PROFILE: Rueben Snake
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Reuben Snake: Native American Civil Rights Leader
Copyright © 2005 by Jean SandersReuben A. Snake, Jr. was a deeply spiritual man devoted to helping indigenous people worldwide. He was born January 12, 1937 at Winnebago, Nebraska, the youngest child of Reuben Harold and Virginia Greyhair Snake.
Reuben's parents divorced when he was four. His mother remarried a year later and the family moved to Sioux City, Iowa. Soon after, his stepfather was drafted into the army, his mother had to work, his siblings were placed in mission schools, and Reuben was sent to live with his father in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Due to his father's excessive drinking, Reuben was often shuffled from place to place to live with other relatives.
After a year, Reuben's mother retrieved the children and enrolled them in an Indian mission boarding school at Neillsville, Wisconsin. The school stressed assimilation, did not teach Indian culture, and presented history from a white man's viewpoint. As Reuben recalled, "I used to contemplate about how we were taught in American History that George Washington was the father of our country. . . . I couldn't fathom how this White guy with his big nose and his powdered wig could be my father."
More moves ensued as his mother changed jobs. In 1945, Reuben's stepfather returned from the war and the family went to live on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. However, unable to find work, the parents placed the children in the Reformed Church Mission Home on the Reservation and moved to Hastings, Minnesota. When their situation improved, the children rejoined them.
In 1950, at age thirteen, Reuben entered the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. In this Indian boarding school, he met people from diverse tribes and participated in athletics. Those were the positive aspects. Reuben described the negatives: "I was thirteen years old the first time I tried alcohol. By the time I left Haskell, the drinking that I had been drawn to . . . though only on an occasional basis, was beginning to affect my life."
When his drinking led to repeated problems at Haskell, he returned to Minnesota. He dropped out of school at sixteen. At seventeen he lied about his age and joined the Army. He was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, completed training as a Special Forces Operative, and was assigned to a tour of duty in Berlin, Germany. In February 1958, he received an honorable discharge.
Reuben went to live with his mother and brother in Waterloo, Iowa but couldn't find work, so he moved to the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. This, too, didn't last long. He continued drifting from place to place and job to job as his drinking escalated.
In 1960, his sister, who had married, invited him to her home in Cleveland, Ohio. While there, Reuben met Kathy McKee, who was originally from the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. Married at eighteen, she had a daughter but had left her abusive alcoholic husband and was staying with relatives. That summer she returned to Nebraska. Then Reuben's sister became ill and she, too, returned to the Winnebago Reservation to recuperate.
Reuben, his brother-in-law, and some male cousins remained in Cleveland. Soon the men were drinking and carousing more than they were working. They lost their housing and lived on the streets. Another episode of drifting from state to state, literally and figuratively, followed. Reuben Snake appeared to be no one going nowhere. Then, when things seemed bleakest, he sobered enough to visit his mother in Winnebago. While there, he asked about Kathy McKee. As if fate had intervened, it turned out that Kathy lived across the street.
Love may not conquer all, but it can change behavior. Reuben began to feel a sense of responsibility. He was twenty-three years old when he married Kathy. For a while they lived with relatives in Winnebago, but moved to Omaha seeking better jobs. Working in a store fixture manufacturing plant, Reuben set many production standards. He also enrolled at the University of Omaha and started night courses in mechanical engineering. His family grew to include four daughters and two sons. Unfortunately, two important problems still existed: occasional drinking to excess and ignoring much of his spiritual upbringing. He finally quit drinking in 1965. His spiritual journey took longer.
When his third daughter had multiple medical problems, Reuben quit school and took a second job to pay the bills. In 1966, he was hired by the Greater Omaha Community Action Council. He also met Eugene Crawford, a Sioux Indian from South Dakota, who suggested organizing an Indian center in Omaha.
In 1967, when the Department of Economic Opportunity set up work and Head Start programs on the Winnebago reservation, Reuben moved back. Eventually his duties expanded to include programs in five counties. He was elected president of the All Nations Club, a cultural organization that made presentations around the eastern part of the state. He also took courses in business administration, child psychology, and early childhood development.
Reuben's prominence as an activist leader emerged in late 1969 with an incident at Walthill, Nebraska. Walthill was a small white community whose economic survival depended largely on the surrounding Indian reservations. A young white woman was raped by some Indian men from the Omaha Reservation who had been drinking. Walthill citizens reacted by circulating a petition condemning all Indians. As a way to address this injustice, area Indians organized a boycott of Walthill businesses and alerted the media. A few weeks later, Walthill's mayor apologized publicly for circulating the petition.
