Tillie Paul

Tillie Paul (January 18, 1863 – August 20, 1952) was a Tlingit translator, civil rights advocate, educator, and Presbyterian church elder.

Early life and education

Matilda Kinnon was born in Victoria, British Columbia, the younger daughter of a Tlingit mother named Kut-XooX, and a Scottish father named James Kinnon, who was employed by the Hudson's Bay Company. After her mother died from tuberculosis, young Tillie was raised by a maternal aunt and uncle in Wrangell, Alaska. Her adoptive family gave her the name "Kah-tah-ah." Later she returned to using the name "Tillie Kinnon" when she was admitted to Amanda McFarland's Presbyterian Home and School for Girls.[1]

Career

Tillie Paul worked as a translator and missionary educator within the Presbyterian Church. Paul started a school at Klukwan, Alaska with her first husband, Louis Paul, in the mid-1880s; they were the first Native American couple commissioned as missionaries by the Board of Home Missions. A few years later, as a widow with three very young sons, she moved to Sitka, Alaska to work at Sitka Industrial Training School, where she served as matron of the girls' dormitory, occasionally as a teacher or nurse.[1] She also lectured on Tlingit culture in Sitka as a member of the Society of Alaskan Natural History and Ethnology.[2]

With a fellow teacher, Fannie Willard, she created an alphabet for writing Tlingit language, and compiled a Tlingit dictionary. She learned to play the organ to bring music to more school and church events. Some of her translated hymns and prayers are still in use among Tlingit Christians today.[3] Tillie Paul helped to found the New Covenant Legion in 1905, a Christian temperance organization intended to reach Native communities considered especially at risk from alcohol abuse. The New Covenant Legion in turn became the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood, advocacy organizations for Alaska Native rights. Tillie Paul's sons William and Louis were leaders in the Alaska Native Brotherhood.[4]

In 1922, she assisted a Tlingit relative, Charlie Jones, in voting, which was considered a felony. Her son defended both the voter and Tillie Paul at trial as American citizens, and won, setting a precedent that was soon solidified in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.[5][6]

In 1931, Paul was the first woman ordained as an elder in the Alaska Northwest Synod of the Presbyterian Church, in the first year that Presbyterian women could be so ordained.[1]

Personal life and legacy

Tillie Kinnon married twice. Her children included civil rights attorney William Lewis Paul, the first Alaska Native elected to the territorial legislature.[7] Tillie was widowed as a young woman when her first husband died by (presumed) drowning in 1887. She remarried to William Tamaree in 1905.[8] She died in 1952, at a hospital in Wrangell, age 90.

In 1979, an infirmary building on the campus of Sheldon Jackson College was named for Tillie Paul.[9]

In 2015, Tillie Paul's great-granddaughter, Debra O'Gara, was named Tribal Court Presiding Judge by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Cherry Lyon Jones, "Matilda Kinnon 'Tillie' Paul Tamaree" in More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Alaska Women (Globe Pequot 2014): 11-20. ISBN 9780762774302
  2. ↑ "Tlingit Baskets to be Displayed" Sitka Daily Sentinel (March 7, 1997): 6. via Newspapers.com
  3. ↑ Victoria Wyatt, "Female Native Teachers in Southeast Alaska: Sarah Dickinson, Tillie Paul, and Frances Willard" in Stephen W. Haycox and Mary Childers Magnusson, eds., An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past (University of Washington Press 1996): 156-175. ISBN 9780295800370
  4. ↑ Patrick J. Daley and Beverly A. James, "How the Raven Gave Voice to a Talking Newspaper: The Case of the Alaska Fisherman" in Cultural Politics and the Mass Media: Alaska Native Voices (University of Illinois Press 2004): 40-79. ISBN 9780252029387
  5. ↑ Peter Metcalfe, A Dangerous Idea: The Alaska Native Brotherhood and the Struggle for Indigenous Rights (University of Alaska Press 2014): 20. ISBN 9781602232402
  6. ↑ Amy Fletcher, "Tlingit Civil Rights Hero William Paul Sr. Remembered" Juneau Empire (May 12, 2015).
  7. ↑ Finding aid, William Lewis Paul Papers, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.
  8. ↑ Zachary R. Jones, William Tamaree Recording Collection 1940-1941, Sealaska Heritage Institute Archives.
  9. ↑ "SJ Names Place to Honor Tlingit Woman, Tillie Paul" Daily Sitka Sentinel (October 19, 1979): 5. via Newspapers.com
  10. ↑ Raeanne Holmes, "Debra O'Gara Hired as Tribal Court Presiding Judge" Alaska Native News (October 29, 2015).
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