Janet Renecker (Yet-Si-Blue) was born on the Tulalip Reservation on March 30, 1934. She was the oldest of three girls and a descendant of Chief Seattle's family,[1] and she lived a childhood marked by poverty and alcohol abuse.[2]
Throughout her early years, she and her family moved often, from Tulalip to Taholah on the Quinault Reservation and, later, to Seattle's International District. Her stepfather drank and had trouble finding work.
She often took refuge in churches and foster homes, spending much of her formative years in the city—mainly out of touch with tribal customs and traditions.
"She thought taverns and drinking was the only way in life," Barbara McCloud, her daughter, said.
She married and divorced young before meeting a Nisqually tribal fisherman and electrical lineman named Don McCloud in the early 1950s. The couple soon married, and together would have eight children: six girls and two boys.
Fishing rights activism
On January 6, 1962, dozens of Washington State game wardens stormed a group of Indians fishing the Nisqually River, arresting five men, including some of McCloud's relatives, for illegal fishing.
"When the raid ended after more than eight hours of sorties in wet brush and on the muddy, swollen stream, five Indians had been arrested and charged with `operating set nets capable of taking game fish.'"[3]
Despite tribal treaties, such as the Treaty of Medicine Creek of 1854, with the federal government that guaranteed fishing and hunting rights to Indians in their traditional tribal lands and waters, state agents periodically squared off with Native Americans.
But as salmon and steelhead numbers began dwindling in the 1960s, the state began exerting more authority over tribal fisheries, attempting to conserve the catch for the commercial- and sport-fishing industries. Injunctions were issued allowing the state to regulate tribal fisheries, and the Washington State Supreme Court upheld them.
Indians began mobilizing. The McClouds founded the activist group Survival of American Indians Association. And, in defiance of court orders, members began staging demonstrations dubbed "fish-ins", the beginning of what would come to be known as the Fish Wars.
Joining her husband; his stepbrother, Nisqually tribal member Billy Frank, Jr.; Puyallup Indians Bob Satiacum and Ramona Bennett, and others, Janet McCloud helped organize the protests at the Nisqually River and Puyallup River, into which tribe members cast traditional nets deemed illegal by the state. Invariably, the "fish-ins" would lead to raids and arrests at the hands of game agents. But the events drew worldwide attention.
Indian elders and activists converged on Washington State. Actor Marlon Brando and rights activist Dick Gregory went to Western Washington, joined fish-ins and lent their celebrity to the cause. And the Black Panthers stood side-by-side with Indians in protests at the state Capitol in Olympia.
All the while, Janet McCloud documented the struggle as editor of Survival News, a newsletter that presented the natives' side of the fish wars. She found an old mimeograph machine at a local thrift store, brought it home and recruited her children to help.
"All us kids would be all right here, sorting and stapling all the papers together, late into the night," daughter Sally McCloud recalled.
Janet's children also stood on the battle lines.
During one famous fish-in at Frank's Landing on the Nisqually on Oct. 13, 1965, a boat carrying several native fishermen, including Janet's husband and two sons, set a tribal net in the river as game wardens lay in waiting. "From the other side of the river shouts were heard: 'Get em! Get the dirty S.O.B.s!'" McCloud wrote later. "In the twinkling of an eye, three big powerboats emerged from the underbrush, were quickly launched and used to ram the Indians' boat."
Her son, Jeff McCloud, not yet 10 and a non-swimmer, was dumped in. A scuffle broke out on the shore, where native women and children had gathered peacefully to watch the demonstration. They pelted wardens with debris, while game agents wrestled and beat some of the protesters.
"If Mom knew that was going to happen, she would've never brought us there," daughter Nancy Shippentower Games said. Six people were arrested, including Don and Janet McCloud. She served six days and refused to eat while incarcerated.
Eventually, the Indians' efforts paid off. On Feb. 12, 1974, U.S. District Judge George Boldt ruled in favor of 14 treaty tribes, upholding the language of their treaties that entitled them to half the salmon and steelhead catch in Washington.
