Mary: Meeting with Lloyd [Colfax] at Neah Bay, August 9th 1973.

Lloyd: ...started a summer program here, and it's a month long, 18 credit hours, we have Jerry [Flew?] from Craig, Alaska, who's program we felt very strongly about, it's a program that has resource centers rather than self-contained class rooms, and they're a mixed group of youngster from grade one through grade six, uh, it may end up being ungraded. We will have the staff go into the homes, instead of sending the report cards out, to discuss the results, and sometimes those people come here. And that part of the program, it would be real nice if you could see that tomorrow, the training of the teacher, we have the teachers, the staff, we have the teacher core, we have six people in the teacher core here, three of them are Macaw, we have the teacher trainees sponsored by our own program, there's five Macaws. The teacher core people have one year to go before they become certified teachers, and three of those are Macaws. The teacher trainees have three years to go before they all become teachers and certified. Now, we will probably run this through the University of Puget Sound, and Ernie Deroches, Dr. Deroches, will be coming up on the 11th, which would be the day after tomorrow, I think. The rest of the people would be the teacher aides, and the community members, and the headstart group. Together we've got 68 people involved in this training in the community here.

Woman: From the community?

Lloyd: From the community. Well, a mixture of from the community and the teachers and the school, 68 altogether have come out. And we have Gene Kelly in math, who has done some special things in work with Indian people, and she's got a real excited group in there doing their thing with math. And then we have Art [Fierre?] from Peninsula College who is teaching marine biology, and he's attempting to relate that to the Indian tribes of the coast, to show why for 25,000 years they've been successful, and all of a sudden maybe we're not successful anymore. But that kind of an approach. And then we have English. And we have Jeanette Morgan, Sister Jeanette Morgan, here and doing that kind of work. Bob Johnson with be here from Oregon State, and he'll be, he's a linguist, so he'll be doing some work with the language group. We got Sandy Johnson Asawa, who is a Macaw, to do work in the culture thing, and she's the one who wants to see you tomorrow. Her husband is Chuck Niece, he just walked by there just a little bit ago, and he does work in curriculum development with photographs and the understanding of that kind of discipline, so we're working like six hours a day for every day in the month of August. We do have some visitors that are coming in. Uh, from Apalachia, from West Virginia, and there's ten of them coming in on the 13th, 14th, and 15th, and I think we have six more coming in on the 24th, 25th, and the 26th, which is the Macaw day weekend for the same place. They've been real interested in our ability to involve the community in our programs. The last community meeting, we haven't had community meetings, and we're not concerned about them in the summer-time. It's real hard, and people are always busy and doing things, so... We had a white leader here one time last summer, and he was real concerned because we weren't having meetings, and because the constitution said to have meetings once a month, whether you need it or not. The man that we have is not concerned about those things, I think the programs are moving, so there's not that same kind of a concern. So, these people have the same kind of a program as we do, except it's in a different context, it's in the context of those people who are having some problems in West Virginia. So, they will be here, Ernie Deroches will be here, the people that I mention, Bob Johnson, will be here starting tomorrow...

Mary: Who's Bob Johnson?

Lloyd: Bob is from Oregon State and he's some sort of a linguist. Does some work in that field, he writes, you know. Things like that.

Mary: Non-Indian?

Lloyd: Non-Indian, right. He's not an Indian person. We have a young boy who spent a year at the University of Washington who's doing some real work in the [Salix?] language, and Bob probably will work with him here. This boy's about 19, I think, or 20.

Mary: What's his name?

Lloyd: Scott Tyler. A real young fellow. Who else do we have... We had Sam Stanley here today to address the group assembly, and he's the director for the Center For the Study of Man at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., and he's up here taking a look at the [Ozet Beaks?]. He gave a strong presentation about his understanding, how he feels about Indian people, which is a very positive approach. He says, "Take the kids to see the artifacts up there, because the artifacts are beautiful. They belong to the kids, they belong to the family." He said, "The Magna Carta, kids know nothing about that, it's not part of their lives, forget about it. Look at those things that are real to them." He went on to discuss some real issues about Indian people, and he had the support of almost everybody in there. We do have, the summer group does have a problem, and it's the secondary group, the high school group. There's unbelievable prejudice there, at the same time believable, it's hard to find, I think, a group that might, especially Masters degree'd educators, who have the sense and the feel that they're, especially if they've been here a long time, that they have the answers and everything, in spite of the fact that the kids have gone through the school without achieving. A remark made yesterday was, 'don't go to the Indians, come to us, because we've been here 20 years, we know,' to the new school teachers, so like I say, there's a real problem here.

Mary: So, you know, all the movies, like for instance, that "Man Called Horse", the white man comes into the place and he learns so much from the Indians that he can outdo the Indians. And that's what the whites get shown on the TV, and various mass medias for many years. So it's awfully easy for someone who has been here for a long time, like for instance, I was asked to speak when Evergreen State College was just starting, and they would introduce so-and-so and they would say 'a native', 'a native', four of them, when they came to me, they couldn't think of something to say. I said, "Well, that's a hard act to follow, isn't it?"

Lloyd: The group from one to six is just terrific, I heard.

