Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times

Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times: Wilma Mankiller

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 2001, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Wilma Mankiller traces her ascendancy from a child of the termination and relocation policies of the 1950s to becoming the first female elected to serve as principal chief of her nation.

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

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Mankiller, Wilma. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Tahlequah, Oklahoma. July 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:

"Wilma P. Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, was the first female in modern history to lead a major tribe. Mankiller was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 1945 and today lives on the land allotted to her paternal grandfather in 1907 just after Oklahoma became a state. The family name, Mankiller, she explains is derived from the title assigned to someone who watched over Cherokee villages, a kind of warrior. Wilma Mankiller herself is a protector of her people and a kind of warrior for justice. Her goal as a community organizer and leader of the Cherokee Nation has been to help bring self-sufficiency to her people. Most of Mankiller's childhood was spent close to the land and in strong relationship with other Cherokee people. In the 1950s the Bureau of Indian Affairs encouraged the family to move to San Francisco under the Bureau's relocation program. The adjustment was extremely difficult for the Mankiller children but Wilma Mankiller was later able to benefit from participation in the social reform and liberation movements of the 1960s. She was inspired by the events of 1969 when a group of students occupied Alcatraz Island to bring attention to the concerns of tribes. Also in California her understanding of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty issues was deepened when she worked with the Pit River Tribe. Mankiller returned to her ancestral home in Oklahoma in the early 1970s. Her ideas for development in historic Cherokee communities caused Chief Ross Swimmer to take note of her work. Mankiller's work was interrupted by a near fatal accident and 17 operations. But through near-death and convalescence she emerged renewed and even more dedicated to work for her people. Chief Swimmer convinced Mankiller to run as his Deputy Chief in 1983. When Swimmer resigned to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, Mankiller assumed the duties of Chief as mandated by Cherokee law. She was strongly opposed by tribal members who did not want to be led by a woman. She ran for Chief on her own in 1987, was elected and ran and won a second term. Wilma P. Mankiller has made a great impact on her own people and other Americans as a tribal and spiritual leader. She received the Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year Award in 1987 and to her great pride one of the health clinics that she helped found bears her name. In 1998 President Clinton presented Mankiller the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In an interview conducted by the Institute for Tribal Government in July, 2001, Mankiller spoke about the historic struggles of the Cherokee people, her development as a tribal leader, her battles to win the post of Chief and the important issues for tribes today."

The Cherokee people

Wilma Mankiller:

"In 1492 we were in the southeastern part of the United States in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, a little part of Virginia, a little part of Alabama and the whole southeast. The Cherokee people I think went through a lot of different phases and a lot of different discussions about how to relate to their new neighbors. Certainly like every other tribe in the country we were forced into treaties where we always ended up ceding land and eventually lost a lot of land in the southeast just through treaties and through war and many other events. But at different periods we were at war. At other periods we had an official policy of almost accommodation where we tried to figure out how to get along with our new neighbors and whether we were in a war era or whether we were in an era of cooperation. It didn't matter, we lost our land and lost many of our rights anyway and so no matter what our official policies might have been."

The Cherokee Nation rebuilds itself after repeated injustice and assault

Wilma Mankiller:

"One of the most famous stories among the Cherokee is that when Jackson was a soldier and fighting one of the major battles that a Cherokee person actually saved his life, a Cherokee warrior saved his life and he lived to regret that. Later Jackson made his reputation as an Indian fighter and as a military man and then later when he became President, almost one of the very first acts was to try to convince the Legislature to pass the Removal Act, which eventually resulted in the Cherokees being dispossessed of their land in the southeast. Most people refer to the Cherokee removal as the Trail of Tears or the Trail Where They Cried because of the large loss of land and large loss of lives but actually all the tribes in the southeast went through the same sort of removal process. The Choctaws and the Creeks and the Chickasaws, the Seminoles, many other tribes went through the same situation. Our story I think is just the one that's more familiar. Our land where we had lived forever was given away in lotteries to White Georgians after the Cherokees were removed and this land's very different in Indian Territory than the land in the southeast. The political system, the cultural system, the medicines, the life ways, everything we'd ever known was left behind so our people arrived here with everything in disarray. Many people dead, everything familiar gone and yet what's absolutely remarkable about Cherokee people is that they almost immediately began to reform the Cherokee Nation and rebuild their families and rebuild their communities and rebuild a Nation and it's just absolutely amazing that they were able to do that given what had just occurred. So everybody helped each other. Most people were farmers and had small animals and they lived basically on a barter system where they...if one had eggs they would trade them to somebody else for milk or if one grew corn they would trade them to somebody who grew tomatoes or that sort of thing. People had a strong sense that if they were going to survive they had to rely on each other."

Life as a child at Mankiller Flats, family, community, connection to the land

Wilma Mankiller:

"My father was a full blood Cherokee who went to...attended boarding school. In those days when my father was a child they took children without permission from the parents. They literally came out and picked...to this community and picked up my aunt and picked up my father and took them to boarding school. A lot of people have stories about losing their language in school, in boarding school but my aunt and my...neither my aunt nor my father ever lost the ability to be very fluent in Cherokee. I think in part because they had each other to talk to. He had a lot of mixed experiences at boarding school but the one thing that he learned at boarding school was he learned the love of reading and of literature, which he passed on to his children. My mother is as best we can tell she says she's Heinz 57 varieties but she's Irish mostly and a little bit Dutch. She is also from this community. She went to probably maybe the seventh grade or something. Very well read, very politically astute. I guess she's what everybody would want for a mother. She is always steady, always gives her children unconditional love. My brother went to Wounded Knee and her advice to him was, ‘Well, just don't get shot.' It was mostly a life of a relationship with the land because we had a large family and a small house and no electricity or indoor plumbing or any other amenities and only one person several miles from here had a television. So our life was really very centered around the land. And we all took turns gathering water from the spring for household use and for consumption. It was the same spring that my grandfather had used and my father had used and so there was a sense of connection to the place and to the land. And so when I think of my childhood I think mostly of being outside and having a very close relationship with the land."

The family relocates to San Francisco in the 1950s

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think the Bureau of Indian Affairs basically told my father that he could have a much better life for his children if we moved away. And it seemed like a way to make sure that we were provided for and all that. That was the main sales because at the time we couldn't conceptualize a world beyond Muskogee. We'd been to Muskogee to the State Fair and to even talk about going to someplace like California was, we were unable to think about it in anyway. It would be like us sitting here saying, ‘I think I'll go to Mars,' and it was a world we couldn't visualize and couldn't imagine. We just knew that it was away from here and we'd have to leave home so we were not happy at all about that and in fact I asked my parents if I could stay here in Oklahoma with relatives. It was a very difficult time. I remember vividly the day we left on the relocation program, we're all piled in the car and headed to Stillwell and I sort of looked very carefully at everything to try to memorize it, the school, the road and everything else. And I always knew I would come back, even at 10, I knew that I would come back. We left a very isolated and somewhat insular world here, a very Cherokee world and got on a train and several days later we ended up in San Francisco with all the noise and confusion and everything else going on and we actually...the Bureau of Indian Affairs arranged for us to go to a hotel. I'll never forget, it was called the Keys Hotel in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco which is the Red Light District of San Francisco and we saw and heard things that were inconceivable to us. I remember my brother Richard and I hearing a siren and we could only relate that to what we knew so we thought it was an animal and we were trying to identify what kind of animal was making that sound. In fact I hated school ‘til I got to college. I couldn't stand school and found every opportunity that I could to avoid school because we were so different. We were country kids and we dressed like country rural people. We had the name of Mankiller. Children can be very cruel and so we were treated differently. We were immediately labeled as different and so...in school...so school became an unpleasant place. And as I got a little older we started going to the San Francisco Indian Center and that was the place where we met other people like ourselves who were from someplace else and just trying to figure out a way to...how to carve a life out in the city. And so that was extremely helpful."

Mankiller learns social issues from family: seeds of activism

Wilma Mankiller:

"There were always Indian people at our house and there was always discussion of what was going on in the world, what was going on in the communities and so eventually there were a lot of people who had ideas about relocation, which was really a very misguided policy and just about things in general. In terms of a political background or figuring out how to be engaged in the community I probably figured out how to do that just by listening to people at home. At the time I did not appreciate that. All I saw as a child and as a teenager is that dad would bring home people and my sister and I would have to give up our bedroom so these strangers could stay there but it sort of soaks in. Or dad didn't have money for us but he always had a $20 bill that he folded up and kept way in the back of his wallet that he would give to a family down on their luck. And so we would rather he had taken us to the beach or given us the money for the show and then later you realize that all that has an impact on you."

The family lives at Hunter's Point, an African-American community

Wilma Mankiller:

"And I still value that time because it gave me a close view of how an African community works from inside the community. There's a lot of strength and a lot of leadership, untapped leadership in African-American communities that nobody ever taps into and when people sit around and wring their hands about what to do about inner city problems, I think, ‘Why don't they just go sit down with the people and ask them?' In fact the first volunteer work I ever did was with the Black Panther party, which was again not like at that early stage not like the media portrays it but there were people who wanted to provide breakfast for elderly people and do a lot of...provide programs, a lot of really good things. And then in 1969 when Alcatraz was occupied, it was kind of a watershed experience for me and my whole family and four of my brothers and sisters moved over almost immediately to the island and helped out and so it was just an unbelievable period of time."

Mankiller discovers new strength from the Women's Movement

Wilma Mankiller:

"It was a marvelous time because before that I think we had like many women of my generation we had lived our lives through the men we were with and through our children and through other people, our lives were in response to somebody else, they weren't who we were and so we were always in a secondary role. We were...at the time I was doing work in the Native American community and I was the person who wrote the speeches for the men and arranged their press conferences, wrote the proposals and always tried to convince them that we should do one thing or another but never articulated my own ideas and so it was a time of awakening for us and kind of coming into our own."

Mankiller cultivates leadership skills directing a youth center in Oakland, attending San Francisco State University and working with the American Indian Resources Center

Wilma Mankiller:

"I gained skills on how to run a youth center period. I had no idea when they offered the job to me what it entailed. You had to develop curriculum, hire teachers, find the building. I thought, ‘Oh, this'll be a neat job.' Well! Anyway, so I ended up having to locate the building, find painters, fix it up, develop a curriculum and I loved the job. It was an inner city street after school program really and it was called the Native American Drop In Center. And all the kids would come after school to be there and work on their homework or have recreation and we did all kinds of things to help them feel good about themselves. At the time there was a Mescalero Apache singer named Paul Ortega who was making the rounds and so we had his music playing all the time and Jim Pepper, a Caw musician and other people like that to show them some role models, Native American role models. We taught the girls how to make shawls and taught the boys how to dance and drum, lots of things like that. It was fun."

Mankiller works with the Pit River Tribe in Northern California

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I think I was inspired at Alcatraz, by what had happened at Alcatraz to be more involved in things around me and I actually saw the Pit River Tribe on the evening news and they reminded me so much of people here. They were rural, Native American people who seemed familiar and so I called up their lawyer who had done an interview on the evening news and I volunteered to do some work for them, whatever they wanted me to do. And so mostly I worked as a volunteer at the legal offices in San Francisco but I spent a lot of time with Pit River people on their land and learned a lot. They were the first group of people I worked with who framed Native American sovereignty issues in an international context and saw the issues as international issues and not just national issues. So that was very helpful for me. I learned a lot about treaties, the treaty rights and the relationship between the federal government and tribal governments during that period at Pit River and in part because I worked for them as a volunteer at the legal offices and I've also helped them put together their history books and various things like that. But I learned a lot just sitting on the porch of some of the elders there at Pit River and I still have a very vivid image of these older people, Charlie Buckskin and Raymond Lague going and finding this little precious box of old papers, which supported their claims to their land near Mt. Shasta. And they treated those papers almost like they were sacred objects because it was their claim to their homeland. So that was a wonderful experience for me and my association with them was for about...until I left, until probably the mid ‘70s I was associated with them."

