BARBARA LAWRENCE IS A KEEPER, collector and longtime teller of stories. Throughout her life, she has memorized the stories passed down from her elders, and now, she retells and teaches those stories to the next generation.
In her work as a historian, she’s documented and preserved hours of oral history and thousands of photographs connected to the tribe. She’s also worked many years in education, teaching native language, stories and heritage to tribal youth through the tribe’s schools and programs. She is currently in administration, working on a Suquamish Tribe-centric history curriculum with university professors which may one day be taught in public schools.
But she feels much more comfortable telling the stories of others and her elders than she does those of herself.
When she was a young child, her father, Charles, was the chairman of the Suquamish Tribal Council. During that time, he was instrumental in reviving Chief Seattle days and leading the construction of the Suquamish boat ramp which bears his name. He died from a brain hemorrhage at age 39, when Barbara was not yet five.
“If I just told you his life story… I’m much more comfortable just talking about him or talking about my mom,” Barbara says. “If I started at the beginning of his life and told you everything. And didn’t tell you how old he was when this happened or this happened. You would think he lived to be 60, 70, 80, because of all the things that happened in those 39 years.”
As a kid, Charles was taken away to a boarding school, Barbara tells the story.
Upon graduating (read surviving) that endeavor, he signed up for the military and fought in World War II. When he returned home, after fighting for veterans’ benefits for ‘non-white’ people and completing a four year degree in just two years, he would go on to become an upper management electrical engineer working at the Keyport Submarine Base in addition to serving on the tribal council.
After World War II and before he fought for his GI Bill of Rights, he would meet Barbara’s mother Anne, a red-haired, green-eyed daughter of a Norwegian logging family…
Barbara tells the story.
They were both being treated at a tuberculosis hospital in Port Orchard. The hospital was U-shaped with the men in one wing of the building, women in the other and administration in the wing between the two. All wings faced a courtyard where patients were placed on bed rest outdoors as part of the treatment at the time. Her mother and father would pass notes to each other through books on a library cart until they found an American Sign Language book and each learned the language. They communicated for years through sign language at the hospital, learning each others’ life stories and falling in love while their courtship happened across a courtyard.
Barbara smiles.
BARBARA IS THE FOURTH OF FIVE CHILDREN. She and her two sisters’ shared bedroom was originally built as a library. Ever since she was young, there was a handmade, traditionally carved canoe paddle that sat atop the family’s mantle. She looked at it often. It reminded her of her father. She’d always assumed it belonged to him, although he wouldn’t have had much practical use for an paddle during his lifetime since the government had enforced a ban on nearly all native customs, ceremonies and ways of life, she’d think to herself.
She’d stare at it for hours.
She remembers the elders of the tribe coming to pick up her and her siblings to go mussel gathering, or clam digging, or berry picking, since they knew the kids didn’t have a tribal parent at home. The elders would tell stories while they worked: Stories of creation myths, and plant people, and animal people. Gossiping Clams with gangly legs and bulging eyeballs. A whale with its back split open, carrying humans across the water.
Barbara had always thought the elders were just trying to entertain them through the drudgery of the work until she heard the story of the young Crow Boy who worked really hard at not working and she thought… ‘they’re talking about my little brother!’ It clicked in her head. These weren’t just stories to entertain. These stories had meaning.
These stories were important.
At age 12, Barbara was hired by the tribe to help with summer school. She was given a table of kids to look after on her own. She found that telling the elders’ stories helped keep the kids’ attention. Later, in junior high school, she went on a field trip to an archaeological dig on the Makah Reservation where a centuries old longhouse that had long ago been covered by a mudslide had been recently partially uncovered. She worked alongside the archaeologist, examining the site and identifying objects, and she was ‘fundamentally changed,’ she said.
These stories became even more important.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Evergreen State in 1989 as a single mother of three and had planned to be a high school history teacher. But all the professors and teacher cert students would ask her what sport she was going to coach. At the time, ‘high school history teacher’ was a position mainly reserved for a high school sports coach who didn’t so much care for the teaching part.
Barbara was dismayed.
But, also during that time, she was selected for the Washington State Centennial Commission appointed by the Governor, which would spawn the inaugural Paddle To Seattle, now called Canoe Journey–a traditional tribal waterway voyage which has become an annual intertribal event celebrated by thousands of indigenous peoples from throughout the Pacific Northwest at the end of each July, credited as a driving factor in the modern resurgence of revival of traditional tribal culture.
And these stories became even more important.
All these years later, the little girl who used to stare at the hand carved canoe paddle atop the mantle place for hours on end, and listen intently to her elders stories is now an elder herself. All the while, she’s been passing on these stories.
Both of her sons have taken an integral role in the annual Canoe Journey. Both are canoe skippers. One son is now the instructor of a Tribal Canoe Journey Course at the University of Washington, while the other works for the Suquamish Education Department and carves a set of traditional handcrafted canoe paddles every year for each member of the Tribe’s graduating class.
Barbara smiles. // BILL MAN
CHIEF SEATTLE DAYS The Annual event honoring Chief Seattle and the Suquamish people with a gravesite memorial, sports tournaments, coastal jam, powwow, canoe races, salmon bake and more Aug 16-18 in Suquamish. More at chiefseattledays.org
