That fall, after I graduated from high school, I traveled to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. I was the third person in my village to go to college. Two others had gone before me but never returned to the island, and one person from Saint George. So I and a childhood buddy of mine, Pat Pletnikoff, who was accepted at Western Washington University that year, did not have anyone to talk to about what life would be like at the university.
I did not know how to take a bus or use a telephone when I arrived in Seattle. Still, I found my way to campus and to Terry Hall, the dorm to which I was assigned. It was ten stories high!
I was assigned to the top floor on what was, as I learned later, one of two floors housing the “crème de la crème” of students who lived in that dorm. Most of them were white and came, as I learned, from relatively rich families—including my roommate. We greeted each other and talked about where we came from. As it turned out, we became good friends. Still, I could not relate to the rest of the students in the dorm, and I found they could not relate to me. They have a strange sense of humor, I thought to myself. Quick-witted would be a term that fit. Native humor is much slower and usually self-deprecating, so I often could not join their conversations. In fact, I had difficulty relating to most conversations around the campus, so I felt very alone.
The next day at registration I was asked what classes I wanted to take. I had gone through all the university classes in the book they had sent me on Saint Paul and already had classes in mind. I did not know that a student’s average class load was twelve to fifteen credits. I thought that classes were organized the same way they were in high school, so I signed up for twenty credits, which was six classes.
The campus was so massive it took up to half an hour to walk between classrooms. I remember the time my sister Eva visited me at the “U of W.” I was giving her a tour when she remarked, “Wow, the University of Washington is sure big,” to which I responded in the affirmative, not knowing what she meant. She was commenting on one building at the “U” and not the whole campus.
And the class sizes were huge too, averaging about three hundred students—half the population of my village! At first I was a bit overwhelmed by this, having come from an average high school classroom of about twenty students. It took some time to adjust. I neither had a face-to-face conversation with the instructors during the entire four years at the university, nor did I ever see an academic counselor. I had been taught to figure things out by myself from my traditional upbringing, and with some effort I did.
Not satisfied to just study the issue of Native American economic poverty, I decided, in my sophomore year, to ask the university president why there were only four students who identified themselves as Native American at a university with an enrollment of 34,000 in a state with twenty-two Indian reservations at the time. I knew that the quickest way to get an answer or decision about something was to talk directly to the person in charge. I went directly to the president’s office complex where his secretary asked me if I had an appointment, which I did not. “He is a very busy man, and anyone who wants to see him has to make an appointment,” she said kindly.
“Well, maybe I can just wait here in case he has some time to talk with me,” I replied. This response prompted her to ask why I wanted to see him. “I am an Unangan Native American from Alaska, and I was wondering why there are only four other Native Americans at a university surrounded by Indian reservations. I thought the president might tell me why.”
She studied me carefully and decided I was sincere about seeing him. “Just a minute, I will see if he can see you,” she said. A few moments later she returned, saying “the president will see you, but he has only a few minutes.”
I thanked her as I entered the large office of the president. He was in his fifties or sixties, wearing a three-piece suit, milling over his paperwork when I walked in. “Good morning, young man. I am President Odegaard. I understand you have an issue with the university that needs some attention,” he said in a soft voice.
“It is embarrassing to the university that it would educate 34,000 students and only four identify themselves as Native American,” I said. “And on top of that, this university is in a state with twenty-two Indian reservations!”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, you are right. How would you like to start a program to recruit Native Americans to the university? I will give you a state car, an office, and a small budget. Not only would you recruit them but counsel them if they need help. What do you say?” I was dumbfounded at this outcome. I did not think he would make such a decision on the spur of the moment and ask an eighteen-year-old to do such a job, but he did. Thus began my work, at five hundred dollars a month, visiting Indian reservations to recruit students to the university, and I had use of a large state car for travel. I credit the people of Saint Paul for always affirming me every day. By the time I went to the university I was raised to believe in myself, never to see obstacles. The program I started became known as the American Indian Education Program, which still exists today. And the University of Washington now has a department dedicated to Native American studies.
It took me four and a half years to complete the university requirements for graduation because, by the time I reached my junior year, I was still unsure about what I wanted to major in. I approached the Dean of the School of Community Development and asked if I could take independent study for the remaining years I had left. I proposed a study of the reasons most Native American tribes were in a state of economic poverty. I planned to visit several reservations in and around Washington State. The study was approved, and in two years I visited thirty or more reservations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
During this time I was also visiting Phyllis and her parents. I first saw Phyllis on Saint Paul when I was fourteen and she was eleven, and she came running out of the community hall one day. I didn’t yet know her, but I knew she would be my wife. She and her parents later moved from Saint Paul Island to Bothell, Washington, approximately twenty-five miles north of Seattle. I had never let Phyllis, or her parents, know about my childhood premonition, but we reconnected and grew very close. Phyllis and I married when I was twenty and she was eighteen.
