Interwoven Oral History Project National Nordic Museum

ID: 2020.042.001

Interview of Leonard Forsman October 30, 2020 , / Seattle, Washington

Interviewer: Alison DeRiemer

Alison DeRiemer: [0:00] This is an interview for the Interwoven Oral History Program at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. Today is October 30th, 2020, and I will be interviewing Leonard Forsman, the Chairman of the Suquamish Tribe. My name is Alison DeRiemer, and this interview is being conducted remotely over Zoom. So, Leonard, welcome, and thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed today. We really appreciate it. I’d just like to start, please, by getting your full name, and where and when you were born.

Leonard Forsman: [0:30] Okay. My full name is Leonard Andrew Forsman, and I was born January 25, 1962 in Bremerton, Washington.

Alison: [0:41] Okay, great. Can you also tell me your current location where you are today?

Leonard: [0:47] I am in Suquamish, Washington, on the Port Madison Indian Reservation.

Alison: [0:51] Okay. Great. Could you tell me a little bit about what you know about your Nordic ancestors, even if it’s not a lot. If you know any names, where they might have come from, where they immigrated to—if you know any of that information.

Leonard: [1:10] Okay. Well, my paternal grandfather… My father was James William Forsman. His father was Alexander Forsman, who immigrated from Sweden. I don’t know a whole lot about his past, other than I believe the census records show him kind of coming via the Midwest, I believe Indiana, or something like that. He was a carpenter by trade, and built a number of houses here in the Suquamish area. He married my maternal grandmother, Marion Temple, who was a Suquamish Indian.

Alison: [2:06] Okay. That’s your father’s side. What about your grandparents on your mother’s side?

Leonard: [2:13] I have no Scandinavian heritage on my mother’s side that I’m aware of.

Alison: [2:19] What is the heritage on that side?

Leonard: [2:22] I really haven’t got a whole lot of information on their heritage. I know it’s kind of a complicated ancestry over there. It’s taken some work to find… I’ve found out a lot about the

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genealogy, but the actual ethnicity, or anything like that is difficult. My mother’s name was Helen Winterbottom, from what I understand, but she had a number of other names—some of the stepfathers that she had.

[3:08] Her mother’s name was Miriam or Marion Winterbottom. I’m not sure. She had two different ways of spelling it. All I know about the Winterbottom side is that they came from Ohio and moved to Baltimore. So, my mom and dad met in Baltimore during World War II. He was in the Coast Guard.

Alison: [3:35] Okay. So, both your Suquamish ancestry and your Swedish ancestry come from your father’s side.

Leonard: [3:42] Yes.

Alison: [3:43] Okay. Tell me about the Suquamish Tribe—its history, and its present, and what it was like for you… were you immersed in that when you were growing up?

Leonard: [4:01] Essentially, the Suquamish Tribe have lived on the Peninsula for thousands of years, and are a fishing tribe, primarily, and relied on canoes to do a lot of travel in, and had villages throughout the Kitsap Peninsula and beyond—even up on Whidbey Island, and of course on Bainbridge Island, Blake Island, and within Kitsap County. They had winter houses relying on salmon, big, winter ceremonial complex of events that occurred in the wintertime, exemplified by Old Man House, which was one of the largest winter houses in the Pacific Northwest. It was here on what is now the Port Madison Indian Reservation.

[4:56] The first contact was in about 1792, with Captain George Vancouver, and then a lot of frequent missionaries and traders that came through. Up until the 1830s, when the Hudson’s Bay Company put a permanent trading site at Fort Nisqually—then, about a decade after that, the immigration into the area, or migration, I guess we’d call it—settlers, moving out to the area, essentially had the United States lay claim to the area.

[5:37] It started to occur, and this created a problem, because the British and the Americans were kind of vying over what is now the State of Washington, or Washington Territory. The Americans were claiming land, the British were saying their claims were invalid. At least that was intimated. There was also a lot of division and strife and hostility from the tribes, because they felt like they hadn’t been consulted or paid or acknowledged for land that was being given away in these donation land claims.

[6:23] In 1855, the United States, when they went to clear the title question, got the railroad out here, got people to settle out here, and establish an economy out here in the . The was signed in January of 1855 in Mukilteo. signed on behalf of the Suquamish, and that treaty established the Port Madison Indian Reservation here.

[7:01] My family, of course, was here, on my dad’s side—my ancestors were here on the reservation. They all lived at Old Man House, and then lived in cabins around Old Man House up until 1905. In 1905, the land had already been allotted into 160-acre parcels, but everybody still continued to live around Old Man House. Then, the Army came in and wanted to buy it and put a fort there at Old

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Man House. There was a big negotiation that went on.

