By Puyallup Tribal News Staff
Every month, a Puyallup Tribal Elder is recognized as the Honored Elder at the Elders Luncheon held at the House of Respect.
Puyallup Tribe Shellfish Director Nancy Shippentower was the latest Honored Elder on Nov. 21. She was blanketed by Councilwoman Anna Bean and Elders Wellness Center Executive Director Vernetta Miller.
Each Honored Elder is recorded, describing their life experiences. The following is Shippentower’s story in her own words.
Nancy Shippentower
“First of all, my parents are Don and Janet McCloud. They were the leaders of the Fishing Rights struggle in the 1950s and 1960s. We grew up in the Fishing Rights struggle, me and my siblings. We watched our dad go to jail and get beat up, both of them. My mother got involved in other things like spiritual unity conferences, learning our traditional ways because we had no way over here. We didn’t have sweat lodges or nothing. It was nothing. When they introduced my mother to those things, she was really excited and she brought it back home to us. She got involved in women’s issues, children’s issues, prison issues and international issues. She was just all over the world. … We learned from a lot of Elders and a lot of teachers, so I guess that’s why I am here today.
“My main focus is to protect the seven generations. I was on Council twice. I was on Council during the Land Claims Settlement and (the newspaper) said ‘topsy-turvy Tribal politics,’ I tell you it was. It was a very stressful time. Our people on Council were getting recalled and people didn’t like what was going on even though we had a committee of people. That’s how I got on Council. I was on a committee in the Land Claims Settlement. Our Tribe just didn’t do it by themselves, they put together a committee of people and this committee of people go out and tell the Tribal Members what was going on and we had meetings with our people, too.
Bob Satiacum actually hired me on April 1, 1982. I kind of laughed because I worked with Bob when he did the fireworks, the smoke shops down there on Pioneer Way. One time I came to work and it was nothing, no cigarettes, no nothing and I said I’m just going to turn around and go home. The place was surrounded by FBI, federal agents, the whole place down on Pioneer. … I said there isn’t any cigarettes here so I am going to go home. He goes, ‘Just wait, you’re not going home yet. I’m still paying you.’ So, I sat there and I thought, well I will get paid for just sitting around doing nothing and then I heard this whoom, whoom, whoom, whoom, and we looked up and it was helicopters coming in, and the helicopters had dropped down a net full of cigarettes, cases of cigarettes and then another one came by and dropped it and all these FBI people were all standing there. … They couldn’t come on the land. So, Bob says ‘OK, stock the shelves.’ And they just gave up then. The feds, they all just gave up. Even though they stopped people and tried to take their cigarettes, there was just too many people coming in there.
“Then, I got on Council during that time. That was really a struggle too for our people. We survived termination. During the Land Claims Settlement, they brought a paper into us. I read it and read it and I took it to a couple of attorneys and I said, ‘What does this sound like to you?’ They said, ‘Sounds like termination. They are going to try to terminate you guys.’ So, I was the youngest and newest Councilmember, and we had to meet with all of these people. Since I’m the youngest and the newest, I was the last one to speak. They are all looking at me smiling and everything, and I said, ‘You brought this to our people, you want us to support you on this?’ … I slammed that paper down and I said I am not going to give this to my people because this is a termination package. Nobody knew I was going to do this and I slammed it on the table and I said ‘Annette (Klapstein, an attorney for the Tribe), explain to them how this is a termination package,’ and so she did. And I said, ‘Come on Annette, let’s go,’ and we walked out. The next day I went to Council and they’re all sitting there looking at me and said ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were going to do that.’ I said, ‘Element of surprise. Did I surprise you guys?’ I was very controversial like that. I did things and said things because I went in there for my people. It was nothing about me or about what I could gain. It was about what I could do for my people and to protect the future of our Tribe.