Resurrecting Native American spirituality
While McCloud has once been a practicing Catholic, the Fish Wars, along with catapulting her into the status of civil rights leader, also brought Janet McCloud in touch with her native spirituality.[1] While her husband was jailed for a fish-in, McCloud experienced a vision at her Yelm home. "She couldn't rely on the white man's religion; it was hurting her," her daughter-in-law, Joyce McCloud, recalled. "That's when she saw the vision: She was looking out at Mount Rainier, and she saw all the faces of the great chiefs." McCloud believed it to be a calling. In the late 1960s, she met with Thomas Banyacya, an internationally known Hopi spiritual interpreter, who taught her to search for answers in peace.[1]
She befriended Audrey Shenandoah, an Iroquois Indian and Clan Mother of the Onondaga Nation in New York, and adopted Iroquois religious beliefs on nature.
"She was always speaking her mind, not backing down for anything," said Tracy Shenandoah, who with his mother came to Yelm to be with McCloud.
During the 1970s, McCloud spread the message of native spirituality and human rights worldwide. She traveled the globe, speaking about indigenous women's rights and social justice, and she served as delegate to a national conference on corrections, urging prisons to adopt native spirituality traditions for Indian inmates.
Sapa Dawn Center
Janet McCloud established her home and the surrounding 10 acres (40,000m2) in Yelm, Washington as a retreat, naming it the Sapa Dawn Center, "Sapa" meaning grandfather, the name a tribute to Don McCloud, who died in April 1985. "The elders have said this is a spiritual place. For over 30 years, we've used this land to teach our traditional ways," McCloud, an Indian elder herself, wrote in 1999. "When all is going crazy . . . our people can come back to the center to find the calming effect; to reconnect with their spiritual self."[3]
In August 1985, 300 Indigenous women gathered at Sapa Dawn to discuss social and economic issues faced by native families throughout the Western Hemisphere. This led to the formation of the Indigenous Women's Network, a coalition championing native women, families and tribal sovereignty from Chile to Canada.[3] McCloud was adopted as a founding mother. McCloud ensured that Sapa Dawn would bring its visitors closer to traditional ways of life. "There was no motel in Yelm then," recalls McCloud. "So we put up tepees. One woman said: 'Where's the motel?' I said, 'Here's a key: tepee number one or tepee number two.'"[3]
Yet-Si-Blue
Her uncle, Pete Henry, explained why McCloud's grandmother gave her the Indian name, "Yet-Si-Blue," meaning "the woman who talks." He remarked, "She had become a spokeswoman for Indian culture. That was the perfect name."[1]
Death
Bedridden and muted by complications from diabetes and high blood pressure in her final weeks, Janet McCloud died on November 25, 2003, at the age of 69, with her family gathered bedside, dressed in traditional garb by her granddaughters, and wrapped in a handmade quilt.
The Lakota are a Native American people. Also known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three prominent subcultures of the Sioux people, with the Eastern Dakota (Santee) and Western Dakota (Wičhíyena). Their current lands are in North and South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three closely related languages that belong to the Siouan language family.
The Nisqually are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American tribe in western Washington state in the United States. They are a Southern Coast Salish people. They are federally recognized as the Nisqually Indian Tribe, formerly known as the Nisqually Indian Tribe of the Nisqually Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.
The Tulalip Tribes of Washington, formerly known as the Tulalip Tribes of the Tulalip Reservation, is a federally recognized tribe of Duwamish, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish people. They are South and Central Coast Salish peoples of indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their tribes are located in the mid-Puget Sound region of Washington.
The Suquamish are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American people, located in present-day Washington in the United States. They are a southern Coast Salish people.
The Swinomishpeople are a historically Lushootseed-speaking Native American people in western Washington state in the United States. The Tribe lives in the southeastern part of Fidalgo Island in northern Puget Sound, near the San Juan Islands, in Skagit County, Washington. Skagit County is located about 70 miles (110 km) north of Seattle.