[7:54] There was more hostility there, but eventually the tribe was resigned to the fact that the Army was going to put this fort in there, and moved off. They never built the fort, and the land was sold off, so that kind of scattered the tribe around the reservation to live where they could, because some of the allotments were not conducive to settlement, because they weren’t near the water, etcetera, etcetera. A lot of people made do fishing, or clam-digging, or cutting logs, or things like that. That’s kind of where my family has been associated with the reservation, pre-treaty, and then post-treaty.

Alison: [8:36] Okay. Thank you for that history. When you were growing up, did you have contact with your grandparents—your grandmother and your grandfather: the Swedish grandfather and the Suquamish grandmother?

Leonard: [8:49] No. All my grandparents were gone when I was born, so I never met any of them. My grandmother, Marion—she went to the Tulalip Boarding School, which was established around 1900. This was a mandatory, basically a K-8 boarding school that the children were forced to go to. I think she lost a lot of her language and culture there. When she got out of boarding school, she came back to the reservation, and apparently met Alexander some way. I’ve never really heard how that happened. They married.

[9:50] I know that this boarding school that she attended was very disruptive to the transmission of culture and heritage. They were intended to do that. They were intended, just like the allotments and the boarding schools, to assimilate, and kind of push away the tribal culture, and the tribal cohesion, and the tribal identity, because it had such great power, because of our presence here for thousands of years. The United States kind of wanted to get that adaptation, that tradition, that connection between us and our landscape eliminated. So, I did not know her. She died relatively young. They had two children, my father, James, and my uncle, Joseph. They were both World War II veterans.

Alison: [10:54] Did your father ever tell you any stories about his parents that you’d like to share? Any traditions that he might have grown up with?

Leonard: [11:03] I don’t know why he didn’t talk about his parents much. I guess because he was really young when his mom died. His father was kind of around, and kind of helped support the family the best way he could through his work. He helped build the house that I grew up in on the reservation here. I did hear some stories about his accent. My mom used to talk about him, what a nice person he was. He always talked about living by the golden rule. That was his main reference point. He wasn’t super religious, but he really believed that is the way people should carry out their life, and the way they conduct themselves.

[12:11] Apparently, he didn’t like the New York Yankees baseball team, and he used to say, “Those damn ‘Jankees,’” the one thing that I remember hearing. He couldn’t pronounce that very well. So, he did have a pretty heavy accent, from what I understand. And I’ve seen pictures of him. He did have some disabilities later in age, with his legs. I think that did affect him. But apparently, he was pretty well-liked around here, as far as we know.

[12:51] My older brother has talked about him, because he was alive when he was alive, and he remembers him being very kind, and buying him an electric train set when he was little. That was

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very exciting for him as a young boy. It was very memorable for him that he set that up and had that for him. I know that was one memory I’ve heard of.

Alison: [13:23] Okay, great. Transitioning into your childhood, you grew up on the reservation. Tell me what that was like for you.

Leonard: [13:36] Well, it was interesting, because it was much more rural than it is now. It has developed quite a bit. We had a house, and it was surrounded by forest. We pretty much lived running around in the woods. When it got hot, we’d walk down to the beach, either at Old Man House, or downtown Suquamish to the dock. We’d play in the water, and hang out on the beach. Those were some of the things that we did. We had a pretty big family. There were five of us. My older sister and brother were kind of out ahead of me. I was the youngest.

[14:26] My dad worked as a logger and a truck driver, and other jobs that he had, mainly manual. My mom was more active working part-time, cutting brush, and cutting holly. Then she got a job at Kiana Lodge in the summers. So, she started to work there a lot more after the kids were pretty much raised up. It was partially living off the land—a wood stove, and dad would go out and cut wood. We would eat a fish and clams quite a bit. We socialized with the other tribal people, but we didn’t really have a hard, structured ceremonial schedule, because they just really weren’t practiced that much. There was very little of that.

[15:38] Chief Seattle Days was an annual event that we all participated in. That kind of started with the American Legion as a fundraiser, and the tribe had a loose connection with that. It really started back in the 1910s, but then it kind of died off, and it started up again in the 1960s. So, that was really the only thing that we had that was ceremonial.

[16:10] So, we did a lot of the stuff American kids do. We played a lot of baseball. We played a lot of sports outside, and ran around in the woods, building forts, and doing all those things. But the tribal families were the main ones we connected with. There was another tribal family that were Norwegian Indians—the Lawrences. They had a big family. Their father had died of tuberculosis at a pretty young age. They were being raised by a single mom. So, we used to go there a lot. We were really active with them, because they were kind of our age.

[16:55] Then, there were the Hocks nearby. We could run through the woods, and visit their house. It was next to ours. That was another family that we’d spend a lot of time with. After a while, we all went to school: Suquamish Elementary, and North Kitsap Junior High in Poulsbo, and North Kitsap High School in Poulsbo—the Vikings. So, there was a lot of Nordic tradition that was presented in the school there, obviously.

