Annette Bryan

Like all parents with young children, Annette Bryan thinks about the future. But as a Puyallup tribal member, Annette’s dreams reach a little farther. When she talks about Northwest Indian College and about her educational goals, the history and future of the Puyallup Tribe intertwine with that of her immediate family into one refrain.

Before she enrolled in the trib­al college, her life was difficult but simpler. Married at 18, she had her daughter when she was just 19 and her son when she was 20. At 23, she felt she was just getting older as life passed her by. “I realized college was the only way to get where I wanted to be,” she says. Aiming for a master’s degree, she systematically divided up her goals and tackled the first—an associate degree. She chose the Puyallup campus of Northwest Indian College in Washington State to start her academic life.

Serendipitously, the tribe announced two technician job openings, one in air quality and another in water quality. Although she was not especially interested in environmental issues, Annette applied for and won the air quality position.

The decision changed her life. “I was just looking for any job, but now I love my work. I’m moving upward and feel good about what I do,” she says.

As she learned more about tribal regulatory powers, espe­cially environmental regulation, she became devoted to the cause. Gradually, her vision expanded beyond assuring the future of her family. In his endorsement for an academic award, Northwest Indian College instructor Marion K. Morford wrote, “Her goals are to integrate her learning with the economic and environmental well-being of the tribal community.” More than just making a living, she wants to help her people maintain their sovereignty.

Attending school full time while also working full time and raising two children has not been easy. The job and her classes complemented each other, however, as she saw how her learning could be applied. The Puyallup campus and the Puyallup Reservation lie in the greater Tacoma area near Puget Sound, with no clear lines dis­tinguishing them.

Similarly, Annette does not sepa­rate her campus life and her tribal life. At school she helped organize a student council and, before a tribal election, a forum for tribal council candidates. At work, she wrote trib­al regulations designed to clean up the serious air pollution problems on the reservation. She minored in environmental studies while major­ing in business.

Since its land claim settlement in 1990, the Puyallup Tribe also could be said to be majoring in business and minoring in the environment. Unlike the wild, coastal reservation that was set aside in 1854, the Puyallup Reservation now hosts industry and one of the most lucra­tive international ports on the Pacific Coast, the Port of Tacoma. As a result of the land settlement, the tribe hopes to begin sharing in that wealth. The tribe received 300 acres, including what The New Pacific calls some of the most poten­tially valuable industrial real estate in the United States.

While valuable, the resources bear the scars of more than a centu­ry of intense development. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has designated part of the area as a Superfund site, a label bestowed upon only the nation’s most polluted tracts of land. Working together, the state, federal and tribal governments have embarked upon plans for cleaning up the air, land and water.

Asserting environmental control is difficult for all tribes but is espe­cially hard on reservations where land is a checkerboard of parcels under Indian and non-Indian juris­diction. Air and water contaminates don’t recognize political boundaries, and often tribal governments have different goals than non-Indian gov­ernments. On the Puyallup Reservations, only about 10 percent of the land is held in trust for the tribe and tribal members.

“Before I had this job, I didn’t realize how difficult the struggle was,” Annette says. With air polluted by automobiles, wood stoves and industry, the tribe wanted to impose its own air quality standards on trust property within the reservations. But, she says, “It’s a continual battle with the U.S. government to receive funding.”

Despite obstacles, she is driven by her understanding of her people’s history, as well as by her personal family history. “It’s important for the young to preserve what the elders have been preserv­ing for the hundreds of years,” she says. Despite the encroachment of industry and non-Indian residents on the reservation, the Puyallup’s have maintained a tribal identity, and so has Annette. She and her children all dance, wearing their tribal regalia, at pow wows. They live close to Annette’s mother, who is a basketweaver.

Despite the many demands upon her time, Annette attends tribal gatherings and watches over the elders, making sure they have seats and refreshments. One of the first students on the Puyallup campus when it opened three years ago, she attended the naming and blessing ceremony.

When her grandmother was young, she worked as a coal miner, as a farmer, and raised ten children. “She showed me a little of what the past might have been like,” Annette says. During her own childhood, Annette watched her mother go back to school in order to provide for her and her four brothers and sis­ters. “She showed me that education would make my life a little bit easi­er—in the long term,” Annette says. “Nothing ever was handed to her. She taught me to appreciate what I have because I earned it. ”

In June, Annette graduated from Northwest Indian College at the age of 26 with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. Prior to graduation, the American Indian College Fund named her one of the ten Outstanding American Indian Students of the Year, and she received several other awards for her scholastic achievements. “I’m going to miss this college, ” she says, including the personal attention and the supportive atmosphere. Now prepared for a bigger school, she plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in the environmental field and a master’s in public administration.

Eventually she hopes to work for tribes and for tribal sovereignty. Already she has been active in the national arena, attending Environmental Protection Agency meetings with tribal environmental staffs and corresponding with the National Tribal Environmental Council in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I would love to come back here (to Puyallup), but I’m not sure if there would be a place for me. If I worked for the state or federal gov­ernment, I would be able to help other tribes. I will be equipped to deal with governments on environ­mental issues because of my educa­tion. And I will care because I’m a member of a tribe, ” she says.

Marjane Ambler is a freelance writer in Wyoming and a frequent contributor to Tribal College. The University Press of Kansas pub­lished her book, Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development, in 1990.