Mary: I believe it.

Lloyd: Tomorrow the class is going out, the marine biology class is going out at five in the morning tomorrow, so the chances of the day being all mixed up are real good, I think. They're going out to the beaches and they're going to look at the marine life and stuff like that, and start on those kinds of studies. So... But I think the rest of the classes all start at eight o'clock in the morning, go 'til about three o'clock.

Mary: And that's here?

Lloyd: Yeah that's in the southern building way over here. [...] are usually in this one here. We've been setting aside 10-11 o'clock for a general assembly for meetings with the community if there's people, or speakers, you know Doctor Dougherty will speak for us some time, maybe next week some time. Of course he's the one who's the head of the [Ozet?] excavation, and I don't know who else, Sandy has been kind of frantically looking around for her group [...]. I think that we've made some, and are making some progress in the direction in which we would like to go. We've involved the community, In our last meeting we had over100 community members here. We've divided the town up into ten sections, we're taking the town and geographically dividing it into ten section, we have a representative in each one of those ten sections, whose responsibility it is to get all the issues from the school community counsel into that group. In the last case, we wanted to accept the Craig concept, we call it a Craig concept only because it was used at Craig and we understand it that way, it's not a Craig concept per-se, it's something that was developed in England i think, and really took its way around. We like part of that, and we want to accept part of that, but the community was a little afraid of that, they're just not that ready to move. So, we broke the thing into ten divisions and then send people out into these divisions, and invited them for dinner, and sat down for dinner, and we reported what we saw in Craig, and after we reported, asked them how they felt, all the questions that we could possibly answer, how they felt and whether they would like to see us get into this kind of a thing. We had like a vote of 94-for and 21-against, a real wide range. So, when the summer school started, most of the skeptics even were enthused. So we've got a strong program, the only part of it is the high-school program, I don't know what we're going to do with it.

Mary: You know, I think one of the things that Indian people are going to have to face is the fact that the longer we maintain our understanding, or the credibility of our understanding on white friends or black friends or even Indian friends, the less likely we will turn the corner on self-determination. Now we're going along and as long as some good white writes our programs, we get money. We can't do that any longer. The thing that I feel, now there have been people like yourself that have worked in education for a great variety of reasons, and for many years, and we're going to have to say to the schools, "Because you have not found a better way, we insist on one administrative position in a school district where there is a reasonable population of Indians." And that and the credibility of that will be that this particular person be assigned classroom teachers to supervise. And also, because it has been very easily noted in the progress of our Indian projects, that they have the Indians to supervise too. So that there can be an exchange, because mostly its all whites up here and then the little Indian prancing around down here wondering why he can't make any headway. Because there are two things that whites respond to: money and credentials. We don't have the money, we don't have the credentials. But we know that a white that know's nothing about Indians can come in and get 18 thousand, 20 thousand, 50 thousand. Don't know one scratch about Indians! And we're going to just have to turn the table. So we don't know a lot about administration, but we've got to start some way! And this is one of the things, and I'd like you to read it. There are two things that we have written. We've taken one step in this big project, easing into, and just saying let Indians be the instruments of demonstrating the project. Hire Indians to work with Indians, in other words. But in this one, we have said, we need more than being hired, we need the status and position of an administrative. Like for instance, now at Evergreen State College, I'm supposed to be a faculty member, and I can get the white secretaries to get off their butts! And because of how they feel about me and get away with it, they've actually raised Cain and been real beligent and hostile to Indians who have called, and that's gotta stop! But the only way that we can stop it is if we get high enough in the administrative force that these people see, but the thing of it is, we cannot get there without the full pay. Not the full pay because we are educated Indians like [...]'s situation there, but full pay because we are Indians! Just like what the white people call the grandfather clause, where people from a variety of experiences come in and they say, from now on, you'll be doctors, from now on, you'll be anthropologists. And that's what we're going to have to do, we're going to have to take a moratorium on this chronic training they've got us rutted into, and say, "We've been training all these years, now we want to prove it." We want to prove it at an administrative level, of course they're going to...

Lloyd: ...I've got a paper here, I guess I gave it back to Dave, but Dave Whitner, do you know him? He's just about ready to get his doctorate out at Central Michigan University, and he has some real, he's Squaxin Island, yeah, and he's a real strong advocate of a lot of things that you're saying, and he's our principle. And we went out to get him, when our principal left here we told the school board that we want an Indian for a principal, period. And we got, we had to two positions open, one for the coordinator of all Indian programs, we got two people applied. We got Don Buckingham, who's a white person, very very strong, very very knowledgeable about the school system, with all his superintendant's credentials, but right off the bat you feel that he has some empathy, he can see you suffering and stuff like this. Glen Olsen said, "That's my superintendant right their," without consulting us, without asking if this was the right way to go. I accompanied him to Olympia, and he and I went around and made the rounds to all the officers there, and he said, "I've got my superintendant," and was done. As soon as the school board opened he made that suggestion, and I objected. I had said nothing to him up until that time, I said, "That's not the way we feel. We want Dave Whitner as a superintendant." That caused a big hassle, everything stopped, everything came to a halt. They discussed this for two weeks and got another special meeting. He recommended Dave for the principalship, and we know it was against his judgement, that he didn't want to do this, and we got Don as the... However, it was very lucky that we got [...], but we've had to do this, you know. We've had to make these kinds of stands, we've had to talk to, like Glen Olsen says, "You can't tell me about Indians, Lloyd. I've lived with them. I've lived with them all my life, I was with the [...], I went to school with them." I said, "Glen, I don't doubt that you did, but I'm wondering what kind of relationship that you had with those Indians."