Mankiller balances life as a single mother, as a student and activist

Wilma Mankiller:

"I don't think that I balanced it very well for most of the time I was doing all that. I think that I had a singular focus on getting things done and so I just did the best that I could under the circumstances. My children went with me wherever I went. My children went to meetings, my children went to Pit River; whatever I did my children did those things with me. I co-founded a Freedom School in Oakland while I was there along with other Native American people and my children, I took my children out of public school for well over a year and they went to school in the Freedom School. Whatever I was involved in they were involved in."

In the mid 1970s Mankiller decides to return to Oklahoma

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think that part of the decision had to do with wanting my children to experience being part of a Cherokee community, part of it was that I wanted to do more local work and wanted to work with my own people. I had helped gather documentation for the 1977 conference in Geneva on Indigenous Rights and so I was dealing with very lofty principles of international law as they relate to Indigenous people and that's all well and good and certainly that work needs to be done but it was hard to reconcile that work with coming home and finding kids sniffing paint and people needing housing and needing healthcare."

Mankiller begins work with the Cherokee Nation in 1977

Wilma Mankiller:

"Basically I recruited Native American students from around the state for environmental training at a small college near Oklahoma City. When I took the job I had no idea where Midwest City was or where all these other tribes in Oklahoma were situated or anything. I hadn't been home that long but I thought, ‘I can figure it out.' And by the time I got processed and onboard it was early November of '77 and I had to recruit students for the spring semester beginning in January but I did it. I got the students there and did what I was supposed to do. Well, I sort of kept moving up. I started writing on my own, grants for the tribe and for projects and I've always liked writing and liked development and so then I moved into a development position and then eventually moved from the field office to the main office and moved into planning and then ultimately ended up doing community development work."

Chief Ross Swimmer moves Mankiller to tribal headquarters

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I had pitched to him before he started doing community development the idea of doing more work in communities like mine which is a rural Cherokee community. And the people who seemed to me to be getting the most services from Cherokee Nation were people who knew how to work the system and who had the ability to get to the Cherokee Nation. By and large they were many more mixed blood people than full blood people who knew how to get around and get things done and were much more pushy. And people in communities like mine were not getting served. And so I had written a paper, co-written a paper with a colleague at work and pitched the idea of doing work more in historic Cherokee communities. And so that...when he started thinking about doing community work I came to mind because of the paper I think."

Cherokees in small communities

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think they felt and I think they continue to feel a sense of alienation from the tribal government because the current system of tribal government that we have and which I was elected to bears little resemblance to our original way of doing things and the original way of doing things was that tribal communities had a great autonomy and their own leadership and there was no single leader or set of leaders who had unilateral authority over all the people. And so the only time all the Cherokee villages came together was probably in times of great catastrophe or an external threat and there was great respect for the local community leadership. And so Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation, like many tribes that have a form of government that's no longer their traditional form of government, have relatively low voter participation because people see the government as a place to go and get services but not the government in the sense of it being an integral part of their family or their community."

Mankiller's life is transformed by a series of events beginning in 1979

Wilma Mankiller:

"When I came home, I didn't come home and necessarily enter the world of the Cherokee Nation and politics. I came home to the traditional Cherokee world and I guess I'd missed it and I guess I didn't feel whole without that so I spent a lot of time going to stomp dances, I spent a lot of time with my uncle who's now passed away who led a ceremonial dance, a stomp dance, and my world was very different and my view of the world was very different. And so I saw the world from a different perspective and in that world disagreements were settled sometimes by medicine. There was good medicine where people could heal each other and provide comfort in times of stress or trauma or heal an illness and that sort of thing using traditional medicine. And there were also people who could use negative medicine to harm people. And during that period of time I learned from traditional Cherokee people that there were certain signs, if you were quiet and looked for signs that there were signs that you could see of an impending disaster or like a warning or something. And one of the things that they told me was that owls were messengers of bad news and so I became kind of leery of owls. The night before something really bad happened to me, two of the people who were part of what was my world then, a guy named Bird Wolf and his wife Peggy who are both full blood Cherokee people who are very involved in the ceremonial grounds came by to visit. And we spent the evening talking about, in part about the extent of which Cherokee medicine still had a huge role in the life of Cherokee people. And it was really interesting because that night that they were here we had...the house became surrounded by owls and in a way that it's just even hard to believe today that this happened because it was not the kind of behavior I've ever seen before and rarely heard of. But the owls actually came up to the window and they were everywhere, all over, and it was really very frightening. But I didn't connect that with anything going on in my life, it was just kind of a frightening situation."

In a head on collision with a car driven by a friend, Mankiller survives but her friend does not

Wilma Mankiller:

"And I remember briefly seeing the car, of course not seeing her but seeing the car, and then I didn't wake up for several days. But what was interesting and life changing is that I came so very close to death during that head on collision that I could actually feel it. I know what it feels like and it's actually very enticing and at the time I didn't know anything about near death experiences or hadn't read anything about them and so I didn't see a light or a lot of things the other people see during that period of time but I felt bathed in the most wonderful unconditional love and I felt drawn toward death. It was like this is what I lived for, everything I'd ever lived for and it was the most emotionally all-encompassing feeling that I've ever had. And I remember during that period of time when I was moving toward that feeling and was going to settle there that an image of my children, Felicia and Gina, who were young and I...that image sort of called me back and pulled me back from going there and staying there. So I think that had a profound impact on me, just the fact that I no longer, when I came out of that experience, I no longer feared death and so I therefore no longer feared life. So in a way I think because of some thinks that happened to me after that, I think that that accident prepared me for what was to come because I came out of that whole experience a different person."

Mankiller and Charlie Soap organize the Bell Community Project

Wilma Mankiller:

"Bell Community is not unlike other Cherokee, historic Cherokee communities. It was probably 85 to 87 percent of the people were bilingual. It was considered to be a rough community, a very troubled community. The school was in danger of closing cause so many young families were leaving. They had no water, no central water line. About I would say 25 percent of the people in the community had no indoor plumbing. There was a need for new houses. There was a lot of dilapidated housing in the community; very few services or programs. Many people weren't even enrolled in the Cherokee Nation tribal government and so anyway they wanted housing. In order to get housing they needed water and in that community it made more sense to do a water line. And so the Chief wanted to try to do a self help project there and so Charlie and I facilitated that process. And so the Chief and Charlie and I basically were probably the only three people who believed that people would actually rebuild their own community. So anyway we got the community together, we worked for them. They organized a steering committee with local leadership, elected from every single corner of the community and planned their own program with us as the facilitators. We just kind of kept a timeline and brought resources when we needed to, an engineer to design the system, funds to pay for the material, developed a system for organizing the labor so that it was done in a consistent way. And at the end of probably a little less than a year we finished...they finished an 18 mile water line using volunteer, totally using volunteer labor. Women worked and men worked and every family was represented."

Chief Swimmer asked Mankiller to testify for him before Congress

Wilma Mankiller:

"He had more confidence in me than I had in myself. Oh, my god, I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing and everywhere I went...I went to testify before a committee for the Chairman Yates was presiding over and after I finished my stumbling testimony he said, ‘Where's Ross Swimmer?' But, my goodness, my first trip was a disaster. It got better after that but he certainly had a lot more confidence and I'm sure he got lots of phone calls saying, ‘Who is this woman?' And then he asked me to represent him at various meetings and that sort of thing when he was ill as well."

Chief Swimmer asked Mankiller to run as his Deputy Chief

Wilma Mankiller:

"Initially I said no because I couldn't imagine myself making the transition from a community organizer and kind of a social services person who was a little bit bookworm-ish to a politician and our tribe's a very large tribe and elections are real mainstream kind of elections with...during that time they used some television, a lot of radio, a lot of direct mail. I just launched my own campaign, completely separate campaign without knowing anything about it but I used my own money and bought ads and did a lot of things to get myself elected."

Mankiller deals with resistance and hostility during her campaign

Wilma Mankiller:

"I tend to be a positive person and try to be very forward thinking and focus on the future. And there's a Mohawk saying that's probably my favorite saying that says, ‘It's very hard to see the future with tears in your eyes.' And so you can't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on negative things or crying about negative things or it blurs the future. So you have to kind of stay focused and keep moving forward. I think the accident prepared me for all that because it literally never touched me. I never saw their attacks as anything personal having to do with me. I saw them having to do with something going on with themselves or just a disagreement they had with me on an issue. I never took it personally and I think I was very fortunate throughout my entire political career that I was able to do that. I'm able to stay real focused on what I need to do, whether it's build a clinic or win an election. It's not about me, it's about a much larger issue and if I would have let my energy be drained off into thinking about me or my reaction to hostility, I'd have never got anything done and so I just didn't focus on it. I think that in any given political situation, people who put themselves out there to be elected know that there's immediately going to be a contingent of people who are very hostile, some overtly hateful who are going to be that way for reasons of their own that have little to do with me. And then I think people have a legitimate right to disagree with their leaders and so they have a right to have their own view of things."

As Deputy Chief, Mankiller heads the tribal council

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, at first, because the entire tribal council had opposed my election they weren't real crazy about my being their president and so it took awhile to establish a relationship with them. And once they saw that I was going to be serious and focused and wasn't going to be drawn into games or negativity in anyway, that I was about the business of the tribe, I think they settled down and we settled into kind of a routine. And of course they thought the world would crash and burn when Ross Swimmer resigned two years after I was elected Deputy Chief to go head the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then I became principle Chief. Then they were just absolutely alarmed. So there were a number of threads running then. I think they one thought that things were going to be terrible for the last two years of Ross's term which I filled and on the other hand they thought, ‘Well, we'll just live through these two years and we'll defeat her in the next election,' which was the 1987 election. So it was a very difficult time because our constitution allows for the Deputy Chief to move into the Principle Chief's office if he resigns or vacates the office. If the council had had to make the decision I would have never been selected. They would have selected somebody else. So I was left with his staff, his mandate, a council that didn't support me and I had to figure out a way to get some work done in that situation."

Mankiller runs for Chief with the enthusiastic support of her husband and family

Wilma Mankiller:

"Charlie was very enthusiastic and very, very supportive of my election and I would not have won election without his support because he's very fluent in Cherokee and was able to talk to a lot of people who, older people and other people who would not I don't think had voted for me -- men -- a lot of people would not have voted for me had he not been able to sit down and talk with them in Cherokee and explain to them why I should be elected. So he was critical to my election. My whole family was supportive. My mom got out and put up signs and my sisters served as poll watchers so everybody was extremely supportive of me during that whole period of time.

Her priorities as Chief

Wilma Mankiller:

"When I came to the Cherokee Nation in 1977 as an employee there was almost no healthcare system. Our options were two Indian hospitals one Claremore Indian Hospital, the other one was Hastings Indian Hospital and being able to take the plans put together by tribal health staff and tribal members and make those plans real is probably the thing I'm most proud of. We basically were told by the people that we needed to decentralize healthcare and move it closer to the people. So during my tenure we built a $13 million clinic in one community, $11 million clinic in another community, we bought a hospital in still another community and renovated a building in another community and when I left we'd started another $10 million project in another community and so we built a lot of healthcare facilities that are closer to people. And the one in Stillwell in this town, our hometown, is named after me. The council...I was out of town and the council passed a resolution naming the clinic in this town the Wilma P. Mankiller Health Center, which is interesting given the fact, given how I started out with the council."

Relationships with other tribes

Wilma Mankiller:

"It would seem natural to me because I had been involved in the San Francisco Indian Center with many tribes and had done a lot of work among other tribes. Having relationships with other tribes seemed not only natural and normal but desirable. I wanted to know what they were doing and oftentimes some of the smaller tribes with far less resources than the Cherokee Nation were doing far more innovative than what we were doing at the Cherokee Nation. So I learned things from them, we shared information, we tried to support one another and help one another. And so I think that for some tribes I think they get a little tired of always hearing about the big tribes like the Cherokee Nation or the Navajo Nation and so there's a little bit of that but I think by and large there was a great relationship. The two times when tribes had to select people to represent them with President Reagan and with President Clinton and both times I was selected by the tribes themselves as one of the people to go and meet with the President. So was Pete Zah, my partner in a lot of this work."

