Vision and Legacy
Mrs. Helen Mary, date unknown
Title: Mary Hillaire Misc 95-011 Social Gathering #10 Singing/Music/Celebration
“I was pleased that I was asked to do this, to introduce Mary, because she’s meant a great deal to me. She came to live with me when she was a school dropout. Mary was a dropout…because she had to go to work, but she had a great desire for an education and so, she finished high school and then went to Western, took a degree there in social studies and this was followed by graduate work at the University of British Columbia.
After that, Mary took employment at the welfare office as a case worker and later, as a supervisor. And this led to another opening in Olympia where she was state supervisor for Man Powered Employment. And sometimes, and I sometimes can’t keep my chronology just straight but, Mary was offered a fellowship by the [John Hay] Whitney Foundation and took a master’s degree at Western in education. Then, another opening came.
She was asked to plan a program for Native American Studies at Evergreen college which was just going to open, and she accepted this but, before she could take this, before the school opened, really, she was offered another fine thing. It was a fellowship with the department of health, education and welfare at Washington D.C. where she spent 10 months in work study program, and she traveled through various parts of the nation to lecture and also to consult with Indian tribes.
Now I won’t try to list all of Mary’s activities, I couldn’t do it, but along the way she took her sister’s three children and with the help of her friend, she reared these children to adulthood. And I also won’t try to tell what this has meant to me, because I had this great privilege of having Mary live with me and I gained a great deal from Mary’s philosophy of life. Part of this was the spirit of gayly, we always had fun. And so, I will take pleasure in introducing my dearly beloved daughter, who I’m well pleased."
Unknown, December 9, 1978
“If there’s anyone else in here that would like to be taped, for history, to be placed in the archives for Native American Studies, we do have the studio today…Mary does insist on documentation for a number of things because this is the way we’re writing living textbooks, and so if theres a story to tell or a child you want seen, or this kind of thing, we certainly welcome that.”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, December 18, 1975
Title: #1 1[?] Indian Education
“Why, in an educational system, that has so much technology, do Indians have to be compared to whites? And with this new approach, legislative possibility of the Indian Education Act, is there going to be a time when this is not necessary? Because this is really one of the biggest problems. Justify, in a white educator’s mind, that Indian education can only be defined in remedial and compensatory education, which will never arrive at a learning system that will create even just the façade that Indian people are not striving to be equal to whites, they are striving to be equivalent, [to] have as much value.
And if they’re constantly harassed by comparisons like this, they will constantly be in the chronic kinds of failure, and we’ll always have big dropouts and we’ll always have nobody really concerned."
Mary Ellen Hillaire, August 30, 1979
Title: #1 8/30/79 Tacoma
“The qualifications that are eating most of our people up are the white qualifications that we’re trying to run our communities and our organizations with. And people don’t know where they are, they don’t know how to adjust the kind of job that they have to the needs of the people, which is I think, paramount. Then more than that, they don’t know how to utilize the knowledge and abilities and skills that they have, to meet the demands of the job descriptions, and role and position of the person in the community.”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, date unknown
Title: WSU 3/2 Women's Lib Talk
“As far as education is concerned, is that it is time that we broke the syndrome of a world work from eight to five and actually opened our lives to a 24-hour lifestyle, in which a network of learning can be constructed so we can actually get out of each other’s way.
You know, it’s impossible to do creatively, the things that you can do and think of if you have to do it in the middle of the stage. Sometimes it is necessary to actually be in the privacy, yes, sometimes in the majesty of a mountain, or near the noisy and gentle streams of our country, that we have so misused, to actually think the thoughts that will, in the future, incite others to good works. And this of course is the reasonable service that we all should be preparing ourselves to do.
What is it that you can do best, that beyond your ability to accomplish, will actually incite someone else to good works?
I think it’s imperative as we think of our priorities, that we see that human potentiality, how to discover it, how to use it as constructively as possible, so that all, not just one, not just selected few, but all, have the kind of opportunity that will allow them to express all the humanity that is in them to articulate.
And I think it is during this kind of a season, when we actually set up in our individual minds, what is the priorities of your life? How are you going to secure the preparation for the kinds of life situations that through you, and beyond you, all people will have a better life and have a better means of establishing a lifestyle that…we will still be alive as human beings."
Mary Ellen Hillaire, December 9, 1978
Title: Mary Hillaire w/ Guest Speaker: Native American Issues, History & Todays Issues Native-American Song & Educational Presentation #1 12/9/78; Discussion Continued for 30 min. Approx.
“Native American Studies is an alternative educational opportunity at a higher education level. It provides for the Native American people an open educational opportunity to deal with the need of understanding the fact that there are significant differences between people that must be recognized by the educational forum.
Today, we are going to be trying to develop documentation for establishing the fact that Indian people, from their cultural points of view, had a mental model of mathematics. In order to demonstrate this, I have asked one of the traditional leaders, a well-recognized speaker of the Pacific Northwest, Joey Washington, at my right, to be assisted by Jolene and Arlene to demonstrate and introduce the concepts necessary to understand the American Indian stick game, or slahal."