Mary: Uh huh... When I get involved with people like this I always tell them, "you know, it's kind of interesting, here you've been with Indians five months or six months or ten year or whatever. I've lived with whites all my life and I still have to ask them, 'How is it with you folks?'."

Lloyd: Absolutely. But now we've go, I don't know if you know this man, but his name is Ray Willard, he's a [Klinket?]. Ray's going to be our English teacher here. He's going to be the basketball coach too, he's an Indian. And then we've got Bob Johnson, who is Macaw, and he's the PE man here. So we got 1,2,3, we got three Indian people here now, since we've started to make some efforts in 1969, and we got five...

Woman: Is Dave Whitner committed, himself?

Lloyd: Oh, yeah. And that's the reason we could never see eye-to-eye with the superintendant. We're forever in hot water, forever in hot water here [laughter]. Like, just the other day he was sitting right where you are , he said, " Who hired the painters?" We're paying for it ourselves, with our own money here. We said, "We did." "And is it true that you're giving them five dollars and hour?" he said. "Yes, it's true." He said, "You know that [...] got boys working for a dollar sixty and hour, two dollars and hour? That [...], who is a teacher here, is working for three dollars and hour, and Al Bigelow, who's a teacher here, working for four dollars and hour? And then you come along and pay these kids that don't even know how to paint, Macaw kids, don't even know how to do nothing, five dollars an hour?" And then I said, "I'm not really concerned about the teachers, one of those teachers, between the family of them, is making 25,000 a year here, and have been for 20 years. I don't give a damn if you pay them 2 bits and hour, as far as I'm concerned." It's just incredible, the thinking that goes on. Sometimes I'm foolish enough to believe that things are right sometimes!

Mary: This is what has kept me in hot water, I'm a non-believer, and no matter how good they get, I can't think that they understand. They must be good because of something else.

Woman: Beware of the blacks too, they set us back at the college about 15 years. They got into the administration and they didn't understand from the word go. It was just like having to start all over again. They're just the same thing as the white, they're like white turned inside out or something.

Mary: They try to put our programs...

Lloyd: Hi Jerry! Jerry, would you meet Mary Hillaire, [Hazil Peet?], and [Pauline Kuppy?]. Jerry [Flew?], who I was telling you about earier, who is running the school program, just recently from Craig, Alaska. Jerry's got some real strong programs to offer, one of the real problems that we have in this school is the fact that, you'll notice that the building over there is the elementary building. This part here is the high school building. We have one principal, he was taking care of the high school but the elementary school was kind of an autonomous thing just by itself over there. That created some real problems, now we're gonna get Jerry over there, so he'll be taking care of those people. He says, in a meeting, when there was so much bitching about underachievment and Indians, he said, "What are you doing about that? What kinds of things have you come up with? What kinds of programs have you come up with? To see how you can help these youngsters? You just got through telling me that you had 50% absenteeism in your classroom, what are you doing about that? Are you doing something?" And these people are bitching, their not doing anything about it. They're sitting there...

Mary: This is, and I think this comes up in the program too, Lloyd, and that is literally, until a kid is 9 years old, he should have an 'A' in everything regardless of what he does, because he becomes a whole person. And you see, as long as we have been governed by whites, that child, because we have been recognized only as children, the adults have been recognized only as children, there's no way to define child. So the child starts with being nothing to the white. And so they think they can do anything to it. But that child, the thing of it is, we should actually have the teachers learning about the children instead of the children learning about the teachers. And this is, if you understand the kinds of things that I've heard old people talk about, you didn't watch a child to control them or to see that they did 12 problems. You watched them to see what kinds of things they were interested in so that you could add to what they had. So the teacher busy watching the content of the curriculul is going to lose the pace of the child. So she'll just think, 'Well, that child should be at x-day in chapter 7.' Maybe the child is six times that much, she doesn't know. Maybe the child missed the whole boat, she doesn't know that. She just knows he should be. It's hard to get the teachers to really give away their books, it's so secure that you get from page one to page twelve in two weeks, and get from page twelve to sixty, and in 180 days you've gotta get through all... I've had that said a million times to me.

Lloyd: And if you miss one of those days you make it up a little bit later.

Mary: That's right!

Lloyd: My son was involved in a discussion with that same group today about counseling, [...] people should be a counselor. It ended up that the teachers all divided up the students, they were gonna counsel them, and Greg says, "How about the Indian people? What are we gonna do?" That's right, that's right, let's involve the Indian peoplel So it ended up that the Indian people would start to counsel, what they wanted to do, would start to counsel the new staff, and the new staff would still counsel the kids. There's no way that they wanted the Indian people to counsel that kids.

