TWO PATHS

“You shall walk two paths…yours and that of the White Man. Pick up those things from the White Man’s path that you can use.” Wise words from Sitting Bull.

Stories are the core of Northwest Indian culture and education, and have been for at least 8,00 years. Emmett Oliver’s story is of one Northwest Indian who was poor, dropped out of school, returned, got two college degrees, and revolutionized Indian education in his native state.

Like many American Indians, Emmett Oliver grew up off the reservation. His unique personal experience combines the best of two cultures and has contributed to each. He has truly followed two paths.

“She came more than a thousand miles and a lifetime of years for the event. Her eyes found her youngest son, handsome and proud in his cap and gown.” These are the opening words of the book “Two Paths”, commissioned by Emmett and written by his friend Ben Smith. Emmett paid for the publication of the books and then gave them away to all Indian schools in Washington State, as an example of what successes could be achieved by education.

After a college sports career, someone suggested that Emmett might consider becoming a teacher. What followed was a lifetime of teaching and counseling both high school and college students, and in encouraging children from Northwest Indian communities to pursue their education.

After the second World War, Emmett returned as a Coast Guard Commander. Handsome, dignified and charismatic, he resumed teaching with his wife Georgia. They both came as educators to California, where we became friends more than 55 years ago. They were my introduction to Indian America.

Tall Ship “The Danmark” training ship for Coast Guard during War

In November, 1969, Indian tribes occupied Alcatraz Island and its abandoned Federal prison in San Francisco Bay. One of the leaders of that movement was Emmett Oliver. He was Chair of BANAC (Bay Area Native American Committee.) the organization that spearheaded the takeover which lasted 19 months. The takeover was a reminder to many (including Emmett’s son, Marvin) of their Indian heritage.

The takeover led to Emmett’s attendance at the National Indian Education Conference in Minneapolis with a large number of prominent Indian educators, where Emmett was encouraged to return to his involvement in Indian education. This led to directing the Indian student programs at UCLA. His mother’s drive for her children to be educated had re-emerged and in that moment his whole life came into focus. He would devote the rest of his life to Indian education.

In the summer of 1970 Emmett joined the Division of Minority Affairs of the University of Washington to head the Indian Student division. His first task was to recruit and counsel Indian students.

At that time, Washington boasted a full-blood Cherokee role model named Sonny Sixkiller, who was their star quarterback. Our daughter was then a student at the University, and a friend of Sonny.

Sonny Sixkiller at the University of Washington

Working with the BIA offices who handled funding, Emmett invited outstanding Indian students from their high schools on weekends when home games were planned. They toured various Departments in which they expressed interest after which they went to the football game. Emmett said “The plan worked in interesting students to go to college. If not to Washington, then to some other college.”

Emmett’s effectiveness brought him to the attention of the Department of Education for the State of Washington and he was hired as the first Supervisor of Indian Education for the State. This gave him a greater opportunity to work more closely with the Indian communities.

“I believed that parent involvement in education at the elementary and secondary level must be increased, and I knew first hand the peril of dropping out, the limitations of purely vocational training, and the need for solid educational grounding if Indians were ever going to be able to attend college and assume positions of leadership in society.”

The first great “Paddle To Seattle” in 1989 that Emmett conceived and coordinated was the Native American contribution to the Washington State Centennial. It was a celebration of Indian culture, and through the annual canoe races, it has culminated in well over 100 canoes from various Northwest tribes participating each year.

Emmett’s daughter, Marylin has been heavily involved in the races, working tirelessly with participants all over the State. She is currently a Seattle Delegate to the City of Perugia, Italy. Emmett’s son, Marvin, is a Professor of Indian Art at the University of Washington and at the University of Alaska and an artist whose massive sculptures can be seen in many places around the world.

“Spirit of the Future” Public sculpture by Marvin Oliver, in Perugia, Italy.

“Mystical Journey” at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital, 26’Steel and Glass suspended sculpture by Marvin Oliver

Emmett’s is a spirit venture, drawing on the past and enlightening the future. His innermost being believes you cannot teach someone you do not love.

Emmett Oliver at 101, with two of his granddaughters at end of 2014 Paddle to Seattle

A BALLET OF HANDS

Bilinguism at Carlos Cano Secondary School

The happy chatter of families, an occasional shriek from a child, and over it all, the ballet of hands celebrating the occasion.