[17:30] I think that the tribal culture was kind of accepted in some ways, and then not tolerated in others, depending on who you were with. But I wouldn’t say it was a situation where it was discouraged, or aggressively rejected. But it wasn’t encouraged. That was something that we kind of had issues with. So, I think a lot of it had to do with the times, too. Kind of similar to now, there was a lot of activism, and people thought, “You need to be behave. You guys are getting kind of out of line here, wanting to exercise your traditional ways.” Then we also had the Boldt decision that came out, and that created some anxiety.

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[18:40] But for the most part, I think that there wasn’t really a movement to assimilate as much as it made it more open to multiculturalism. Like I said, it just wasn’t encouraged. You had to push it. That was some of my high school experience. I played a lot of sports, too. I had a lot of friends on the teams that I played on. My dad played a lot of sports. He played football for North Kitsap back in the 1930s. I played basketball and baseball. My brother played baseball and basketball, too.

[19:29] I remember a story about when he had gotten out of grade school. After he got out of grade school… I think they went to eighth grade, or something, in those days. His friend saw him, one of his non-Native friends, named Murray Bystrom, and said, “Hey, Jim, what are you going to do now? Are you going to go to high school?” And he said, “No, I think I’m just going to dig clams.” Because he didn’t really think about doing it. It was like… I don’t think it was really required, or anything like that. I’m not sure. But it wasn’t on his list of things to do, apparently. It might have been different in those days. Plus, there was no transportation, either.

[20:19] He said, “Well, Jim, they play football up there, you know.” He goes, “What?” “Yeah, they’ve got a football team.” “Oh, I think I’m going to go to school.” They started walking. They would walk from Suquamish to Poulsbo, or walk home. I think they got rides in the morning, but they had to walk home, and sometimes walk back and forth. It’s about seven or eight miles. He said the traveling salesmen would come through. They had a nickname for them. I can’t think what the nickname is, but they would drive through and sometimes they’d pick them up, and give them rides back to Suquamish. Anyway, I’m kind of drifting here.

Alison: [21:07] No, not at all. It’s really interesting. Just going back to growing up in your family, I know you mentioned there weren’t necessarily a lot of ceremonies, but one of the themes around these interviews is cultural identity, so did you and your siblings feel strongly tied to the Suquamish Tribe? I know you lived on the reservation, but it was it something that you felt proud of? Was it something that your family discussed? Did you talk about any knowledge from your ancestors in your early years?

Leonard: [21:44] It was complicated. [Laughs] Plus, the era we were in. I was born in 1962, so by the time I’m in the first grade, there’s a lot happening in the U.S., especially around Civil Rights, and Tribal Treaty Rights, and issues surrounding anti-poverty programs, and tribes’ self-determination and sovereignty. All of these things were boiling around at that time. So, my older siblings, Jim and Marion… Marion was the oldest, and my brother Jim was below her. She was born in 1946, and he was born in 1948. They were active.

[22:38] I think my mother was concerned about us being too… She was not tribal. She was born and raised in Baltimore. Although, she might have had some American Indian blood in her for all we know, but still, she wasn’t raised near that. She was born in a rowhouse and raised in a rowhouse in Baltimore. I think the thing that I think of is that it was kind of uncomfortable for them, for us to ally ourselves with the Native American/American Indian identity. Therefore, it wasn’t really talked about, or encouraged. I don’t know how much of that was my mom or my dad, or both.

[23:47] I think my dad kind of had similar feelings, maybe coming from that boarding school era, and his World War II experiences, etcetera, where he was kind of beaten down, too. He was proud of it, and he had a lot of Native American friends—a lot of Indians from Port Gamble S'Klallam, which is eight miles from here, towards Kingston. He had a lot of his war buddies who were Native

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American. It was just like… it was there, but it wasn’t like really identified like we do now. It was just part of who we were as people, as a social circle. But everybody was so very much concerned with survival. That was the one thing. People were working really hard to feed their families, and just make it. There was a lot of struggle, economic struggle.

[24:55] I remember there were a lot of people that would come around that were Native American. All of our friends were American Indian Suquamish people. But we never really talked too much about our… at least when I was younger. But it all changed, probably, when I was eight, nine years old, that age. The tribes started getting more empowered, because the tribal government, which my dad had been part of, was trying to get itself established.

[25:35] Then, the United States passed the self-determination act, and that brought projects to the tribe that used to be administered by the federal agencies offsite, like up in Everett, or out in Taholah, or in Portland, or wherever. They would provide services from there. So, if you wanted to do anything, if you wanted to get anything done, you had to go to Everett. If you wanted to get a program going. Then they said, “No, we’re going to give these contracts directly to the tribal council. They’re going to administer those.” That created jobs at the tribal government. Pretty soon, we had a phone down there. We had an office. Then, we started applying for grants, and slowly we started to build things. Summer youth brought jobs out, and then we started getting together as tribal youth in these summer jobs, and that created more identity. Then, we started working on Chief Seattle Days, getting prepared for that.

