THE ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL, July 4, 2005

Speaking up and reaching out

LaDonna Harris steps away from the sidelines to become an advocate for American Indians, helping others become ambassadors of their nation

By Marisa Demarco
Tribune Reporter
July 4, 2005

LaDonna Harris isn't used to talking about herself.

Harris, president of the board of directors of Americans for Indian Opportunity, will tell you all about the causes she's worked for.

But ask her about her rise from farm girl in Oklahoma during the Great Depression to big-time politico, and something changes.

She's Comanche and has fought for civil rights, American Indian rights, women's rights, farmworkers rights and the environment for more than three decades.

She has been appointed to commissions and advisory councils by every president but the current one.

She even made a run for national office as the 1980 vice presidential nominee on the Citizens Party ticket.

"OK, right," she says from her North Valley home where she is waiting for an electrician to come fix some wiring. "Back to me."

LaDonna, 74, married Fred Harris in the early 1950s when she was still a senior in high school in Walters, Okla. They are now divorced.

But Fred Harris' first days in the Oklahoma Senate at age 25 marked LaDonna Harris' first exposure to government.

"Socially, I was the epitome of the historic Indian girl," she said. "He was very verbal, but he depended on my ability to read people, read their body language and observe their behavior."

Harris said she would go to the state capital, though she was the only wife who would attend the sessions, and sit on the Senate floor with her husband.

Still, she was more seen than heard.

"I wanted to figure out people before I opened up," she said.

Harris was at a meeting at the University of Oklahoma listening to professors speak about civil rights when she first spoke up publicly.

"I asked about Indians, and no one knew anything," she said.

She got the professors to come to Lawton, Okla., where much of the American Indian community was at that time, to discuss those issues. Out of that meeting came the formation of the Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity in the 1960s, the first American Indian organization that joined the tribes of the state. For the first couple of months, they ran the nonprofit out of Harris' house.

That organization shut its doors last week.

"It didn't find its new road," she said. "It's a great sadness."

Working for the organization meant Harris had to learn to speak in public in her late 20s and early 30s.

"I lost some of the skill of reading people," she said. "It was a trade off. It sounded easy, but it wasn't."

She wouldn't let her husband attend her speeches because he made her nervous. But one day he snuck into the back of the auditorium to listen in.

He told her she had done well.

"He had to," she said.

After her husband's political career took them to Washington, D.C., Harris founded Americans for Indian Opportunity and embarked on what has been a life of "educating the educators." She says she taught "Indian 101" to every member of Congress and presidents for more than 30 years.

"It got boring," she said of training generations of politicians in pre-Columbus American history.

She said she often faced racism, but it was mostly ignorance she was confronted with.

She was known in Washington as "The Indian," an affectionate nickname, she said.

"As grandmother says, `Don't spend time being mad at people, because then they have defeated you,' " she said.

Today, Harris has designed an ambassador program that mimics her rise through the political landscape. American Indians are chosen from around the country, brought to Washington, D.C., and abroad to train to become an ambassador of their nation.

"She sees the value in everybody," says Stephanie Posten, a graduate of the program. "The number of people that come to her and are thrilled to see her is amazing."