The Elders Circle’s traditional teachings inspired Janet to garden and be a steward for her ten acres of land in her husband’s Nisqually reservation border town of Yelm WA. Waking their talk, Janet and Don taught their children and grandchildren to fish, smoke and can foods, garden and care for others in need. They open their hearts and opened their home to traditional ceremonials and provided a place to challenge modern thinking and life ways. Constantly aware of the poverty that surrounded them, Janet, Don and their children blazed a trail in the Northwest to re-traditionalize Indian people. Recognized as a mother to all, Janet was named by her Indian peoples, Yet Si Blue placing her in a mother clan where only mothers belong. Janet recalled, I have heard there was up to ten maybe more from different nations around here (Northwest, Yelm WA.) It also means one who speaks her mind. (IBID) Janet’s mentors were the Elders Circle, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) in the Northeast and the Hopi in the Southwest and the traditional peoples from the Plains in addition to her Northwest Elders. It was at annual Elder Circle gatherings and during international travels together that Janet’s talents as a writer and spokesperson found another source of inspiration. Janet stirred the pot of traditional teachings and contemporary politics in her writings and speeches. It was here, a political analysis with the intersections of economic and cultural class, race, gender and the environment was fined tuned within a spiritual context of traditional philosophy and religion. Janet collaborated with Elders such as Thomas Banyaca and Oren Lyons to produce written Communiques, traditional messages to the Peoples. With each Elders Circle trip abroad, Janet incorporated a traditional world view that empowered her to speak to larger and larger audiences about North American Indians, and ultimately the survival of the planet. Janet was an advocate for the Hopi Prophesy and wrote, A Warning Message to All Indian Nations and our Friends and Supporters, a second 20 page treatise dated January of 1978.

That was the year of the Longest Walk from San Francisco to Washington, DC where 30,000 people demonstrated and successfully defeated eleven pieces of anti-Indian legislation. When the Black Bass Act came out, along with other anti-Indian federal legislation that surfaced in Congress; and later, David So Happy was put in jail for fishing on the Columbia River, Janet continue to campaign for our basic right to have food and clean water. On the Longest Walk, Janet lectured on the Forced Sterilization of Indian women by the US Indian Health Services estimating that 70% of US Native women were forcible sterilized. After the Walk, Janet, Pine Ridge South Dakota’s Lorelie Means, Madonna Gilbert and others started the Women of All Red Nations WARN as a women’s component of AIM. Janet said we needed to give more attention to our internal sovereignty, what is happening in the homes with families and the children (Article, “The Backbone of Everything by Crystal Mountain in Indigenous Woman 15th Anniversary Edition, Austin TX.) Each founder made a commitment to go back home and start a chapter of WARN. Janet’s grassroots organizing for WARN resulted in the Northwest Indian Women’s Circle. Janet sought and received the blessings of the Elders of Assumption, Canada to do this work. Janet instituted the spiritual sanctioning of community organizing as a model for Native activism. The Elders left Janet with only one reservation, “don’t become sexist and get involved in the separation of the sexes.” (IBID) By this time Janet had met with and counseled many leaders of the American Indian Movement. Janet felt a kinship with Dennis Banks and shared a collegial relationship with Russell Means. She encouraged Bill Wahpepah’s organizing in the San Francisco International Indian Treaty Council office, visiting us frequently. Janet was respected for her intellect, outspokenness and counsel to women in the American Indian Movement who she gathered up in SF, White Earth and NY to convene in her back yard at Yelm WA the first Indigenous Women’s Network (IWN) Gathering in August of 1985 only a few months after her beloved husband’s passing in April 1985.

To hear Janet speak at the founding of IWN, she was a passive supporter of women, but to have seen and heard her in action, she continues to be a role model and inspiration to us today. Women will rise to protect life, at this point this is not happening. We need education, communications and to define what we can do to help ourselves. Start simple. It seems our prayers are being answered by the women represented here and the work they do. Our first meeting is like an embryo and we will go through a process of growth. We do not want to structure too much but to get to the point…now we have to help the Indian mother … present the women’s view…we can raise the consciousness of the men and the family. We view ourselves as facilitators-not leaders, to provide a framework for our traditions and history. We provide role models for leadership...we are trying to take responsibility…Women are coming together…the prophesies… the root of the problem is genocide but how are we dealing with this?...The best thing to do is to organize…It is impossible to organize disorganized women…Indian women suffer from double doses of racism and sexism…it manifests itself in being mentally dependent…we know the history...we are women organizers…identify women organizers for survival of our communities (and) network to formalize the concept.

The author of the article, Agnes Williams, is a Seneca mother of three daughters, grandmother of four; daughter, sister and auntie living in the occupied territory of Western New York State on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation near Irving. Agnes’ daughter Josie contributed the title to the article. Agnes is a founding mother and on the Advisory Board of the Indigenous Women’s Network, a WARN central committee member and currently organizes for the Indigenous Women’s Initiatives of Buffalo, NY, a project of the Grand Island, NY- Riverside Salem United Church of Christ. Agnes is a licensed Master in Social Work consulting with the Native American Community Services, also of Buffalo., NY.