For many years Reuben and Kathy were involved with Mormonism. Reuben had attended Mormon mission schools as a child. As an adult, he led youth activities for the all-Indian branch of the church. However, as time passed, this faith didn't fully satisfy his spiritual needs as an Indian.
Slowly, during the early 1970s, he began to renew his ties with the Native American Church. Partly this was due to dealing with his brother's fatal illness. Partly it was due to his oldest daughter. One day she asked him why a teacher had remarked that "Indians have weird beliefs."
As a baby, Reuben had been given a Snake Clan name, Kikawa Unga (to rise up), in a Native American Church ceremony that carries the religious significance of baptism in other faiths. His children, too, had been named in the Native American Church, but now he realized they needed to strengthen their spiritual and cultural heritage.
Reuben has explained that "In the Native American Church, we pray to God in Jesus' name and we emphasize the life of Christ as a model. . . . [There is no] great conflict between Christianity and traditional Native American religions. . . . We are taught that the Native American Church way of life is family-oriented."
In 1970, the Army Corps of Engineers tried to condemn land in Iowa adjacent to the Missouri River just across from the Winnebago Reservation so a water recreation complex could be built. This land was protected by an 1865 treaty. Reuben led the protests by forming the "Winnebago Navy." No Winnebago Indian owned a boat, so they borrowed a fourteen-foot runabout and a twelve-foot aluminum rowboat from friends. They then "sailed" their Navy's two-boat fleet across the Missouri in defense of the "invasion." Two federal lawsuits later, the Winnebago tribe won the right to the land which, today, is home to the Winnebago tribal casino.
In the spring of 1970, Reuben moved his family to Rapid City, South Dakota to work in the community action agency. That fall the national American Indian Movement (AIM) held its first conference, and Reuben was elected vice-chairman.
Two major events occurred that year. Reuben was involved with the first Indian occupation of Mount Rushmore in 1970 in order to publicize the fact that the Oglala Sioux had never been paid for their sacred land. He also organized an event to honor the living survivors of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
In 1971, he returned to the Winnebago Reservation to oversee education programs for the Nebraska Indian Inter-Tribal Development Corporation. It became the first Indian organization in the country that controlled the federal funds earmarked for Indian education.
Reuben's mother died that year. In August, Reuben moved his family to Albuquerque, New Mexico to head the Indian Education Training program. His main responsibility was to travel and train Indian organizations across the country.
In the summer of 1972, Reuben was appointed national chairman of AIM. During his tenure several major demonstrations took place publicizing Indian issues and rights. One of these concerned the protection of Chippewa fishing rights in Minnesota that had been guaranteed by treaty.
Another time, the Minneapolis Naval Air Station was scheduled for closure and was to be declared excess federal property. Legally, Indian tribes had the right of acquisition. AIM applied but was rejected, so about 150 Indians entered, occupied the Station, and declared it to be AIM Headquarters. The occupation lasted several days in an effort to draw attention to Indian rights.
Yet another demonstration occurred when Raymond Yellowthunder, an Oglala Sioux, was beaten, stripped naked and abandoned in the American Legion Hall by drunken white men in Gordon, Nebraska. Subsequently, he died from the abuse. Following a national meeting of AIM, a large contingent of Indians drove to Gordon, occupied the American Legion Hall and much of the town. This drew national attention and eventually the perpetrators of the crime were convicted of third-degree manslaughter.
In the summer of 1972, Reuben attended a meeting where a walk called the "Trail of Broken Treaties" was planned to coincide with the national elections. Reuben chaired the national meeting in Minneapolis. A twenty-point position paper was prepared. A family emergency prevented him from joining the demonstration in Washington, DC but the Indians who went delivered their paper.
In 1974, Reuben moved to Sioux City, Iowa to implement an educational program he designed for the Sioux City American Indian Center. One of the men he hired was a Roadman in the Native American Church--a spiritual leader who presides over sacred meetings. Together they instituted Native American Church services and prayer meetings. In the fall of 1974, a Snake Clan elder entrusted Reuben with "the care and keeping" of Native American Church sacred instruments and he, too, was ordained as a Roadman.
In the fall of 1977, Reuben was elected chairman of the Winnebago tribe. At the time the tribe was poor and largely dependent on government grants and contracts. Reuben met with LaDonna Harris of Oklahoma, founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity. She recommended a review of federal guidelines that governed most of the Winnebago programs. With her help, the tribe was able to combine programs, create a centralized administration, improve funding and accountability. Reuben also obtained grants from private organizations. Programs were instituted for revolving credit, land acquisition, health, alcoholism treatment, and Winnebago culture.