“I became the Natural Resource Policy Rep. I had to fight with the state and the feds on our fishing and shell fishing. I was sitting in Council one day and I was telling them about the state trying to take our fishing and what they were doing. Bill (Sterud) just whispers to me, he goes, ‘You know we own the riverbed. We did not give that up during the settlement.’ So, I went to this meeting in Portland and Sylvia (Miller) and Fred (Dillon) were there. The fishermen in the meantime had given me these things that they were throwing at our people in the water at the same time that our people are trying to fish. They tried to block the river off with their poles and everything, but they were trying to hurt our people. So, I took those pictures and I went down there and the state goes, ‘Oh, we’ll try to come, too’ and I said, ‘No. You guys are not coming on our river anymore.’ They said, ‘Well you can’t stop us.’ I said ‘Yes, we can. We own the riverbed. The riverbed belongs to the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. You cannot come on our river anymore while our people are fishing.’ … They kicked all of the people off our river so our people could fish in peace.
“I’m in the Shellfish place now and I have to deal with the state on crabbing, geoducks and stuff like that. There is a lot of things I have been through in my life, but this last phase, we rented a plane so we could fly over and count all our buoys because the state does not accurately count their crab that come in. You only pay five bucks for a license, and then if you don’t turn that in, the next year you have to pay ten. … So anyway, we got a plane, I told my office, ‘Let’s get a plane and count their buoys.’ They called up and said, ‘That’s not in our policy, you can’t do that.’ I said ‘Oh yes, we can. We don’t follow your policies. We have our own, so goodbye.’
“As a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother, this is what I look for in the future of our Tribe, this is who I look at. How are they going to benefit? They are starting to do the language, the traditions, the cultures, basketweaving and things like that. There is a spiritual element to our people. When we walk on Mother Earth, she’s our mother. We were born from Mother Earth. I go to these meetings and speak up if I think something is wrong. I have to say I like to tell the truth. My mother was a well-known leader throughout the world. She was a worldwide traveler, but I never ever used my mother’s name. It was later on in life where I got to be where people knew who I was.
“So, after we did that, closing the river down, all of these other Tribes were saying, ‘How did you do that.’ I said we just did it because we owned the riverbed, so we just did it. They were trying to do it. I don’t know if some of them were able to do it or not, but we did it successfully. … We grew up fishing. We had nothing. My mother was a big giver. People would donate things to her. When people would come to the house, she would hand it out to the people, the community. Clothes, food, money or whatever. She would hand it out to everybody. She never got rich off the movement like a lot of these people did. They got rich off the movement. She didn’t do that. She shared the wealth with everybody. People adopted her in South Dakota and New York and everything. If they were having a hard time, she would send things over there or she would have people deliver things so we learned that from her. We were hunters, fishermen, crabbers. We did weaving, we did sewing. We did all kinds of things in our family. Most of the stuff we gave away to people who didn’t have anything. It’s funny she said these are for people less fortunate. In our home we had holes in our floors. Our windows were broken. We didn’t have a lot of warm clothes. We had whatever. We had holes in our shoes. We were looking at her like, ‘There is people worse off than us?’ She goes, ‘Believe it or not, there are.’
“I’m really grateful for my life. I’m grateful for the opportunities I had. I have a lot of people who don’t like me and that’s fine. I don’t care. I’m not out for a popularity contest, I’m out to speak the truth. When I hear people saying these stories sometimes, I look at them and think you weren’t even born to be in the Fishing Rights struggle. You were not there. We were. I’m the last generation. Me, my brother and sister, they were there. We’re the last generations that actually grew up right in that area. My mother was a founding member of AIM (American Indian Movement), WARN (Women of All Red Nations) Indigenous Women’s Circle and all kinds of things, so naturally we flowed with her into these things. We were right with her helping her. She had six daughters and two sons. She did newspapers, she did her own writings and we were right there doing those things with her.
“I am the person I am because of my parents, the teachers that came into my life, the spirituality movement we went through. The Fishing and AIM and all those movements we grew up in, those are part of me. Those are part of my history and that is how I became who I am today.”