Cherokee lands and environment

Wilma Mankiller:

"I personally had taken a hard and fast rule, pro-environmental rule so we weren't approached by a lot of people who would do damage to the environment so that was never a real huge issue for us. I think someone came once, you could always tell these guys that are coming from organizations that'll devastate the environment, they generally have a Rolex watch and a great spiel about how they can protect the environment and do all this stuff and so we would send them away."

During his lifetime, the great Chief John Ross revered the judicial system of the United States. Mankiller comments on the system today

Wilma Mankiller:

"I think I was less shocked than the rest of America by the Supreme Court's involvement in the 2000 election because I've seen how politicized the judicial system can be. We're very fortunate in the 10th Circuit in Denver for our region to have I think a pretty fair set of judges but that's certainly not the norm. I think that I've come to understand how very political the justice system is and you can simply look at the number of Native American women and men that are in prison and the number of Black men and Black women that are in prison and look at, compare that to White people who have committed similar crimes and understand a little bit about the judicial system in this country. And so I didn't have...I don't think I had the blind faith that other people had and I've never had the optimism that John Ross had that the judicial system was indeed just. So I wasn't shocked by what the Supreme Court did at all, not at all. I think it's significantly diminished the stature of the Court in the eyes of most Americans."

What progressive people can learn from opposing forces

Wilma Mankiller:

"Well, I'll tell you, the right wing has certainly figured out how to organize families and communities around the issues that are important to them and I think that people on the left in the ‘60s let the right just walk away with issues around spirituality and religion and a lot of other family values and they practically turned religion and spirituality in a bad word because they have such a narrow interpretation of...the right has such a narrow interpretation of religion and spirituality. I think we have a lot to learn about how they listened to the people then organized around issues that are important to everyday people. I think there's that lesson. For me, because I live in a state that's very conservative and there are a lot of right wing people, I'd rather deal with up front, right wing people than I would these squishy liberal people who are just as racist, just as greedy and are just as unsupportive of Native American rights who will read these wonderful stories about Chief Seattle and quote him in their meetings but who wouldn't lift a finger to help tribes and tribal sovereignty issues or tribal rights or who would not stand with Indian people in times of trouble. Give me an out and out racist any day than someone who will have the liberal chatter at a cocktail party and have more of a smoke and mirrors way of doing the same thing."

Interdependence and our responsibilities to the earth

Wilma Mankiller:

"What I mean by interdependence is I think that the Creator gave Indigenous people ceremonies to help us understand our responsibilities to each other and the responsibilities to the land and I think that the original instructions we were given as Indigenous people are what keeps us together as a people and that everything's connected to everything else. And so to me a life is not worth living unless you're engaged in the community around you, unless you have some sense of interdependence with other people and with the land and so when I speak of interdependence that's what I speak about. I think that the message we hear on television and magazines and films about doing for yourself and only thinking about yourself and that sort of thing, I think we should reject those messages and remember that we have a responsibility to each other as human beings and we have a responsibility to the land."

Major challenges for tribes today

Wilma Mankiller:

"We have just a daunting set of health, education, housing and economic development problems but the central issue I think for people is going to be...the central question is going to be, ‘How do we hold on to a sense of who we are as Indigenous people?' We can't do that if we lose traditional medicines, traditional knowledge systems, any sense of connection to our history and to our stories and to the land. And we've lost everything if we've lost that."

The prophecy of Charlie and the two wolves

Wilma Mankiller:

"Since almost the time of contact the Cherokees have debated the question of how to interact with the world around us and still hold on to a strong sense of who we are as Cherokee people. And the question became more confusing and more difficult as Cherokee people began to intermarry with Whites. And so at some point in history Charlie the Prophet appeared, a Cherokee man appeared before a meeting with two wolves and he warned the Cherokee people that they would die if they didn't go back to the old ways, the old Cherokee ways of planting their own food and living according to the old values. And I keep that statue and I have also a poster in the hallway of this same prophet to kind of remind me that it's an ongoing and continual debate among Cherokee people. How do we hold onto a sense of who we are as Cherokee people and still interact with the society around us? And I think that Charlie the Prophet when he was talking about the Cherokee people would die if they didn't go back to the old ways, he wasn't talking about physical death, he was talking about a spiritual and a cultural death and so I think his message is an important one that if we're to survive as tribal people and enter the 21st Century and beyond that the single most important thing we can do is to find a way to hold onto our culture, hold onto our life ways, hold onto our ceremonies and songs and language and sense of who we are."

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:
Wilma P. Mankiller
Clinton Presidential Materials Project

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: Oren Lyons

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, traditional faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation Oren Lyons shares his experience in various roles within the international Indigenous community. Lyons also shares his involvement in the U.S. Senate's passage of a resolution in 1992 that formally acknowledges the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the United States Constitution, and his special relationship with the nation of Sweden, whose leaders are confronting the realities of global warming.

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

Lyons, Oren. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Buffalo, New York. 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:

"Oren Lyons, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, is faith keeper of the Turtle Clan. At the request of Clan Mothers in the late 1960s, he gave up a successful career as a commercial artist in New York City to return to the Onondaga Nation. The Onondaga is one of six nations in the Iroquois Confederacy. Chief Oren Lyons spent his childhood his says, ‘running about the Nation,' where he learned ceremonial practices including the game of lacrosse. He says that when you talk about lacrosse you talk about the lifeblood of the six nations. He was an All-American lacrosse player as a goalkeeper when he was a student at Syracuse University. In 1990 he organized an Iroquois national team that played in the World Lacrosse Championships in Australia. In 2003 Oren was inducted into the International Scholar Athlete Hall of Fame at the University of Rhode Island's Institute for International Sport. His personal story ranges widely over many experiences; hunting, fishing, coaching, painting, activism, traditional leader, crisis negotiator, author and teacher. He is a Professor of Native American Studies at State University of New York Buffalo. With John Mohawk he published a major work, Exiled in the Land of the Free. Presence at the most significant recent events for Indigenous peoples in the United States and abroad, in 1972 Oren accompanied a peace delegation of the Iroquois to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington which had been taken over by the American Indian Movement, AIM. In 1973 he led a delegation to the Lakota Nation during the standoff at Wounded Knee. In 1977 he was instrumental in organizing a group of Native leaders to speak at the United Nations in Geneva. Through Oren's work in educating leaders the United States Senate passed a resolution in 1987 that formally acknowledges the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the United States Constitution. Oren has a special relationship with Sweden. His philosophy of responsibility to the welfare of future generations has struck a responsive chord in Sweden's leadership, which is facing the realities of global warming. In the north of the country Oren has a working partnership with one of the oldest cultures in the world, the Forest People, fishermen and reindeer herders. Often in the limelight Oren Lyons remains compassionate and humorous using his visibility for matters of urgent concern, tribal sovereignty, the survival of Indigenous people and their traditions and the perpetuation of Creation. Speaking before the United Nations at the opening of the Year of Indigenous Peoples in 1993 he said that, ‘when we walk upon Mother Earth we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. Mother Earth is not a pleasant metaphor for Oren Lyons. He is gravely concerned about Her survival. He believes human beings can be productive and supportive of Nature or they can be parasites. They are, he declares, ‘presently the latter. There are forces that will check this unbridled growth such as disease and lack of food and water. Privilege will not prevail. There can be no peace as long as you make war on Mother Earth.' His message of peace also took him to the streets to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Committed to religious understanding as a way of reducing world tensions he has participated in ceremonies with Buddhists, Christians and other groups at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and in other religious venues. Though Chief Oren Lyons' message to the world is prophetic and urgent, his lectures always include an encouragement to people to take good care of their families. He is himself the father of two children. At the end of his interview with the Institute for Tribal Government in Buffalo, October, 2003, Oren said, ‘I have two instructions. Be thankful for what you have and enjoy life.'"

Life as a child

Oren Lyons:

"Well, I grew up on the Onondaga Nation territory. The time that I was growing up they called it the Onondaga Reservation. My mother was a Seneca, the Wolf Clan and she was married to my father who was Onondaga, the Eel Clan. Although I was born in the Seneca Territory, Seneca Nation, I just happened to be born there, I was brought up, the whole family brought up at Onondaga. Since the process of our way of keeping track, it follows the woman; I'm Seneca, following my mother, Seneca Wolf, as was her whole family. In 1972 I was adopted into the Onondaga Nation. So now I'm Onondaga, still Wolf but borrowed into the Turtle Clan and I've been sitting for the Turtles since 1967. So we were brought up Indian style. My early childhood was just running about the Nation. I don't think I saw a White person until I was about four years old. We didn't travel downtown. We didn't go down...Syracuse is just down the road. We're about today, jump into the car and you're downtown Syracuse in 10-15 minutes. So we're right there in that all your family is around, grandmother's down the road. You've got all your relatives are everywhere in a real community so that even though you may not be related, just wherever you happened to be at dinner time, that's where you ate. People just sat you down wherever you were. And if you lived off the main highway, which is where the spigots were, then you had to go to the springs and carry water. So we carried water all our lives mostly growing up and cut wood, hunted, hunted for food. And we were very good at it. Everybody was planting. I remember my father planting fields in the back and using the old style of, what would you call it, plow, the plow that you have the handles behind the horse and that's tough plow because you hit rocks and you're like flying all over the place. The horses were very patient with us out there. They knew more than we did about plowing and so forth. Cold winters, no such thing as insulated houses. There was a school on the reservation, still is. It kind of was like an outpost of extension of White people into our land. There was no such thing as a Parent-Teacher's Association or anything like that. You just sent the kids to the doorway and left them and picked them up and no interaction. And for us it was like going into this outpost with all White teachers and strange ideas and different talking people. It was a trial every day. We were pretty independent, rambunctious kids. I know it was a hard time for them. But school was something to be endured. And most kids quit sixth grade, went on to work. So the reservation, the Nation itself was a very traditional Nation, still is I think. As far as I know we're probably the last of the traditional chiefs and leaders in North America who are still in charge of land. There's no Bureau of Indian Affairs, we don't allow them on our territory. We don't allow the state police nor any police except our own people. So we have working arrangements and it's not unusual, that's just the way we were always brought up. We were brought up to be who we are and we don't think it's strange. But as I travel about then I see the differences. The long house was the center of activities all the time. Ceremonies were going on, there was always dances, there was always feasts going on, there was always community activities."

The story of the Great Peacemaker, a spiritual being who came to the Iroquois Nation 1,000 or more years ago

Oren Lyons:

"We didn't learn that story, we lived it. So you don't learn something that you're living and if you're living it then you're just involved in it and you don't think of it as learning cause that's the Great Law. Peace was what governed our people. You were just involved in it and never thought much about it. In the traditional style of governance there rarely is there sessions where people will sit you down and talk to you like that. You just learn by participation and by watching. So the Great Law of Peace is a daily event. It's how you live. It's how ceremonies are performed, how leaders work, how the community operates. It's all...that's how we're brought up. So we're brought up very free, very independent and very aware of who we were in terms of our Clan and our Nation. People kept track, very close track of Clans. The Great Law of Peace is our second gift or second message. The first message that our people received was how to live, non-Indians call religion. I don't really have a word for religion. It's how you live day to day. And so the ceremonies and all of that was given to us way, way, way, way back. We don't know when. But we know the stories and we know how it came and we know all of that. And they are epic stories, they are great, great stories. The Great Law of Peace came when we were in battles and when we were neglecting the first message which was how to live. It was terrible times for Five Nation people. We were battling, we were fighting one another and we were fighting internally. The men were on the war path, so-called war path all the time. They were moving, they were fighting, fighting each other, fight anybody. Children, women, they were hiding, they were in the woods, they weren't even in their homes because they were afraid and it was a terrible time and here comes the Great Peacemaker. His intent and purpose was before he was born and his mother was a virgin, which she didn't know how she got pregnant and when the baby was born her mother tried to kill the baby three separate times and then the third time she received a visit from spiritual beings and they told her, ‘You're not going to be able to do that and don't do that because this person has a mission.' And so the story of him growing up was also one of being different and being singular in who he was."

