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80 chapter 3 Leschi Stories Cynthia Iyall, the first Native American representative to take the stand in the Historical Court of Justice, talked about the importance of the exoneration process to the descendants of Chief Leschi. Iyall first named her ancestors back to Leschi’s half sister and then pointedly said: “After hearing this story told by our elders with great anger and frustration, we have decided to take one more chance to clarify our history once and for all.” Iyall’s and the other representatives’ goal was to reveal to the public that which Nisquallies had long insisted to be true: Leschi was innocent of murder and had been unjustly convicted. Dorian Sanchez, then chair of the Nisqually tribal council and the next representative to take the stand, presented a tribal council resolution and explained the meaning of Leschi’s exoneration to the tribe. Sanchez began with a history of how the tribal members transmitted their knowledge about Leschi across the generations: “We all grew up knowing the story of this great warrior. . . . In gathering places on the river and in our houses, we have told and retold the story of Chief Leschi, and our stories have been clouded by other versions of the truth.” The representatives all suggested that the source of the story—the elders—proved their special claim to truth in comparison to non-Indian accounts. Sanchez, like Iyall, associated the transmission of memories of Leschi with the intellectual and cultural labor of storytelling. Their testimony shows that Leschi’s exoneration would mean more than just clearing Leschi’s name; in their eyes it would honor the act of storytelling and the work of elders in preserving the truth over time.1 Despite the representatives’ suggestion to the contrary, the stories about Leschi changed over time and did not remain fully distinct from non-Nisqually accounts. But, significantly, the performance of distinct traditions makes a claim for distinct rights and identity in a liberal multicultural society.2 Native stories played an important role in the joint Indian/non-Indian 81 leschi stories enterprise of the Historical Court. The petitioners included the testimony of Nisqually and Puyallup representatives so that these people could speak for themselves about what they knew to be true, how they came to know it, and what exoneration would mean to them. Leschi’s story was a potent reminder of prereservation life, an affirmation of who they were before the pressures of colonialism worked to break them apart and assimilate them. The structure of the symbolic court fulfilled the goals of multiculturalism in which a minority group could be free to interpret the past as its members pleased, independent of Western concepts of objectivity and burdens of proof.3 As a public history event, the Historical Court of Justice illustrated for the audience the existence of multiple perspectives and competing interpretations. If the sole purpose of the event had been to educate the public about what was known about Leschi by combining epistemological and historical approaches, it was indeed an effective teaching tool. But the stated purpose of the Historical Court was to do something. The petitioners wanted to take action for Leschi, and Justice Gerry Alexander proclaimed that the Historical Court would search for and uncover the truth.4 These expectations raise a question: What is the role of multiculturalism and alternative narratives in an adversarial system designed to produce a final decision on the truth of a case? Once an apparently authoritative legal decision has been rendered, it is supposed to carry the cultural weight of permanent truth and represent a resolution to disagreement .5 In its static form, “the law reflects a logic of literacy, of the historical archive rather than of changing historical memory,” anthropologist James Clifford notes. “To be successful the trial’s result must endure the way a written text endures.”6 The perception of an enduring authoritative decision was part of the appeal for the Nisqually petitioners. They insisted that history books include the court’s ruling and had initially hoped that the official legal record might change as well. But unwritten Native stories demonstrate how alternative stories can endure—in fact must endure if Native identities are to survive—and maintain dynamism in a way narrow court decisions and published texts cannot. If anything, the history of Native stories about Leschi shows that such storytelling practices will continue, regardless of non-Indian texts, public pronouncements, and legal decisions. Stories are inherently useful, Walter Benjamin claimed...

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