[26:32] Then we thought, “You know what, we really grew up without our culture.” We had one elder, Lawrence Webster, who was really big on this, who was a great friend of my father’s and my mother’s. We were great friends with his daughter. His daughter is still alive—Marilyn Wandry is her name now. He was saying, “We’ve got to build a museum. We’ve got to save our culture,” and really pushed that.

[27:01] So, we really started pushing to try to get the museum opened, and an archives established, etcetera. So, that’s when it all kind of flipped. I remember there was a time when you really demonstrated it, because there was a Supreme Court decision that said the State couldn’t charge Indians sales tax when they bought something on-reservation. So, when we used to go down to the grocery store, and bought something… In those days, I think they might have even taxed food at one time. I know they taxed soda pop, and all that other stuff. Anyway, it was different.

[27:49] I remember being little, and my brother brought his Indian card out, and said, “No, you can’t tax me.” “Oh, okay, you have to sign right there.” That was like the first time as a young person that I was like, oh, wow, we have this relationship that’s legally-based that we’re starting to achieve. So, that whole time there was one that was very, very powerful, and political, and… what’s the other word I’m trying to think of? I don’t want to say… kind of disruptive, chaotic. It was intense, let’s just say that much. The whole 1970s were intense for our country. And historic, as well.

Alison: [28:41] Yeah. So, you were in school during that time. Tell me about the decision to go to the University Washington. You went there right after high school, is that correct?

Leonard: [28:53] Yeah. So, anyway, the thing was, for me, I was pretty active in high school in sports, and I was a pretty good student. I think I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I had skipped

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second grade. So, I was a year younger than everybody in my class. But I was pretty good, physically. A physically large kid, so I kind of fit in. I was able to compete in sports at that age.

[29:24] Anyway, like all high school students, I had some awkward times, and I was really kind of burned out on the schedule I was keeping—the college prep schedule, a lot of sports. A lot of disruption, because we sold the house that I grew up in when I was just out of my senior year. So, I kind of was feeling a little anxiety about all that. I thought, “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

[30:02] So, I ended up applying to a number of schools. I had done fairly well on the SAT, and I was American Indian, so I got a lot of letters. I got a ton of letters. I remember I got one from the Naval Academy, and my dad just saw that letter, and he goes, “You could go to the Naval Academy and be an officer!” I was thinking, “I don’t want to go be an officer in the Naval Academy.” [Laughs] The last thing in the world I wanted to do was be in the military at that time. It was post-Vietnam. It was still kind of rumbling around. It was 1978, 1979.

[30:47] So, anyway, I ended up applying to the University of Southern California. I thought it sounded exotic to me. I ended up getting accepted there, and I said, “I’m going to go.” So, I just went. I went there for three semesters. It was a real adventure. I just kind of got plopped into Los Angeles. Everybody said, “Oh, you’ll have no problem. You’ll do fine; you’ll do great.” I was on my own, 17. I remember the day I landed, it was 105 degrees, the worst smog in 20 years.

[31:251] I ended up… My wisdom teeth were coming in, and I had this toothache. I went through all this rigamarole to get my classes, and then get my housing. Finally, after it was all done, I got my paperwork… I was in an off-campus apartment. I went up there, and it was about 7:00 at night, and I went to the office, and it was closed. It was like, “Where am I going to go now?”

[32:02] So, I ended up sitting on the steps of this apartment complex with my suitcase, and I sat there, and I was thinking, “You know, if I could, I would just go home right now, but I can’t, because I don’t have any money.” [Laughs] All I have is a card for the cafeteria. So anyway, about an hour later, my roommate showed up. He was out shopping, and he came back, and he said, “Hey, are you Leonard?” I go, “Yeah.” “I’m so-and-so. I’m your roommate.” “Oh, good. Do you have a key?” He goes, “Yeah!” It all turned out okay. [Laughs]

Alison: [32:37] That’s good. [Laughs]

Leonard: [32:38] But anyway, I really learned a lot down there, mostly out of class, because I transferred into a dorm from that apartment. Everybody said, “You’re transferring from an apartment into a dorm?” It’s like, “Everybody wants to get out of the dorms and get into an apartment.” “Well, I don’t know anybody, so, I’m going to the dorm, because I want to meet people.” Anyway, it was an international dorm, so I had an international roommate. Anyway, after three semesters, it started to get expensive. My first year was covered, but my second year wasn’t covered. So, I transferred to the University of Washington in 1981.

[33:15] The University of Washington is on a quarter system, and the University of Southern California is on a semester system. So, when I got back home, I had like two months to kill before spring quarter started. I went down to the tribal office, and I went, well, I probably should work. Maybe I can get a job, make a little money. I had always had a summer job down at the tribe. So, I

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went down there, and an old friend of mine that I played ball with was working there, Chuck Deam. So, I went, “Hey, Chuck, are there any jobs around here?” He goes, “Yeah, there’s this job here. It’s a cultural cataloger job. Maybe you can get that.”