The Peacemaker's process was thought, not force. He moved from the Mohawk to Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca

Oren Lyons:

"And he said, ‘my business is peace. I want to talk to your leaders.' And they laughed and they said, ‘Well, you've got a lot of work, you have a lot of work.' He was very insistent and that impressed them so they said, ‘All right, we'll take the message.' And so he left, they left and they started out and the first night that he spent, he spent at a lodge that was there, there was a woman by the name of [Mohawk Language] and she was an Erie, she was an Erie woman. They call it cat nation and she was, her mission was to provide food and lodging for the runners and the fighters up and down... But she said that she had a rule and that was that no discussion of war, no discussion of battle, that they could spend the night, they leave their weapons outside and she'd provide them with food and so forth. So that was what she did and when the Peacemaker stopped and he told her his mission was peace, she said, ‘Well, that's wonderful. I believe in your mission and whatever I can do to help.' And then there's this story of [Mohawk name]. [Mohawk name] is an Onondaga who was exiled from his own land because of the fierce leadership there with this fierce leader by the name of Tadadaho. He was evil incarnate and powerful and ruled and had killed three of his daughters and he was mourning. He just left and he was in the woods all the time and the Mohawks knew about him and he kind of drifted up their way and they said, ‘You should go talk with this man, he talks like you do about peace.' So he did and there's a whole epic story about how he became a partner with the Peacemaker. And then they convinced these leaders, they changed their minds and then they moved west to the Oneida and the Oneidas were going through the same thing. And so the story goes after convincing the leaders of the Oneidas to come with them then they went to Onondaga and they couldn't deal with Onondaga, he was too strong. Tadadaho wouldn't...he did all kinds of things and they couldn't get to him. He lived in a swamp, he lived by himself and they couldn't get near him. His hair was covered with snakes, he was twisted. He was just evil and powerful and a cannibal on top of it. He didn't want to talk with them about any peace or anything."

To solve the difficulties, a woman suggests a song for approaching the Onondaga leader

Oren Lyons:

"They learned the song and then they all approached him and they said it affected him, the song affected him and that even as they approached they could see him transforming, they could see the snakes dropping from his head, they could see he was transforming into something like a human being and eventually they talked with him. And then they bargained with him and ‘Your title will be the leader of the Five Nations and they will always come from Onondaga and this will always be the central fire.' And they bargained with him and he agreed with that and he transformed him and the Peacemaker transformed him, the most evil of all beings. And the lesson there is you should never give up on anybody, that anybody can be redeemed."

The Peacemaker lays down the foundations of governance

Oren Lyons:

"And then he began the discussion on governance and how you shall operate and how you shall function. And so the women were chosen as the keepers of the nations actually. So the identity of children is directly what the woman is and that's the law, one of the oldest laws we have. And that continues today and it is still her duty to choose the leaders and oversee the conduct and activities and oversee the general welfare of the clan itself and indeed act like the Mother of the Clan and of the people and very, very hard work. We have Clan Mothers today doing that today just as they always have been and it's difficult work. You give your life over to the people and then of course when she chooses the leaders then he said, ‘Her choice, it shall be her choice.' And I think that's the genius of why we're still here. I think that's what makes the Iroquois so strong was that the balance of relationship and governance was between male and female, men and women. They had equal responsibility and very much work to do but the essence of it was that leadership was chosen by the woman. And it had to be ratified then by the clan by consensus. There was no voting. You had to all agree which is a harder way to do things but of course when you come to a total agreement you're much stronger."

The Peacemaker established a system of democracy

Oren Lyons:

"Then what he said, the Peacemaker when he laid out the foundation he said, ‘There will be elder brothers and younger brothers. You will have two houses and this is how you will work together is your houses. This is the dynamics of your governance, two houses, even within your Nation there will be two houses and this is how the clans are set and that's how the houses operate together. So we're talking about governance now. We're talking about how the establishment of a democratic government, which I believe is the basis of Western society. The democracy that they talk about that comes from Greece is not here. They learned what we knew."

Western democracy and the U.S. Constitution have roots in the Iroquois Confederacy

Oren Lyons:

"Now when the Peacemaker had them throw these weapons of war into the currents under the earth, he said, ‘They'll be carried away to nobody knows where and you'll now rely on the rule of law, the rule of peace and the process of governing people by their own consent.' And so I would say that democracy, Western democracy is based on that. I talked about this meeting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when the Onondaga Chief talked to the leaders about having a union, 1744. All of that was heavily recorded. It was recorded very well and there's a very thick and large book on just that 1744 treaties and this book was printed by Benjamin Franklin. All those words were taken down to Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin read the reports and he said, ‘This is a good idea.' Ten years later he called the Albany Plan of Union and he asked the Six Nations to preside to talk about governance, talk about democracy. And at that meeting there was a spy from the King of England and the word went back and the letter is available warning the King of this discussion by people of governance by the people. So they knew very well what was going on and they understood the hierarchy and they understood... And by rubbing shoulders with Indian nations and people for 200 years transformed the Englishman to an American because in those days when you said you were an American, an American meant to be an Indian. And so Benjamin Franklin really saw and said...there's words where he directly talks about that ‘savages can make something like this why can't we,' and he followed through. And so the Albany Plan of Union transformed into the Continental Congress and the Continental Congress was formed very, very much on the lines of the Confederacy. They called themselves the 13 Fires. They called themselves the Grand Counsel. They used all the euphemisms and they used wampum, the original... At the Boston Tea Party when they dressed up as Indians, they didn't dress up as Indians, they dressed up as Mohawks. They were dressed as Mohawks and so the whole idea of being free and different and fighting your father and so on. 1775 when they came to our...asked for a meeting at German Flats where they wanted us to join them in the coming battle, the revolution, our leaders said to them at the time, they said, ‘well, we know your father. We have a lot of agreements with your father, we love your father and we know you as well and we have agreements with you as well. But we see this as a war between father and son and we would much rather step aside and not be a part of it.' And the delegation from the Continental Congress said at that time, ‘Good,' they says, ‘because that was our second request. If you are not going to fight with us, don't fight against us.' And so it served the purpose of the Confederation because they knew that this battle was going to be taking place around them and probably across their land, which it did finally and they wanted a neutral position because they had their hands full with the French as well. There's a whole history of the French and Indian War and that was mostly fought by Six Nations against...on behalf of the English. All that history, all those meetings, hundreds and hundreds of meetings that we had, we knew each other very well, the leaders. And our leaders traveled and if you go down to the Philadelphia you will see in front of the Hall of Independence where the Liberty Bell is you'll see a square of greens out front, it's out front there's an open square, that's Six Nation land. We visited there so often, we camped right there. It's our land today even. So these kinds of discussions you find really a complete discussion in our book Exiled in the Land of the Free. And we wrote it because the 200th anniversary of the Constitution of the United States was coming up and they were making no consideration or no place for the Indian people and we said, ‘How can you do that?' When we went to Washington we said, ‘Well, where do you want the Iroquois to stand in your celebration?' And they said, ‘Why?' because they had no idea, it's not in your books, they don't teach it, it's not in the school. Nobody teaches that history that I'm talking about. And we said, ‘Well, we gave you this idea of democracy. We held your hand through the process, our leaders.' And so it was presented to the Congress, we took it to Senator Inouye and the result was that the passage of S76 recognizing the contributions of the Iroquois to the Constitution of the United States on the principle of democracy. So I say that Western democracy is directly from our roots. When they came over on the Pinta, Santa Maria, they weren't bringing any democracy with them, at all. They brought a lot of pain with them and they brought a lot of ideas about ownership of land and so forth but they didn't bring democracy. And when the ship the Mayflower came over, that didn't bring democracy either. They were escaping the King of England. Democracy didn't come over on the boat. Democracy was here and it was all over the country, it was all over. The whole country was democratic.

What went wrong in the new U.S. democracy?

Oren Lyons:

"With our reception of the Great Law that spiritual center, that spiritual peace, is the center of it, it's the foundation of our Confederation, spirituality, the spiritual law and we said, ‘Well, that's not a good idea. What you're doing is going to come back.' And then when they consolidated their power and they actually began to go over their own records on the Continental Congress and they were doing the Constitution, they began to reinstitute European law and closure, one of the private property. They couldn't deal with slave ownership. That's going to come back to you. We told them at the time, ‘How can you have a democracy when you imprison men, people? And where's the women? Where's the women in your democracy?' The way I look at it like if you were looking from the moon down to the earth at that particular time you would see a great light as they picked up this idea of democracy. And then if you watched over a period of time you would see that light diminish until finally in 1843 or 1844 they start talking about manifest destination. And Christian rule and Christian law has always been a problem with us and for us. They've always called us heathens, they've always called us pagans and they said we have no standing because we're not Christian. So the whole taking of land across America is based on that Law of Discovery, not being Christian. It still prevails. It's right in the U.S. constitutional law now. So it's tough to do, tough to beat."

Schooling for leadership included hard work and lacrosse

Oren Lyons:

"As I was growing up, my father left the family and I became the hunter. My mother was tremendous, a woman of great integrity, never said much but kept that integrity. She never drank, she never...anything like that, just took care of the family, a very strong woman. And I quit school in the seventh grade because I didn't like the teachers, they didn't like me and I knew they weren't doing right by the people there and I just didn't get along with them, I challenged them all the time. Life was miserable for me. So I would set my shotgun aside or my fish pole and then as soon as I'd get off the bus down at the school I'd walk back and I'd spend the day in the woods fishing. And those years probably were my best teachers because I learned a lot about developing your own character. When we were growing up we had to go and cut wood and carry poles, hardwood poles, 30 feet long. One pole of oak is very, very heavy. And you carry four or five or those poles, put them on your shoulder, that's a big load. But all the kids were up there. We cut the wood, trimmed the wood, wearing sneaks in the wintertime, colder than a son of a gun. There'd be snot all over our sleeve from wiping our nose and getting the wood back and cutting it up and bringing it in. It was hard work, took a lot of character; that built character. It was good training, probably one of the best trainings I had because it built that reserve, that strength that you get from finishing something, getting it done. So I didn't really go to school. I was an athlete and we were playing lacrosse already and that's part of the fabric of the community. And your heroes are the lacrosse players and even the ceremonies in the Long House includes lacrosse. It's not a game; it's part of the fabric of our nation. And that's how I grew up, grew up playing the game and that's what gave me the offer to get to school."

Drafted in 1950 Oren found the discipline of the Army useful

Oren Lyons:

"I don't know how they drafted us because we weren't supposed to get drafted but I did. Anyway, I wound up in the Army and I said, ‘Well, this is...I don't know how I'm going to do here,' but I found out that they recruited for the Airborne came around and you get $50 more for being in the Airborne, for hazardous duty pay. I said, ‘$50 more a month. I've got to go there,' because I was sending money home to the family. So I got $50 more. So we got into the Airborne, went into the 82nd Airborne, went down to the jump school down in Fort Benning, Georgia. And then I was assigned to the 82nd in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We jumped around different places. We had to, we were so-called Honor Guard of America and if anything happened directly to the...we were the ones to be there first. So we were prepared all the time for combat. So I learned a lot, I thought the Army discipline was good for me. I didn't like it at all. When they captured me the first time they put me in jail for truancy I guess and I was just like a wolf. I didn't want to be in there, I didn't like the man and I didn't like the ideas, I didn't like anything and this truant officer, I still remember him sitting there chewing on a cigar looking at me and saying, he says, ‘You know, you dumb Indians,' he says, ‘you can't even talk, you can't answer, you can't answer me why are you not in school.' And I couldn't answer him. I was mad and I was thinking, ‘Gee, maybe I can get one punch in on this guy.' And he was looking at me and he says, ‘Don't even think about it.' And they put me in...they locked me up. I hated that. But I went to work and I did all the little stuff you do to get by. Hunted and worked in labor, dug ditches, did all of that."

