Kathryn Harrison, influential Oregon tribal leader, dies at 99

Her niece Lisa Watson, the former director of Portland’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, said Harrison never stopped fighting for Indigenous communities.

“She never really saw her job as over,” Watson said. “She continued to lead and inspire and try to influence the futures of everybody she came in contact with, particularly young people.”

Harrison made her foray into the Indigenous civil rights movement at the age of 50, when she began working at the Siletz Tribal Alcohol program as a nurse. A year later, in 1975, Harrison won election to the Siletz Tribal Council and began fighting for the 61 tribes in Oregon that lost federal recognition under the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act of 1954.

In 1976, Harrison testified in front of Congress to regain tribal recognition for the Siletz, to open the door to federal resources and tribal sovereignty. She told lawmakers the process alone had generated pride among tribal members.

“There is a new spring in our step, a feeling of expectation in the air, a hoping that maybe this time the Indians will acquire something — something desperately needed,” she testified, according to “Standing Tall: The Lifeway of Kathryn Jones Harrison,” a 2005 biography. “And it will be our own.”

Lawmakers passed the Siletz Restoration Act in 1977, and a few years after that Harrison reconnected with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, where her father had been an enrolled member. She was elected to its tribal council with her eldest son, Frankie Harrison, in 1982.

Further federal action

Alongside her son and a daughter, Harrison testified in front of Congress again in 1983, this time on behalf of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. She detailed her lived experience of the injustices committed against Indigenous tribes, and she highlighted how the restoration of tribal recognition and the reestablishment of a reservation would allow Grand Ronde tribal members to begin to address the systemic poverty, abuse and addiction that gripped Native communities after white settlers invaded.

“Our people have endured much, but they have endured,” she told lawmakers, including Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin, who described the testimony in his memoir. “Like our ancestors, we have continued to hold tightly to those strands of our heritage, mindful of the coming generations.”

Harrison again succeeded. Congress enacted the Grand Ronde Restoration Act in 1983, paving the way for the creation of Spirit Mountain Casino and the reestablishment of the Grand Ronde Reservation.

Harrison continued to sit on the tribal council until her retirement in 2001, serving as tribal chair several times over the years. Former Gov. Barbara Roberts worked with Harrison to establish gaming rights and the protection of Indigenous cultural resources in the state.

In office from 1991 to 1995, Roberts said she admired Harrison’s steadfast dedication to her cause and Harrison’s ability to work respectfully with other leaders who may have had conflicting goals.

“Kathryn was one of those people that you meet once in a lifetime,” Roberts said. “There’s only a handful of them who are truly leaders, who gently do the work of leading without pushing, without raising their voice, without doing any of the things we sometimes think of when we think of leaders.”

Others’ admiration for Harrison was palpable, Roberts said.

“There’s one word I always think of when I think of her — it’s kind,” Roberts said. “Kathryn was one of the kindest people I ever knew. Kind to her own people in the tribe, kind to the people in the community, kind to people who had needs. Her kindness always shone through.”

Spirit Mountain Casino opened its doors in 1995 and ushered in an era of economic growth for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. With newfound financial independence, the tribe, with Harrison, helped establish the Spirit Mountain Community Fund, a charitable organization that has distributed over $94 million to nonprofits around Oregon.

Funds from Oregon’s largest casino were used to create educational, nutritional and health programs for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, and funded its newly formed government. Harrison played a crucial role in establishing each program.

Tony Johnson, tribal chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, served as the director of the Chinuk Wawa language revival program at Grand Ronde under Harrison. He said that opportunity came out of the blue, after Harrison turned an everyday conversation into a job interview.

“That’s just kind of classically related to the way that she was able to manipulate, in the most positive sense, the world around her for the benefit of her community,” Johnson said.

‘For once I belonged’

Harrison was born to Harry William Jones of the Molalla peoples and Ella Flemming of the Alaskan Eyak tribe in Corvallis in 1924. Both parents died in a flu epidemic when she was 10, and Harrison was sent to foster care, eventually landing with a white family in Buxton, Oregon. She endured sexual abuse and was forced to perform heavy labor, she told biographer Kristine Olson in “Standing Tall.”

