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Esther Ross, Stillaguamish Champion

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Esther Ross: Stillaguamish Champion
Robert H. Ruby
and John A. Brown
U of Oklahoma Press
Norman, OK; 2001
312 pages.

Unfortunately, American Indian women in the United States have largely remained veiled from general public attention or knowledge, although in most Indian communities they have been and remain the most vital force in forging the directions and promise for our future. Therefore, there was some elation in reading this reasonably well-focused biography of the Stillaguamish's Esther Ross.

I shared journey with Esther for nearly 30 years, although mostly as an observer through the first ten. Then, I saw her ignored and dismissed by the Indian leadership and spurned at each turn by government officials.

Esther's life was largely the tragedy of extraordinary energy being expended for the smallest of gains. Throughout life, she confronted abuses of power, position, agencies and organizations - unjustifiably directed against her rightful and modest claims.

Beyond revealing Esther Ross's wondrous character and commitment, the book's best feature is in giving account for a number of people who aided in securing the principal desired objects of her long fight. Thus, variously in brief or at length - in photos or text - David Getches, Jim Heckman, Chuck Trimble, Suzan Harjo, Billy Frank, Joe DeLaCruz, Ramona Bennett, Roger Jim, Dan Evans, Mike Grayum, Chuck McEvers, Suzan Satiacum, LaDonna Harris, Roy George, Barbara Lane, Mel Tonasket, Bernie White Bear and Sam Cagey, among some few others, are revealed in a well-deserved best light.

The book's greatest weakness is its reliance upon confabulation in sole source interviews about moments long since past, coupled with disregard of clarifying or contradicting documentation. This, perhaps, produces only harmless error in the larger context of its personal story. However, it dilutes its usefulness as an accurate history of detail and events.

Also a weakness: Esther's report of Mad Bear's judgment on Dick Gregory's 1966 state involvement is doubtlessly correct. But the authors' extrapolation that "Mad Bear believed that Indians should not join up with blacks" is puzzling. Mad Bear joined with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1967, and was a Poor Peoples' Campaign resident in summer 1968. In 1971, he offered his own "Rainbow Treaty Among the Races" in calligraphy on deerskin to James Farmer at an Indiana conference. One questions why no views are given of the magnificent Lillian Gregory, who additionally courted arrest on Washington's Nisqually River in 1966.

But without question, there is no truth to offensive accusations rendered by Bill Jefferies against an unidentified high-ranking "black man," at chapter 12. John Finley, the referenced official, diverted not one cent of "war on poverty" Indian funds to black communities. Nor did he ever wrest for power over Indians in the governor's office, or elsewhere. The "picture" painted by Jefferies is either artifice of ego and imagination, or an atrophy of intellect.

At least twice the book places Janet McCloud and me together in events when, in fact and for extended period of time, we were a continent apart. It is also fact that it was not I who called Esther's friend Margaret Green regarding "Samish records" - about which I had no knowledge during the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties.

The early history of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission is tortuously miscast at page 276. It's absolutely false that anyone "took some money from STOWW to form NWIFC." The formation commenced at a May 1974 Portland, Oregon, meeting of tribes which had secured the Boldt Decision earlier in the year. There were no preceding acts nor years of conspiracy and intrigue - as is plain from transcript for the concluding plenary session. That document is not cited by Ruby and Brown, although it includes an Esther Ross speech. Any work preceding that session was set aside - literally torn, chart by chart, from the walls - and decision made to begin anew in drafting the charter for an inter-tribal coordinating agency. Ensuing months of very complete minutes, executed by Florence Kinley in text from shorthand, additionally refute the book's account of NWIFC's development.

Causes for a fracturing of the Survival of American Indians Association and its falling into lethargy by 1967 become apparent in its 1964-66 minutes as well. The SAIA resurrection evolved with the success of Maiselle Bridges and Edith McCloud in recruiting a credible number of Indians for involvement in the 1968 Poor Peoples Campaign, an activity commenced before Dr. King's April assassination. At that point, I became personally engaged in the lives of Esther Ross, her son Frank Allen, and her grandchildren David, Barbara, Lois and later Sandra. A hereditary Shoalwater chief, Myrtle Landry, joined with us in traveling across country and back.

This led to Esther and Myrtle's naming Franks Landing figures as their tribal delegates to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) conventions in Albuquerque and Anchorage in 1969 and 1970. An added resolution of the Puyallup Tribe gave us 30 tribal votes to cast. We arrived in Alaska to find that STOWW had already claimed the Stillaguamish, Shoalwater and Puyallup NCAI voting credentials for a STOWW bloc. Our official resolutions trumped their having nothing and none. But maintaining NCAI membership for Esther in 1969 had critical impact.