Leaving school so young yet becoming a professor

Oren Lyons:

"So when I got out I went back to playing lacrosse again right away and doing a lot of heavy drinking and doing a lot of what kids do at that age. I was boxing; I was boxing at the time. I boxed before I went in; I boxed in the Army. And when I came out I was asked by the coach from Syracuse University he said, ‘Well, why don't you come up here, play lacrosse for us and box for us.' I said, ‘Well, I don't know. I don't think I've got the credentials.' He said, ‘Well, you've been in the Army.' He says, ‘You know, take the GED test in the Army.' I said, ‘Well, I don't know.' I said, ‘I took a lot of tests.' And he said, ‘Well, why don't we look for your tests and why don't you make application. Come on up.' So they recruited me. And when I graduated four years later, he said, ‘You know, we still haven't got your records. We were looking all through the Army.' He said, ‘Maybe, maybe we can just forget looking for them now.' But I had done very well. I made the Dean's List. I was a good painter; I was an artist, that's what I did. And so I did very well in the art course. I drew all A's and I had suffered through English and suffered through all the other courses but I managed to get through. And as a matter of fact they have an award they give to the outstanding Junior scholastic athlete and they call it the Orange Key Award and I won that award my junior year. And so it's a contradiction of moving away from school so early and then finally actually winding up to be a professor at the end of the day."

Art, New York City and lacrosse

Oren Lyons:

"The artwork is what got me into the university. So when I graduated I wanted to go south. I did very well in the lacrosse. In 1957 we had the first undefeated team at Syracuse University and we had an amazing team. Jim Brown, the big football player, was on our team. Billy Brown played for the Boston Patriots. It just went on. We had this amazing team. We were undefeated and we beat West Point, the other undefeated team in the country that year. It was a great year. I became an All American, made All American the next couple of years and then I went south. I went right to New York City. I was going to take up art, staying in this little room in the YMCA and running around looking for a job and carrying my portfolio around realizing, ‘Hey, this isn't going to be so easy,' and New York City being the Mecca of artists and competition. The amazing thing I learned about New York is nobody talks to anybody. Nobody's friendly, nobody says anything. You can just not talk to anybody for days on end except in an interview or wherever you're going, just no conversation. It's strange coming from a Nation where everybody talks to everybody. But anyway, a knock came on my door at the YMCA and there was a short man, bald headed and he had a mustache, gray mustache, and he says, ‘I'm Dr. Schoenbaum, Pinty Schoenbaum.' Pinty, they called him Pinty. He said, ‘I want to ask you if you're going to play lacrosse for the New York City Lacrosse Club.' He had tracked me from Syracuse and found out where the heck I was, don't ask me how. But he said, ‘Play for our team.' I said, ‘Sure. You've got a team down here?' ‘Yeah, we've got a team.' And so that helped me a great deal. I moved right into...I had some kind of friendships again, back to lacrosse again."

His career as an artist and art director

Oren Lyons:

"I finally landed a job at Norcross Greetings Cards and it was kind of like a little safe haven, didn't pay much at all but it was recognized in New York City as probably one of the best training grounds for art there is, practical training. Because with all my four years of college and abilities up there I took one look at my work and I looked at the professional work that I was up against and I said, ‘I need to refine, I need to get back to...get up to standard here, long way to go.' So I took a job there, started our $45 a week, coming out of university and I could have made that $45 in half a day working on construction. But it was a real shock to me to do it but I took the job. I was more in the art directing because I was doing artwork at night. I was freelancing all over and I had a lot of work. I was a good artist and I was doing a lot of illustration, a lot of sports illustration and I...once people found out who you were and where you then you could work. I was more or less running an ad agency right out of the company too because we had 250 artists and every one of those artists that was at Norcross was a very independent artist on their own. They were all freelancing and Norcross was easy to...easy work for a real professional. And I was doing my own work, I was doing a lot of illustration. I was getting a reputation. But I was not liking New York. Things were changing, I had children now and I didn't like the idea of bringing them up in town. You can't leave a child two feet from you, you cannot. You just have to tie them together. You just don't dare let a little girl wander. So it was constantly to keep the kids in the school and then...so I moved out to New Jersey. And when I moved to New Jersey I played for the New Jersey Lacrosse Club and I commuted back and forth, bought a house out there. But still I didn't want to bring the kids up in a foreign country so I said, ‘Well, I want to go back home.' And it was about that time, '67 when Clan Mother asked me to be leader chief and I agreed but it was about the end of my marriage too because my wife didn't really agree with that. She did not want to be sharing me with the Nation."

Returning to Onondaga and working for Indian culture and sovereignty across the nation

Oren Lyons:

"And when I got back, this was 1970, when I got back they said, ‘Well, you have a lot of knowledge. We want you to go to school and learn about museums. We want to put a museum here.' So I took a master's course at Cooperstown, which was again a very good event for me. I learned a lot about museum technology and history and that was a dual course I was taking, History and Museum Technology. So when I came out from there I was qualified to teach and John Mohawk and Barry White and several of the young people they said, ‘You've got to come to Buffalo and you've got to start an Indian class at the university.' They said, ‘We've got Black studies, they've got Women's studies, they've got Puerto Rican studies, they've got no Indian studies.' So they were really on my case and they followed me everywhere I went and by that time I was moving. When I came back home I was working with the leaders already and we traveled. We took what they call the Unity Caravan, which was a composite of leaders from Oklahoma, Hopi and Iroquois and we just went...we did a tour of the whole United States stopping, telling people at the time the importance of keeping your language, the importance of keeping your traditions and we were a traditional group and we made this circle four times. We went around, four years we went around. We were at Alcatraz. We stopped when they were having the problems there and helped the spirit of the people cause they didn't have any elders there. And so they were so happy when all these...carloads of...we traveled in a caravan of 20-25 cars and we would just come to an Indian territory, set up camp and talk about tradition. And a lot of the people I see today who are now leaders remember when we came through and how that influenced them and how they remembered the importance of your language and the importance of your tradition and customs and your land. And I felt...it was in my really strong years and I felt that I was doing something positive."

A new chapter in the lacrosse story, the Iroquois Nationals

Oren Lyons:

"In 1983 I got a call from my friend Roy Simmons, Jr. whose father was the coach, Roy Simmons, Sr. And now, Slugger we call him, Roy, Jr., was now the head coach of Syracuse University and he said, ‘Can you bring an Iroquois team down and play Canada at the NCAA finals?' And I said, ‘Gee, I don't know. We haven't played field lacrosse in a long while. I don't know.' He said, ‘Well, think about it. We'd like to have an exhibition match.' And so I thought about it and I said, ‘Geez, why not.' So we did. We got the boys together and we took a team down there. It wasn't easy and we got roundly defeated but the boys liked the game. I said, ‘Hey, this was a good game, let's get back into it.' The following year, in '84, we played at the Olympics in L.A. and we had the consent of the Olympics because we were promoting the return of Jim Thorpe's medals. And it was called the Jim Thorpe Memorial Powwow and Native Games. And the center was going to be the Iroquois Nationals playing Canada again. But England heard about it, they called us up and said, ‘Hey, you guys are having a game, you didn't invite us.' I said, ‘Well, yeah, but you're so far.' ‘We'll be there.' England flew in. Australia was touring Canada. They had a lacrosse team touring. They came down. So there we had...and then the United States said, ‘How the heck do you guys have a game and you didn't tell us.' So we had the five nations playing again and we had the Native games down there and we did very well. And so England said, ‘You boys play a very good game.' They said, ‘You want to come over and play us over next year?' We said, ‘Well, we're traveling on the Iroquois passport. You understand.' They said, ‘We'll manage, don't worry about that.' So we went over and we were very successful. We won every game but one over there and very happy. The boys were getting into the game so we said, ‘Well, we want to get into the International Lacrosse Federation, let's get into the big game.' So we petitioned and we had a lot of problems with Canada and so we were not allowed to compete in the '86 games but we ran our own tournament here at UB and we invited everybody but Canada cause they were hosting the game. And in '87 they called me and they said, ‘We had a vote, the ILF had a vote and they want to vote the Iroquois in as a full member nation,' the International Lacrosse Federation. I said, ‘On our terms.' They said, ‘On your terms.' I said, ‘Great.' And they said, ‘And get ready for the games in Perth, Australia, in 1990. So while all this stuff was going on we filled the team and we took a team over to the Perth games, world games in 1990. There were four teams when we joined. We became the fifth nation and now there's 14 nations including South Korea, Japan, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden. They're all playing and Tonga wants a team. This is all going on, this is all part of this whole fabric in the meantime, which affords great recognition to the Haudenosaunee because when we play, our flag goes up with whoever we're playing. So the Haudenosaunee flag goes up with the USA or Canada or England or whoever. Well, the sovereignty as I was talking about, the Iroquois Nationals are certainly a very serious element of manifestation of sovereignty and so that means we have to deal with state departments around the world, it means we have to have Visas because our passports are Iroquois. So it's advancing our culture, it's advancing our presence, it's advancing people's understanding of Indian nations, internationally. It's certainly developing a better understanding among our own people, respect for other nations, respect for other people, respect for the American flag. If you go back to the times when we were battling at Wounded Knee and around and flying the flag upside down or burning it or whatever else, now when the United States plays the Iroquois our men stand at attention, take their hats off in respect. That's a big move. That's a big change but it's mutual respect is what it is and that's what brings that. So they understand that they've grown, our players have an amazing growth sense. Now they've traveled, they've been around the world, they play Japan, we've played in Australia, we've played in England, we've play Canada, we've played all over. That's exposure for our own people to learn about other nations, other people and the game itself is really founded because it's our game and so we're like the grandfathers of the sport and we get that respect from around the world. We work with them very well and it's a great avenue, it's a great venue for interaction, positive."

Working with Indigenous people internationally and with the United Nations

Oren Lyons:

"So on the other hand when we move into the U.N. and we're in the working group for Indigenous populations, the discussion still is and we still have not cleared the fact that we are peoples, not populations. ‘Peoples' with an S. ‘People' is generic, peoples means specific. So when we try to put our names as peoples the U.N. still calls us populations. And of course if you're a population then there's no human rights for populations. So the discussion is really fine tuned and our biggest adversary is the United States and the issue is the issue of the self determination, the right to self determination. And they say, ‘Well, you have a right to self-determination as far as we allow.' And we say, ‘The right to self-determination is absolute and there's no modification or else it's not self-determination.' But for Indigenous people, yes, it is. Of all the people in the world, when you have the human rights of the world, they don't apply to Indigenous people. We had to write our own. Why? The issue's still land. Land, who owns it and who are you. It goes back to the time of Columbus; it goes back to basic issues. The issue you brought up right now. They're saying, ‘And you can't tax.' So all of that is still unresolved and the United States has a very hard time to acknowledge first of all the damage they've done to Indian nations. They have a hard time to look at that. They have a hard time to acknowledge the lands that were taken, stolen. Even today they can't bring themselves to pay...here they are in Iraq, they're looking for $87 million to rebuild Iraq and they can't pay the $8 billion that they stole from the Department of Interior of Indian land. So where do you go for equity as the peacemaker said. We have to go to the international field and that's why we're in Europe. We can talk to them over there, we talk to the State Department over there but hard to get them here. And the whole issue of Indigenous peoples reflects earth and reflects land. Australia: the lands taken from Australia. Now they have recently won a case where they have agreed that the basis of land taking, which was the Law of Discovery, the Supreme Court of Australia says, ‘That's not a valid position.' That court case rocked everything everywhere around the world because you go to South Africa, you go anywhere, all the colonization that's taken on is on that basis including the United States and Canada. So we're still, when you say ‘the land of the free, the home of the brave and the land of the free' you're talking about Indians because...and you come down to the issues that they cannot resolve and get these things ready and clean their house. I'm talking about the United States and Canada and Central and South America as well. If they can't clean their house how can they go around the world trying to clean everybody else's house?"

