Encyclopedia of North American Indians -

Encyclopedia of North American Indians

Garry, Joseph

(1910-75)

Coeur d'Alene national political leader and the most prominent American Indian spokesman of the 1950s

At a critical juncture in U.S.-Indian relations, Joseph Richard Garry unified tribal leaders as a political force to turn back the resolve of Congress to end federal trusteeship. Handsome, personable, and articulate, Garry won six consecutive terms (1953-59) as president of the National Congress of American Indians and rallied the organization to reverse government efforts to break up Indian land bases, destroy tribal identities, and abandon federal treaties with native tribes. For the Coeur d'Alenes, Garry fashioned model economic and governance programs.

Garry was born on March 8, 1910, into his small, impoverished tribe in northern Idaho. His father, Ignace H. Garry, was the last traditional chief of the Coeur d'Alenes and the great-grandson of a noted chief, Spokane Garry. His mother, Susette Revais, was the granddaughter of a noted interpreter of treaty-making times.

Ignace Garry and his family performed in native costumes as token Indians for dignitaries visiting the nearby city of Spokane, often at the famed Davenport Hotel. Young Joe liked demonstrating Indian ways, liked the spotlight, and found that life at the hotel stirred his ambition.

After completing the two-year commercial course at the Haskell Institute, Garry enrolled at Butler University, in Indianapolis, Indiana, thinking he would become a forest botanist. As the sole Indian student at Butler, he was happy to be a campus personage. He taught Indian lore at boys' summer camps. But Garry could not afford to complete his studies, and he entered the Indian Service as a clerk-typist, transferring after four years to the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. Superiors invariably praised Garry's harmonious relations with coworkers. "A boy of very fine personality," one wrote on Garry's evaluation.

Garry returned home to marry—it was to be a short-lived union—as World War II broke out. He served as an infantry sergeant and after the war returned home to establish a small cattle herd and study animal husbandry briefly at Washington State College. He was eventually recalled to fight in Korea.

In 1950 the Coeur d'Alene tribe filed a claim for lost aboriginal lands with the Indian Claims Commission. Garry joined tribal leaders, who had barely started to plan for economic development when in 1953 Congress resolved to end trusteeship. Meanwhile the Internal Revenue Service relied on a recent court ruling to charge eighteen members of the tribe, including Garry, with failing to pay taxes on income from allotted lands. For years such income had been presumed tax-exempt. The tribe dispatched Garry to solicit defense funds from other tribes and to promote united resistance to federal encroachment on Indian rights.

With a portfolio and a mission, Garry traveled widely through the western states, appealing for united opposition to government policy. The Ninth Circuit Court eventually overturned the attempt to tax tribal incomes. Garry turned his pilgrimage into the presidency of the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest, and he rapidly developed the constituency that elected him to the presidency of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) at its Phoenix convention in 1953.

Garry warned that Indians had to hold on to their lands to achieve economic independence, declaring, "Indians are hard to get rid of as long as they have their land." He demanded an Indian voice in federal deliberations affecting Native Americans.

Shortly before Garry's election by the NCAI, Congress endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 108, which declared that Indian tribes and individuals should rapidly be "freed" from federal supervision. Indians cried that Congress would thus destroy Indian tribes. On the heels of his election, then, Garry convened an NCAI emergency conference of forty-three tribes from twenty-one states and Alaska, which met in Washington, D.C., in February 1954 to declare united resistance to termination. The conference enunciated an Indian policy: "Congress should not enact legislation affecting Indian property or other rights without . . . consent of the Indian tribes concerned."

Thereafter, Garry traveled constantly, speaking to Indian tribal councils, service clubs, and civic organizations to justify Indian opposition to government policy. He testified at congressional hearings and lobbied individual congressmen. Nearly six feet tall, of light copper complexion, dressed in a business suit, Garry made an impressive advocate. He spoke lucidly, in a rich baritone. He was soon the best-known Indian spokesman in America.

His was not the only voice. Helen L. Peterson, the tireless executive secretary of the NCAI, and tribal leaders also made themselves heard. Peterson reprinted magazine articles for a large mailing list. Her small staff analyzed bills in Congress affecting Indians and counseled tribes on lobbying. The NCAI fought termination, state control of Indian tribes, the practice of stripping tribal members of less than half Indian blood of their lands—all while working on a shoestring. In Garry's time, the NCAI's annual budget rarely exceeded twenty-five thousand dollars. By 1958 the federal government had backed away from ending trusteeship without consent and all but abandoned termination.

While he presided over NCAI, Garry was also elected chairman of the Coeur d'Alene tribe and set about planning an economic resurrection of his people. In 1957 and 1959, he was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives, the first Native American in that state's legislature. And he continued as president of the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest.

On May 6, 1958, the Indian Claims Commission awarded the Coeur d'Alenes $4.3 million. The tribe named Garry program director to plan for using the award. A dissident clique resisted the plan that Garry proposed, alleging that he—and his wife, Leona, the tribal secretary—had turned dictatorial, and they carried their discontent to the NCAI. No doubt Garry did dominate, believing himself to be the most experienced manager on the tribal council. He relinquished the presidency of the NCAI in 1959 to run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, and could not rebuild his constituency when he attempted to take back his old post.

During the 1960s, Garry applied himself to tribal development, completing a new constitution and a law-and-order code for the Coeur d'Alenes in 1962. He counseled other tribes. The Coeur d'Alenes improved sanitation and housing. In 1967 Garry gave up the chairmanship of the tribal council to serve in the Idaho Senate, where he championed Indian and veterans' concerns.

But once he was out of the national limelight, his political base slipped away. A beloved daughter died. Garry's health broke. He sometimes turned to alcohol and memories: he had been chosen the Outstanding Indian of North America in 1957 and 1959, had won the National Indian Council Fire Achievement Award in 1973, and had received accolades of achievement from dozens of community-service and Indian organizations.

Garry lost his bid for reelection to the tribal council in 1972, a bitter defeat. He died on the last day of 1975 and was buried with a military honor guard in the mission cemetery at DeSmet, Idaho. The executive board of the NCAI at the time summed up Garry's contribution to Native Americans: "[he] was responsible for the Indians holding on to their land base, and he invented tribal government, as we know it."





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