"Oh God, here comes Esther Ross." Such was the greeting she received from members of the U.S. Congress during her repeated trips to the Capitol on behalf of Stillaguamish Indians. Tenacious and passionate, Esther Ross's refusal to abandon her cause resulted in federal recognition of the Stillaguamish Tribe in 1976. Her efforts on behalf of Pacific Northwest Indians at federal, state, and local levels led not only to the rebirth of the Stillaguamish but also to policy reforms affecting all Indian tribes. In this rare, in-depth portrait of a contemporary American Indian woman, Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown document Ross's life and achievements. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Stillaguamish tribe, located on the Puget Sound in Washington State, had all but disappeared. With no organization or system of communication, tribal members dispersed. Desperate for help, surviving members asked Ross, a young, well-educated descendant of Stillaguamish and Norwegian heritage, to assist them in suing for lost land and government services. For fifty years, she waged a persistent campaign, largely self-staffed and self-funded. Despite personal problems, cultural barriers, and reluctance among some tribal members, Ross succeeded, but she was eventually forced from tribal leadership.

Broadens the scope and meaning of American Indian political activism by focusing on the movement's early--and largely neglected--struggles, revealing how early activists exploited Cold War tensions in ways that brought national attention to their issues.

The Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest inhabit a vast region extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from California to British Columbia. For more than two decades, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest has served as a standard reference on these diverse peoples. Now, in the wake of renewed tribal self-determination, this revised edition reflects the many recent political, economic, and cultural developments shaping these Native communities. From such well-known tribes as the Nez Perces and Cayuses to lesser-known bands previously presumed "extinct," this guide offers detailed descriptions, in alphabetical order, of 150 Pacific Northwest tribes. Each entry provides information on the history, location, demographics, and cultural traditions of the particular tribe. Among the new features offered here are an expanded selection of photographs, updated reading lists, and a revised pronunciation guide. While continuing to provide succinct histories of each tribe, the volume now also covers such contemporary—and sometimes controversial—issues as Indian gaming and NAGPRA. With its emphasis on Native voices and tribal revitalization, this new edition of the Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest is certain to be a definitive reference for many years to come.

The imagined ghosts of Native Americans have been an important element of colonial fantasy in North America ever since European settlements were established in the seventeenth century. Native burial grounds and Native ghosts have long played a role in both regional and local folklore and in the national literature of the United States and Canada, as settlers struggled to create a new identity for themselves that melded their European heritage with their new, North American frontier surroundings. In this interdisciplinary volume, Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush bring together scholars from a variety of fields to discuss this North American fascination with "the phantom Native American." "Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence" explores the importance of ancestral spirits and historic places in Indigenous and settler communities as they relate to territory and history--in particular cultural, political, social, historical, and environmental contexts. From examinations of how individuals reacted to historical cases of "hauntings," to how Native phantoms have functioned in the literature of North Americans, to interdisciplinary studies of how such beliefs and narratives allowed European settlers and Indigenous people to make sense of the legacies of colonialism and conquest, these essays show how the past and the present are intertwined through these stories.

Long before vacationers discovered BC’s Sunshine Coast, the Sliammon, a Coast Salish people, called the region home. Elsie Paul is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. In this remarkable book, she collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents, who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, stories, and legends. Her adult life unfolded against a backdrop of colonialism and racism. As Paul worked to sustain a healthy marriage, raise a large family, cope with tremendous grief and loss, and develop a career and give back to community, she drew strength from Sliammon teachings, which live on in the pages of Written as I Remember It.

In this companion work to Peace Weavers, her award-winning first book on Puget Sound’s cross-cultural marriages, author Candace Wellman depicts the lives of four additional intermarried indigenous women who influenced mid-1800s settlement in the Bellingham Bay area. She describes each wife’s native culture, details ancestral history and traits for both spouses, and traces descendants’ destinies, highlighting the families’ contributions to new communities. Jenny Wynn was the daughter of an elite Lummi and his Songhees wife, and was a strong voice for justice for her people. She and her husband Thomas owned a farm and donated land and a cabin for the second rural school. Several descendants became teachers. Snoqualmie Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of the most powerful native leader in western Washington, married a cattleman. After her death from tuberculosis, kind foster parents raised her daughters, who ultimately grew up to enhance Lynden’s literary and business growth. Resilient and strong, Mary Allen was the daughter of an Nlaka’pamux leader on British Columbia’s Fraser River. The village of Marietta arose from her long marriage. Later, her sons played important roles in southeast Alaska’s early fishing industry. The indigenous wife of Fort Bellingham commander George W. Pickett (later a brigadier general in the Civil War) left no name to history after her early death, but gifted the West with one of its most important early artists, James Tilton Pickett. Interwoven Lives was a finalist for the 2020 Willa Literary Award, scholarly nonfiction.

In this book, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, and Aboriginal leaders focus on how Coast Salish lives and identities have been influenced by the two colonizing nations (Canada and the US) and by shifting Aboriginal circumstances. Contributors point to the continual reshaping of Coast Salish identities and our understandings of them through litigation and language revitalization, as well as community efforts to reclaim their connections with the environment. They point to significant continuity of networks of kinfolk, spiritual practices, and understandings of landscape. This is the first book-length effort to directly incorporate Aboriginal perspectives and a broad interdisciplinary approach to research about the Coast Salish.