As the youngest director of a university Native American program, I was invited to be part of the Convocation of American Indian Scholars. The gathering was composed of one hundred selected scholars who were dedicated to addressing human rights violations of Indigenous people in the western hemisphere. The first meeting I attended was at Princeton University. It was a heady crowd for an eighteen-year-old. This was where I met N. Scott Momaday, the first Native American Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist; Vine Deloria, who wrote Custer Died for Your Sins; and Buffy Sainte-Marie, an internationally recognized Native American singer/songwriter—to name just three.
This was also when I first became aware of the brutality of some governments toward aboriginal peoples. We watched a homemade movie showing Indigenous people from a South American country being slaughtered by a machine gun from a helicopter. The people being attacked were throwing spears at the helicopter. The killing was that government’s effort to stop the Natives’ resistance to construction of a road to access precious metals and oil.
For the better part of the week we discussed how to stop these atrocities. Finally, a decision was made we thought would not only end the persecution, but restore land to the Indigenous people. We would quietly reveal the footage to the government and private companies involved, with the threat that it would be shown for all the world to see if they did not comply with what the Convocation wanted. An agreement was reached and the atrocities stopped, with provisions to restore some lands back to the Indigenous peoples.
In the summer of 1968, the tribal president of the Aleut Community of Saint Paul, Gabe Stepetin, asked Patrick (Pat) Pletnikoff and me to meet with the council. I thought that this must be some kind of big deal, especially since the entire council was seated when we arrived. Gabe explained, “Congress just passed the bill giving us rights as citizens, including the right to form a city. But, we don’t have any money to create a city. We would like to hire the both of you to represent us in Washington to seek funds for this effort and any other thing that may help us. We know both of you are in college, and, therefore, you speak English better than us and have experience working in the white world, which is why we selected you. We will give you four thousand dollars to cover your expenses and pay. What do you say?”
I was surprised that the tribal officials would even consider hiring two kids with just a year of college under their belts to be the tribal representatives and help implement the Fur Seal Act of 1966. I stood up and answered affirmatively. While I was responding, Gabe said, “Larry, why don’t you speak English?” I realized then that I had picked up the way the white people spoke, which was not village English. “I am sorry. I did not mean to speak this way. It was just something I picked up in college. I will speak English from now on.” What Gabe was saying was that I talked like a white person.
So, Patrick and I were hired as tribal representatives that summer. We knew that Flore Lekanof from Saint George, the only person who went to college, besides Patrick, and graduated from Saint George, worked in DC for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, so we called him. He agreed to arrange a meeting with Senator Stevens, the senator from Alaska. As representatives of the tribe, that was all we knew what to do.
We arrived at Dulles Airport. I decided to rent a car for us but did not have the presence of mind to ask for a map. I must have driven for six hours before we found DC. It was only twenty miles from the airport. I stopped at the first hotel I saw. It was the Marriot and expensive.
The next morning we drove into DC and hit Dupont Circle. I got into the Circle okay, but couldn’t find a way out. I drove around and around the circle. Cars were in every lane. Finally, I decided that the only way to get out was to cut across three lanes to an exit, and to the sound of honking horns. At last, we found the office where Flore worked. He introduced us to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, then took us to Senator Stevens’s office on Capitol Hill.
It was an ornate office with a couch and a large mahogany desk. Mementos from all over Alaska were on every wall, including photographs. Senator Stevens greeted us warmly, while Flore explained that we were representing the tribe on Saint Paul. I said, “I am glad you agreed to meet us, Senator. We are here to see if it would be possible to get some funds to create a city as authorized by the Fur Seal Act of 1966. And possibly to see if we could get a boat harbor started. We are still dependent on the government for jobs and the maintenance of critical systems that support the island. Although we pay for these services, it is subsidized.” I had added the boat harbor because my uncle, Eddie, who had passed away a year earlier, thought it would be a great economic base. I thought so too, so I brought it up without consulting anyone.
Senator Stevens thought about it for a moment and said, “Okay, I will see what I can do. I realize that the people of the Pribilofs have had it hard under government rule, and you all don’t have much money. So, I will see what I can do.” That was it. After saying appropriate goodbyes, we left the office feeling as if we had accomplished what we had set out to do. When we got back to the car, I had a parking ticket. In fact, during our stay in DC I received seventeen parking tickets.
No one heard from Senator Stevens until that fall, several months later, while I was at college. The tribal council received word from his office that it would receive fifty thousand dollars to start up the city and that the senator would come for a visit perhaps the following summer. He made good and visited Saint Paul and Saint George in the summer of 1970, at which time, in preparation for the visit, the tribal government of Saint George ordered the public works crew to bulldoze across a road adjacent to the village. That was to be the first airstrip on Saint George since flights first stated operating in Alaska. Prior to that point, mail had been dropped from an airplane.