go to college, that I will never let finances be a hindrance to them. And so it's a major accomplishment for me. I worked all my life, worked two jobs a lot. My wife worked all her life. We are now...we're not rich but we can send our kids to college and we can make sure our grandkids have the opportunity to go to college. So real personal satisfaction but a real awareness on my part that if I'd went on to school I might have been able to articulate some of the things that I can't do in writing now. I love a person that can articulate on paper what they believe and what they see and all."

The legacy Tullis would leave

Eddie Tullis:

"I want them to know that people who face adversaries can still accomplish great things. I know that there's no doubt in my mind that I have improved the quality of life of a number of people beyond just myself and I'm thoroughly convinced that the happiest people in the world are the people who can do that. I'm very conscious of the fact that we have the most educated group of young leaders coming on we've ever had. Education does not solve all the problems. Education to me is the ability to use all your God-given talents for the benefit of the people. And so leaders today have got to realize that we've got to accept the fact that the new crop of leaders coming on are educated and much more capable of doing and meeting the challenges that are coming our way. But we've also got to instill into those young people a commitment to do what's right for the majority of the people."

The Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times series and accompanying curricula are for the educational programs of tribes, schools and colleges. For usage authorization, to place an order or for further information, call or write Institute for Tribal Government – PA, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon, 97207-0751. Telephone: 503-725-9000. Email: tribalgov@pdx.edu.

[Native music]

The Institute for Tribal Government is directed by a Policy Board of 23 tribal leaders,
Hon. Kathryn Harrison (Grand Ronde) leads the Great Tribal Leaders project and is assisted by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse, Director and Kay Reid, Oral Historian

Videotaping and Video Assistance
Chuck Hudson, Jeremy Fivecrows and John Platt of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

Editing
Green Fire Productions

Photo credit: Mr. and Mrs. Tullis and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times is also supported by the non-profit Tribal Leadership Forum, and by grants from:
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs
Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, Chickasaw Nation
Coeur d'Alene Tribe
Delaware Nation of Oklahoma
Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe
Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians
Jayne Fawcett, Ambassador
Mohegan Tribal Council
And other tribal governments

Support has also been received from
Portland State University
Qwest Foundation
Pendleton Woolen Mills
The U.S. Dept. of Education
The Administration for Native Americans
Bonneville Power Administration
And the U.S. Dept. of Defense

This program is not to be reproduced without the express written permission of the Institute for Tribal Government

© 2004 The Institute for Tribal Government