Ramona Bennett (b. 1938) is a prominent Puyallap Tribe leader and activist. She was elected to the Puyallup Tribal Council in 1968, and served as Tribal Chairwoman from 1971 to 1978.
Much of Bennett’s work focuses on social welfare issues, mainly fighting for the rights of women, children, and families. She began her social service work in the 1950s, with the Seattle’s American Indian Women’s Service League. In 1972, she co-founded the Local Indian Child Welfare Act Committee, where she developed a model for childhood and family services that she used to co-author and secure the national Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, a Federal law that governs the removal and out-of-home placement of Indigenous children. In the 1980s, she co-founded the Rainbow Youth and Family Services in Tacoma, a non-profit which she ran for many years.
Bennett is also a pioneer of fishing rights advocacy, co-founding the Survival of American Indians Association in 1964, and helping to bring “fish-in” protests to national prominence. On September 9, 1970, Bennett was among 60 people arrested at an armed encampment on the Puyallup River just north of Tacoma, set up to protect Puyallup fisherman and defend Native fishing rights. The fish-in was in protest of the three-day-a-week fishing season imposed by Washington state on Native fishers. Native activists and their supporters asserted that under the 1855 treaties with the U.S. government, they could fish off-reservation without restriction. Soon afterwards, Nixon’s Justice Department sued the State of Washington on behalf of tribes seeking to remove the state’s restriction. The lawsuit eventually resulted in the 1974 Boldt Decision, granting tribes 50 percent of the salmon and steelhead harvest and the right to regulate their own fisheries.
This photo shows Ramona Bennett while she was out on bail after her arrest at the encampment. At the time, she and activist Hank Adams, of the Survival of the American Indian Association, were meeting with eight leaders of the Protestant Church to ask for their understanding and support of the cause of Native fishing rights. The men made a monetary donation, and pledged to be present in court at the trial.
Caption information source: “Ramona Bennett,” The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, University of Washington, https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/bennett.htm Caption information source: “Tacoma Police arrest 60 persons at a fish-in on September 9, 1970”by David Wilma. HistoryLink.org Essay 2625. Caption information source: "Indians Win Church Support" by Maribeth Morris, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 18, 1970, p. 4.
