A man for all tribes

Once distrusted by Indians he served, BIA superintendent Bill Black retires with appreciation for his service to area tribes

By Theresa Goffredo

Herald Writer

When Bill Black arrived at the Lummi Reservation, north of Bellingham, during a flood in the mid-1980s, he couldn’t believe it. Not only was the reservation buried under water, members of the National Guard were evacuating the Indian Health Service center.

That left Black with no doctors nor nurses and no medical supplies.

So Black, superintendent for the local Bureau of Indian Affairs, bought supplies and rounded up a helicopter to retrieve tribal members stranded on dikes. He set up a makeshift food bank where tribal members could get free donated food. He set up shelters.

But after the crisis cleared, Black received a bill — a big bill — from one of the nation’s leading relief agencies. Black, a patient man who normally chooses his words carefully, lost it. He demanded to know how they could send a bill when the agency hadn’t contributed one dime to the Lummi relief effort?

Black angrily let into the agency. The bill went unpaid. To this day, Black has never given a dime to that agency.

Though the years have taken the edge off that memory, Black still remembers how the experience changed his attitude overnight. Like an epiphany, Black knew what he had to do as superintendent: He needed to help Indian tribes take charge of their own affairs.

For 27 years as a BIA employee, 18 of those as superintendent, Black championed tribal rights. He even played a role in one of the largest legal settlements ever won by a tribe. But more than single victories, Black changed the overall perception that the bureau controls the tribes.

In part, Black was able to change the bureau’s image from the "Butt Into Affairs" bureau to one tribes trusted because he was empowered by history-altering laws giving tribes more authority to run their own programs and rights to fish.

But part of Black’s success simply came from within him.

"I have met very few BIA people who are supportive of the tribes. Many are ’60s holdovers who believe they needed to keep Indians on the reservation so they wouldn’t molest the settlers," said attorney Mason Morisset, who helped tribes regain their fishing rights by arguing their case in federal court in the historic Boldt decision.

"But Bill was such a breath of fresh air," Morisset said. "He saw himself as a helper and assistant. He was more of the new school, assisting the tribes to reach their full potential."

Morisset was among the guests at Black’s retirement party last week. Black’s actually retired as superintendent for Puget Sound Agency in April when illness forced him to call it quits. The party was the formal goodbye and itself a symbol of Black’s achievement as a successful liaison between opposing sides, as 250 Indians and non-Indians gathered and gave gifts. Even Black’s ex-wife attended.

Freddie Lane, a former vice-chairman of the Lummi Tribe who likes to take jabs at the BIA, said he was surprised that anyone from the bureau could understand and solve tribal problems. But Black surprised him, Lane said.

"It was not just gaining our trust, but he was there to help return to the Indian people what is rightfully theirs," Lane said during the party, "and get the reigns back to Indian people the way it should be. And though the BIA has changed, Bill was already doing that"

But it took time for Black to earn that trust.

William A. Black was born in Omak, the middle of five children. His dad, Harry, was a journeyman ironworker who helped build Grand Coulee Dam and the Space Needle. Black was raised in Indian ways by his grandmother and still considers the town of Monse, between Brewster and Omak, his home base. It was there that his grandmother gave him his Indian name: "Qual-Lee’-Lah, which means "of the earth."

Ironically, the first husband of Black’s grandmother, a Colville Indian, was shot to death by a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent. But the story’s irony only became clear years later because the young Bill Black, a bearish boy of 6 feet who loved to sing, dreamed not of working for the government, but of becoming a vocalist.

His first job with the bureau was as an enrollment officer for the Colville Confederated tribes in Eastern Washington. That was supposed to be temporary.

But Black started at the bureau at the time of the Boldt decision, which gave Indians greater fishing rights. The decision would prove to be lucrative for most tribes, but proof of tribal membership was necessary to reap the rewards. Prior to Black’s arrival at the bureau, records of membership were sorely outdated. There was a panic to bring the system up-to-date and make it accurate, and Black helped spearhead that process.

Those were volatile times; some might say the turning point for non-tribal commercial fishermen who believed they were losing their livelihood to Indians. A few heads were cracked in violent confrontations, Indians were shot at and Black recalled receiving numerous bomb threats at his office, which at the time was housed in the old federal building that is now Henry Cogswell College on Colby Avenue.

One such threat was carried out. In the mid-1970s a bomb blew off the front of the building at 5 a.m. No one was hurt and no one was ever caught. Black kept the shrapnel-shredded BIA flag that once hung in front of his office.

Those times were tough on Black for other reasons. Black was an Okanogan Indian employed by the BIA, a federal bureau once under the War Department to ensure Indians behaved themselves.

Many tribal members distrusted the bureau. And they distrusted even more an Indian working for the bureau.

"A lot of people accused me of being a traitor. They didn’t want me to be anywhere near them and would trust a white man a lot more than they would trust an Indian working for the bureau," Black recalled.

Black estimated it took seven years before tribal elders got to the point where they’d want to talk to Black and no one else. In 1983, Black was appointed as superintendent of the Puget Sound Agency.

"Then I knew I had crossed that line and was no longer considered a traitor working for the enemy, but the one who could be trusted," Black said.

That trust was gained by countless hours spent listening to tribal members whenever they had concerns. Tribal members would show up at his house at all hours and sit in their cars with the headlights shining until Black came out and talked with them.

