Page 1 of 22 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Lavinia Alexander 
1980 
Cassette 1, Side 1 
 
 
Winona Weber  00:06 
I guess this is the way it goes. [Recorder shifting.] Just, um, say your name and-and your tribal 
affiliation. That way, I know what [?day it?] comes up, if I lose the thing for the tape, I'll know 
who I'm talking to. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  00:29 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Winona Weber  00:29 
Huh? Okay [loud bang, recording stops]. There. [Shuffling sounds.] Where did you-- Where did 
you live when you were a little girl?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  00:30 
That probably formed the-- Well, my name is Lavinia Alexander, and I'm from the Coeur 
d'Alene Tribe.  Well, I was born in, um, on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. I was born about 
right on the state line, Washington-Idaho state line, Tekoa, Washington. And I went to school at 
De Smet, Idaho. Parochial school.  
 
Winona Weber  01:04 
Uh-huh.  Oh! What was your um, um? What is your earliest happy memory? When you were a 
little-little girl, do you think? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  01:35 
Well, I wouldn't know what [?might be?] my earliest hap-happy memory. I was born on 
Christmas Day, on the twenty-fifth--[crosstalk] 
 
Winona Weber  01:42 
Oh, geez, that's all right! [Laughs.] 
 
Lavinia Alexander  01:43 
--of December. So every Christmas was my--one of my happiest ones, because on Christmas 
Day, I usually got birthday gifts and Christmas gifts for, oh, man, I think that would be about the 
Page 2 of 22 
 
ones I could say, and another happiest moments, I guess would be when I, um-- We went to 
school at-- I went to school at De Smet with the si--where there was sisters. 
 
Winona Weber  02:10 
Yeah. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  02:11 
And, uh, they-- And on Friday evenings, my folks would come over and pick me up. And that 
was one of the--[crosstalk] 
 
Winona Weber  02:18 
Oh, that was a memory--  
 
Lavinia Alexander  02:18 
--one of my happy days. They come-come after me for the weekend, and I'd stay home until 
Sunday, then they'd bring me back. And-- 
 
Winona Weber  02:28 
Was it kind of a boarding school, kind of thing? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  02:30 
Yes, I stayed right there. There was about, um, at least 60 girls there, and then they had the-- 
called the boys' building.  
 
Winona Weber  02:30 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  02:38 
That's where the boys went to school, and they had priests that would take care of them, and we 
couldn't even look at them. We couldn't-- But, um-- I was, I wasn't really--I was only about--
think I was six years old when I started, and I used to have braids, and I talked a lot of Indian. I 
knew how to talk Coeur d'Alene language pretty well. 
 
Winona Weber  03:12 
Mmm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  03:14 
 We used to get punished for not-- 
 
Winona Weber  03:16 
For speaking--  
 
Lavinia Alexander  03:17 
--for talking-talking Indian. But I was there. My mother and dad brought me there, morally, to 
learn my religion, and to learn how to pray and the Catholic religion.  
 
Page 3 of 22 
 
Winona Weber  03:29 
Mmm. So it [inaudible] Catholic? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  03:33 
Yes. 
 
Winona Weber  03:36 
Oh, I see. Was--When-when you talked at home, was it in English or-or Coeur d'Alene? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  03:41 
Well, my mother and dad talked English, but they also talked Indian-- 
 
Winona Weber  03:46 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  03:46 
--to each other, and they talked Indian to us, because I knew how to talk Indian, but my 
grandmother talked Indian all the time, and she lived with us, most oh the time quite a while. 
When I was-- can remember, she lived with us, because um, oh, I don't know, maybe when I was 
about, I don't know, maybe about 10 years old, and then my grandmother moved, because she--
her mother was still alive. 
 
Winona Weber  04:12 
Boy.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  04:12 
I remembered her mother, and they moved, and they lived in a teepee for all winter. Then they 
got a house. I think the government built my grandmother a house. I remember because I loved 
pink when they painted it, and it was pink. Mm. 
 
Winona Weber  04:38 
Ah. And your--your, uh--Did your grand-- Wait. Was your grandmother old enough that she-- 
Was she born into the more traditional ways? Like what type of-- What kind of house did she 
live in when she was young? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  04:54 
Well, I think that my grandmother lived in, um-- All I could remember is they lived in-- Well, all 
she used to tell me is, I guess they-- I don't think she ever lived in the ones that they had made 
out of, uh, grass. I don't think they lived--she lived anything like that. I think she lived in teepees 
then, because, because she lived here in Spokane, right?  
 
Winona Weber  05:19 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  05:19 
My dad was born at Indian Canyon. 
Page 4 of 22 
 
 
Winona Weber  05:23 
Yeah. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  05:24 
So she was already--they lived here in Spokane, and um, so-- Oh, I don't know when they--they 
moved to Spokane--they moved all the Indian people that lived here. They moved them, one, 
some of them to the Coeur d'Alene Reservation, and they moved some to the Spokane 
Reservation.  
 
Winona Weber  05:49 
Oh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  05:50 
They moved some to Montana, to the Flathead Reservation, and some to the Kalispel Tribe. 
 
Winona Weber  05:57 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  05:58 
So we all split up, and that's how I became a Coeur d'Alene-- 
 
Winona Weber  06:05 
Yeah. But you're [inaudible, crosstalk]-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  06:07 
--but I have--I'm more I'm more Spokane than I am Coeur d'Alene, because my grandfather from 
my mother's side, my mother's father, was a full-blood Coeur d'Alene, but my mother was half-
Spokane and half-Coeur d'Alene. So that made me, about three-fourths Spokane. But then we 
were enrolled over here. So then, I am a Coeur d'Alene.  
 