Mary: Well it's just the same way, [...] we wanted to know what is the most positive position in the college that we could have. So I was nominated for dean, but they said, "Oh Mary, you wouldn't want to be dean, you wouldn't be happy there. All it is is paperwork. And besides that, everyone knowing you realizes that you like to work with your people. You wouldn't want to deny that, would you?" All these things are just absolute contradictions, and so I said to them, "I will do anything, paperwork and all, that will help the situation that the Indian people are in. What we need is the status and the support of money. You don't get that teaching here. Look at the difference between McCann's wages and mine." He doesn't need that status! The whites have this damn country. But I said, "The Indians, who are the owners, they have nothing. So why should you get upset because one college has one Indian for a president?

Lloyd: You know, that's not any different than everyday work that goes on here. Like my brother's been on the boom here for a long time, and for loggers and people in that kind of industrial work, then the boom is a pretty good experience for them, because even though it's real hard work, you don't have to get up at three in the morning to get out in the woods some place and get back at six at night. You get up at like seven in the morning and get back at three thirty in the afternoon, so it's a nice job, just right out here. He didn't break his leg, but he tore some ligaments, so he was off from work for about three months. He had a real hard time, and when he got back to work, he said "[...], there's a promotion now, and you're next in line." But he said, "You wouldn't like to learn how to do it, there's machinery to operate, you wouldn't like to do that." He ended up saying, "No, I wouldn't like to do that," and another guy in back of him was promoted up in front of him. It's incredible.

Mary: It is, and the thing of it is the way they ease it around just by words.

Lloyd: Yeah. I said, "What happened, what did you do?" He said, "I don't know!" [laughter]

Woman: It reminds me of that story, the Indian and the white guy went out hunting, they went for a long way and the Indian was guiding the white man to the good hunting ground. So they got there and the white man shot first, and down fell a bird. The Indian went over and picked it up and it was a buzzard. Then they went on further, and of course the Indian shot too, and they went to pick up his bird, and his was an turkey. Then they were going home, and the white man said, "You got a turkey and I got a buzzard." A little bit further, "I got a buzzard and you got a turkey." Who ended up with the turkey? [laughter]

Mary: That's the truth.

Woman: You know, Blackhawk, in the story, as early as Blackhawks date, Blackhawk was trying to tell him something, his actions, he knew they couldn't understand his words. He had found that out the hard way... So at the dinner table one day, him and the general were sitting close together, well Blackhawk kept moving over like this, you know, and then he's move over again. Evidently, he was kind of a big guy, the general talking, moving further over, further over. Pretty soon the general commented, "Say, I'm about ready to fall off." And Blackhawk says, "Well, that's what I've been trying to show you, what you're doing to my people." See, that's a true story about Blackhawk trying to tell them then what they were doing, but they were just too intent and determined to build an image. They came from the gutters, for goodness sakes, and overhere, they established very very slowly. Took them 200 years to have a little red school house and a dale. And then the still hadn't got the bugs out of it. They claimed superiority...

Mary: You see, the school system initially was to control. It had these very poor people, all poor people, and they were all oppressed. But I don't know where in the whole psychology of oppression that one flicks up like a wart and becomes the oppressor, even of the oppressed. And that's what happened here in the United States. A few people flicked up from that gutter level and became intolerable opressors. And you read it throughout the whoe constitution, throughout the bill of rights, all those things implied to keep control, to keep the lid on. The only time it ever burst out is Watergate. They maintained it this long, total oppression.

Woman: You know, I was on the student government at college, and we began to watch Watergate, and I says, "Oh, all southerners," but it was all southerners! Everyone had a southern drawl, and the reason I remember the southern drawl is my argument with my girlfried down in Oklahoma who started the southern drawl. The white the [...]. In Watergate, it was all southern, and there were all yankees on the other side, and we said, "Uh oh..." I tried not to watch Watergate, and then Mary and I started talking about it, and we decided between us that it was a red herring. It was distracting from the economic crisis in other places and it moves the comments we're making.

Mary: What happened? The minute they got public attention, they start whacking off Indian program, minority programs, and poverty programs. Now these have all been drained...

Woman: Big slices! Millions of dollars! And you know there's not an Indian on that Watergate. And then another comment that I made on the student body government was that not only were there no Indians, lets see, they weren't involved. [...]

Mary: But you know, last year I was offered two presidential appointments in Washington D.C. The first one I just ignored, I just thought, "Well, they just haven't got anything else to do." And so when they called I just said I couldn't take it for reasons of my own. And then they called again, almost being insistent. Then the became threatening when I just pushed it off a little bit, they said, "Not a single Indian will get any call if you don't take this." And I said, "When have I become so important? I'm just a nothing. Your people can spit on me all through my school and chase me through the gutters. All through my work life, I can be just like a peon, and then all of a sudden I have to take a presidential appointment because my people will be..."

Woman: It's a good thing you didn't.

Mary: And I decided I'd carefully write them a letter. And say, "Thank you, but no thanks. I have something to do, and I can't have the burden of political favors."

