On September 1, 1964, Suzanne Satiacum (b. 1942) is booked for assault and additional charges after a scuffle that begins at the Tacoma County-City Building. It is her first known arrest in a career of noted incidents and activism on behalf of Puyallup Tribal treaty rights and of her husband, Robert Satiacum (1929-1992). Suzanne, her sister-in-law Henrietta Satiacum, and three young men were assembling a teepee outside the building where the Satiacum husbands were soon to appear in court over a fishing dispute.
A Controversial Teepee
Susan and Henrietta Satiacum, accompanied by Harold Joe, 21, and teenage brothers William and Gerald Dan, arrived at the courthouse building in the morning with a disassembled teepee, which they began setting up on the lawn. Other demonstrators entered the lobby, and still more walked down Tacoma Avenue with a miniature coffin containing a sign reading "Justice is Dead."
Roy Devish (1914-1992), the building superintendent, called police and got a three-squad-car response. Officers told the group several times to take down the teepee and leave the property. They refused on the grounds of free speech, and Suzanne broke free when officers tried to take her into custody. After a foot chase down Tacoma Avenue, she was restrained and arrested. During the uproar, Officer Larry Russell said Satiacum nicked his hand with a homemade spear. (The weapon's stated blade length grew from one court appearance to the next, topping out at 9 inches.) She countered that he had grabbed it.
The next day she filed suit for false arrest, asking $100,000 compensation for damage to her reputation and violation of her First Amendment rights. The suit was dismissed, and in December she was found guilty of remaining on public property when asked to leave, assault, resisting arrest, and intimidating an officer. She was fined $25, and sentenced to 10 days in jail, suspended upon appeal. A week after the arrests, Robert (1929-1991) and Suzanne Satiacum let it be known they planned to return to the courthouse with another teepee. Police were on alert when the couple arrived and placed a foot-high miniature teepee. They were not allowed to leave the teepee, but they were not arrested.
Suzanne Satiacum was then 22, a mother of a toddler and stepmother to Robert Satiacum's five children from his previous marriage. Being young, outspoken, and beautiful, she became a magnet for publicity for the fishing-rights cause as well as the object of commentary in the media and elsewhere. Her actions helped to keep fishing-rights campaigns in the news, while also allowing media to trivialize them. In its coverage of a rally at the Capitol, The Olympian called her "a curvaceous gal who would look at home on New York's Fifth Avenue" ("Brave Mis-Mass ..."). A picture of her and her son in Tacoma's News Tribune was captioned a "cute little papoose" held by "his attractive mother" ("Brando Fishes..."). "The dark and willowy SuZann was her usual stunning self," News Tribune reporter Rod Cardwell wrote in a social column ("Faces and Places").
A Chase on the River
Although the couple had a flair for publicity stunts, most of Suzanne's activism was more serious, and more risky. A year later, on September 1, 1965, she was arrested along with another sister-in-law, Clara Satiacum, after a wild night of boat chases and accusations on the Puyallup River. The Satiacum women were fishing on the river when Larry Kelly, captain of a Foss tug, called police claiming that people in a river boat had threatened him and the accompanying tug with a rifle. "A radio message went out from the Foss tug, through the Coast Guard, to the Pierce County Sheriff's office and finally into the City Police complaint center," wrote Don Hannula ("Puyallups Lead...).
By the end of that real-life game of telephone, the message was that the tugs had been fired upon. Nine officers were dispatched to the mouth of the Puyallup. They boarded the tug and gave chase to the Satiacums' 15-foot boat. It was an uneven contest as the outboard was faster and more maneuverable and, running without lights, able to hide along the banks of the river. Eventually another batch of officers arrived to patrol the banks and to pilot a faster boat, and the women were arrested after 90 minutes of pursuit. Neither a gun nor the two men the tugboat pilot said he had seen were found aboard, but there was a net and a couple of fish. Satiacum was charged with illegal fishing, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and destruction of property (a police radio was thrown into the river).
Suzanne and Clara went back to the river to fish, this time in daylight, on October 1, and were once again arrested and booked into jail. The News Tribune referred to them in their coverage as "the Satiacum girls" ("Indians Back in Jail ...").
Decades later, when she testified about the fishing conflicts as part of Robert Satiacum's application for refugee status in Canada, Suzanne recalled being punched and shot at as well as arrested during fishing demonstrations: "It was constant, it happened all the time when you went out there ... You knew you were going to go to jail ... that you'd lose everything" ("Satiacum's Wife ...").
Backing Bob
After the Boldt Decision of 1973 clarified the treaty tribes' right to fish, Robert and Suzanne Satiacum turned mostly to other types of commerce, including tobacco and fireworks sales and a casino on the Puyallup reservation. Their enterprises were both lucrative and controversial, a combination leading to legal and personal complications. Products were seized by state authorities. Some competing tribal businesses alleged harassment, including threats and arson. Although their marriage frayed during this period and they both moved on to other relationships, Suzanne remained loyal to Robert and supportive of the cause of tribal sovereignty.
When he was arrested in Canada after fleeing the U.S. in 1982 and spending nearly a year on the run, she went north to see him and support him in his court appearances. Back home in Puyallup, she passed petitions and solicited letters for his claim of refugee status and request to be allowed bail.
Twenty years after Robert's death, Suzanne was still living in Tacoma, occasionally speaking on her experiences in the movement.
