Lucy Covington: Native American Activist Leadership
Lucy Covington comes from a generation of Native American leaders whose stories are probably the greatest untold civil rights activist stories in America.
This is the Lucy Covington Tribal Government Center on a snowy evening just a block away from our IHS clinic in Nespelem, Washington. This building is the center of the government for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. It was built in 2016 and brought under one roof something like 60-some tribal departments that were once scattered across the Reservation. The colored steel panels of the exterior evoke the basket-weaving traditions of the twelve tribes that make up the Colville Tribes.
Lucy Covington is probably one of the most unheralded civil rights activists in the sphere of tribal rights and sovereignty. She was the great granddaughter of Chief Moses of the Sinkiuse-Columbia tribe- he was one of the great chiefs of the Colville at the time of the Reservation's establishment in 1872.
Born and raised on the Reservation, Lucy Covington graduated from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas and returned to the Reservation. It was during the Great Depression and she got a job as a forestry camp cook for the Civilian Conservation Corps- that's where she met her husband, John Covington. During the Second World War, they both worked as welders at the Kaiser Shipyards in Portland, Oregon.
Prior to 1940, the federal government had jurisdiction over the Native American Reservations as part of long-standing treaty obligations. Beginning in 1953, the federal government moved to "terminate" Native American tribes, essentially severing their treaty obligations to Native Americans.
On the surface of it, the wording of termination laws and policies seemed benign enough. On 1 August 1953, House Resolution 108 was enacted declaring as Congressional policy as “rapidly as possible to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, and to grant them all the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.”
However, within the termination policies came an immediate end of federal tribal recognition, federal services and benefit programs as well as an end to a tribe's reservation lands. Over 100 tribes lost recognition and their reservation lands within three years of the passing of House Resolution 108 in 1953.
Relocation programs moved Native American families off reservation lands to US cities and placed them in seasonal jobs like the railroad or agriculture. But once terminated as a federally-recognized tribe, those Native Americans lost access to the Indian Health Service and those families moved to US cities to "assimilate" were only given six months of health insurance.
As many tribes lacked their own hospitals and clinics outside of the IHS, the impact on Native American health was disastrous particularly as tuberculosis was rampant in the mid-1950s.
Lucy Covington's brother George Friedlander was on the Colville tribal council at the time. He and other members of the tribal community grew concerned as some of the tribal leadership wanted to strike it out on their own and support termination. Her brother wanted to fight termination, but he had a heart condition and stepped down only on the condition that Lucy Covington take his place.
She resisted at first, saying she had to help her husband take care of their ranch, but her brother and his family offered to help with the ranch so she could run for the tribal council. She easily won her brother's former seat in 1954. Her influence and leadership against termination rapidly grew and in 1965 she testified before Congress against termination when the Colville were told they would be terminated by 1970.
At the time she was not popular with the tribal leadership because they wanted termination and the opportunity to sell the reservation's natural resources on their own. This was particularly significant because the tribal leadership had withdrawn the tribe from membership in NCAI and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) because both organizations opposed termination. Lucy Covington, still on the tribal council, was heavily involved with both organizations.
She made frequent trips to Washington to lobby against termination as well as trips to coordinate with other Native American tribes across the United States. Since she was operating contrary to the official position of the tribal leadership, she funded her own trips by selling her cattle and some of her prized horses. Subsequent tribal elections swung in her favor as President Johnson put on hold the plans to terminate the Colville Tribes.
In 1971, some of the younger tribal members she mentored in civil rights swept the tribal elections, unseating every tribal council member who favored termination. The tribal election was in effect a referendum on the federal policy of termination. The new tribal chairman, Mel Tonasket, was only 30 years old and was one of Lucy Covington's most ardent supporters.
Not a single Native American tribe experienced termination after the 1971 Colville tribal elections.
Lucy Covington went on to serve 22 years on the tribal council including one term as the chair, the first woman to do so. When the new tribal government center was built in 2016 to replace the older one lost to a fire, by unanimous vote of the tribal council, the new building was named for her.
In 2017, Eastern Washington University near Spokane established the Lucy Covington Center to educate and train the next generation of Native American leaders.
She passed away in 1982, but I have been fortunate to have met members of her family when I've worked at the IHS clinic on the reservation. The current IHS clinic's CEO in fact, is one of Lucy Covington's grand-nieces.
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