Woman: And if it really came down to it, you can chase the Watergate back clear to George Washington.

Mary: Absolutely! Nothing as obscene and ludicrous as that Watergate has come up in just one year. You can bank on it.

Woman: And so many white do not realize that it's all white, because it's so party minded that they don't realize that it's all whites. That is so typical. Clear to George Washington...

Mary: Somebody was saying that they're looking for a commisioner for that commision on Indian affairs.

Lloyd: Sandy, could I stop you here for just a second? Marry Hillaire, Sandy Johnson. Oh, you've seen the people already, ok.

Woman: Can we figure out a way to get Mary into this picture?

Lloyd: Well, yeah. I was hoping that she could get worked in there sometime.

Woman: Tomorrow, Bob Johnson's coming [...] ten o'clock...

Lloyd. Yeah. I would like to have her in a meeting I've arranged at one o'clock, so if you can work her in there someplace, even in the morning sometime. I was thinking it's going to be kind of cut up tomorrow because at five o'clock Art [Fierre?] and his group are going to the beach, I think.

Woman: How long are they going to be gone?

Lloyd: I don't know how long they're expected to be gone but I think that there's a lot of them in that class, so...

Woman: When the tide comes in...

Lloyd: Yeah, when the tide comes in they'll all be in. [laugher]

Mary: That's very logical!

Lloyd: So are you going to work her in at sometime in the morning?

Woman: One o'clock is another meeting, from when 'til when?

Lloyd: I don't suppose it'll last much more than an hour, and hour and a half. If it all depends, we're playing it by ear pretty much. We do have Edy Hadoway, who's on this commitee. I don't know if she'll be here or stay in the classes or not, or if she's going to go out to the beaches.

Woman: Ok. I'll try to put that group in there, then.

Mary: We'll probably be around, I'd kind of like to roam the [back roads?] tomorrow.

Woman: We're interested in seeing anyone that would be interested in going to Evergreen. We're recruiting...

Mary: From age six to sixty. [laughter]

Woman: [...]

Mary: Or some of the people who would even like to work with us to even set up their work experience into educational equivalance. I really think before you invest too much in school you might consider this too, but your so close anyway.

Woman: The workstudy program is the same as on the job, they can get credit at Evergreen.

Lloyd: I was talking to Ty Parker about this and he had some concerns. He was our police officer here, he's head of the AA program but he's not really sure about that, and he's kind of in limbo about that. He's got a year at Washington State University, so I said, "Why don't you consider Evergreen, Ty?" I was talking, sitting here, and he said, "I never thought about that. I'm not real sure, who would you talk to?" I said, "Well talk to Mary, she'll be here sometime." Whether he might still have that same interest or not I don't know. But Ty has got a background, he's the chairman of the [...] schoolboard. See, we have...

Mary: Oh. That would be a good job to tie into...

Lloyd: Yeah. This is the other problem we have: You see, we're married to the people in Clellam Bay. They have three members out of the five member schoolboard, so they've got us in this ratio. And they've got us even worse with Ty being a chairman because we really only have one vote. But, however, he really exerts a lot of influence from that position. He's been a chairman for about two years now I think, but Ty was the other schoolboard member, he's also been the chief of police, he's also had one year at WSU. He's a man of like 53 or 54 years old. He was the chairman of our school community council here, and he's a member of the executive board, so he's got a lot of interest, and has had a lot of interest in education for a log period of time. More than most of us, I think. Whether he might be interested in some direction, like I said, I don't know. But I told him, "Gee, I would talk to them," I said that's what I'm doing.

Mary: What degree do you have?

Lloyd: I don't have a degree. I have about three and a half years of college...

Mary: You deserve one. [laughter] This is what we're saying, there's some of our people who have been in Indian leadership for years. We don't have to give them a degree in music, we have to give them a degree for their music, so that they can become credentialed and actually teach not what we have taught them, but what they know.

Woman: A basketmaker, or a woodcarver, or anyone who has a special...

Mary: I would think that somebody like Mrs. [Barker?] would come...

Lloyd: There's a culture program on in town. I think that starts at ten o'clock in the morning and ends at two in the afternoon. My dad was one of the teachers intructors but he got ill today and went to the hospital. I think he got a bladder infection or kidney infection or something, he's pretty sick today and his wife went with him, so I don't know who's going to take their place tomorrow. But I think Nora's down there, I think most of the other ladies are down there.

Mary: Where is that?

Lloyd: At the old community hall next right next to where I live, right where you turned around there, there's a community hall. That goes from 10 to 2. Everyday.

Mary: But she wasn't home when we went down there.

Lloyd: I saw her walking this way this afternoon, I don't know where she went. She probably visiting around town some place, I don't know.

Mary: Maybe before we go back we can...

Woman: Now I'm going to try to talk myself into paying his tuition, and using his job, he's working [...], he sets up workshops for theater, he's more or less a business administrator. And that is what he was majoring in. He lacks one year. And if you say some of this stuff on here, he was using it as an internship at Evergreen he would have his degree in June.

Lloyd: I created a real problem here.