[34:03] So, I applied for it, and I ended up getting it. It was a job cataloging historic photographs. That’s when I saw the first photographs of my grandma, and my great-grandma, and my great uncle—all of these people I had kind of heard about. So, that was a big changer. I was 19. There were all these things I didn’t know, that my parents didn’t share with me for whatever reason. There wasn’t a whole lot of discussion. I think some of it had to do with my mom, because my mom was kind of the dominant force within the family.

[34:41] She had kind of a relatively informal… I should say, unusual, at least from a social context, upbringing. Basically, a single mom. She got pregnant with my mom and my aunt when she was pretty young—17 and 19. I don’t think she was married. There was a lot of stigma with her family that she didn’t want to talk about. She came out here, and she was making a new life, and didn’t really want to look back too much. So, I don’t know if that kind of transferred over to my dad, and he just said, oh, well, I’m not going to talk about my family, either, that much. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. But it was a really big change in my life when I saw those photographs of my family— people I had heard about, but had never met.

Alison: [35:34] Wow. That’s really interesting. Just to go back a little bit, when you mentioned those photographs of your family, I read that your family is connected to Chief Seattle.

Leonard: [35:49] Yeah.

Alison: [35:50] Could you talk about that a little bit?

Leonard: [35:52] Yeah. That’s something that really was never discussed among my family. I really found that through genealogy. When you go from Marion, her parents were Alice and Jack Temple. He was Cherokee, from somewhere in Texas, and he moved up here to Seattle, and they met somehow. Alice was descended from… If I can get this right. I don’t want to go too far, because I might get it wrong. She was descended from William DeShaw, who was a trader, and from the sister of Jack Davis, who was Jenny Davis’s… There were two Jenny Davises.

[36:49] There was a Jenny Davis who used to live over on Lake Union, and then there was a Jenny Davis who was Jack Davis’s sister. They weren’t related that I know of, at least not very closely. Anyway, that’s who Alice Temple descended from. So, I had to find Jack Davis, because I didn’t have a lot of information on Jenny Davis, and I kind of followed his genealogy. That directed me up to Chief Seattle’s brother. So, I’m really descended from his brother, not from Chief Seattle.

Alison: [37:27] Okay. Interesting. Do you think that the job you had in college kind of put you on a path towards working in the cultural field?

Leonard: [38:04] Absolutely.

Alison: [38:05] So, what did you do after college, then?

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Leonard: [38:09] What happened was, I was on an engineering track at USC, and that didn’t work out. So, I just kind of went undecided. When I came to the UW, I was kind of in the same place, undecided, undeclared. When I started working in that position as a cataloger, the next summer, I continued working in that position. That was the makings of our archives. That was pretty much building the archives. Then it turned into building the museum. Lawrence Webster always wanted to build a museum. The tribal center had just been built in 1979. So, it was only two years old.

[39:02] The upstairs had not been completed, primarily because a fire had destroyed the tribal center—the first construction in 1978. It was almost completed, and it had burned down. We had to rebuild it, and the insurance money didn’t cover the full construction. The museum was left undone, so we were trying to get that part of it done. So, anyway, I was in the middle of that, so the timing was awesome. So, we had partnerships with the Burke Museum in trying to get our museum built. Jim Nason, at the Burke Museum, was Comanche. He was working really hard with other tribal museums, like the Makah and Yakima, Steilacoom, and different places that had tribal museums. The Burke was a big partner in that.

[40:02] So, we were talking to Bill Holm and Barbara Lane, and all these people who were affiliated with the University of Washington and the Burke. So, I had exposure to that. I started taking classes at the UW in Anthropology, and I declared an Anthropology degree. I actually did independent study in the museum for credit. So, it worked right into that. I ended up leaving the UW, and then my girlfriend got pregnant with my daughter, so I had to really settle down and buckle down. I started getting serious about working in the museum. I ended up being Director of the museum, eventually. They had cut the staff way down, because we were running out of grant money during the Reagan era. They were cutting a lot of the grant programs.

[41:03] What I was going to say, is that the museum opened in June of 1983, and I didn’t get my degree until 1987, because I had left with a couple classes undone. Everyone was saying. “You really don’t even need that degree.” I was going, “Well, I’m going to finish it. Why would you do all that work, and then not finish?” So, it took me a while to get it, but I finally did get it. That pretty much set the course of my professional career for a couple decades.

[41:39] In the meantime, in 1987, I got elected to Tribal Council. That was not expected at all. I was actually working on a lease extension project. We had a lease, a 50-year lease in Suquamish Shores. It was signed in 1968. The Tribe was looking at possibly extending it. There was a lot of pressure, because the lease was coming up for renewal, and we had to decide if we were going to extend it or not, and negotiate with who was there.

