Local resident became American hero, martyr 

By Jean Lachowicz 

Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa, known as O’Peqtaw-Metamoh (Flying Eagle Woman) as a member of the Menominee Nation, was an internationally known humanitarian who worked globally for indigenous peoples’ rights, indigenous women’s issues, sovereignty, and human rights.

            Her journey led her from Chicago’s Humboldt Park to an Indian reservation in Wisconsin and later to the United Nations, the Hague, indigenous people’s rights groups throughout the world, and ultimately to a tragic end.

Humboldt Park childhood

Washinawatok and her sister attended St. Sylvester’s School at 2157 N. Humboldt Blvd. Regina graduated in 1968 and Ingrid in 1971; both went on to Alvernia High School. During their years in Chicago, the family used White as its last name. They first lived in Palmer Square and then moved to Belden Ave. near the intersection of Fullerton and Kimball Aves. 

             “Ingrid had a passion for Indian people," said Regina Washinawatok, who teaches traditional crafts at Menominee High School in Wisconsin. "She was so passionate about what she believed in; there was no end to her work. All over the place, I meet people she worked with. It never ceases to amaze me how many lives she touched. When people think of her and her belief in what she was doing, tears well up in their eyes. She always had a heart for her people.

            “The number one value of the Menominee people is family. Ingrid always amazed me at her ability to treat everyone as one big family,” Regina went on. “She treated people like she was from this big worldly family and connected with them in that way. It was always personal to her. A smile from a shy kid would touch her heart, and she would talk about it. Those little things kept her going.”

The sisters experienced activism first-hand as children. Regina explained, “In the ‘60s, the Menominee Nation was considering selling the ancestral land. When I was about 15 and Ingrid was 11, we watched our parents [the late James, member of the Menominee Nation Supreme Court, and Gwendolyn (Dodge) Washinawatok] work their tails off to create a grassroots organization to restore the land. We both had our eyes opened. Ingrid took it one step further by making it a worldwide endeavor for indigenous people of all colors.”

            The 1969-71 Indian occupation of Alcatraz and the 1973 Indian siege at Wounded Knee, SD, which raised consciousness about treatment of American Indians, were yet to come. "It was still a time of disconnecting, not connecting," Regina said. "My parents were raised in the era of Indian boarding schools that were set up to actually get rid of Indian culture and identity. For example, my mom’s dad did not speak any Menominee to the children. For my parents to step forward and do this [become activists] was amazing in itself.

“The work they did was very hard. I remember asking my dad, ‘How do you keep going?’ He said he looks in the eyes of the old people and it gives him hope. It’s hard to fight your own people, but he was a very charismatic speaker. Some called us troublemakers from the city since many of those seeking to stop the sale of the land were from Chicago and Milwaukee.”

            Every summer the girls stayed on the Menominee Indian Reservation, visiting relatives and making many friends. Ingrid spent countless summer days at the family cottage on LaMotte Lake, and she loved biking on old logging roads and in the woods, walking in the Menominee Forest, hunting wild game with her cousins, and swimming in the Menominee lakes and rivers. She also learned about traditional medicines.

Irene O’Neill, MD, now a Bridgeport resident, was a classmate of Ingrid’s at St. Sylvester’s School. “I remember Ingrid as being a very unique person even in grade school," O'Neill recalled. "At an age when most people do their best to blend in, she celebrated her American-Indian heritage.  She spent her weekends at the American-Indian Cultural Center on Wilson Ave., and would participate in larger American Indian gatherings in Wisconsin.

“Even back then, she was comfortable with who she was, embraced it, and shared it with those of us lucky enough to know her. Obviously, a person like that has an influence on you the rest of your life, especially on how you view American-Indians. It makes it much harder to generalize about an ethnic group, when you know such a remarkable individual.”

While Ingrid was at Alvernia, the family moved to Wisconsin full time; she graduated from John F. Kennedy Preparatory High School in St. Nazianz. Regina started a family and today lives on the reservation. She said, “I moved here because I wanted my children to be in the place my mom and dad fought for. There’s a sense of belonging and a connection to family and the history of our people.” 

 

Lifelong activism

From an early age, Ingrid promoted indigenous cultures and traditions. Her persistence convinced her father it was time to let go of “White” and reclaim the family name, Washinawatok.

While attending the University of Minnesota, Ingrid became involved with the American Indian Movement and later the International Indian Treaty Council. She also studied at the International University in Cuba, where she learned Spanish and met a young Palestinian, Ali El-Issa. The two later married.

Ingrid returned from Cuba to live with her sister on the Menominee Indian Reservation but the International Treaty Council quickly asked her to administer its office in New York City. She and El-Issa moved to New York, and soon after they had a son they named Maeh-kiw-Kasic, which means Red Sky in Menominee.

