By Puyallup Tribal News Staff
A Puyallup Tribal Member 55 years of age and older is recognized as the Honored Elder at the monthly Elders Luncheon at the House of Respect.
Sam Stiltner, who has worked as a lawyer for the Tribe since 2004, was the latest Honored Elder on July 18. He was blanketed by Vice Chairwoman Sylvia Miller, Councilwoman Annette Bryan and Councilwoman Anna Bean. Elders Wellness Center Executive Director Vernetta Miller presented Stiltner with a cedar hat after he was blanketed.
Each Honored Elder is recorded, describing their life experiences. The following is Stiltner’s story in his own words.
Sam Stiltner
“My name is Sam Stiltner. I’m the director of the Tribe’s law office. I have been in the law office since 2004. I’ve been an attorney since 1977. I’m a Tribal Member. I actually grew up around the Council, because there have been times when Tribal Council met in people’s homes. My house was one of those. My grandmother was on Council at one time. She was the first woman to be Chairwoman. … She passed away in 1958 when she was on Council. When she was on the Council, the meetings were in our house as far as I can remember. I can only remember back to when I was four. That was part of my experience — was being the age of four to six, and then having the Tribal Council in our house meeting and people stopping by.
“Her brother, my great uncle, Uncle Lou, his name was Loulin Judge Brewer, he had been on Council in the 1940s and he lived with us. My grandmother was Ruth Brewer. After she passed way, the Council continued to meet there and my mother was sort of the secretary, sort of like what Angel (Robertiello) does today, but the Tribe was smaller then. There were still Council meetings in our house and I got to grow up around that. My mother being the secretary to the Tribe, her name was Jackie Stiltner. I got out of high school in 1970 and went to college so I wasn’t always around. I was around again in 1971 or 1972 at least on weekends because I was in college. Eventually, I was in Seattle and the Council was meeting in our house again. I didn’t live there by then, but when I visited them the Council was there. … It was exciting times for the Tribe and exciting for me to be part of things.
“There was a time when I was fishing we had a drift net. Robert Dillon got it and Oscar (George) taught him how to use it. We didn’t know really what we were doing. We had an aluminum boat and Robert and I would fish at the mouth of the river. We did that for a couple of summers. The fish buyer was Harry Dillon and often we would gather in those years, in 1971 and 1972 under the 11th street bridge where the boat ramp is.
“Sometime in there the Council sent Robert (Dillon) and I to go up to Seattle to get copies of records at the federal archives at Sandpoint (Seattle Federal Records Center). The people that worked there had told all the Tribes it might be a good idea for the Tribes to start copying everything just in case. Our Tribal Council had already been sending people up there occasionally, but they had us go up there specifically to start copying everything related to the topic of how we lost our land. I think it took Robert Dillon and I two summers to finish that. We turned it in and the Council would have put it with the Tribe’s other records related to that. Sometime around then, our great attorney that we had for so long, John Bell, arrived with two other lawyers. They weren’t lawyers yet. They were going into their third year of law school. And it was John and two other law students, Manuel Quintana and Ellen Yaroshevsky. They were all going to different law schools and they were on a National Lawyers School project and it ended up they came to us. Anyway, they all went back to law school and they all came back for a time, except when John came back he stayed and he became our attorney and just recently, finally, retired almost completely a couple of months ago. We were very fortunate to have John all that time. He accomplished a lot of great things.
“What they did was impressive to me, even still but especially then, they took the records that the Tribe had, including those that Robert and I had gathered from Sandpoint (Seattle Federal Records Center) and they summarized and sorted the information. They got additional records from UPS (University of Puget Sound), and the museum Tacoma had, had some records. Then, they did something that would really be hard work. They learned how to look at the land records at Pierce County Assessors or Pierce County Recorder. Anyway, it’s where they keep the land records. That would have been a lot of work, but John, Ellen and Manuel took it on and they researched each track of land and they organized all of the information that way. … The records that Robert and I had collected, remember all that Robert and I did was copy things and bring them back, but those records were helpful to the three law students. … What we brought back was correspondence between the BIA (Bureau of Indians Affairs) agency here and the central office in Washington, D.C. There was also correspondence with others that was relevant, so that was important information because they actually were the first people to assemble all of the information that we had at that time about where our land went and how we lost it. The city of Tacoma, the downtown business community, got their own law to get our land. There was a paid commission. The commissioners all had conflicts of interest. They were business leaders from downtown and it’s not clear that any of our sales were voluntary. It was all rigged.