Lushootseed, formerly known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish, or Skagit-Nisqually, is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main dialects, Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed, which are further separated into smaller sub-dialects.
The Nisqually River is a river in west central Washington in the United States, approximately 81 miles (130 km) long. It drains part of the Cascade Range southeast of Tacoma, including the southern slope of Mount Rainier, and empties into the southern end of Puget Sound. Its outlet was designated in 1971 as the Nisqually Delta National Natural Landmark.
The Treaty of Medicine Creek was an 1854 treaty between the United States, and nine tribes and bands of Indians, occupying the lands lying around the head of Puget Sound, Washington, and the adjacent inlets. The tribes listed on the Treaty of Medicine Creek are Nisqually, Puyallup, Steilacoom, Squawskin, S'Homamish, Stehchass, T'Peeksin, Squi-aitl, and Sa-heh-wamish. The treaty was signed on December 26, 1854, by Isaac I. Stevens, governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs of the territory at the time of the signing, along with the chiefs, head-men and delegates of the stated tribes. For the purpose of the treaty, these representatives who signed the treaty were stated to have been, "regarded as one nation, on behalf of said tribes and bands, and duly authorized by them."
United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371 (1905), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that the Treaty with the Yakima of 1855, negotiated and signed at the Walla Walla Council of 1855, as well as treaties similar to it, protected the Indians' rights to fishing, hunting and other privileges.
Henry Lyle Adams was an American Native rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. He was instrumental in resolving several key conflicts between Native Americans and state and federal government officials after 1960. Born on a reservation in Montana and based in Washington state for much of his life, he participated in protests and negotiations in Washington, DC and Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
Billy Frank Jr. was a Native American environmental leader and advocate of treaty rights. As a member of the Nisqually tribe, Frank led a grassroots campaign in the 1960s and 1970s to secure fishing rights on the Nisqually River, located in Washington state. His efforts centered around promoting cooperative management of natural resources. Frank served as the chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission for over thirty years.
Women of All Red Nations (WARN) was a Native American women's organization that fought for Native American civil and reproductive rights. It was established in 1974 by Lorelei DeCora Means, Madonna Thunderhawk, Phyllis Young, Janet McCloud, Marie Sanchez and others. WARN included more than 300 women from 30 different tribal communities. Many of its members had previously been active in the American Indian Movement and were participants in the 1973 Wounded Knee incident. The inaugural conference took place in Rapid City, South Dakota.
The Nisqually Indian Tribe of the Nisqually Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Nisqually people. They are a Coast Salish people of indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Their tribe is located in Washington.
The Fish Wars were a series of civil disobedience protests by Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. These protests, coordinated by tribes around the Puget Sound, pressured the U.S. government to recognize fishing rights granted by the Treaty of Medicine Creek. They protested by continuing to fish on their land while risking charges being pressed against them.
The Steilacoompeople are Lushootseed-speaking Southern Coast Salish people, indigenous to the southern Puget Sound region of Washington state.
The Indigenous Women's Network (IWN) is a nonprofit organization that provides a platform for Indigenous women in the Western Hemisphere. The organization was founded in 1985. IWN focuses on Native women, their families and communities and attempts to help them have sovereignty over themselves and their environment. IWN has published a journal, Indigenous Women, since 1991. This magazine is the first and currently the only magazine written by and for Native women.
Deborah Parker, also known by her native name cicayalc̓aʔ, is an activist and Indigenous leader in the United States. A member of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington, she served as its vice-chairwoman from 2012 to 2015 and is, as of July 2018, a board member for Our Revolution and the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. She is also a co-founder of Indigenous Women Rise.
Ramona Bennett is an American Puyallup leader and activist who was involved in the 1960s and 1970s Fish Wars of the US Pacific Northwest and in tribal sovereignty.
Lonnie Nelson (1932–2014), also known as Madelon Nelson and Madelon S. Healy, was an American labor, peace, civil rights, social justice, and Indigenous peoples activist in Seattle, Washington in the United States.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
