Vi Hilbert (; ; July 24, 1918 – December 19, 2008) was an Upper Skagit elder and conservationist of her traditional culture and of the Lushootseed language, of which she was the last fully fluent heritage speaker. She taught Lushootseed at the University of Washington for 17 years (1971–1988), where she also transcribed and translated Lushootseed recordings from the 1950s. This work is preserved in the university's audio library.
Hilbert was an enrolled member of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, a tribe located in Skagit County, Washington. She was named a Washington Living Treasure in 1989, and received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton, in 1994. She co-wrote Lushootseed grammars and dictionaries, partially with linguist Thom Hess, and published books of stories, teachings, and place names related to her native region, the Puget Sound ().
Early life and education Vi Anderson was born to Charlie () and Louise () Anderson on July 24, 1918, near Lyman, Washington (), on the Skagit River. She was the only one of their eight children to live past the age of 3. Her parents spoke Lushootseed with each other and their friends, which encouraged the young Hilbert to begin to learn the language. Her father was a fisherman, a logger, and a canoe maker, whose canoe the "Question Mark" is housed in the Smithsonian Museum Archive. Hilbert's family mainly traveled by canoe when she was a child. She went berry picking with her family during the summers, and often went fishing with her dad at night on the Skagit River for King salmon, chum, silvers, and steelhead.
The family moved frequently in search of work, which resulted in Hilbert attending 15 different schools. For a while, she attended a boarding school at Tulalip. This was a U.S. Government-run Indian residential school, which were known for their abusive treatment of students in an effort to erase their culture. A previous attendee of the Tulalip school recalled the whippings that students received for speaking in their native languages, which had the effect of causing their generation to only speak English: "Believe me, we never talked 'Indian' at the school again...I gave a talk somewhere to a group, and I explained the reason why we seldom spoke Indian: it was beaten out of us." Hilbert recalled of her own time at the school::24-25
In high school, she attended the Chemawa Indian Boarding School near Salem, Oregon. From there, she transferred to Franklin High School in Portland to get the best education she could find, while working as a domestic to support herself financially. She was nervous about attending Franklin, but credited the care and support of the school's principal, Mr. Bell, in helping her adapt. She attended the school for two years while working for $10 a month, with room and board.
Experience in World War II In an interview, Hilbert stated that she was nearly a victim of the US policy of internment of Japanese Americans; however, she was ultimately able to prove her Native American heritage.Miller, Julie. Personal interview with Henry Donald Hilbert and Vi Hilbert 2000. Interviewed taped via telephonic interview.
Career Before Hilbert was paid to research and teach the Lushootseed language, she worked a variety of jobs. In Tahola, Washington, she planned out and ran a gas station and grocery store. She later worked in groceries and food service, before performing telegraphy for the Seattle Railroad School and becoming the secretary to the Director of Nursing at Seattle Children's. After training at Mr. Lee's Beauty School, she ran a hairdressing business from her home from 1960 onward.
Early research Hilbert met Thomas M. Hess, a linguistics graduate student at the University of Washington, in 1967 and researched Lushootseed with him. At the time, the language was called Puget Salish by the academics learning about it. Hess was writing a grammar book for the language. Hess and Louise George, a Nooksack elder, had spent years meeting at George's house to transcribe Lushootseed recordings. When they came to a story told by Hilbert's mother about the Basket Ogress, George recommended they consult with Hilbert, and she began attending their meetings. Hess said that Hilbert was intrigued by his correct pronunciation of her name, as well as the writing system they were using to transcribe Lushootseed, which she learned in a month. Hilbert wrote that she was surprised during this visit at how much of the language she remembered, and at the fact that she could translate it to English. She had previously been excited to find a published book concerning part of her culture, Erna Gunther's Ethnobotany of Western Washington, and it built Hilbert's interest in researching her culture as well. She recalled that she was initially concerned she would not remember enough of Lushootseed to be able to work with it, but credited Hess for believing in her and working with her as she learned more.:29–30
Hilbert began to record conversations and stories with different elders, including George. Hess taught her his orthography system and she taught him more vocabulary. In 1968, they met frequently, often with George, to analyze Hess's recordings of the stories that other elders had shared. They documented the grammar, vocabulary, and sounds of Lushootseed, and often recorded their own meetings or shared work via postcard.:31
Teaching and research In Spring 1972, Hess taught the first class at the University of Washington about Lushootseed, which Hilbert audited. Hess credited her with making the class a success, including by participating from the front row and convincing other students that they were truly learning Lushootseed, even though the teacher was white. Hess moved to Canada the next year, asking Hilbert to teach the class. She decided to in spite of her hesitations, including the fact that she had not attended college. Hess said that Hilbert felt duty-bound to the job because sharing the language would honor the people from her past and help young Native Americans. Besides taking over teaching duties, Hilbert worked with Hess to create daily language-learning lesson plans, a textbook, and a Haboo Book that shared traditional stories passed down from her elders.
