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. 

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