Present and future dangers facing Creation

Oren Lyons:

"And coming up on us now is global warming. Now these issues that are coming here are very, very serious. They're going to make any conflagration that you have around the world minor when they start to manifest. And actually I've been studying this and I've been...most of my work in the past three or four years has been in that area because the danger is so evident and we're pushing toward an ice age. We're forcing the issue to an ice age and people don't understand that. There's a convection going on in the Atlantic Ocean where fresh water now has reached all the way to the Carolinas from Greenland, from the ice and snow melting in Greenland, fresh water all the way to the Carolinas. This convection is what's slowing down the currents and the University of Bergen in Norway who monitors the gulfstream said that the gulfstream is slowing down and that if it continues to slow down at the past it's slowing down, it could conceivably stop altogether in the next 15 years. Now if you can comprehend what's going to happen if the gulfstream stops and you talk about economies and you talk about what's going to happen, well, it's going to freeze, things are going to freeze. You'll trigger the ice age and it's happened before, it's not something that's never happened before, we're just pushing it with our fossil fuel, over extended fossil fuel use and all that. Global warming is real. I'm now working with scientists who are willing to speak up now. But the attitude of this present administration, the Bush administration on environment is very, very bad about environment. They're just not interested in it, they're interested in business. But it's responsibility, they have to look for the next generation and they're not looking for the next generation. So I asked the scientists, I said, ‘Okay, what happens? What happens when...how does this trigger happen?' They said, ‘Well, it's like a dimmer switch on the wall. You want more light you turn the dimmer switch,' and that's what we're doing with energy, more and more, more and more and now we come to the end of the dimmer switch, right? You can't get anymore, but we want more so we hit it once more and now the switch, actually the dimmer switch becomes a switch, it goes from hot to cold, switched. The earth itself has its own systems and when it gets too warm it cools itself off. That's the ice age. So we're pushing that now. Now the [1:02:36] ?? people from off...the marine biology units at the [1:02:42] ?? have said that this convection here is going to cause that, is going to cause the switch to turn. So they asked them, ‘Well, when?' They said, ‘It's all the way down now.' It wasn't there in 1960, nothing. Now the freshwater's all the way down here, it's slowing the current and it'll get farther. The ice is melting faster. We're in a compound. There's a compound of melting. The faster it melts the faster it melts. We're compounding. We have a compound in human population. Put them two together and you have big problem and so why are we in these insane efforts for oil and industry when we're not looking at the big picture and that's my...I said, ‘We've got to look at the big picture,' and I think it's criminal that a government doesn't look to the future and actually tries to cover it, tries to change it. It's very serious."

Amidst much negligence, hopeful signs

Oren Lyons:

"Yeah, there are. Yes, coalition is coming now. Scientists are saying, ‘Yes, we have to speak up.' So yes, on a positive side, we can slow it down if we go into a total mobilization just the way they did on the terrorists, same kind of mobilization. The system is there but it's going to manifest itself now, you're going to start to feel it and it'll get warmer and warmer and warmer and then it's going to switch and that could be in a year's time, that could be ten years. I have no idea. But we're pushing it now and so that's been my message. That was my message to the Bioneers and it goes back to the Peacemaker saying, ‘Don't make a law against that spiritual law,' and that's what we're doing, precisely what we're doing. Challenging that spiritual law, you can't win. My grandson says to me, ‘Grandpa, what's going to happen to me?' Hmm, hard question. That's what the kids are saying, ‘What's going to happen to us? Who's going to look out for us?' And if the adults don't do it, if the families... who is? And that's my message. People can do it. I think very clearly that the fate, our fate is still in the hands of the people. I believe that yet. But we're losing ground. Every day that we don't do something we get closer to the point of no return. So if you're not going to think about your grandchild much less seven generations, it's pretty murky out there right now. So it means that you have to try hard. You've got to maintain your own integrities, you have to maintain your own cultures, your own prayers. I remember Priscilla V. Hill, our elder from the elder circle, she said to me, she says, ‘you know, people forget how powerful prayer is, how strong prayer is.' Our people in particular cause we're spiritual people, we pray a lot and we pray all the time and we believe in a higher power, we believe in the ultimate authorities and we understand a lot of that and that's what the ceremonies are about. That's the integrity. Now if everybody could get on that kind of a line, then we wouldn't have what's going on now. But we have a secular world now. Spirituality is rare. We have commerce."

Promising new alliances

Oren Lyons:

"I think the religions that we have to deal with are the ones that are made here in this United States. They just make their own religion; they become what I call the hard right fundamentalist religion. They're not really listening to the teachings of their teacher. They're making their own statements. So religion has been a spear right into our breast. That's how they came, that was the spear that entered us and it's been a problem but on the other hand in today's times our best allies are religious leaders. So you know, people go, people change, we come to a common belief and we're getting there, getting there. But is it going to be...when? We're in a bind now; we're in a time bind. So I don't know. Gorbachev is a great leader; he's a great environmental leader. Al Gore, if he'd get back into gear. He belonged to that parliament who worked with us, global forum of parliamentary and spiritual leaders. Gore was in there. It's a race. But I think when the manifestations, when the fires get more, which we had all those fires last year, there are going to be more of those. This year, fire's burning up there in British Columbia all over, dry, climate change and we're going to get wind storms. The winds are coming heavier. The slower the ocean goes the quicker it warms up, the quicker it warms up heavier winds and we're spawning these big hurricanes now. We're doing that. So all these things are coming and one of our chief allies is the insurance companies. They're saying, ‘Listen to those people, it's true what they're saying.' They have to pay. And they know what the damage is costing very year, more and more and more. So I don't know politics are so peculiar in this country and around the world. And the avarice of man and the greed, the unleashed greed is fundamental to all of this. Still, I believe that it's still in the hands of the people. If people want to get out there and they want to make themselves known, then things are going to change. If they don't, then you suffer the consequence and it's not happy. But as long as we can, you never take hope away from the people. Hope is always there and I urge the people to take action, do what you have to do. Vote this administration out. That's what's got to be done. They're very, very damaging. I think in this contemporary society everybody has gone kind of a little nuts and the idea of money and this cycle of work that people are in, they've got no time for anything. I feel it."

The future is still in the hands of the people

Oren Lyons:

"This is still a democracy. This is what we helped way back there in 1775. It's a democracy yet and if people act on it, it will be. But if they just submit then that's what's going to happen. It's what I call corporate states. They have more gross national product than most countries. The corporations have allegiance to no one, they don't have any human rights, they don't have any concern about health. They have a concern to put money in the hands of the investors and that's the big deal. We're looking at the kids now and we're going to have the grandchildren and looking at trying to see this future. In the global forum of spiritual and parliamentary leaders after all the years of leading we came to a conclusion. Why were we meeting, what was going to be the substance of this whole thing? And we came to a decision under the leadership of Akio Matsumura who's a brilliant man and a great humanitarian and we came to the conclusion it would be four words, after all our meetings with all our people: value change for survival. We either change our values or we're not going to survive and we've going to have to get back to the basic values of family, of relationship rather than money, acquisition. Private property doesn't work. That's the song of this nation, private property. And so you lose community. The community is what we're after and getting back into the community of the earth itself because that's one big community, we're all one. We're a long ways away from that. But we can do it, we can get back and around the world, yes, they are trying, yes, yes, they are trying. But we have to get better leadership in this country. We have to get leadership with vision and with responsibility to the future. That's what the Peacemaker said, seven generations; make your decision on behalf of seven generations coming. You, yourself, will have peace, that's just common sense. Never give up. That was a big lesson, don't give up. Don't give up on anybody. They can change. In Sweden now we have a coalition of very active people and among them is one of the best filmmakers in Sweden, a very famous man and along with another active person that promotes events and so forth. And they have agreed to do a film on, a feature film on global warming. They said, ‘We know how to do it,' and they've prepared it. And so what I'm trying to do now is get $2 million from somewhere to get this film made and then we'll get it distributed. We want to do it in six languages simultaneously so the message gets to the people and they know how to do that. Now that's urgency, that's awareness that you've got to bill to the people cause leadership knows what's going on. They're just not pressed by the people. So that is one of the things I'm working on. I also work on the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth on the issue of keeping your culture and so forth. I think the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse teams is great fun for me and great for everybody and it's a great venue for interaction so I always put a lot of time in that. And teaching is good cause I talk directly to the children. And family, getting back to the family. So that's where I'm at. I work with the Sami people up north and they have the same problems we have. Global warming is really manifesting up there. Ice is melting, a big problem for the reindeer because it melts and freezes and they can't get to the grass, the liken. They can starve in a short time that way. They live on a daily basis. But they have good years and bad years and they have the same problems with the people, there's racism and so forth. Positive though, the government is much more positive over there towards them than here towards us. We shouldn't have to be suing the federal government for money it owes us, that belongs to us."

Building strengths and making peace

Oren Lyons:

"Peace is a dynamic action. Peace is not passive. Peace requires a lot of action and a lot of activity. It's light, it's light and it has to be always pushed, always promoted, always acted upon. On the other hand negative energy is heavy and it's dark and it has its own strength on that. If you stand still, you lose. It's easier to sleep in the morning than to get up. It's easier not to work than to work. It's always easier to do the negative than it is the positive. You have to recognize that and you have to do your own personal battle and you have to make your peace with creation and I would say coming from Priscilla V. Hill, ‘Peace and prayer are powerful.' That's the basis of where you go for your strength. Individually we're not strong enough for anything so we've got to get people back on line, spiritual path. Thomas Benyaka used to say, the old Hopi elder and he made his trips around, all the time he always said the same thing, ‘Prayer, meditation; prayer, meditation,' and that's powerful. So we have a spiritual strength and available, we should use it. It's more powerful than anything and that's the ceremonies. Thanksgiving. We still hold it. I'll say one more thing. In the longest walk there was an elder from Japan, the venerable Fujison. He's 100 years old and he was in charge of the peace Buddhists, they come and they sing that ‘no more [1:19:09] ??' and they play that. That's his people. He instructed them to come on the longest walk with us and they did, they walked the whole way, they're Buddhists. And he came along, later on and he was being pushed in his wheelchair. He had a sticker on the side said, ‘The Longest Walk,' and they hosted us when they had a pagoda in Washington, D.C. and they hosted everybody that came. They had a big meal they cooked for us and everything and they were sitting in a circle on a table and the elders were there, Chief Shenandoah, some elders from Lakota Country, Chief Farmer and I remember Chief Shenandoah saying to him, ‘Why are you here with us? Why have you...what have you...why are you here? Why have you joined us?' And the venerable Fujison said, ‘I have studied human relations around the world,' and he says, ‘I don't think there has been a people that have been more abused and have suffered more than the Native American people.' He said, ‘Yet, you have kept your spiritual center.' He said, ‘It's strong, it's crystallized.' He says, ‘Of course you have all the problems, of course you have this and you have that and you have drinking and drugging and all that.' He said, ‘But you also have kept the spiritual core.' And he says, ‘And I believe that the spiritual center of the earth is here in North America with your people.' That was his statement. I never forgot it cause we don't think that way. We just go along and do what we do. That was his observation and it makes me think every now and then what that means."

The instruction Oren Lyons would leave

Oren Lyons:

"I have two instructions to our nations. Be thank for what you have, there's all the ceremonies. Second instruction was, enjoy life."

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:
Oren Lyons
The Onondaga 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: Billy Frank, Jr.

Producer
Institute for Tribal Government
Year

Produced by the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University in 2004, the "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" interview series presents the oral histories of contemporary tribal leaders who have been active in the struggle for tribal 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 2001, longtime treaty rights activist and chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission Billy Frank, Jr. (Nisqually) shares his experiences as a leader battling on the front lines to protect and maintain the treaty-guaranteed fishing rights of his people and other Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest.