Mary Ellen Hillaire, June 25, 1973
Title: 1 June 25, 1973 Institute of Indian Studies UW; June 26, 1973 Institute of Native-American Studies UW - Native-American Culture & History Lecture
“Education is the performing manifestation of inner experience. That’s what education is all about. Learning how to expose those things, that are your private experiences in living, in a way that they will help people. And so, on the other side of the coin of learning, is teaching. You can learn without teaching, but you cannot teach without learning.”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, date unknown
Title: Tape #2 Mary Hillaire Lecture: Power Structure and Social Indifference, Critique of Distribution of Wealth...
“Social indifference is a product of our society that allows a, how would you say it, a rocket of increased crime. Because the people who get into power don’t realize that the power was the thing that denied them what they needed to be human. So in order to perpetuate that carnal nature of our human state, they needed power. Power requires constant human sacrifice. And it will take you in order of when you’re there. When you get there, from where you are now, you can either choose power or understanding, if you choose power, you probably will have a job, and then you will use power to deceive yourself further. Or you will find out through understanding, that we have some final, crucial steps to take if we’re going to continue to live on this land until we die. As a civilized human race, we must face the problem of rethinking our ecological relationship on this land. We must redesign the composition of our relationships between human beings, understanding that there does exist, between us, significant differences.”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, date unknown
Title: Tape #2 Mary Hillaire Lecture: Power Structure and Social Indifference, Critique of Distribution of Wealth...
“We must restructure a way of distributing the resources of the world. And then finally, we must understand the nature of giving and receiving. And realize in a significant way, that if we don’t, we will continue to give people what they can’t use, don’t understand, and don’t need and we will continue to reserve that in us, that dwindles away to frustration and anguish, and despair, and loneliness. So, we lose in both cases.
And this country, this nation, this civilization is sick unto death. We are insane. But beyond us, something has allowed us to preserve the one instrument that may be able to help us overcome the stench of our human, carnal condition – our mind. That’s our last frontier, people, and its infinite!
Again, I say to you, understand with humility, with sorrow, that tens of thousands of undeveloped brain cells will die with you if you do not will it otherwise. You must will it. It will not happen if you do not. If you spend as much time in understanding the magnificence of you as a human entity, we may have the collective wisdom, being sick of our condition, unto death, to stop it. And re-adventure into what is good and what is well with us. The spiritual understanding that all are as one, in spirit. And that it is going to take all of us understanding the process of giving and receiving, because there’s not going to be gold put in your hand, people!”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, December 9, 1978
Title: Mary Hillaire w/ Guest Speaker: Native American Issues, History & Todays Issues Native-American Song & Educational Presentation #1 12/9/78; Discussion Continued for 30 min. Approx.
“I’m so glad to see so many children around because one of the things I encourage students is to bring their children because I feel very, very much that some of the problems in speaking, some of the problems in reading, some of the problems in getting along with one other is because parents and children are separated too often and too long. And so we have had in Native American Studies, sometimes, three or four babies in baby boards, we’ve had grandparents, we’ve had parents, we’ve had at least four generations in a classroom at the same time and I feel this is necessary to try and establish a value of education in a way, that our children, if they must, can go forward into the schools of the white people and establish the kind of record that will allow them to maintain high enough grades that they will not be ashamed that they’re Indian. So this is our first reason for Native American Studies, to try to establish a way that Indian people can contribute to the education of one another.”
Mary Ellen Hillaire, May 7, 1982
Title: May 7, 1982 "Survival Our Future"
“It's my pleasure to meet and greet with so many friends and I invite you as people of this land, this land that’s in our history, in our lives, in our values, is the highest form of tribute to our existence. This land that is in a condition that requires positive thoughts to revive the growth, the life, the depth of understanding that is represented in the going and coming of mankind, that is traced in the history and the development of these woods, of the things of the sky, it’s so interesting as I listen to the concerns of our visitors, as I look into the faces of our students, the past, and the present, and the future, to see the need in education for the stamp of the Indian people. For the voice of the Indians of this land, to allow the full expression of what it is, being human, to help each other become humane. As I look and see the various tribes represented, the people from various organizations, and the students, my hands are out to you.
Thank you so much for coming. Be with us this day, because this day marks an important junction in education, that is designed to place a marker in the ways of learning that will attract the path of all the young people. Those people who will carry the values, and the culture, and the attitudes of the people of this land forth. To bring again the honor and the dignity and the integrity of a people, whose voice yet rings. Understanding that this land, and the Indians are of one mind. Forever preserved in the protection of stewardship, this land must continue to be the heritage of Indian people. Protected in the value of our heart’s beat, every life should be dedicated, that this land, this land known as our land, might survive the threat of death because we have taken the responsibility to be who we are! We’re Lummis and we’re Nooksack, and we’re Squaxin, and we’re Nisqually. Every voice that defines the manifestation of human understanding must now speak. They said if we don’t speak, the very rocks under our feet will have to sing the praises of the spirit that created this and placed it in our hands. Allowing us the guidance and the control of our own beings, toward the end that the land will be better because we passed this way."
"[Mary laughing] No, you do it or you don't."
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