[42:21] We started to talk about it, and we thought if we can get a bigger celebration area for this lease at Suquamish Shores—it’s a 36-acre lease—then, maybe we can come to a deal with the people on the outside, and get a bigger celebration area. But they said, “Well, we can’t really remove anybody.” We thought, well, if we don’t get more… if we don’t get our ballfield back, which was taken away, which was promised to be kept, it’s really going to be a hard sell.

[42:49] So, we were getting to a place where they were saying, “Well, maybe there’s something we can work on.” So, me and the Chairman, who was Lawrence Webster, worked on this. We went down to the General Council Meeting and said, “Well, we want to know if you guys are interested in us pursuing this negotiation, because this is where we are right now. We don’t want to keep going if

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you guys aren’t interested in doing it. We didn’t want to waste our time, if something was going to be rejected anyway.

[43:25] So, we went down there, and the tribe voted like…I kind of remember the vote. It wasn’t very many people. It was like 43-22 or 26, something like that. It was a “no.” So, it was like, all right, we won’t do it. As it turns out, it was good thing that we didn’t do it, because we got all the land back now. Fifty years seemed like… 2018 seemed like a long time in 1987. That seemed like forever, right? So, now it’s over, and we have it all back.

[44:05] That day that I made the presentation to the General Council, somebody nominated me for Tribal Council, and I got elected. And I served 15 years as Secretary of the Tribal Council. Then, I took a three-year break to get my master’s degree in historic preservation from Goucher College. I’ve been Tribal Chairman for another 15 years, but that’s another story.

Alison: [44:39] What have these positions meant to you, personally, as far as your identity, and bringing to light some things about your past, and your family? Have you learned anything that you feel like you would have never known had you not taken some of these positions on?

Leonard: [45:05] Well, I always had an interest in our culture. A lot of that came from my sister, Marion, who passed away in 1999 from cancer. She was always a very culturally-oriented person, an education-oriented person. Her husband, Frank Boucher, was a member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy, Montana. They used to take me to a lot of ceremonies: pow-wows, and events, when I was younger, when I was a teenager. I went to a lot of those events with them.

[45:47] She was on Tribal Council in her own right. So, that had a lot of impact on me. When I started working on these cultural projects, and documentation, and things like that, I got more exposed to the elders. I also got more exposed to our traditional culture and history, and the stories, and the places, and all those things. And the voices. I just felt like this is something I need to do. Being exposed to all that really eventually kind of changed me. When I turned 30, I made a strong commitment to this way of life.

[46:46] I’ve been consumed now with all this working with the Tribe as Chairman—first full-time Chairman—it’s a lot of administrative duties and responsibilities, and a lot of accountability. It can kind of be stifling in a way, to have fallen into that pathway. But spiritually, that’s what’s happened with me.

[47:12] What happened is, I ended up leaving the museum in 1990. Then I went commercial fishing with the tribe for a year, on a tribal vessel, a purse seiner. Then I came back to work for an archaeological firm on the West Point Sewage Treatment plant. That was an eight-week job that lasted eleven years. So, I ended up working for Larson Archeology. That taught me a whole lot about working for a small business consulting firm, billable hours, multiple projects, making payroll, doing really fun work, really fast.

[48:14] That all had an impact on me, because that exposed me in a real way to the past… in a tangible way—not only in the field, but in the archives, and working with tribes, and talking about different places all over. That all kind of coincided with the canoe journey, the birth of the canoe journey in 1989. It overlapped into all of that. When I came back to the Tribe, I really engaged

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myself in the canoe journey, and continuing the cultural resurgence of the tribe.

[48:54] In 2003, I left Larson Archeology to come back to the Tribe, to work as a Tribal spokesperson. I really started to get engaged in that. That’s been kind of an overlap that has occurred. Then we really started working on the cultural resurgence activities related to that. We were going to host the [canoe] journey in 2009, and it was really important for us to be ready. So, we built the new winter ceremonial house. We built the new dock, and kind of got the area prepared for that hosting. That’s been a big part of what I was able to get accomplished, with a lot of help from a lot of people here.

Alison: [49:43] That’s great. that’s a lot of wonderful accomplishments. I’m interested in… you said you spent a year commercial fishing. You said it was a tribal vessel?

Leonard: [49:55] A purse seiner. Yeah.

Alison: [49:56] That’s interesting, also a connection with the Nordics. As you know, fishing is what brought a lot of Nordic people here. Is that something you want to comment on—what that experience was like for you?

Leonard: [50:11] What happened is, I was out there… Once I got laid off, I was on unemployment. Hold on a second-- [Video break] Anyway, I was unemployed, and kind of kicking around. I had been working, and going to school hard core for a long time. So, anyway, there was a purse seiner that had a man down, and needed somebody to help out. It was a tribal purse seiner. They said, “Hey, do you want to jump on with us?” I said, “Sure, I’ll give it a try.” I was still on Council, but it wasn’t full-time. It was part-time. I was still engaged with the tribe.