Immediately following the federal filing of the treaty fishing rights case, United States vs. Washington, a major Washington, D.C., law firm filed an intervention in the lawsuit in behalf of various named tribes - who had not been consulted and who had not given authorization. The names had been drawn from NCAI's current roll of member tribes, which included the Stillaguamish. Esther took position that they should be in the case, but that she should have her own independent attorney. David Getches of the Native American Rights Fund agreed to represent her and the Stillaguamish. United States Judge George Boldt ruled in her tribe's favor in his February 1974 decision. The 1974 NCAI San Diego convention followed with a support resolution, and the NCAI executive staff, Chuck Trimble and Suzan Harjo, acted with Getches and the federal government to give it effect.

In April 2000, a long train of memories were revisited when Frank Allen - in a wheelchair, and one foot lost to diabetes - arrived with his faithfully caring son, David, in their charter line bus for the funeral of the Quinault's Joe DeLaCruz. But the continuing great love for Esther found a most precious expression at the December 2000 memorial for Jim Heckman, where Billy Frank reminded the SRO gathering of friends: "Now we can't say goodbye to Jim without remembering the time and times he gave to and spent with Esther Ross."

It had not been an easy life for her, and it has probably been more difficult and constraining for her grandson, David, 43 - being with her all the way; now with her invalid son, his father. It was not the fates which conspired against her, but rather small people in little organizations and powerful agencies. Persistently, they chose to act on skewed personal and political bases; seldom professionally. If a signature statement has been authored to typify the operative attitude she confronted in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it would be the words entered in the April 5, 1973 diary of Stanley Lyman, an Agency Superintendent: "I couldn't keep back the hatred and the glee when I saw that [Indian] finally submitting."

What carries forth? That may be seen in sidelight to the Ruby and Brown accounts of the Stillaguamish 1975 blockage of America's Bicentennial Wagon Train after it left the Peace Arch and arrived at Arlington.

In late June 1975, Esther Ross had sent telegrams to each David Getches and myself at Stanford University, where separately we had been invited by the American Bar Association to attend Columbia University's 4-day "American Assembly on Law and the Changing Society." Routed to our inns, the telegrams simply read: "We plan to attack the wagon train [again]. Send reinforcements." Although arriving days earlier, the messages were intercepted by the FBI, then released only at time of our checkout departures. A large FBI presence was on hand in conjunction with an appearance of the Attorney General of the United States, Edward H. Levi, as our keynote speaker. On the evening of our first day, word had started filtering across the campus about news reports that two FBI agents had been shot and killed by Indians in South Dakota that same day.

When the Attorney General prefaced his formal delivery of the following night with references to the FBI deaths, I challenged his additional inappropriate condemnation of Indians in general and his assignments of guilt in the absence of any identified suspects. As I interjected from balcony of the new Stanford Law Center auditorium, FBI agents moved angrily to shie

My name is Sandra M. Allen, Chief Esther R. Ross Was my Mom and grandmother.

My brother David has received a history book for his birthday about yrs after grandma passed away in 1990 and we had noticed that the full information wasn't in it about Stillaguamish and this is when we decided to have Esther's(grandmas)story written.

I spent from birth till I was 16years old on the road with grandma and I had an education that I thought should be shared and here it is. To me Grandma was a role model and someone I wanted to live my life by and follow. In the book tells everything both good and bad in some eyes, but everyone has a opion. When my dad (Frank)and myself talked about it too me I wanted a book out because I wanted to have people read and see what she did and was able to do. To me she did more then she was ever given credit for. David and myself gave our education while growing up but in this book everyone can see why we are proud to have had the experience. I have finished high school and college this year will be going on to law school to finish grandmas work... I will be going for Land and Water rights and am very proud to have had her as a Mom and as a role model. My Father Chief Frank Allen passed away one week before seeing the cover of the book on May 14.2001 it was given to us at the gave site, this is to us a wonderful book and has everything in it that we wanted and to my brother David and myself we hope schools will use it and hope that it encourages people to not give up and that one person can make a difference. This women you all are reading about was a legend, role modle,history maker,mother,and friend. She had people who couldn't stand to be around her and she had people who couldn't wait to see her she was a honor to be around and I am proud to say this book is a 5 star. This wasn't to be about facts or to please everyone this book is from us to you the readers its not just one more book Ruby and Brown have written, this is a part of our lives and a way to keep it all together for our children and grandchildren and so on this is opening up our lives to you to share with you what kind of women she was, she was a loving, caring and I wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for her and my dad Frank Allen, I would have been like my other siblings out drinking and no education or just given up but my goal in life is to be like her and do as she would have me do. So please take the time and read about my mother/grandmother, and see why we wanted to share her life with you and I hope she can be a role model for you also or your children. I was with Esther till she was taken from us and went on to school and when I graduated I dedicated my diploma to my grandma and dad cause without them I wouldn't have had the wisdom or strength to try and be the most I could be....