Mary: How did you do that? [laughter]

[tape ends]

Side 2:

Lloyd: As one who would have either a masters degree or a doctorate, at least a masters degree, it has a terrific weight. They pay me eighteen thousand five here; it was designed for a white educator with a masters degree. That's what it was designed for. When the guys were writing it, those were the people who were writing the description. And then when it came time to apply for the job, seven of us applied. Of the seven of us, I was the only one without a degree. And I used the background that I already had in education, about the things that I've done and about the commitees that I've been in, about the decidion making positions that I've had, this kind of a thing. The fact that I was an Indian and only two years ago president Nixon said something about self-determination, and that if there's going to be a change, it had better be by an Indian, that it can't be by a white person that is part of a race that has put us here in this position in the first place, that kind of argument. There were thirty members of the counsel who hire me, and I had a majority on the first bout, right off the bat. The put me into a position right next to the superintendant in wage, and he was really sore about it. He said, "You're paying him more than you're paying the principals!" and I said, this is an open meeting, I said, What do you suppose prevented your principals from applying for that job? It's an open job, I didn't step into this thing. Nobody gave it to me. It was an open competitive thing and if your principals were interested in that job they should have applied for it. Right?" and he said, "Yeah..." Man, that was a tough [...] that night, and it hasn't really been resolved, except, it's almost resolved. He's still sore about those kinds of things.

Mary: And they carry a grudge...

Lloyd: Oh, yeah. And then it went back between here and Washington D.C., both blaming the other for keeping this thing alive after thing was over for six months it kept cropping up. I said, "Who in the hell is making this, what's the problem?" The person in Washington D.C. is keeping this thing alive. I called back there, 'Glen is keeping this thing alive'. They're both white people, they're both saying the other one is; blaming the other person. The history of this is going to come out, of our program, is going to come out fairly soon. This is part of the documentation of the history.

Mary: Who did it?

Lloyd: A guy from Stanford University is doing the history of the program, saying what is being done. And wehave our own history that we're doing ourselves, because we look at this in a completely different light, there's just no two ways to look at it, there's no two ways to look at it in the same way at all. And it's to the point where this position is so sensitive that they've got watch the principals, well I had Jack Kurt[...] last year, and he and I just couldn't get along. I had to watch what I was doing, I had to watch my steps with Glen, the superintendant, and I have the teachers that I have to watch, I can't, I have to be careful, I have to be diplomatic if I don't want to come to an impasse. I've got the WEA to contend with, and their representative there. I've got the schoolboard with three against two, and I've got real strong white community members here that said, "That's crazy what you're doing back there," you know. They say that because they've been successful in the system, and they can't see why a person is unsuccessful and that kind of thing. Geez, I'm telling you... But I don't ever get...

Woman: Don't let it get you down...

Lloyd: I just feel the need to do this is so strong that it never bothers me. Now I was in ten years with the Oregon State Employment Service, I worked from an interviewer to a state supervisor position, and I couldn't take it...

Mary: Do you have your description, your work history?

Lloyd: Yeah.

Mary: I think it probably would be a good idea to document for portfolio at Evergreen...

Woman: [...]

Mary: Could he have a copy of this?

Lloyd: Yeah sure, we'll make a copy.

Mary: Yeah this is what we have to, we don't have to broadcast right now, but I think there's going to be a time when we're going to have to approach, because this difference is not going to get better, it's going to get worse. I've had people hollering at me, crying at me, just practically hanging on and saying, "You're wrong, you're wrong! Indians can't do anything." And I said, "The fact that they are disproves everything." "Oh no, they're not qualified," and, "I've had ten years working on my masters degree." I said, "That has nothing to do with it." I don't care how many years you have, you're not going to be an Indian. And this work, educating Indian people, that's an Indian job.

Lloyd: Before I got this job I was the chairman of, no, before that I was the vice-chairman; to begin with, when we created a counsel, we got a thirty member counsel here, twenty of those people are Indian, and my first reaction after the first few meetings was that the counsel should be all Indian, we shouldn't have non-Indian people in it at all. The compromises that we're going to have to go through in order to get through the programs are just going to be diluting things because we have such a strong group of people in this school. People were shocked, they said, "You can't think that way, what about this brotherly love kind of a thing, that we should work together and that we should achieve together," and I said, "I've had a hundred years of that now. I can't go any further." When I made that statement, I pointed out that the executive committee is made up of six white people and two Indians. I said, "The white people have achieved here, the Indians have not." In spite of the fact that this was their school, on an Indian reservation, and they haven't achieved. I said if there was going to be change, it couldn't be by white people, it had to be by Indian people. And you know, I had resignations, bang, just like that. The chairman, who was a white person, resigned. It's unbelievable that with twenty white people out of thirty they could elect him. It's unbelievable. Because of the conditioning of Indian people to feel that white people are the only ones that can lead.

Mary: Right now, for instance, I have said this is going to be an Indian program for Indian people by Indian people. And now the three other faculty members are saying, "You can't do that!" They say I need a full class. But if we're going to make a stand we cannot have one white, because that would just bring us down to the same level they've always kept us on. And one white will beat the whole slew of us.

Woman: They actually expected the Indians to die off and assimilate to white for a reason; there would be no Indians to tell on them.