“They put together a report that, in a way, is the seminal document of our law office. Even though they weren’t yet lawyers, they came back and became our first in-house lawyers. … John stayed for a total of 50 years. Speaking of myself, I got into law school in 1974 and I graduated in 1977. I got the idea to go to law school because of our fishing rights struggle. I didn’t know that I would work for my own Tribe. I thought I might get work with some other Tribes who didn’t know me when I was a kid. I thought it’d be hard to believe I was an attorney when they knew when I was a kid or they wouldn’t listen to me. I assumed I was going to work for others. So, I got out of law school in 1977. By then, I was working in downtown Seattle after school each day with a law firm that represented Tribes all over the country, a very good firm. I was lucky to have the experience and I stayed there for seven years. A lot of the work we did was representing Tribes. I did other legal work there, too. I became interested in doing other things that lawyers do. We were well served by lawyers at the time, it seemed. In other words, it didn’t seem like I needed to come back, put it that way, or I could do it later. I was happy doing what I was doing. I left that law firm and I became a solo attorney in downtown Seattle. I brought partners in the year 1990 and that didn’t last very long. It was an experience. Then, I was solo again from 1992 to 2004. By then, I had 27 years of legal experience and had learned how to try cases. I’d argue cases on appeal. I’d done a variety of things like lawyers do.
“Then, in 2004, remember we had a very good law office (at the Puyallup Tribe) and I knew that, and one of them wanted to retire, she was our fisheries attorney. I knew she was very good. Her name was Annette Klapstein. All lawyers are different. She was different than me, but she was also just very good. Anyway, she wanted to retire young and go live with her husband on a sailboat in Mexico. Well, they did that and I got to take her job. Because when she left, it seemed like I might really never have a good opportunity to work for my own Tribe. That would mean something to me, it would be important. It was fine that I had gone out and learned other things that I wouldn’t have learned. I will admit I had fun doing that and doing different things. By then, I had been a lawyer for 27 years, and so, in 2004, Council chose me and I got to come back. I was the Fisheries attorney, but gradually John was going to retire and it seemed like I should be willing to be the director as he retired. That’s what I did. Now I’m the director (law office). I still do a lot of fisheries. That is probably the greatest percentage of what I do. … One nice thing about our office is we really have hard-working attorneys and our secretaries, too. … Not all are Native, but most are. We value them all equally.
“I was the first one from our Tribe to become a lawyer. I guess somebody would do it first and I did. Now, we have others. In our office we have four members of our Tribe that are lawyers now for our Tribe and that makes five of us, but we’re not the only ones. There’s at least two others. I’m probably not thinking of everybody. Now, there’s so many. It’s not that being a lawyer is the greatest thing to be. I’m not saying that, but I think it’s valuable. Sometimes, it seems like it’s a whole Tribe of lawyers because everybody thinks like a lawyer.
“It’s a privilege to be able to work with the young people and to have work that I really like to do. I like to come in and do the work that I have, and to contribute to the Tribe. … It feels a little awkward to be honored. I don’t feel awkward speaking in a court, but this time the subject is me. I do feel a little funny about that. I thank the Council and Vernetta (Miller) and who else chose me to be honored because it is an honor. It means something to me. It would mean something to my mother, my grandmother, my uncle. So, it’s a great privilege for me to work here. I thoroughly enjoy it, there’s nothing I would rather do. I really enjoy having our law office and having the younger lawyers there with us. Not just our Tribal Members, the others are great, too.
“I’m 72. I found a work that I like to do, and I can do it for our Tribe and that’s what gave me the idea anyway because our Tribe has been a leader obviously in defending our fishing rights. … Our Tribe probably has been in continuous litigation in one form or another since way back in the 1960s, maybe even the 1950s, talking then about criminal cases against our members. We only fight for what’s right. In (other) words, our Tribe doesn’t fight everything, we just fight when we think we’re right. That means that we’ve been successful. We work harder than the other side. Most of what I’m talking about was before I was doing it, I’m not talking about me. It’s a privilege to fall in line of succession with our Tribe that happens to be so good at this. We have something to do that’s important.
“In our office we work hard at that. It means a lot to us. We try to do it right and in the best way we can. I know from myself, I make mistakes every day I have the guts to get out of bed and come down and go to work. You know, I admit it, and most of the time we don’t make mistakes. We work hard, but we know that mistakes happen. We own up to it. Mostly, we’re not focused on that. Therefore, we’re focused on doing the best we can. I appreciate also all the support that our Tribal Council gives us to help us in our work because they make resources available. It helps us and I’m grateful they have chosen me to do this work because I don’t know what else I would do where I could like it so much and it suits me.”