            Among many anecdotes in the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin’s tribute to Ingrid, one person recalled, “Ingrid tried to make it home every year for the Menominee Pow-Wow. I remember sitting next to 'Ink,' and we were watching her sister Regina fancy-shawl dance. She said, ‘Isn’t Gina so graceful? She glides through the air. Isn’t she so great? She’s so beautiful; she’s the best dancer I have ever seen.’ Ingrid always looked up to her sister. She loved her so much.”

            By the 1990s, Ingrid was executive director of the Fund for the Four Directions in New York City, where she planned, organized, and directed grant-making policies and initiated an effort to promote and revitalize indigenous languages and cultures.

            An award-winning lecturer and author, she spoke out for indigenous peoples’ rights both regionally and internationally. The Thunderbird American Indian Dancers recognized her as 1998 Indian of the Year; the Rockefeller Foundation named her a Fellow in the Next Generation Leadership Program; and the North Star Fund gave her the 1995 Frederick Douglass Award for outstanding contributions to the struggle for political, social, and economic justice for all people in the spirit of Frederick Douglass.

            An active member of the Indigenous Initiative for Peace convened by Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchutum, Ingrid organized sessions for the first Through the Fourth State World Forum conferences in San Francisco and served as an official translator for an international non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations’ Second International Conference of Indigenous Peoples and Land. She also served as a delegate to numerous sessions of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and served in 1994 as chairperson of the NGO Committee of the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

            A board member of the American Indian Community House, she also was a founding member of the Native American Council in New York City, co-chair of the Indigent Women’s Network, and chair of the board for Native Americans in Philanthropy.

            She received the Fanny Lou Hamer Award in 1992 for work helping indigenous peoples, received the keys to the city from Scranton, PA, in 1993, and co-produced the documentary film Warrior. She also won the Asian-Americans for Equality Award in 1987 for building economic harmony and economic cooperation and the International Women’s Leadership Award of the International Cross-Cultural Black Women’s Institute.

 

Journey’s end

In 1999, Ingrid and two associates, Lahe'ena'e Gay and Terence Freitas, visited the U'wa, an indigenous nation of about 5,000 living in the northern tip of Colombia, to help establish a bilingual school to protect U’wa culture and language. The school was planned as part of the U’wa Defense Working Group that Freitas and other activists launched to help the U’wa in a bitter fight against the California oil multinational, Occidental Petroleum.

            Oil occupies a special place in the U’wa cosmology. They consider it the blood of mother earth and take responsibility for ensuring the earth is kept in balance. According to their beliefs, Occidental’s drilling plans would destroy the earth’s balance, affecting the entire planet and cosmos, not just their land.

            On February 25, 1999, while traveling with the U’wa, guerillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped the three Americans. Attempts by family, friends, and the U.S. government to obtain their release proved futile. A week later, Ingrid and her colleagues were found murdered, their bodies left across the river in Venezuela.

            FARC was a Marxist revolutionary force generally in sympathy with indigenous peoples, so the killings came as a shock. Some believe that, as Colombian military pursued FARC, the revolutionaries panicked and killed their captives before disappearing into the jungle.

Ingrid was 41. She was buried in the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin.

            Ali El-Issa, Ingrid’s husband of 17 years, publicly made three promises to the Menominee people at her funeral: “First, that I will support the search for truth and justice for what has happened. Second, that the work that my wife dedicated her life to will continue. And third, that my son Maeh-kiw-Kasic will be raised like his mother would have raised him. He is now yours, a son of the Menominee Nation. Nineteen years ago, the Menominee Nation gave me a skinny little Menominee girl to become my wife; I now give you back the greatest possible honor my people believe in, a martyr.”

            Daniel Bennett, current principal of St. Sylvester’s school in Humboldt Park, said the activism, courage, and sense of social justice exhibited by Ingrid and Regina reflect the values the school encourages students to embrace. “We are proud and humbled that such an exemplary person as Ingrid Washinawatok graduated from our school.”

            Ingrid has been eulogized across the globe through scholarships, libraries, awards, and events. The Flying Eagle Woman Fund for Peace, Justice, and Sovereignty (www.flyingeaglewomanfund.org) was established in 2000 to strengthen indigenous peoples’ sovereignty by building communities that are self-reliant yet maintain and reinforce their traditional cultures and way of life.

            As Ingrid Washinawatok herself concluded, "From offerings to the black ash trees and sweet grass so baskets can be made for family income, to scholarships to honor the memory of a loved one, to the distribution of meat and fish by the young men's first kill or catch, to community powwows to send an athlete to national or international competition, the realization of the circle of life takes on an even stronger constitution in this day and age."