Sam Cagey Sr., Lummi Leader And `A Warrior For Indian People'

"You can tell everything about a person's life from the way he walks through a forest. The outdoors is our temple." - Sam Cagey, Lummi leader.

Whether it was the woods, the water, the wildlife, or the salmon, Sam Cagey Sr. was caretaker of them all.

Balancing his spiritual reverence for nature and the economic reality it afforded, the Lummi leader was on the front lines and in congressional halls, defending his tribe.

When the Internal Revenue Service said that Lummi fishermen must pay federal income tax on commercial salmon sales, Mr. Cagey tossed a burning torch into a beached gill-netter in a symbolic gesture of protest.

"They've pushed Lummi fishermen about as far as they can go," Mr. Cagey said as he began a battle that eventually was successful in defeating the tax.

Mr. Cagey, a longtime crusader for the rights of Indian tribes, died Feb. 20 after a long illness. He was 68.

"I consider him one of our traditional leaders of our tribe," said Violet Hillaire, a friend who worked with Mr. Cagey on legislation and health issues. "Sam was a person who would go down fighting. I look at him as a warrior for Indian people."

Born and raised on the Lummi Reservation, Mr. Cagey served as a Lummi Tribal Council member for 23 years. He had just been re-elected to the council.

Mr. Cagey was a leader in tribal self-governance and was active in the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, the National Congress of American Indians and was the past president of the American Indian Trade Council.

Mr. Cagey was a leader in a controversial aquaculture project in the 1960s - a project now considered ahead of its time and still going on today. He also helped establish the Indian school of aquaculture, which trained many of the tribe's technicians.

Mr. Cagey also was instrumental in creating the Northwest Indian College, the Lummi Health Center and the Lummi Casino.

"When you spend your life working and living life out as a tribal leader there's nothing you don't touch, from education to culture to law enforcement, to courts," said G.I. James, a former councilman and programs manager for the tribe.

"He was always there as a tribalist," said James. "We were fighting for our existence, our way of life, all the time. There was always an attack somewhere."

Mr. Cagey was a man who worried about his tribe - and his children - losing their identities and forgetting their cultures.

"The federal dole killed us, softened us," he once said in a speech to an Indian gathering. "We are controlled by these federal officials and they have no confidence in our intellect or our expertise."

What made Mr. Cagey unique was his insistence on teaching his family the cultural ways of the tribe, said Hillaire.

"There aren't many people here who have that concern about passing their traditions, their way of life of our ancestors down on to our children," she said. "Yet he wanted his children to seek an education to compete in a white man's world."

Mr. Cagey is survived by his wife, Mary Helen, a son, four daughters, three stepdaughters, a stepson, three brothers, three sisters and 98 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Prayer services will be held at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Community Center at the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham. Services are scheduled for tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., also at the Community Center.