So please share this with others and I hope the memories of our life with our mom/grandmother and father will live on. Dad and Grandma always were together and now they are together in peace.
I miss dad and grandma so Dearly but with this it makes it as they are here with us still and I can still her my grandmas voice when I read the book so many memories. Some people have a scrap book we have a history richer to us then gold that is what dad and grandma left me the richest person on earth a life time of fighting and tears and sweat to give me and my children and theirs an IDENTITY and its one we hold close to our hearts.

Esther Ross, Stillaguamish Champion, reads like a novel. It is the thirteenth book by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, co-authors of several popular Pacific Northwest Indian ethnohistories. American Indian activist LaDonna Harris describes it as "A story about an American Indian woman who takes incredible risks." Esther's daring schemes for tribal identification were played out over fifty years (1926-1976).
Legislators who met up with Ross still mention the fiery-eyed Indian woman chief obsessed with the goal of federal recognition of the Stillaguamish people. The tribe was a signatory of the 1855 Point Elliott Treaty, yet without federal recognition the Stillaguamish could not carry into effect the treaty promises-rights to certain lands, use of certain waterways. Eventually the policy makers with whom Esther kept company by way of her frequent trips to the Capitol declared her a nuisance. Her long-winded speeches, highly repetitive, and her disregard for protocol irritated the officials; she would talk far beyond her allotted time, and she wouldn't go home.
Ruby and Brown invested almost a decade piecing together Esther's story after her son Frank offered them the five footlockers of primary documents and secondary source materials which Esther had kept. While the materials provided a close look at twentieth-century Indian politics and federal policy, the compelling subject was Esther Ross, a woman ordinary and extraordinary, complex and creative, tricky and tenacious as a bulldog.
Ruby points out that Ross "was a double minority, one-fourth Indian and a feminist before that word was coined." Hard to believe that this same Esther never knew she was Indian until near the end of her high school years. Her father was Norwegian, and Esther lived her girlhood in white Northern California society. Her mother, not noticeably Indian, did not enlighten her daughter regarding Stillaguamish blood quantum. Esther's father died when she was ten. When Esther was twenty-two, in response to a call from Indian relatives in distress, Esther and her mother moved to Washington State where Esther, ignorant of tribal history, decided to "uncover her identity."
To strengthen her quest Esther searched the vicinity of the Stillaguamish River for a legitimate source of land to qualify as a land base for her people. She sought ancestral burial grounds from the whites who owned and plowed them. Instead she was offered some bones from an exposed site. Applying her flair for the dramatic, Esther would spill these human bone fragments across the desk of governor Dan Evans in Olympia and later, display them in the national Capitol.
In pre-war days Esther's foot-going treks to visit Stillaguamish families increased the tribal membership to more than sixty, but post-war visits revealed a group more interested in award moneys than in Esther's larger goals.
During 1964 Esther's path crossed that of Herbert Holdridge, a retired brigadier general who advocated buying up Nevada desert land and turning it into a sovereign nation for American Indians. However, she had far greater interest in fishing rights for the Stillaguamish, a matter of sustenance and revenue. Joining the Poor People's Campaign (1968), Esther and her son Frank were bused to DC where Esther made her presence felt.
The Boldt Case would make the difference. The federal government was contesting the state of Washington's control of Indian fishing rights. The government attorney advised that Indians were entitled to fifty percent of the fish harvest; the state had ruled five percent. Judge George Boldt would try the case in Tacoma's U.S. District Court. And Esther Ross would have her "fifteen minutes." Fortunately for Esther-and the courtroom-David Getches represented Esther as special counsel. When she took the stand, he guided her through a review of Stillaguamish River history. Judge Boldt's ruling favored the tribes. The grumbling of non-Indian commercial fishers was heard for years, but the Stillaguamish had won the right to fish.
It would be difficult to add up the thousands and thousands of miles Esther Ross traveled during her fifty-year crusade for Stillaguamish recognition by the federal government. Or to say how many state capitols she visited, how many elected officials heard her speak-badgering, cajoling, but never threatening-on behalf of all unrecognized tribes who 120 years ago had chosen to stay on their homelands rather than accept the reserves chosen by white men. Their great-grandfathers had signed a treaty that would preserve fishing rights, but those rights had been denied the landless Indians. Esther became, eventually, champion for the whole, her mission self-sustained despite her meager income. Esther's complete and absolute dedication was not doubted. Perhaps this accounted for her supporters even among those persons who deplored her outrageous schemes.
Among such schemes was one that would temporarily disrupt the national Bicentennial pageant. The escapade began June, 1975 in Blaine, Washington, near the Canadian border, where three horse-drawn wagons and Western-clad riders headed for the 200th National Birthday Celebration, a 3000-mile trek to Valley Forge. It was son Frank's idea to set up an attack, to waylay the wagon train until the Secretary of the Interior unconditionally recognized the Stillaguamish tribe. Frank called television and radio stations, and Paul Harvey on his daily national newscast announced the impending attack. Indian activism of the 1970s was recalled-siege at Wounded Knee, takeover at Alcatraz, trouble at Fort Lawton. The "attack" might prove to be more than symbolic.
At Stillaguamish headquarters (Island Crossing), Frank stopped the wagons. And Esther, age 71, a wrinkled little woman wearing Indian clothing, stood in the middle of the road and read her speech. An assistant to the interior secretary assured Esther that the document granting tribal recognition would be ready in thirty days. Eight months then passed without word from the government, and a new secretary of the interior, Thomas Kleppe, was appointed.
Two years after the Boldt decision Esther "recruited" a steelhead trout from the Stillaguamish river to play a part in a scheme that stunk to high heaven. Needing to familiarize Kleppe with her drive for tribal recognition, she air-freighted him a frozen 18-pound trout labeled "Washington Salmon." The flying fish had begun to age en route; on arrival, dockers, holding their noses, wanted someone from Interior to take it off their hands immediately. Kleppe's response to Esther was to thank her and mention his preference for beef, saying he had given the beautiful fish to his neighbors.
Esther had problems within her tribe. They referred to her style of leadership as nepotism and resented her hiring whites as assistants. They challenged her right to increase, then decrease, the blood quantum for tribal enrollment to suit her personal intent. They openly wondered how much of tribal funds she was spending on herself. The Stillaguamish wanted Esther stripped of privileges and functions. It was more than two years since the promise made at the wagon train; push needed to become shove. Esther Ross sued the Department of Interior. Judge June L. Green heard the case. On October 27, 1976 Esther Ross' goal was achieved: the Stillaguamish had a recognized place in time.
During January, 1988 Esther began to sicken. Ever-protective son Frank cared for his mother until her death August 1, 1988, a month short of her 84th birthday.