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

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Frank, Jr., Billy. "Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times" (interview series). Institute for Tribal Government, Portland State University. Olympia, Washington. June 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:

"Billy Frank, Jr., born in 1931, is a member of the Nisqually Tribe in southwestern Washington. A principal activist in the struggle to uphold Indian treaty fishing rights, he learned his tribe's heritage from the vivid stories of his father, Willie Frank. The life of the Nisqually people was abruptly altered in the mid-1850s, the treaty period of federal Indian policy in the northwest. The Medicine Creek Treaty took away some of the Nisqually villages and prairies but it did guarantee the tribe's right to fish at 'all usual and accustomed grounds and stations in common with all citizens of the territory.' Billy Frank was fishing with his father in an area restricted by the State of Washington when, at age 14, he was first arrested. The opponents of tribal fishers held that tribal members were subject to state regulations while fishing off their reservations and that treaties signed in the mid-1800s were invalid. Over the years he was arrested more than 50 times. His family endured repeated persecution, raids, beatings, fines and jail. The so-called 'Fish Wars' of the 1960s and '70s became a symbol of the struggle for tribal sovereignty rights across the nation with celebrities like Dick Gregory lending support. Many U.S. citizens became aware of sovereignty issues being played out in the Pacific Northwest. The politically charged events, which rival a Shakespearean history, culminated in the landmark ruling of federal judge George Boldt in 1974: 'Indian fishers are entitled to half of the harvestable catch of salmon in Washington.' But Billy Frank learned that victory in court did not eliminate conflict and hostility. He became an artist of shrewd compromise, bringing diverse interests together to seek solutions on complicated issues. In 1992, he received the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Award. Today, he chairs the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, which represents 20 Washington tribes in negotiating natural resource management plans with state and federal officials. Charles Wilkinson, in Messages from Frank's Landing, writes, 'Billy Frank, Jr. has been celebrated as a visionary, but if we go deeper and truer, we learn that he is best understood as a plain spoken bearer of traditions, passing along messages from his father, grandfather, from those further back, from all Indian people really, messages about the natural world, about society's past, about this society, and about societies to come.' Wilkinson reflects on the development of Billy Frank as a leader: 'If it is true that Billy's first three decades scarcely suggested what was to come, it is also true that a standard account of a budding activist's education and jobs rarely reveals the personal qualities churning and building over the years of a young life that will cause a person to assume the burden of challenging accepted authority on behalf of a sacred cause.' The Institute for Tribal Government interviewed Billy Frank in June 2001 at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission."

The Nisqually Watershed before the arrival of explorers and settlers

Billy Frank:

"You know, this place was a magical place, and my dad and grandpa always talked about how they never wished for anything. They had everything, and they always asked my dad about Social Security number and he never did have one. He always said he never did need one. He had everything. He had all the fish and all the food, we had all the vegetables up on the prairie, we had all of our medicines, we had everything. We had shellfish down here and clean water and clean air and just everything that you needed. Every year on the watershed, we had our lodges up in the mountain where we picked huckleberries and all of our berries and gathered up on our mountain and then down with our canoes we went down and out into Puget Sound and gathered and dried all of our shellfish. We caught a lot of flounders and different foods that we'd put up for winter but it was always a cycle of the first salmon would come in in springtime and that would start our ceremonies and winter would be over. And then from that day on we start preparing for the next winter and so that cycle would just keep going. We had our flutes and we had our drums and we made our own music and we knew our own songs and we played them and danced and we had everything. Our society was intact."

The State of Washington often fought tribal treaty fishing rights

Billy Frank:

"All of a sudden, the laws started to be wrote. Here comes the State of Washington, became the State of Washington, and of course they had a legislature that started writing laws and they wrote laws against us, us Indian people, for fishing and not on the reservation, but our reservation was only like maybe two miles long along the watershed. And so they pretty well had us just on the reservation. That's what brought about the U.S. v. Washington, because it just was a continual fight with the State of Washington, and even the United States Army was on the State of Washington's side. They were across the river all the time and the State of Washington used their property to get to us. I just continued to go to jail along with a whole bunch of us and we continued to fight the State of Washington. Other tribes also continued to do that now. So we protested."

Billy Frank's mentors were Nisqually leader Leschi and his own mother and father. His father was moved to what is now Frank's Landing when the Army took over most of the Nisqually reservation for Fort Lewis in 1917.

Billy Frank:

"My dad lived to be 104 and mom lived to be 96 so they were with us all the time and that was, they held us together and kept us together and that was a big part of us. The Bureau of Indian Affairs -- which at that time was in South Dakota somewhere -- and they knew that the Army was taking over the reservation, two thirds of it, but they said, "˜If you buy land, Willie Frank, anywhere we'll put it back in trust for you, restricted trust status,' and so that's why we ended up at the mouth of the river. But yeah, dad had a hard time. He was taken away to school when he was young and they took all the Indian kids up to this side of Seattle, a long ways away from home and they gathered them all up and hauled them off to school. All of that time, if you're not in the community, people die and aunts die and uncles, and people all of a sudden they're gone."

Fishing was a way of life, and getting arrested

Billy Frank:

"I'd take my canoe and go up the river and I'd leave my canoe. You can't do that now, there's so many people along the watershed you can't even hide your canoe or anything. But I could hide my canoe along the river and I could go up the trail at dark time, no light or anything, get my canoe and come down, pick my net up and come on home. I'd just pick one or two nets up. It would depend what I had in and I'd just float down. Nobody'd ever hear me or see me or nothing. But if they were laying for you, then they could catch you. Well, they were laying for me, and they caught me on that side of the river, because where you go is you usually find a bar -- either a sand bar or gravel bar -- and you park there and you fix your net out and take your fish out. That's when these guys caught me the first time and then a whole hell of a lot of times after that. They wouldn't take my canoe at that time, they wouldn't confiscate all your things. They'd take maybe one net or something, but they wouldn't take the canoe or anything. Then they start taking everything, taking the body and everything that we had. I fished all the time, and sneaking out and fishing. I fished right off the front of the house. Our house was right on the river. But they continued to arrest me up until 1950 and it was '54 when I got out of the Marine Corps and then after I got out, then we started to fish and going back to jail again, just a whole lot of things was happening then. But that was the "˜50s. Of course, the "˜50s wasn't a good time for Indian people. They were taking our reservations in other parts of the country, termination was going on strong throughout the United States and we were getting involved in all of this fighting termination, and so there was a lot of things happening. [Dwight] Eisenhower was president at the time and started to terminate all the tribes and they started relocation of Indians and sending them to Los Angeles and New York and wherever, Chicago and Seattle and everywhere. So all of them things were happening in our time. But we were still fishing on the river and still not even dreaming that we were going to be part of some big movement. The Civil Rights movement started happening in the '60s and then all of a sudden the Kennedys and all of the other things that happened throughout our time, my time. But taking part in all that and being there and understanding that we had...you have to live a long time. These guys will die. Our strategy is United States Supreme Court guys, they'll die, Congress, they'll die, new guys will come along, Governors will die, Senators will die, bad guys. The bad guys will die. And will there be another bad guy? I hope not. I hope they'll be better understanding of our people. So that's how we keep going because...I always say, 'I'll outlive all these guys.' But when I'm gone and all of the people that we have that are my age and beyond or younger, they'll take our place and it'll be the same, our people, nothing will change. We will still have the treaty, we'll still have fighting to bring our salmon back now that they're gone and clean water and the principles of life and the food chain that has to sustain all of us. This is what it's all about. I'll never quit doing what I do. Everybody says, 'Have you got a retirement?' 'Hell, no, I ain't got a retirement. I live right here. I'm not going anywhere.' If things go to hell I can go down here and dig clams and catch fish and flounders and they're still there. That's what I do and that's being an Indian, just being an Indian and try to bring people together to work together. That's the only way that the salmon and the water and the environment, the habitat's all going to work if we bring people together and people come together to try to find a balance for the salmon. If we can't find a balance in the middle of the road for the salmon, then they'll be gone. You can't fight and be way over there, you can't fight and be way over there. You've got to be, find a balance and keep moving forward and try to make it better every day. And so that's a principle of life that I have to live on and even though sometimes we go to court, the State of Washington vs. the Indian tribes or the United States government taking our side. That's not bad. That's something that we have to do. We have to get a principle of law before we can all continue to move down the road or something."

The importance of outside support and coalitions

Billy Frank:

"One of my old friends is gone now. His name was Ralph Johnson at the University of Washington, a professor. We have them in Portland and we have them all along the United States, our professors that fight for treaty rights and he said, 'You have a treaty, don't ever let the United States government or anybody such as Slade Gorton, Senator Slade Gorton...that treaty is there and they better respect it and not abrogate it, even the United States Supreme Court and Congress and so on.' So that was a big part of us being educated and understanding what we were doing in this big fight. The fight never ends. The fight's going on today. It's just a war between a culture and them. There was good people that didn't like what the State of Washington was doing and the United States government was doing and what the dams were doing and what was going on with just the environment. So there was coalitions all over and there was people at the universities and there was doctors and there was people just in every profession was thinking of getting involved. Certainly we'd have never made it without them. You can't...with all your power and all your community and everybody staying together -- you can't fight that battle alone."

The Sohappy vs. Smith case in 1969 led to Judge Robert Belloni's ruling of a "˜fair and equitable share of fish for tribes', which influenced later debates on 'allocations.' Years after the ruling, David Sohappy, Sr. served a sentence in federal prison for selling fish out of season, suffering several strokes in prison.

Billy Frank:

"It's an ongoing fight, a continual ongoing fight, even in the year 2000 now. There's just been so many things that I...David [Sohappy], my partner, my friend, I went over and testified for him over at Yakima. They killed David. The United States people killed David Sohappy, one of our own people that wanted to be left alone to just be able to harvest salmon down on the Columbia River, and what in the hell is...that is not a big thing, of 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 salmon a year, whatever for this community. What is so big about that? They made such a big thing and they put him in prison and killed him, trade and everything. And way back in 1800s, they talked about trade, they talked about commerce for the Indian people and we had it then. We had it way before Lewis and Clark ever came. We had trade with big baskets of salmon and trading with these ships and everything. Here in 1968 and up until our time it was, anytime that we had anything to do with the economy they didn't want us to be part of it, even blaming us for killing the salmon or whatever it might be, even though we had judges on the Columbia River as well as in our district over here that ruled for us and continue to rule for us today and thank them. We never win anything. It's sad but true. Even the United States Supreme Court were hanging on today with the five-to-four decision for the tribes on sovereignty and they're still ruling for us, thank goodness. We're just hanging on by our teeth when it comes to law. But I think the Sohappy case and other cases on the Columbia River were positive cases and they set a precedent for the United States to uphold the sovereignty of tribes. The allocation can't work if we go back to the turn of the century because there was a lot of fish, 20 or 30 million salmon in the Columbia River. Now there's three million, very little fish. So that allocation...but they looked at the tribes over here and they said the tribes have to have an allocation and they looked at the non-Indian and they cut him way down. So out of all of that fighting and law and trying to...and winning, something good comes out of that but you look at it and we're still fighting. They are still raping the water. They want potatoes, they want grapes, that's more important than salmon and they use the water, the irrigation. Eighty percent is going to them guys for potatoes and whatever they grow irrigating. What goes for the fish? They've left...they've completely sold the fish out, the United States as well as the states and the political people. Survival, survival is what we're talking about, survival of us Indian people and of our salmon and our food chain out there and our whales and our eagles and all of our fur bearing animals and everything. We're talking about all of those things and our mountains and our trees. That's what we're talking about."

Judge George Boldt and the courtroom scene in U.S. v. Washington, when Boldt ruled that Indian fishers are entitled to half the harvestable catch of salmon

Billy Frank:

"In this one particular case on a day there's standing room only in this place. You had to get there early to get into the courtroom, and for 70 days it went on like that. This day this lady over in Suquamish, lives across the bay from Seattle, she was up on the stand, and Slade Gorton and his prosecutors were there for the State of Washington, they were asking questions on everyone. Grandma Haler was up there and she was, the judge was sitting here and she's sitting here and she...they started asking her some questions about some of the things that went on and she couldn't understand them so she started talking Indian to dad, which dad was...she's sitting here and dad's way over there and she started talking Indian to, our language to dad and dad answered her back. And boy, the prosecutor jumped up and objected. 'We can't have this going on in the courtroom,' and all this. Judge Boldt overruled these guys and said, 'If she wants to clarify what you're saying, she can talk to grandpa.' And this is...that was a recognition of our language, a recognition of us -- what the judge just did -- and an understanding person that's a federal judge, conservative judge that understood what we were saying and what we were doing and trying to get the information out to him so he could make a decision. It was a lot of things like that that the judge did in that courtroom, that he had respect for all of our people. He had respect for all of our people, and just things that he did on his own as a human being in what he did. There's other judges that did similar things, but that's one of the things that I don't forget because when he rendered the decision in '74, I got to take him around to all the tribes. He had retired and all the tribes had wanted to give him dinners so I took him to all the tribes. Judge Boldt is well and alive even though he's gone, that case and the respect that he had for all of our people, our grandmas, our grandpas and our uncles and our aunts and our children. It was just...we respected him so much and we gave him that big welcome when we all took him and had big dinners. Every one of these reservations did something for him. And also Senator Gorton, then Attorney General of the State of Washington, was telling the people of the State of Washington that, 'You don't have to abide by that ruling because we're going to get it overturned when it gets to the United States Supreme Court,' which it did get to the United States Supreme Court in 1979 and they upheld it. So all of that was telling the people, the people of the state to proceed as usual, go out and rape the fishes you were doing and go out and fish illegal even though we have regulations. And so they were fishing illegal out here. In 1980, a task force was formed and I testified that there was lights from Canada to South Sound here, just non-Indians fishing night and day out in these waters raping the salmon and they did. And the State of Washington let them do it. Now Judge Boldt brought them back in court and took their sovereignty away. He took the State of Washington...Slade Gorton come in and he said, 'You're that far from being held in contempt of court. As of today...' Now there was shooting going on in the water, they were shooting at each other and just a whole lot of bad things happening in the State of Washington on commercial fishery. And so he told them at that time that, 'You no longer manage the salmon. The federal court...I manage the salmon. National Marine Fisheries and the Coast Guard will immediately take over out here in these waters.'"