In the early 1970s, Reuben was part of the group that planned the Nebraska Indian Community College. Initially it was a state-run school, but by the end of the decade it was accredited, and entirely controlled by Nebraska's three tribes: Omaha, Santee, and Winnebago.
When the Nebraska Public Power District wanted to condemn land in order to build a line across the reservation, the Winnebago tribe sued because tribal approval was needed for such an action. A settlement was negotiated, and the money allotted was used to develop small businesses.
Reuben attended the first organizational meeting of the National Tribal Chairman's Association (NTCA). During the 1970s, he served on the education committees of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the NTCA. He became NCAI's president in September 1985.
In the fall of 1980, he was one of fifteen Indians selected by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of the Interior to serve as a delegate to the Eighth Congress of the Inter-American Indian Institute, Merida, Mexico. This was the first time Indians were included. Internationally, more than a hundred Indians represented tribes throughout Central and South America.
In 1982, he spoke on the health needs of Indian people at the World Assembly of First Nations in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Also during the 1980s, he traveled extensively throughout the country as a Roadman for the Native American Church. He served on the boards of directors of national and international organizations, including the First Nations Development Institute, the Seventh Generation Fund, the American Indian Law Resource Center, the Native Lands Institute, and the Americans for Indian Opportunity.
In May 1985, he went to Bogota, Colombia to observe negotiations between the Nicaraguan Indians and the Sandinistas.
The 1985 Ninth Congress of the Inter-American Indian Institute in Santa Fe was significant because one of the major issues concerned the importation of peyote from Mexico. Peyote is a button-shaped cactus, considered legally to be an hallucinogen and, therefore, a controlled substance. However, as used in the Native American Church, it is considered to be "divine medicine" and is an integral part of sacred rituals. Its use has been compared to the use of sacramental wine in other religious ceremonies. For centuries, Indians from many countries have used and regarded as sacred similar types of plants, so this was an international issue. At the Santa Fe meeting, a resolution was adopted, calling for an international conference to address this issue. Later, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii championed the cause and relied heavily on Reuben's advice as the issue made its way through judicial battles and Senate hearings.
In the summer of 1986, Reuben and his son went to Bad Segeberg, Germany to participate in a pageant based on the writings of Karl May, who had never been to the United States but was fascinated by American Indians. May communicated these feelings effectively to his fellow Germans. For the event, the Germans constructed a building called the Nebraska House, where they sold genuine Indian arts and crafts. Reuben's involvement bolstered international friendship and tourism. For this he was honored by the State of Nebraska.
In October 1986, Reuben suffered a major heart attack, followed two weeks later by cardiac arrest and heart surgery.
In 1989, Reuben was invited to attend the "Earth Walk" near Sydney, Australia. Indigenous people from different places in the world addressed environmental issues. Reuben opened the conference by conducting a pipe ceremony.
In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the sacred use of peyote was not protected by the Constitution. Reuben became the official spokesperson of the Native American Church to educate the public about church philosophy and history. He organized the Native American Religious Freedom Project to lobby for national legislation that would amend and strengthen the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Unfortunately, his health worsened steadily and he did not live to see the results of his hard work. He died on June 28, 1993.
On October 6, 1994, President Clinton signed into law the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments that protected the religious use of peyote by Indians.
Reuben A. Snake, Jr. was an innovator who practiced what he preached. He overcame early hardships and addictions to become an honored leader. In the November 28, 1999 Omaha Sunday World-Herald supplement "Celebrating A Century: 100 Extraordinary People of Nebraska," he was one of only three Native Americans included.
His awards included the Nebraska Indian Commission Citizenship Award, the Distinguished Nebraskan Award, and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's Certificate of Recognition.
He described himself as a "militant teddy bear" or "Your Humble Serpent." In explaining his activism he said, "Everything we did was geared to establishing the civil and human rights of Indian people within this country. We didn't do something just to show off or just to agitate people. Everything we did had a purpose."
All quotes are from Reuben Snake: Your Humble Serpent as told to Jay C. Fikes (Clear Light Publishers, 1996). For insight into the use of sacred peyote in the Native American Church, read One Nation Under God: The Triumph of the Native American Church, compiled and edited by Huston Smith and Reuben Snake (Clear Light Publishers, 1996).
Helpful profiles can be found in the May 25, 1968 and December 20, 1986 Omaha World-Herald and Notable Native Americans (Gale, 1995) 405-407.
For more information, consult "900 Famous Nebraskans" on the Internet at www.nsea.org or www.beatricene.com/gagecountymuseum or www.nebpress.com.
