Opinion

Column: Muckleshoot Tribe succeeds despite harsh history





Wally's World column on the history of the Muckleshoot Tribe of Washington
Throughout my childhood, Muckleshoots were the recipients of some of the most bitter racial comments I ever heard. Disparaging remarks about them were far more common than similar barbs aimed at African-Americans, probably because, at the time, there weren’t any blacks around here.

After such a corrupt, violent and cultural-destroying history, one could hardly expect the members of this artificial tribe to make a rapid recovery and readily accept the white man’s manicured lawns, freshly-scrubbed homes and Christian religion. But dissipated as they were, the Indians tried as best they could to regroup and develop a society that preserved some of their native beliefs and ways. They built several dilapidated homes that tended to confirm the white’s bigoted opinions.

One time when I was just a little kid, I remember driving through the reservation with my father, just as an Indian fellow stumbled and fell down the front steps of a house with a bottle of booze in his hand. I asked my dad what was wrong with that “Indian guy.” My father, who wasn’t an especially bigoted man, nevertheless quickly replied, “That’s just another drunken Indian.”

Get the Story:
Wally's World: Muckleshoot Tribe deserves support (The Enumclaw Courier Herald 6/27)

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