Harrison fled foster care and at 15 entered Chemawa Indian School, a government boarding school for Indigenous children that combined “military rigor” with programs designed for prisoners to eradicate Native influence on students, according to “Boarding School Season” by Brenda J. Child. At least 270 children died in Chemawa custody between 1880 and 1945, according to researchers from Pacific University.

Harrison told Olson that Chemawa was a refuge compared to the abusive foster home in Washington County. “Here for once I belonged,” she said, according to her biography.

The school trained her to be a maid and found her a job with a wealthy family in Portland after graduation. Instead, she waited tables and weighed packages on the assembly line of a Northwest Portland Jell-O factory, Olson wrote.

She married Chemawa classmate Frank Harrison in 1944. The couple had 10 children.

In Olson’s biography of Harrison, the author notes Frank Harrison was an abusive husband and an alcoholic. He faced rampant discrimination when he returned to Oregon after serving in the military during World War II. Unable to find reliable work, Frank Harrison led his family to stints at farms in Oregon, Montana, Arizona and Alaska.

In 1970, at age 46, Harrison left her husband, moving back to Oregon with the five sons and daughters who were still children. She enrolled at Lane Community College, where she received an associates degree in nursing and went to work at a hospital in Lincoln City. Harrison later received honorary degrees from Portland State University, the University of Portland and Willamette University.

The official end of her marriage in 1974 coincided with her rise in tribal affairs, a path that brought her in contact with Oregon elected leaders across several decades. Although leadership came naturally to Harrison, her fierceness surprised some, said Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, which in 2012 made Harrison the first Indigenous person recognized as an Oregon History Maker.

Tymchuk said Harrison enjoyed a lifelong friendship with former U.S. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who died in 2011.

“It was mutual admiration with Hatfield; they really formed a great friendship and that was key in Congress passing legislation that restored their tribal recognition and land,” Tymchuk said.

Former Gov. Ted Kulongoski praised her widespread influence. “Kathryn’s leadership brought respect and dignity to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and all of Oregon’s Native peoples,” Kulongoski said. “She made Oregon a better place for all of us.”

U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer dubbed Harrison “one of most consequential people in Oregon over the past century.”

And AuCoin called her unforgettable: “When you find somebody who’s filled with so much goodness, it’s something that lasts a lifetime in your memory.”

In 2021, the Corvallis School District renamed an elementary school for Harrison.

Service to her tribe

A devout Christian, Harrison incorporated cultural traditions into her faith, a practice handed down from her father. When Harrison learned the American Museum of Natural History in New York City had a meteorite sacred to the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde on display, she negotiated visiting privileges and the right to conduct after-hours ceremonies for tribal members. She later served on the museum’s board.

Olson, her biographer, said the tribe makes an annual trip to Manhattan to visit the meteorite called Tomanowos, also known as the Willamette meteorite.

Olson once gave Harrison a small carved turtle attached to a note that read, “Behold the turtle; she makes progress only when she sticks her neck out.”

In return, Harrison gifted a turtle rattle to Olson, saying “Watch me stick my neck out.” It became an inside joke.

“And after that, whenever we met, she always made a point out of an exaggerated neck stretch,” Olson said in an emailed response. “She had a great sense of humor and didn’t mind inviting laughter at herself.”

The day before her death, Grand Ronde tribal members honored Harrison at a naming ceremony for a dugout canoe. Harrison, the oldest member of her tribe, spoke at the event to a captivated crowd, and later huddled with Johnson, of the Chinook Indian Nation, and his teenage son. The Chinook lack federal recognition, and Harrison told the father and son about the fights she led in Congress.

“Literally, to her last day, she was teaching, sharing knowledge,” said Johnson.

The public is invited to attend a memorial luncheon in honor of Harrison at 10 a.m. at Spirit Mountain Casino, niece Lisa Watson said.