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Reviews
STANDING TALL: THE LIFEWAY OF KATHRYN JONES HARRISON, CHAIR OF THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE GRAND RONDE COMMUNITY
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by Kristine Olson
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Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2005.
Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 272 pages. $23.95 paper. |
| In 1970, Kathryn Jones Harrison hit bottom, beaten down by a lifetime of punishing blows. For her, the crucibles of pain and sorrow had never been far in the background. She was born into poverty and lost both of her parents six days apart in a flu epidemic, a scourge that reappeared a decade later and claimed her twenty-three-year-old older sister. She suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her foster father, took her education in an off-reservation Indian boarding school, and was married too young to an abusive, alcoholic classmate. An itinerant worker and mother of ten children, she spent twenty years hanging on by the thinnest of threads, an experience so excruciating she has repressed most memories of it. Surpassing the magnitude of those miseries was the most agonizing hurt of all, the deaths of two of her sons. Harrison's realization that she would have to sever ties with her husband of over thirty years demarcated the end of the first major stage of her life and her ascendancy into the second. Weary of living on the margins and drowning in a relationship of booze and dependency, Harrison decided to strike out on her own in search of a future that offered at least the hint of something better. |
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Harrison may have reached low ebb, but in the wisdom of Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms, she had been made "strong at the broken places," her trials having uniquely prepared her for the challenges that lay ahead. At the age of forty-eight, she embarked on a journey that began as a personal quest to provide for her children and ended with her achieving public status as one of the most prominent and effective Indian leaders in Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and the country. |
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Harrison's personal life corresponded to the period of American Indian history known as "Self-Determination." A 1942 graduate of Chemawa Indian School, she enrolled in Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, and earned a degree in nursing. But her true calling was not healthcare. Drawing on the influence of her father, a descendant of the Molalla Chief Yel-kus who had been selected by the Grand Rondes to testify before congressional leaders on the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, and the resourcefulness of Molalla Kate, her namesake and great-great-aunt who had been employed as a nanny for Dr. John McLoughlin as a teenager, Harrison assisted the Siletz Tribe of western Oregon in its successful campaign for tribal restoration. She ran for and won a seat on the Siletz Tribal Council, holding the position of secretary. |
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Not feeling totally accepted in that community — her father's family was from Siletz, but he had been enrolled at Grand Ronde — Harrison moved north in 1981 and emerged again as a tireless and formidable leader, laboring literally night and day for Grand Ronde tribal recognition, which was granted in 1983. Eventually occupying the offices of vice chairman and chairman on the tribal council, Harrison served for nearly two decades. She shepherded the Grand Rondes through the critical process of acquiring a land base and oversaw construction of the tribe's economic lifeblood, Spirit Mountain Casino, one of the most successful gaming operations on the Pacific Coast today. |
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Standing Tall joins an expanding anthology of contemporary biographies that document the inestimable contributions of American Indian women in the twentieth century. Although the life history of each of these trailblazers is unique and relevant to their own experiences, they are bound by the capacity to confront and conquer the cruelest of adversities. Kristine Olson's wrenchingly poignant retelling of the bitter disappointments Harrison knew, contrasted with her fearless determination and perseverance, reminds readers of the courageous response of another Chemawa graduate, the late Hazel Pete, a renowned Chehalis basket maker and cultural leader. Harrison's political acumen and prodigious powers of persuasion were not unlike those of the longtime Stillaguamish council chairwoman, Esther Ross, whose adult life was devoted to achieving federal recognition of her tribe. Harrison, Haida elder Florence Davidson, and Makah elder Helma Swan all negotiated the dominant culture while never forsaking their own tribal cultures. Perhaps more than any other, Harrison's life closely paralleled that of Wilma Mankiller, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma from 1985 to 1995. Each rebounded from shattered personal circumstances — hardscrabble beginnings, failed marriages, single motherhood, limited educations and resources — to become the unlikely first female heads of their tribes. |
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Today, at the age of eighty-two, Harrison has transitioned into another phase of her life — respected elder. In her, young people especially have been provided with a remarkable example of an individual who at many junctures could have simply given up but chose instead to stand tall. In doing so, Harrison amassed a substantial legacy — for herself, her family, her tribe, and for non-Indians — that is sure to be felt for generations. |
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| CARY C. COLLINS
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| Maple Valley, Washington |
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