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Spring 2024

Native Americans

Winter 2005

Sacajawea's People: The Lemhi Shoshones and the Salmon River Country

In this year of 2005, the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, we are again reminded of the role Sacajawea played in that long journey westward. However, Sacajawea’s tribe of origin, the Lemhi, has gone largely ignored. Only recently have historians given any significance to what Native American history offers us past the late 19th century. It’s this oversight that John W.W. Mann (’01 Ph.D. Hist.) addresses regarding the Lemhi tribe’s heroic struggle to maintain its separate ancestry, cultural heritage, and identity during the 20th century in Sacajawea’s People: The Lemhi Shoshones and the Salmon River Country.

It is, frankly, an excruciating and confusing … » More …

Fall 2004

The Renaissance of American Indian Higher Education: Capturing the Dream

 

Much of the effort of American Indian education in recent years has been to reverse the effects of the deadly programs of the past, when the schools most Indians had access to were procrustean institutions, to which they were required to adjust, or fail. The intent of this book is to document the story of the Native American Higher Education Initiative (NAHEI) and the concept of the tribal college movement. The NAHEI is identified as a partnership of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation with the tribal colleges and universities, three federal schools, four national American Indian educational organizations, and mainstream institutions of higher education whose … » More …

Summer 2008

A Dialogue with the Past

A fierce Pacific storm in February 1970 revealed early remains of Ozette, on the Olympic Coast between Cape Flattery and La Push. Worried about the site's vulnerability to looters and further storms, Makah tribal leader Ed Claplanhoo '56 called archaeologist Richard Daugherty at Washington State University, commencing an 11-year excavation of the site. The excavation yielded thousands of well-preserved artifacts and a wealth of clues to the history and culture of Makahs and other coastal tribes. » More ...
A new memorial in Neah Bay, built on land donated by Ed Claplanhoo '56, his wife Thelma, and two other Makah families, commemorates area veterans and the presence of Spain on the Northwest coast as early as 1774. Photo Zach Mazur
Fall 2008

A memorial and a blessing

At the western edge of the Makah Nation village of Neah Bay sits a tidy new park. It marks the spot where 216 years ago Spanish explorers built the first European settlement in the continental United States west of the Rockies and north of San Francisco.

Fort Núñez Gaona–Diah Veterans Park, dedicated in May, was built on property donated by Ed Claplanhoo ’56, his wife Thelma, and two other Makah families in a unique partnership amongst the Makahs, the state, and the Spanish government.

Claplanhoo, a former Makah Tribal chair, had known of the historic significance of his property for many years, even marking … » More …

Fall 2008

A new college guide

The market is full of books on how to get into and succeed in college, but few of those books are targeted at students who may be the first in their family to go beyond high school. Even fewer are targeted specifically to the needs of Native American students.

Two faculty members at Washington State University have sought to fill that need with a handbook titled The American Indian and Alaskan Native Student’s Guide to College Success, published in 2007.

The book is for students, but it’s also for “quite a range of stakeholders,” says Michael Pavel, the author and associate professor in the … » More …

Fall 2002

Palmers want to give others hope for the future

Sometime in the near future Perry Palmer and his wife, Marcie, want to return to the Colville Indian Reservation. Young students there lack good role models, as well as incentives, Perry says. They need to be made aware of opportunities for advanced education and benefit from them as the Palmers have.

Perry completed a master’s degree in education at Washington State University in May. Marcie will finish her doctorate in counseling psychology next May.

Both are members of the Colville Confederated Tribes. They met on the reservation, where Marcie spent three years as a social worker for Child Protective Services, and were married there in … » More …

Fall 2002

Whispered prayers

On the floor of Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum, Native American children dressed in full regalia run off steam before the grand dance at the Pah-Loots-Pu Powwow this Saturday night in April. One of them is Red Bear McCloud, the 5-year-old son of arena director Russell McCloud, seated at the announcer’s platform in jeans and a crimson wind jacket. Father looks on at son unhurriedly. The grand dance is scheduled for 6 p.m., an hour away, but McCloud knows it will most likely be later. Always factor in Indian time—about half an hour more than what’s advertised.

“I grew up going to powwows,” McCloud says. He … » More …