1950 Mother's Day Tribute to Elizabeth Bender Roe Cloud

Marie Mason Potts often wrote Smoke Signal stories based upon news she found in the national press about Native Americans of note.  This column is based on an announcement that Mrs. Henry Roe Cloud had been named "Oregon Mother" for 1950. It seems likely that the story was particularly important to Potts as both women had connections to the Carlisle (and may well have been there at the same time). 

April 1950 Smoke Signal

University Library Exhibit Highlights Marie Potts' Life Story

In conjunction with this year's University One Book Program, which features Sherman Alexie's book Blasphemy,  the University Library is featuring an exhibit I co-curated with Dr. Brian Baker, entitled Before 'The Search Engine': Education, Identity and Tradition. Our exhibit was inspired by the short story The Search Engine, and includes four exhibit cases. Two feature Americana Indian artifacts from Dr. Baker's collection, and two (shown below) feature my research on Marie Potts--her years at the Greenville Indian Industrial School and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the period of her land claims activism here in Sacramento.  The exhibit is up through December 12, 2014. 

Happy New Year

The December 1949 issue of the Smoke Signal offered a New Year's greeting to the membership. Notice the addressee in the upper right-hand corner of this issue.  Edna and Saturino Calac hailed from Rincon Reservation, in San Diego County. Their choice to back the FIC land claim petition (versus that of the Mission Indians) reflects the political potential of social affiliations forged in boarding school contexts, including Stewart and Carlisle. For instance, Marie Potts and Peter Calac (who gained national fame as a member of the school's football team) overlapped at the Carlisle from 1912-1915.

Thanksgiving Soliloquy

In the November 1949 edition of the Smoke Signal, Marie Potts re-published this memento from her years at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. "Thanksgiving Soliloquy" appeared on the last page of  Volume VIII, No.13. Potts (then Marie Mason) attended the Carlisle from September 1912 through May 1915. 

Smoke Signal, Vol. VIII, No. 13., November 1949

Marie Potts and Russell Means

The passing of Russell Means today, at the age of 72, inspires a post that leaps decades beyond 1948 and the FIC's Freedom Train appearance. The year is 1971, the location is Spokane, Washington, and the occasion is the meeting of the American Indian Press Association (AIPA), organized the year before by Charles Trimble. Russell Means, then editor of the Cleveland Crier, and 76-year-old Marie Potts, longtime editor of FIC's Smoke Signal newspaper, were founding members of the AIPA. 

American Indian Press Association, 1971, Spokane, WA.
Potts is seated at center,  Means is second from R,
Trimble is on the far L.

Potts and Means represented different generations and traditions of the American Indian press. The pioneering efforts of Marie Potts inspired the organization to create "The Marie Potts Achievement Award" (inaugurated the following year in Denver, Colorado) as a way to recognize up-and-coming American Indian newspapers and journalists.  The younger members of the organization inspired Potts to assume a more authoritative American Indian and Mountain Maidu voice in her Smoke Signal editorials. Two years after the Spokane meeting, Means was making national and international news for his role in the American Indian Movement. When a reporter from the Sacramento Bee asked Marie Potts what she thought about AIM and the siege at Wounded Knee, her response revealed just how far she had come from her years as a dutiful and dedicated student at California's Greenville Indian School  (1900-1912) and Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Class of 1915): 

We were subjugated, beaten down, then our people began to study law…we work now through Congress and the courts whenever we can—but, of course, we have to have militants to bring about these things…to get the attention of Congress and the courts.

  -Sacramento Bee 4/22/73