Lloyd: And the remaining ones to change to be white people.

Woman: And Hitler read a book by Carl [May?], Carl May is a fiction writer, and was writing about the wild wild west here in America. Hitler got ahold of it, and I guess it's a fact that Hitler was using that concept that the Puritans had against the Indians. All of wherever they were from, France, England, Germany, Italy, or wherever they came from to discover the Indians. Hitler was using that at the fall of the third reich, he was going to use the Russians as his Indians, and he was going to use part of them to breed them away out of their Russian blood, and he was going to have the others as Indians. Redskins. And his plans failed because he lost the war. One thing we're going to try to develop at the Evergreen state college is a library, a work reference library. If you have any of the material that is developed on education that can be used, and we're going to maintain that as an Indian reference library so that the benefits of Indians and the progress of other Indians can be used to encourage and establish confidence that Indians can do it.

Lloyd: You know, I see your problem, I think, even in the way that it was brought on to us, because... Our problem is a little bit different than yours, mostly because we were still groping and didn't know how to deal with it. For instance, we said, "We have six people, Indian people, and we want to become certified, and want them to have a degree, and we don't want them to leave Neah Bay." They've already had one year of work here already. Peninsula College said, "Fine, we'll do that, we'll give them two years, give them an A.A. degree, and you pick up the four year college, give them two more years, and they'll pick up the certification and the degree without leaving Neah Bay. All the work will be in the field." We said, "Fine." [They said], "The first thing that we can do, we'll give you a proposal for the A.A. degree." They got the proposal, I have it there. The proposal says: We will give you English 101, 102, Math, Science, there's nothing different! It's just like going and finishing at the college except up here, so we wrote a counter-proposal and we said, "We want you to consider giving us 15 credit hours for us to develop a [...] program, ourselves. We'll develop the program." He came down and he said, "That's a good idea. Two years ago I would have just thrown that out, I wouldn't have even though about it, but now we're thinking a little different in education." So, during that first quarter, we looked at ourselves, we looked at the school. We considered programs, we helped with the Northwest-affiliated tribes education meeting here. We helped with that and co-sponsored it and put it together, and they worked in that context. They looked into the community, and they started looking for the problems that were causing the problems that were causing these lot of things. They worked with the comittees, they went to the SCC meetings once a week, they attended schoolboard meetings, we had staff meetings here everyday for the first three months of school, seven o'clock in the morning. Every teacher there, they went to every one of those. After that was over, they came over here and they discussed those staff meetings amongst themselves. The second quarter we got into Northwest history using some people that had studies in Indian studies [...]. The Macaw culture, we talked to the senior citizens, interviewed them about education here. We went to Olympia, went up to their archives, and we start to dig up some records there that pertain to education on this reservation. And then we went into the classroom with the culture teachers and we sat in with the culture teachers, and then we start to get lost. And then the programs start to take on the traditional look, English 101, 102. Philosphy. And then it started to get back into this sort of traditional kind of a... But there is the problem. I think we had it at the very first quarter, and then we had most of it in the second quarter, but the third quarter it started to get the real traditional flavor, but we think it's still better to have classes out here than in Peninsula College. The thing has not ground into it, I think the real determination of knowledgable Indian people who know what they want, they can't verbalize that somehow.

Mary: Well, the thing of it is, what we do is, we know it's apart like that. In the United States, they had this whole system called the melting pot dream. All of a sudden we go up like this, and we might be good children, and we might be good adolecents, but just soon as we get to adults we go like that. And all of a sudden there's one value, and it's English 101.

Lloyd: Yeah, those are the things that we're fighting and we're losing that fight somehow.

Mary: And so the thing that we have to do is, we have to, and this is what the Native American program has started to do, is Indian music, Indian dance, talk. And talk is everything else in the whole school system. It can be anthropology, it can be sociology, it can be anything. And we can then transcribe it by saying, "This Indian class 'Talk' has covered these areas." ut we don't have to do that, and so our students don't fail. See, once they get into the bag of the whites, they can't do the white bag.

Woman: Your college won't do that, they're just going back to the sterotype?

Lloyd: Except that it somewhat...

Mary: Willard [...] is in that same bag. He gets to the point where he says, "These teachers need to be trained different, but..." And then it clamps onto that whole educational system and then...

Woman: That's biased.

Mary: And the thing that I say is that we're going to have to get people like you, who have all the background of credentials, and so we can establish our own, so that we can still go up here, and when you're up here you're still yourself. You're not doctor of anthropology.

Woman: I suppose you heard Joe Hillaire talk?

Lloyd: Oh yeah, I knew him real well.

Woman: He used to quote that declaration of independance, when a group of people like the Indians have found that the government is not working for them, they have the right and the duty to cas that aside. And I think that more colleges are doing this today, and if this college is going to insist on doing it the old way, they should be cast aside.

Mary: Well this is the thing: they try to put us in a minority group and I say, "No." Just as soon as we get in a minority group the leader is a black, cause the black likes you and you like the black. I said, "I don't want any of that, we want to be able to stand up, we might stagger around but we want to do it by ourselves." And now we've got the program, and incidently we need some support letters.

