TULALIP – Tulalip tribal member Mary Fryberg recalls being told to hide beneath the pews at the Indian Shaker Church.
The pews protected children from the evil and ills being cast out of the adults around them.
“They’d work on people who had evil done on them, like voodoo,” said Fryberg, now 62. “They were afraid a spirit would try to jump onto a child.”
Adults jumped and danced around a person said to be sick or possessed by demons. “I’ve seen them bring in patients in beds, and they’d walk out,” Fryberg said.
That’s what happens when Indian Shakers “shake” over the ill, she said.
“It’s God that’s doing it,” she said. “We shake, and God helps them.”
Now, some Tulalip Tribes officials want to demolish their faded church to build something sturdier.
“I’m disappointed and heartbroken,” said Tulalip Tribes Chairman Stan Jones, 80, who attended the church as a boy. “I hate to see it torn down.”
Church members say that if the church is demolished they’re not sure where they’ll meet – or if they’ll meet at all.
Fryberg said the church asked the tribal government for a grant to repair the building.
Her father, Eugene Joseph, helped build the church in 1923. The building is historic, she said, and holds memories that are sacred to many tribal members.
The tribes’ construction department has determined that the church should be entirely rebuilt.
Mike Alva, head of the tribes’ construction development department, said he won’t comment until after the tribes’ Board of Directors meets on Saturday.
For generations, the old church was a beacon in a poverty-stricken community.
When there was little money for doctor’s bills, Indians – even those who weren’t church members – brought their sick, and their hope for a miracle.
“They seem to have certain powers,” Jones said. “They were the healers out here.”
The Indian Shakers say their religion took root in 1881. That’s when Shakers say Squaxin Island tribal member John Slocum was revived from death, said Alexandra Harmon, a historian at the University of Washington.
The religion is unrelated to the Protestant denomination of the same name.
Slocum said he met the “Big Father” – God. He said God told him to stay away from traditional Indian shamanism, and to renounce alcohol, gambling and other vices.
That would be his ticket to heaven, he said.
Slocum quickly gained followers, but he later slid back into his old habits, Harmon said. As Slocum laid on his deathbed a second time, his wife, Mary, revived him by shaking over his body.
“This came at a time when Indians were under tremendous pressure by U.S. agents and missionaries to be more like ‘civilized’ non-Indians and to convert to Christianity,” Harmon said.
Though the Indian Shaker movement turned scores of Indians away from alcohol and gambling, federal agents were suspicious that the religion was a disguise for traditional Indian practices.
“They clapped some people in jail, they threatened other people with loss of privileges or supplies,” Harmon said. “The movement didn’t go entirely underground, but some people laid low.”
Today, Shakers in northwest Washington travel each weekend between churches on the Tulalip, Lummi, Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle reservations to support one another.
The church at Tulalip is strong, if a little weathered, Fryberg said.
She said the people need the church. There is still evil on the reservation, she said, and people need a place to come for healing.
“We pray in there,” she said. “We dance and sing. That floor is sturdy.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@ heraldnet.com.
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