It also meant marathon weekends attending tribal ceremonies and sometimes using his own money to bail tribal members out of jail.

It hasn’t always been easy for Black.

"I’m pretty good at talking down an issue and bringing it under civil control," said Black, a graduate of the University of Washington graduate school of public affairs. "But if I can’t, I’m also capable of throwing them completely out of the building, and I’ve done that sometimes."

Black chuckled. "That isn’t what I count on. Communication is the key."

"The lack of being able to communicate is based on fear," Black said. "Because they believe someone will do them irreparable harm, and the best way to eliminate that fear is to let everyone know the answers to the questions."

Ramona Bennett, former chairman of the Puyallap Tribe, sometimes wound up at odds with Black. Still, Bennett remembers how Black helped the tribe access previously sealed records.

"Everything was held in trust like we’re a bunch of irresponsible idiots," Bennett recalled. "But Bill had been an enrollment officer, and he knew how important it was for tribes to be able to document themselves. He really let us begin accessing our own information.

"I tend to believe there was wrongdoing by the predecessors and they were simply being secretive to protect themselves," Bennett said. "But Bill had no such history. He really opened up the bureau so that Indian people can be comfortable transacting our business."

One of the most significant accomplishments of Black’s career was his leadership working with the Puyallaps during their years-long effort to re-acquire tribal tidelands in the Port of Tacoma in Pierce County and land once considered the bottom of the Puyallup River before it was dredged and channeled.

Black was the intermediary between the government and the Puyallaps. He and Pierce County Executive John Lagenburg butted heads during those five years of negotiating. But the result was an unprecedented settlement in which the Puyallaps were awarded $90 million and received 90 acres of land, which they have since expanded to several hundred acres.

It was the first such agreement in which tribes and the federal government renegotiated entire tribal rights, Lagenburg said.

Lagenburg called Black the bureau’s "instrumental, key guy" who was able to marshal the settlement through Congress.

"I have to give him an ‘A’ because it’s something that had never been done," Lagenburg said. "We had our ups and downs. But in the end, it was a great day for Tacoma and Pierce County."

Black said he worried that he had not contributed enough. "It’s something I’ve given a great deal of consideration to because I hope I’m doing something good," Black said.

Over the years, Black has seen his office go from a staff of 80 to a staff of 12. Black sees that as an example of how he had helped transfer the responsibility and authority over to tribal governments.

But Black also sees a future for the BIA.

"Sometimes I like to put it that the bureau is a bad boy, but it’s the tribes’ bad boy," Black said. "They can stand up and can criticize the bureau, but heaven forbid that somebody else criticizes the bureau, because it’s their bureau."

Black gave up the reigns of the bureau April 30 by surprise. At 53, he had planned on another three years. But he was taken to the hospital that night, unable to breathe and not expected to live.

Black’s wife, Patty, the dean of nursing at Everett Community College, said her husband has been at death’s doorstep four times over the last six months. "He’s been to the brink and back, literally going into cardiac arrest on the surgery table," Patty said.

Patty and Bill were married in a traditional Indian ceremony in La Conner 13 years ago. They met at Everett Community College and over the years have shared the joy of their children and shared the hobby of collecting. Patty’s collection of nurse dolls fills an upstairs room at their Edmonds home. Bill collects Mickey Mouse memorabilia, models of 1950s Jaguar roadsters and native artworks, such as paintings, baskets and carvings.

The Blacks’ library is filled with model cars and books. A picture of Ulysses S. Grant hangs on the wall, a relative on Bill’s mother’s side and a noted Indian fighter. There’s also a picture of his grandmother on an easel.

Bill Black used to paint. And carve. And play the piano. A lacquered black grand piano takes up an impressive space in the living room. Black sang for the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

But today Black can’t sing. The medication that keeps his condition in check causes his hands to shake, so he can’t paint or carve. On good days, he can play the piano and wear cowboy boots when his ankles aren’t swollen.

Music was always a big part of Black’s life. A radio played oldies tunes while Black talked about how he faces new challenges.

"You are given permission at your retirement to do what you want," Black said. "For me, it would be to paint or play guitar or carve. So what a dirty trick that this takes away my ability to sing, and arthritis takes away from me working with my hands."

From the best the doctors can figure, Bill Black suffers from rheumatoid lung, a condition which makes it difficult to exchange oxygen. Black now constantly wears breathing tubes in his nose attached to an oxygen bottle.

Even so, Black doesn’t regret any of his time at the bureau. Shortly before he retired, Black helped a woman find her past. The woman, now in her 70s, was left with her brother at the Rainier movie theater. She became a ward of the state and grew up to be an exotic dancer.

She moved to Las Vegas and married, then retired comfortably. Still, not knowing her family roots drove her finally to contact Black. Through research and investigation, Black helped the woman discover she was a Suquamish tribal member. She even received trust money owed to her in the amount of $150,000.

Patty said her husband has given his "heart and soul to Indian people."

Bill would say he simply guided tribes to their ultimate destiny as self-governance.

"We had to be true to our word and honest and it takes awhile," Black said of his job with the BIA. "And I’ve spent years working for the betterment of tribes and proven my word is good. And that’s when you get results."

You can call Herald Writer Theresa Goffredo at 425-339-3097

or send e-mail to goffredo@heraldnet.com.

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