Woman: If we could get Lloyd to...

Mary: Yes, here is what we have submitted to the Counsel of Higher Education. And there's the letter that we have, we'll give you a copy of it tomorrow, requesting support letters and we sure would appreciate if you [...] one of those in to McCann.

Lloyd: Ok.

Mary: Bacause we've got to stand alone, and we've got to stand on the credibility of our own things.

Lloyd: You know, we have the teacher corps here, six people, three of them are Macaw, and this is the wildest group of teachers, as uncontrollable a group of people as ever... [laughter] You know Len Savage? Western Washington? He and his partner, he's never walked out of here without having a fight. When he comes in, I said, "Len, the fact that you walk through that door right there is intimidating to me." [laughter] It's that way all the time. I told him at and open meeting, he wants the traditional kind of thing to happen, and I said, "It hassn't work, it can't work." And he said, "What do you have in its place?" I was just being [...], I said, "A humane approch, love." And he said, "You're crazy." I said, "Len, we're going to change your whole damn educational system is what we're gonna do, and we're going to start right there in that room." It's to the point where it's an uncomfortable feeling, it's an awkward feeling to have him and his group come in here.

Mary: The thing that I get picked on for, I have stopped saying love and am now saying understanding. They don't like that a bit either.

Woman: You know, I sat there at a meeting with Mary and the administration and it's just hard to believe they just don't understand.

Mary: And the thing of it is, if they would face that they can't... They can't! [...] propose that program, and they said, "But we don't understand it," and I said, "You don't have to understand it. If you believe in your democracy, you will merely demand that I have the right to be what I am. You don't have to know what that is. You don't understand Indian talk. All you have to understand is I'm different than you, and have a right as a citizen to be what I am." Anyways, "Well, you know it hasn't been that way," and I said, "No, it hasn't, and you haven't got a democracy, have you?" But they won't face it! It's incredible.

Lloyd: The brutality of this system is so bad that, often time we've talked amongst Ty and myself, and we've both agreed that it would be easier to face a strong physical force than to be submitted to a thing that we...

Mary: Oppression...

Woman: That's when you have to cast that aside, when that oppression shows, because that's what created the minority in this country. And if there's self-determination rising its head, we have to keep the oppressors to the side.

Mary: Right. It used to be so funny when I was at the welfare department. Everytime I'd come in with an idea, and they'd knock me down and they really thought that I'd just die under their oppression, but the next time I'd bounce up with something else, you know, just as jovial as the other. One time I decided, they were asking me what kinds of social problems need for some type of alleviation of the problems, I said, "Well, one thing, we need a function gigolo system. You folks don't marry right. You don't marry the best person." And I said, "Because of the constitution of your marriage institution, we must lead to something else, we must train men to be human. A gigolo service would do that. Just like the Geisha girls in Japan." They just struck me down like lightning, so then I just sort of smiled and let it go at that. I knew that one wasn't going to work... So then the next time they said, "Well what do you think about this Mary?," it was still the same old problem, and I said "Well, why don't we have male homemakers? If we have a broken home, we always send another woman. And it's generally the woman who's left." I said, "Two women don't make a home. A woman and a man, that's our whole society. So why don't we train," [laughter], I said, "This is the healthier kind of a way!" I said, "On the other hand, let's change our society. If we say that two women make a home, let's make that the home. Then a lot of these women could have other women with them, and they could share the burdon of the children that are left, and then we could just heard the men out. [...]" [laughter] And then they knocked me down, oh they just were all upset. So then next time they asked me again, same problem, and I said, "Well, now, there are people that have the tolerance to stand youngsters for three months. Why can't start a part time family?" [laughter] And I said, "Then we could get these kids out of these institutions and all that," they didn't like that either.

Woman: [...]

Mary: So they gave me, when I asked for a supervisory position they gave me an old rundown group, and I was able in a year to get those people so motivated that they built up that unit so that people were fighting to get in to it! So I thought, "Well gee, they should be impressed by this!" And I said, "Well, since I did such a good job on this unit, can I be transferred? All my education is with children and youth, and there's a vacancy coming in the Child Welfare, can I have that?" He said, "What's wrong with you, Mary Hillaire, can only be corrected right where you are."

Woman: What was wrong with you?

Mary: I don't know, they didn't tell me!

Woman: Just in the last two years, when the minorities were getting a lot of attention, programs, money, funds, then you had what you call Appalachian, they wanted to join, they wanted to be a minority. And in Seattle, we went over there and they wanted to collate all the minorities, so they had the welfare people there and they wanted [...] white. Well I got on the mic, and I read off the list, and I said, "I see here I'm called a Native American. I've been called a lot of other things! I just can't see why anybody would want to be called a poor white." Now, had they chosen that name for themselves, or had they been given this name? And nobody would talk, but later the welfare people were right up there, they wanted educational benefits, they wanted [...], all of these benefits that we have been getting because they could be a minoriy, and I said, "As far as I'm concerned, the white man will be the majority regardless of whether his rich or poor."

Mary: Right, absolutely.

Woman: What would be the majority? We didn't [tape ends]