The California School For the Deaf high school class of 2014 graduated 42 happy young students ready to take on the world. As friends of the family of one young lady, we were privileged to attend the event, where many scholarships and honors were awarded.

The school for deaf and blind was originally in Berkeley, located quite near the campus of the University and was moved to Fremont in 1979. Since then we have become accustomed to seeing blind and hearing-impaired people going about their business throughout town. The school provides home and education for children throughout Northern California from the ages of 3-22.
We talked with the mother of a 20 year old graduate yesterday who has lived at the school for 10 years.

I first became aware of the graceful beauty of sign language while following a car with several non-hearing people conversing, and realized it is like a ballet of hands. In my teaching life, I occasionally had a deaf person, with an interpreter handy to translate my garbled lesson. (grin) At a celebratory party after the graduation, several interpreters were present to help those of us who were limited by our “mono-lingual” condition.

Marc Petrocci “Simply Sammy”

During our meandering through the campus, we came upon a large bronze sculpture by Douglas Tilden, a scion of an early California family. Tilden became deaf at the age of four, and attended CSD in Berkeley where he taught at the school after graduation. He began doing sculpture while attending the school, and then went to France where he studied with another deaf sculptor. His monumental pieces can be seen all over the world.

“Bear Hunt” by Douglas Tilden

Sculpture seems to be an appropriate medium for a deaf person, since their words are expressed with their hands.

“If my hands could speak they would say something profound.”

CHECKS AND BALANCES

watercolor painting by KSR

Some years ago, when I was teaching at our local Community College, it occurred to me that everybody was younger and smarter than I was. They used cultural references I knew nothing about, they were up on all the newest movies, dance steps and music. (And they didn’t get out of breathe after climbing the hill to the art lab.) Suddenly my clothes began to look dated, and I started to wonder if I was going to be a frumpy old lady in a few years.

But we were into double-edged sword territory, so age wasn’t always a liability. When you’re older and don’t talk a lot, younger people often think you’re wise and they ask your advice about all kinds of things. I do adore handing out advice to people who might actually heed it. Besides it was my class, my rules. It’s amazing what you learn about the younger generation by just listening. I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but when it’s not personal, the floodgates open, and no subject is out of bounds. It has been a grand education, and when you don’t know what you’re talking about, just keep your mouth shut. Make allowances for each others differences.

I remember the young man who showed up for my sculpture class in a wheelchair. He was a Vietnam veteran who had had his legs blown off by a landmine. The other young men were discussing their heights one day when he remarked in a soft shy voice, “I used to be six feet.”

Then there was the woman with a crazy, lopsided blond wig, which was always askew. She wasn’t a talker, but one day she told of having had cancer as a child and hearing a nurse ignore her by telling another nurse that “she’s going to die anyway.” Now her cancer was back and she was handling it in a crazy wig and good humor.

My friend Lory O. once wrote: “With age comes wisdom, and also forgetfulness of all those wise thoughts.” It’s one of the immutable laws of the Universe that we will all be a bit forgetful at some future time of our lives. I tend to blur out the major cataclysmic occurrences of the world. There are far too many to remember clearly.

I remember the quieter, smaller happenings in our own lives and in the lives of those around us that are personally momentous, while the rest of the world lurches on, oblivious. You become a personal historian. You can’t forget everything and everyone you’ve ever know, and the list gets longer with each year.

BUT I CAN’T SPEAK SPANISH GRANDMA

Mark Twain once said, “My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”

Well, how hard it is to learn a language depends on what language you speak to begin with. If you speak English you have a head start as it’s a Germanic language. But German doesn’t make it any easier with all of its genders, 12 ways of forming plurals, etc.—and that’s only scratching the surface.

Some years ago, when a grandson started high school, he needed to choose another language to study, so he chose Spanish. However all the classes were full, but as he was passing an open door to the German classroom he saw it was nearly empty, so he went in and took a seat. A clever way to choose a second language.

Another grandson took three years of Spanish in high school, 4 years at university, and went to Spain for a semester of study. He lived with a Spanish family, and took his classes in the language, but when we went to visit him in Granada, and I said how happy I was he could translate for me he blithly told me “But I can’t speak Spanish!” The pronunciation was different, and people spoke much faster than he could translate.