In response to Hank Adams review on Esther Ross, Stillaguamish Champion. Regarding the weakness ascribed to the book by Hank when Ruby is delving into comments made by Mad Bear about Dick Gregory. In footnote 6 of Chapter 7, a reference is made to the citation for Ruby's claim of Mad Bear's judgement of Gregory. The source cited is Arlington Times December 15, 1966: "Of the Nisquallies, the Tuscarora remarked that they had made a bad mistake by importing Dick Gregory, Negro comedian, to draw attention to their cause. (Gregory was arrested and brought to trial last month on a charge of illegal fishing.) The Indian and Negro problems are not the same. There is no parallel, Indians owned and occupied the land, while the Negro people were brought in as slaves of the white man. Therefore, he said, the Medicine Creek Treaty was not allowed at Gregory's trial." The authors properly cited their source of information before making the statement.

In this well-balanced biography of the late Stillaguamish Tribal leader, Esther Ross is described variously as hard-driving, stubborn, difficult, determined and unyielding. I knew her as all those things, but most of all as a shameless persuader.

She once persuaded me to traipse through a heavily forested mud bog along the Stillaguamish River in search of lost Indian graves which she insisted I must write about. I lost a boot when I sank knee deep in the mud, ruined a pair of slacks and needed a shower before I could return to work.

We didn't find the graves that day, but Ross was undaunted. The bones of her ancestors deserved to be on sacred land, Stillaguamish land. She carried a box of bones with her on occasion to emphasize her point to reporters, politicians and any one else she thought could help her cause.

For more than 15 years Ross and her son, frank, were visitors to The Herald in Everett where I was a reporter and later editor. She may have looked like a gentle old woman in Native American garb, but she was a force that would not be denied.

Ruby and Brown meticulously documented her early days, her triumphs, and her ultimate rejection by modern-day Stillaguamish, who, without Ross, would still be talking about the raw deal white men dealt their ancestors.

They also showed a much more intimate side of the woman who carefully crafted a public persona. They went through dozens of boxes of unsorted personal papers and countless interviews to accomplish this task. In doing so, we see the woman as well as her mission. We see the great persuader at her best and at her worst. We see the struggles of Native Americans in the late 20th century to gain self-determination, treaty rights and cultural sovereignty.

After covering Stillaguamish Tribal issues for many years, I thought I knew a lot about Ross. I was wrong. This book taught me so much more and I appreciate the thousands of hours of research and interviews Ruby and Brown completed to bring it to fruition.

A few weeks ago the Marysville Globe carried a story and photos of the Stillaguamish Tribe's three-day Festival of the River celebration. Hundreds attended. Somewhere in her lost dreams, I know Ross saw such a day. Too bad it did not come in her lifetime.