[51:54] Anyway, we went out here, and fished off of Yeomalt Point. We made a bunch of money in one day. I was like, “Wow, this is great.” The guy told me, “It’s not like this every day.” [Laughs] “I’ll do this anytime you want!” That was in the fall. The next summer, I wanted to go out and give it a try, so I ended up jumping on with a guy out of Nooksack, who had a pretty new purse seiner. So, we went up to Anacortes, and fished out of there. That wasn’t working out too well. Pretty much all he had was the boat and a net. He didn’t have much else. [Laughs] So, it was a bit of a struggle.

[52:44] But I learned a little bit about fishing there. Then I jumped ship, and got onto a Suquamish Tribal seiner, because they had a man down. So, I jumped on with them, and spent the rest of the summer fishing with them. They really didn’t make a whole lot of money, but it was a great adventure. The next year, I got that job in the archeology firm, and I had an opportunity to go fishing. I was kind of going around and around. I had kind of gone through this life change, and had gotten sober. I said, “Well, I think I’m just going to stick it out here at home and the steady paycheck.” So, that’s what I did. So, I did have one summer and fall of fishing there, that was a great experience.

Alison: [53:44] That’s great. And you have children, you said?

Leonard: [53:48] Yeah, I have one daughter, Chelsea. She was born in 1985. Then my wife and I met in 1997. So, Chelsea was 12 then. I was living with my mom and dad. When I met Janet, she had

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a daughter who was eight. So, we got married, and Chelsea moved in with us. So, we raised her from then on, with Lauren. They’re both adults now, and we’ve got grandkids now.

Alison: [54:28] Oh, great. And are your children and grandchildren involved in tribal activities at all?

Leonard: [54:35] My grandchild is. He’s six. His dad is a Suquamish Tribal member. He’s got a big family. He’s fairly involved in some of these things. He’s kind of shy yet, so it’s going to take him a little while. And then my other grandson, Weston—he’s not Suquamish, because he’s my stepdaughter’s child. But he is part Cherokee Cree, like his grandma. Not enrolled. So, he hasn’t really had too much involvement with the tribe.

Alison: [55:21] Okay. That kind of leads me to my next question, about the Tribe today, and how knowledge and identity are being shared in the Tribe, maybe between the elders and the younger people.

Leonard: [55:37] Well, I think that there are a number of ways. It’s through the language program, where we are trying to preserve the Lushootseed Language. It’s through ceremonies, where people are allowed to intermingle and learn. It’s also done within the families themselves. It’s also done through the canoe journey, and also through the tribal programs. We train the youth in the respectful ways of treating elders, and treating their friends, and their peers, and all. So, those are a number of the ways that we do that. We try to get the curriculum into the schools as well. So, I think there is mixed success on that. More success than I was exposed to. I know that. Children now have a lot more opportunities and experiences that we didn’t have. So, that’s good.

Alison: [57:00] Yeah. That’s great. The Pacific Northwest and the Kitsap Peninsula, in particular, have a rich history of Nordic immigrants, of course. What do you think about the intersection and the interaction between the Northwest tribes, specifically the Suquamish Tribe, and the Norwegians and the Swedes around the area? Do you think that there has been, overall, some cultural sharing? Are there similarities you can see between the values represented from both cultures? I know it’s kind of a tough question, maybe.

Leonard: [57:44] It is. I think I’d be speculating. I think speculation is allowed. [Laughs]

Alison: [57:50] Sure.

Leonard: [57:53] From an anthropological viewpoint, there is an aboriginal relationship that a lot of Nordic people had. I think a lot of them were relatively recent immigrants to the U.S. I don’t know the whole story, but I know a lot of them were immigrants—they weren’t here for generations. I think when you get into people that were here for many generations… Not “here,” but in the United States, for many generations… If you go back East, there is an identity that has been released from their aboriginal connection.

[58:39] So, I think they had that kind of idea of… There is a tradition among the elders of the Tribe: you take what you need, and you leave the rest. That was what they always used to say. You never wasted anything. You just took enough, enough to get by. And I think that kind of… there wasn’t a ton of greed… like, “I’m going to get as much as I can, and get the biggest and best.” I think a lot of the Nordic people of this area were in the same kind of mindset. A more humble approach to life,

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where people had their values set in a way that was about respect, and respecting your neighbors, and respecting your family value system. Having mutual respect for each other.

[1:00:04] So, I think I kind of felt that. I didn’t feel… It seemed to me, in school, if a family identified themselves as a certain ethnicity, it was kind of thought of as being an asset. “Wow, you have an identity.” I had a lot of Norwegian friends. I wouldn’t say “a lot,” but some pretty close Norwegian families. There was this kind of acceptance. Acceptance and tolerance that I felt was there for most of the people in this area. It was kind of like, we were the locals, you know? We had that same kind of standing, even though we were Indians. We were connected.