Hilbert also began researching Lushootseed, feeling called to it as : "Work that the Creator was wrapping around me. I was ordained to do this work. It was always there, waiting for me to do." She began receiving grants from the Melville Jacobs research fund in 1972. Hilbert spent years transcribing and translating Leon Metcalf's tape recordings from the 1950s. Metcalf was a high school music teacher then who had grown up among some Tulalip Lushootseed speakers. Using his own funds, he began recording stories and oral histories with elders to help preserve Lushootseed language and culture. Hess described Hilbert's efforts to transcribe these tapes as Herculean, because the tapes had poor quality and used vibrant language that had been lost to most speakers. She would repeatedly listen to sections of a tape and fill in words, then travel to visit other Lushootseed speakers to see what they could help transcribe. Many of Hilbert's students volunteered to help her with her research.
Hilbert and her students created the Lushootseed Newsletter, followed by Lushootseed Research in 1983. She later founded Lushootseed Press to help publish books on the language. Lushootseed Research earned grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities during the 1980s that supported her creation of a new Lushootseed dictionary with Hess and Dawn Bates, as well as Lushootseed Texts: An Introduction to Puget Salish Narrative Aesthetics, written with Crisca Bierwert.:34-35
Hilbert retired from teaching at the University of Washington in 1988.
Post-retirement Hilbert, Bruce Miller, and Marilyn Wandry advised the 2004 exhibition "Song, Story, Speech: Oral Traditions of Puget Sound’s First Peoples". The collection was curated by Barbara Brotherton for the Seattle Art Museum. Mixed media, including documentaries, songs, and stories, composed the main part of the exhibit to demonstrate the importance of oral traditions in Coast Salish history and culture.
In 2007, Hilbert wrote about the importance of writing Lushootseed using Thom Hess's orthography, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet, rather than an imprecise and older system based on the English alphabet. On behalf of the board of Lushootseed Research, she criticized the first edition of Native Seattle, by Coll Thrush, for including an atlas of place names written with the English alphabet rather than the phonetic alphabet. In the second edition of Native Seattle, Thrush revised the atlas to use the alphabet recommended by Hilbert, citing a pronunciation key from the 1994 dictionary she wrote with Dawn Bates and Hess.
In 1997, Hilbert, Bruce Miller, Pauline Hillaire, John and Edie Hottowe, Hazel Pete, and David Whitener gave the name (House of Welcome) to a longhouse built at Evergreen College. Hilbert named the garden outside the space , also called the Gifts Garden. She also gave the name (Intellectual House) to a Coast Salish longhouse-style gathering space at the University of Washington. She gave Spee-pots Brian Cladoosby the Lushootseed name (Little Bear).
The Healing Heart of the First People of This Land In mid-2001, Hilbert stated that one of her current goals was to create a symphony, explaining that "music is a conductor that has healing power". After 9/11, she dedicated herself to the project because she felt music was the only universal language that could help "heal a sick world". Hilbert commissioned Bruce Ruddell, a composer living in Victoria, British Columbia, to write the work. Ruddell had previously collaborated with Bill Reid, a Haida artist. Hilbert did not have money to pay Ruddell, but raised funds and convinced him that the Seattle Symphony would perform it. Hilbert commissioned the work based on two Lushootseed songs in her collection. These were a Thunder Spirit Power song, passed via Chief to his descendants, who shared it with her, and a Healing song given to her by Pәtius Isadore Tom, her cousin. The symphony adapted these songs's melodies and rhythms, and included Lushootseed speech.
Hilbert named the symphony "The Healing Heart of the First People of This Land". In 2006, the Seattle Symphony premiered the work. It was performed again in the 2020s by Western Washington University, Windham Philharmonic – Vermont, the Seattle Symphony, and the University of Washington Symphony, accompanied by vocalist Adia Bowen, Hilbert's grand-niece. Jill La Pointe, Hilbert's granddaughter and senior director of Seattle University's Indigenous Peoples Institute, produced the documentary The Healing Heart of Lushootseed about the symphony.
Collection Hilbert hoped to share her archive for anyone who was interested in accessing it. She wanted to make it available via multiple locations, including one copy at the University of Washington. In 2001, Hilbert explained that she sought to share her collection with Native people "to pass on what the ancestors realized would make us strong". She also wanted to make the collection available to non-Native people, who she believed would never fully understand Lushootseed culture, and thus not be able to exploit the knowledge from the collection. She thought that sharing this knowledge with non-Native people had benefits, because "the little bit they get to learn makes them richer, and if they're living richer, it can't help but make the world a better place".