Resistance, hostility and racism after the Boldt decision

Billy Frank:

"Racism, they were putting sugar in our gas tanks and in 1974 we had a gas war. You guys are too young to know this, but there was a gas war in the United States and nobody would gas our boats up out here. They'd gas all the non-Indian boats, they wouldn't gas the Indian boats. So I'm out here representing the tribes in this office and, 'What the hell is going on?' Our fishermen were, they couldn't buy gas out here on the water. And so that's racism at it's best going on into the fisheries management and everything else. So all of these things and it was hard feelings going every direction and they were shooting at each other and there was every kind of thing happening in the northwest. But we were still managing it, we were here, the tribes were here with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and all of our tribes and we were still managing putting a comprehensive plan together like the judge ordered."

The tribes are involved on every front -- the mindset that it takes to persevere

Billy Frank:

"Down on the river on my canoe I always thought, 'Jesus, I wish I had somebody that was protecting us.' I'd look at the State of Washington over there and they had a fishery department, they were saying they were managing, but they were always mismanaging it seemed like, and they had attorney general and they had their government doing what they do. But nobody was protecting us, nobody was protecting the salmon, nobody was protecting the watersheds and nobody was protecting our treaty. But the tribes are unique, very unique in as far as being the best and the best at management, the best at doing whatever they do and always being the protector or the one that speaks for whether it's the grass or whether it's the river or whether it's the mud out there or whether it's the clean air or whatever it might be, it's always bringing common sense to what's all around us, whether we're there or over there or where it might be. I've always thought...now here we are today, we have a laboratory back here with doctors and how did we get there, we started out with maybe three or four people here and all of a sudden we have a range of professional people, the highest quality people there is down in Oregon and wherever we might be. The tribes have their own management going and we coordinate among all of us. We coordinate from there over to here and down there and the Pacific Coast and Canada. We're in the international treaty. When we started with the treaty, U.S.-Canada International Treaty, they were intercepting all of our fish coming down here. And we couldn't get in the door, we the Indian tribes could not get in the door in U.S.-Canada. They wouldn't even let us sit on any of the panels or anything, any government position. U.S. Fish and Wildlife was our representative, United States Commerce was our representative and we said, 'No, we've got to be our own representative.'"

The relationship of the Nisqually Tribe with the Army and Fort Lewis

Billy Frank:

"They managed that country like if it was ours. They don't harvest and clear-cut and do all the crazy things. We know that their mission is to train troops and we work together. They do not drive the tanks over the rivers and the streams anymore. They got cement bridges built. So these are positive things that we can live together and work together and share the watershed. So that's kind of where we are and that makes me feel good."

In a battle over dams, Judge Stephen Grossman took testimony about the conditions of the Nisqually River from 100-year-old Willie Frank.

Billy Frank:

"We'd go to Seattle every year to the federal building in Seattle and so I'd take dad every year. We'd go up there and we'd stay and we'd have hearings for two weeks. But two particular days I'd have to take dad up and all the lawyers from the City of Tacoma and all the lawyers from the City of Centralia and the State of Washington and the tribes and the Federal Energy Commission with their lawyers and our judge presiding over it. And so we started to put the watershed together and getting in-stream flows and so on and so forth and the plan...this is the Nisqually plan going into effect. And so Judge Grossman, my great friend and I think the world of him, we were up there, dad now had reached 100 years old and I told the judge that, 'Dad can no longer, I can't bring dad up anymore. We've got to park and walk up these stairs and then the elevator and whatever.' I said, 'We're not going to bring him up anymore, dad's going to stay home.' And so he said this in front of everybody and put it into the record and he said, 'Well, Willie Frank, Dad, Grandpa can't come up here anymore. He's 100 years old now,' I don't know what he said and then he said, 'But I want to know if anybody has a problem with us...we're going to move the courtroom down to grandpa's house on the Nisqually River tomorrow morning at 10:00. Now is there any objections?' Nobody will object to a judge and so, 'Court will preside in grandpa's house tomorrow morning at 10:00.' So everybody come from Seattle clean to grandpa's house at the Landing and the Federal Energy Commission and Judge Grossman, they held court right there."

Billy Frank speaks about transcending past grievances, focusing on the future and what can be done.

Billy Frank:

"I think back, way back to Chief Joseph and him saying, 'I've got to quit fighting and I've got to gather my people up.' To me, everything is survival, everything is survival not for me so much, it's my kids and our aunts and uncles and our relatives that are all out here. Everything that we do is not...it's for survival of everything that's around us. So I know the politics, I know who sits on these task forces, they're here today, the President appointed them in 1980, they're still here, I work with them. There's bad guys and there's good guys. You take advantage of whoever you have in this picture that we're in to work to bring everything together. I think that we're on the good side, we're not on the bad side and that's a big difference in life when you can always say that you're on the good side. I think that...everybody says, 'Well, how can you keep going with these guys?' There's a change every day and there's a change for the bad and then there's a change for the good and to try to find a balance out of that for our people, we just hang in there long enough things get better and they might get worse in the meantime, but then they start getting better and getting better means that you have new thinkers coming up, you have new children coming up, you have new...our people are still there and they're still ready to sit down and work, they're still down in the coves, they're still up the rivers, they're still along the Pacific Coast and they're still out on the prairies. You've got to go see them people and you've got to go take part in their energy and their ceremonies and things in Canada or wherever it might be. That's a whole thing in life if you can see that and take part in it."

The state of Nisqually watershed in 2001

Billy Frank:

"The watershed is in fairly good shape. We have a lot of good programs going on it. Certainly the Nisqually Tribe manages the watershed and along with the state and a whole bunch of environmental people and people working together and local governments as well as the counties and on both sides of the river and the Army. And I think the watershed is a workable watershed and the farmers and the ag [agricultural] people, everybody on that watershed participates, so that's a good thing, the hydroelectric dams and all of us. Even though sometimes we go through these droughts and everything, we work together to try to find a balance and that's the most important thing. Now our salmon, our steelhead is pretty well gone, they're wild steelhead. We don't know why they have never come back. There are just a lot of things that happen. Our pink salmon are getting healthier and that's a wild stock and our chum salmon are not as healthy as they used to be, but we're still holding our own on those, them are all wild. And then the rest, the Chinook and the coho and sockeye and other things that we've got are artificial and so we have to take advantage of that and try to work the wild and the artificial together and we're working on that every day and it's a continual thing that we work on. But that watershed is a workable watershed with all the people that's involved on it. I think we've been able to be observed out there by the United States as kind of a model watershed to try to bring people together to look at it and try to design other watersheds."

How to be a leader on the local and national level

Billy Frank:

"Well, the tribes are the ones that allow me to do that. The tribes, I don't do anything to hurt the tribes and I don't do anything to hurt any of our people politically or any way. I'm always trying to help wherever I can and support and bring them together. If there's a conflict of any kind between other tribes or anything I try to help and make some sense out of it. But the tribes allow me to basically speak with one voice. We have our commission and all of our tribes belong to them and they all...we pass resolutions and we pass initiatives to go forward to Congress or wherever we might be. It's like our Columbia River people and our California people, we try to all work together in this form of management for natural resources and support one another."

How to work with people who think the choices are either/or, fish or power, salmon or farmers

Billy Frank:

"Maybe some of these people you can't work with, but you don't give up on them. You don't give up on them and you don't tell them to go to hell because you're just going to have to get the best of them by doing what you do. You can talk to them in a forum or you can talk to them one on one and you can make them feel bad, you can...you use every damn trick you've got in the book. You can make them ashamed of themselves. You can get down and dirty with these people and you can talk about money, you can talk about who the hell they are and you can talk about where we was and where we are today and where in the hell are we going if we follow your route. You educate these people as you talk."

The importance of educating people, from tribes to Congress

Billy Frank:

"A big part of it now is all education. I could be speaking all the time, there's no stop to that, at the universities or the kids down here in the grade school and I do that. But a lot of it is testifying in front of the United States Congress, it's getting hearings throughout our country, it's trying to educate the courts to be part of the watershed: 'Spend your money on the watershed, that's an investment that's going to always be there.' It's the type of things that you can actually make happen with the position that you're in, to make them think about what has to be done. But education is the biggest part of trying to turn this big ship the right way; even our own people, educating our own people of the direction that we all have to go. It's a big job and will always be there."

Wa He Lut School, the dream of Maiselle Bridges

Billy Frank:

"It was her dream to have an Indian school at the Landing. She's my oldest sister. In 1974 the school was born in a little one-room building we built and then the Army was across the street from us. The little road was right here but the Army owned this piece of land. So on September of '74 we moved the schoolhouse, we just moved it over on the Army land and then we built our school over there. Before the general or anybody could know what was going on we had a school and about 20 kids going to school over there. Pretty soon the general come down one day and we were blacktopping the road going into the school, it was all mud and everything so we were blacktopping. He said, 'Billy, what are you doing?' And I said, 'Oh, we're blacktopping this road.' And so he said, 'You can't do this, this is Army land.' I said, 'Well, you never did run our pigs off on this side or our horses and so now you're going to run our school children off?' And so I went to...Senator [Warren] Magnuson was a senator of the United States at that time, and Senator Magnuson was our senator here in the State of Washington, I said, 'I've got a school down here that is on Army property and the Army wants me to move off and I'm not moving, all of us, my sister and all of us.' So we negotiated with the Army and so now we have that property. The Army deeded it over to dad and the Landing and it's being held there for our school purposes. Now we have like 130 kids going there. Senator Gorton was a big part of making sure that that school was rebuilt after the flood. The flood of 1998 was this big flood that we all along the Pacific Coast here, it was a terrible flood. It devastated our Nisqually River and everything. It took our school our and everything but we built a new school and that's it in that picture, but he was a big part along with Norm Dixon, Congressman Norm Dixon and all of our delegation from the State of Washington. They made sure that that school is still well and healthy and is funded. We just really take pride in these kids."

The message Billy Frank would like to leave

Billy Frank:

"We're going to survive and we're going to be healthy. With the help of all the neighbors, of all the medicines that are out there, the new technology is going to be better, the technology that's going to put the dams out of business. There won't be no more fight over dams; they'll be all gone. There'll be new technology to find power and so on and so forth. There'll be new technology to take these things that are destroying our environment out there, that destroyed some of our bays, these big giant plants that are put in poisons the water and everything, they'll be gone. They'll be gone. Why will they be gone? Because there's technology now that it's not feasible to have these dams any more, it's not feasible to have these kind of plants that destroy our little cities and smell them up and everything. These are things that if you're looking at life and you're a manager you look at way down the road, things might be bad today but how are we going to get better. Are we going to get better down the road? Yeah, we're going to get better."

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

Special Thanks to Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Charles Wilkinson, Author
"Messages from Frank's Landing"
University of Washington Press, Publisher

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