[1:01:06] And I think with the immigrant families that came here, they were connected, too. They weren’t transient. That was one thing that Chief Seattle talked about in his speech. He said, “I don’t understand how you guys left your country. Why did you leave your country to come here?” You know. So, I think that when people demonstrated that they were connected and had a relationship, and respect for the land, they had a mutual affiliation with each other.

Alison: [1:01:45] Yeah. That’s a great point. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we close?

Leonard: [1:02:01] No, I don’t think I have anything else. It’s been a good interview.

Alison: [1:02:05] Yeah, this has been very interesting. You continue to have a wonderful career, and you’re doing so much to share culture and knowledge.

Leonard: [1:02:16] It’s funny, because I feel so much more relaxed today than I did a couple days ago. I did an interview with Puget Sound Energy. They wanted to do something about Old Man House. So, we went down to the beach, and did it down there. I just got really super tired after a while. I think part of it is, you kind of feel like you’re on point. They’re using it to train their employees, and you have that kind of pressure to get it right, and standing up by the water… it was kist a little tiring. I don’t feel as tired on this interview.

Alison: [1:02:58] That’s good. We like to keep these fairly low-key, and just let people talk, and whatever comes up is…

Leonard: [1:03:03] Yeah. I remember when we did our oral history interviews back in the 1980s… At the time, I was doing the photographs… All these photographs had been collected from different institutions. We had thousands of them. They needed to be cataloged. I had to do all that documentation, and gather information to find out who was in the photos and what was going on, etcetera, etcetera. There was also another part of the program… this is before the museum opened. There was an oral history project. All of these interviews were being done with elders. I remember being 19, and you know how you are at 19. You’re super energetic. They said, “Well, when you talk to these elders, you’ve got to keep it kind of short, or you’re going to tire them out.” “Well, we’re just doing interviews. What’s so tiring about that?” Now, I understand. [Laughs]

Alison: [1:03:54] Yeah, it is. I know. [Laughs]

[TAPE BREAK]

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Leonard: [1:06:30] I was up in Alert Bay at a potlach, and [Bill Holm] was there. This was about five years ago. The young people were singing these songs all the way through the whole weekend. And he said to me, “Leonard, the thing is, when I was up here, 40 years ago, or whatever, there were a lot of people up here that had the material culture, carvers, and things, but they didn’t have these songs. They have these songs now.”

[1:07:11] I And I think that a big part of that is the canoe journey. When the canoe journey started, people started having these gatherings, and people would have to come forward as a tribe, or a band, or a nation, and make a presentation. “Well, we’ve got to sing a song.” That was a big part of the canoe journey when it first started out. In fact, we didn’t have any songs, and people were lending us… People would give tribes with less, a song. A tribe might have a lot of songs, and say, “Hey, we’re going to give you this song. It will be your song to sing.” Then our people started composing their own, and now we have a lot of them. A lot of tribes, when they started out, just didn’t have those things. They had them, and they just had to find them, but they’ve got these young people up there, singing. So, it was pretty cool.

Alison: [1:08:02] Wow. Yeah.

Leonard: [1:08:03] Very interesting to see him say that, because he had a perspective on all of that.

Alison: [1:08:07] Yeah. Absolutely. That’s really interesting. That reminds me, before I let you go, one more quick question. One thing that I’ve noticed, when I’ve been doing a lot of these interviews, is that almost everyone we’ve interviewed for Interwoven does some sort of art. We were thinking about possibly doing an exhibit at the Museum in the future. Just wondering if you do any sort of art or carving, or anything like that.

Leonard: [1:08:31] Very little.

Alison: [1:08:33] Okay. No worries. I just wanted to check.

Leonard: [1:08:35] The one thing I do specialize in is these simple canoe necklaces.

Alison: [1:08:42] Oh, yeah. I noticed that. Can you hold that up to the camera?

Leonard: [1:08:45] Yeah. This one I got in Alaska. So, this isn’t my work.

Alison: [1:08:48] That’s really nice.

Leonard: [1:08:48] This is probably a little better than I can do. But I can do one for you.

Alison: [1:08:56] Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

Leonard: [1:08:59] You can put me down for a necklace, okay?

Alison: [1:09:02] All right. Sounds good.

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Leonard: [1:09:03] All right.

Alison: [1:09:04] Thank you so much, Leonard. This has been so interesting.

Leonard: [1:09:07] All right. Talk to you soon. Thanks for the interview. This turned out great.

Alison: [1:09:09] This was great.

Leonard: [1:09:10] It felt good to talk about some of these things I hadn’t been able to… It’s a great name, because I feel like we did “interweave” a lot of things.

Alison: [1:09:19] Great.

END OF RECORDING.

Transcription by Alison DeRiemer.

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