A granddaughter fell in love with French and made it her major at University. I’m sure she speaks it beautifully, as it is a beautiful language, and the best part is that she married a man who also speaks it, so they can chat away and people like me who doesn’t even speak Latin can’t understand a word. I’m beginning to watch a lot of French movies though.

We live in the age of possibility though. Living in a diverse community, our schools teach a variety of languages. At the voting polls this month alone the ballots were printed in five different languages. English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, and Russian!

When I was a student the choices were limited to Spanish, French or Latin. I chose Latin, probably because there was a very good looking boy signing up. But I took it for four years and I can’t speak a word of it, and had no desire to become part of the medical community. But yes, it is possible to become somewhat fluent in a number of languages today (maybe not Latin.)

TRAVELERS VS. TOURISTS

 There are two types of people in this world; travelers and tourists.  Tourists can’t wait to come back home.  Travelers never want to come back.

“But why do we travel, really?  If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others and compare them to our own.  For these reasons, we study guidebooks and make lists of the churches, palaces, galleries, and museums we’ll visit.  We take photographs and write our impressions in diaries.  We might even justify the expense of the trip by planning to share our knowledge with others upon our return.

But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel?  Or–be honest, now–do we more sincerely desire souvenirs?  What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home?  We want something to display, a memento, a “conversation piece” that will silently inform a guest that ‘I have traveled’.  We look for a painting, a sculpture, a vase that will whisper: I have shopped in foreign countries, and I have this to show for it.

Of course, one could buy such objects ay home.  After all, there are importers, antique shops and art galleries.  Why then do we undertake the expense and risk of travel?  Why leave the comforts of home for flies and disease, heat and dust, crowds and the risk of theft?  Because souvenirs remind the traveler of his journey.”

We do not take a trip.  Often a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck says there is a Spanish word for which there is no English counterpart; vacilando.  It means you are going somewhere but you don’t greatly care if you get there.  My aunt was very much like that.  She loved travel, and she was good at it.  I think she would have chosen to be perennially on the road.

There are map people who delight in being navigators, expecially on a road trip.  While the driver is enjoying the scenery, he/she is busy reading the maps.  There are also people who are terrified of being lost, whether on foot or in a car.  They never veer from the preordained plan, or take a sudden look at a point of interest off the beaten path.  Then there are people who set a daily goal for themselves and come hell or high water, they plunge on until they arrive at their goal, even if their passengers need food or bathroom facility.  The use of the GPS means less random–but not nearly as much fun travel, if you can stand the annoying female voice ordering you to “turn left in one mile”, or “you’ve gone too far”.

When you return, friends ask “Did you have a nice time on your trip?”  We want to answer in full.  We want to tell about all the interesting and educational things we have seen, but they need to hurry away.  We say we will invite them over to see our pictures, but somehow that never happens.  So we slip right back into our cosy and comfortable lives as if we had never left them, and file all those wonderful memories away in our mental banks to be drawn upon at random.  But travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry.  We shall get there some day.”  A.A. Milne

A SURVIVOR

An amazing woman passed into the annals of history the other day at the extraordinary age of 99.  She was my mother’s sister and my aunt.

As a child the family moved often, often prompting her to say she had attended 52 schools, which though I believe that  number to be apocryphal, it probably was actually a larger number than most.  My grandfather was a dear and charming asthmatic hypochondriac who could no longer work, and who believed his health improved by simply moving a few blocks from where they were living at the time.  This led to a divorce, leaving my grandmother to support herself and 2 small daughters.

The women in my family are strong survivors, and while Grandma took in boarders, the girls went to work part-time at early ages.  Education was not valued as highly as survival, especially during the Depression, and they were lucky to attain high school educations.

She loved clothes and dancing and wanted  so much more than she had and with no certain prospect of obtaining.  She had great style and made most of her clothes.

She worked at whatever jobs she could find , going to night school learning to become a secretary, always reading and learning to improve herself.  By 1949 she was supporting herself, her daughter and her mother.

She took a job with Standard Oil of California which took her to Saudi Arabia, and Aramco, where she met her husband.  They remained happily married for over 50 years.   During the thirty years they lived in Dharan,  they traveled the world, and she absorbed facts and knowledge like a sponge.  She was a fascinating conversationalist on history, politics, religion and the daily news from all over the world.  Her taste was impeccable and she collected china, silver, rugs, books and jewelry from Europe and Asia.

She is a tough act to follow.