Winona Weber  06:31 
Yeah, that's like me. My dad is Assiniboine and my mother is Quinault. Until I was 10 years old, 
I was enrolled in the Assiniboines. And then, since we live out on the coast anyway, we're-- Now 
we-- We, you know, dropped the Assiniboine, and now we're enrolled as Quinaults. [Inaudible.] 
 
Lavinia Alexander  06:49 
That's really, really-- That nowadays, when they have, um, I mean, um-- The children, there's a 
lot of Indian babies that's born now that are maybe a fourth Caldwell, a fourth Coeur d'Alene, 
and a fourth Kalisepel, and fourth of something else, or one-sixteenth or one-eighth of some-- 
Anyhow, they don't have enough blood, like Caldwell blood to be enrolled in the Caldwell. They 
don't have enough blood to be enrolled in the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, and they don't have enough to 
be-- So then-- 
 
Winona Weber  07:32 
Here they are, they're three-quarters Indian, [inaudible].  
Page 5 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  07:34 
Right. 
 
Winona Weber  07:34 
Huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  07:34 
They look like Indians. They are Indian kids-- 
 
Winona Weber  07:37 
Yeah! 
 
Lavinia Alexander  07:37 
--but they-they don't have enough, uh-- 
 
Winona Weber  07:41 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Lavinia Alexander  07:41 
--blood type, either their mother or father to be enrolled at either place, so then they are denied to 
be enrolled.  
 
Winona Weber  07:50 
Do you think that might have been from-- Well, I know my mom and my dad met at Chemawa. I 
wonder if-if that might be part of it, with you know, then, all these different tribes meeting at the 
government school. And they-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  08:09 
Well, I imagine, I think that's what it is. That's what is it is. But there's no way they can stop 
anything like that. They all--They feel, if you, if you're a Caldwell, you should marry a Caldwell. 
 
Winona Weber  08:21 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  08:22 
You know, then the kids will be eligible to be enrolled. But I don't know. I can't-- I really can't 
see it. I am right now. I'm on the adoption committee on the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. 
 
Winona Weber  08:35 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  08:35 
And I'm adopting every baby that's come in there that can be enrolled anywhere, but they are 
Indian babies, and they can't be enrolled anywhere. So I just make a, just, um, recommend them 
to the tribal council and help them, help them-- [Recorder shifts.] 
Page 6 of 22 
 
 
Winona Weber  09:05 
Where did you learn your beading?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:08 
What?  
 
Winona Weber  09:08 
Where did you learn to bead like that?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:11 
Oh, I learned how to bead years ago. I've been beadin', I think, since, um-- My grandmother was 
the one who taught me how to bead-- 
 
Winona Weber  09:18 
Oh, really? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:19 
--and I've been beading since. And I'm 61 years old-- 
 
Winona Weber  09:21 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:22 
So I've been beading since I was ten years old, maybe something close-- 
 
Winona Weber  09:29 
You--your grandmother beaded.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:30 
Mhm [affirmative].  
 
Winona Weber  09:31 
Did your grandfather bead? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:34 
No. 
 
Winona Weber  09:36 
I was just wondering, was it a-- Was it just a woman's occupation? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:40 
I think it was just the woman did the beading. The men, the men seldom, did anything. 
 
Winona Weber  09:47 
Yeah. [Chuckles.] Sounds like the Indians on our side. 
Page 7 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  09:50 
Women did all the work. Right? The women did all the work. They gathered the wood, they 
made fire, and took care of the kids and... Dug the roots. 
 
Winona Weber  10:06 
Mhm. What did-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  10:07 
Women did most of everything, dried the salmon, they dried the--prepared for the winter. I guess 
only thing the men ever did was go out and hunt for, uh, meat, deer, buffalo, and all that. And 
fish. 
 
Winona Weber  10:21 
They-they did the fishing. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  10:22 
They did the fishing. 
 
Winona Weber  10:23 
Mm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  10:23 
But the women did all the rest of it. 
 
Winona Weber  10:28 
Did the women go out at the hunt and help them pack the meat back? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  10:32 
Mhm. They would go out to pack, and I--[crosstalk] 
 
Winona Weber  10:35 
That's what I thought. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  10:35 
--I don't think the men had to do any packing. [Crosstalk.] 
 
Winona Weber  10:37 
Do you know if Theresa [inaudible]--uh, Judy [inaudible] is coming? [Recorder clicks. Silence.] 
This darn thing--the other one, you just pushed a button-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  11:08 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  11:08 
All done, you know. You were talking about your grandmother, she-- [crosstalk]. 
Page 8 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  11:13 
Yeah. She still, um, work up here at Mount Saint Michael's. They had an old church, one of the 
first Catholic churches, I guess, is built here in Spokane. It's down here at Fort Wright nowadays, 
they pulled it down there. 
 
Winona Weber  11:30 
Huh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  11:32 
Anyhow, the cemetery's on against there, and the Indians that's buried there. I have some people 
that's buried there, I guess they're pretty-- very great, great grandparents of mine are buried there. 
 
Winona Weber  11:43 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  11:44 
My grandmother worked for the Jesuits there. She had to pack wood for them, and I have a 
picture of where she was packing wood. [Conversation in the back getting louder.] 
 
Winona Weber  11:56 
Was that when she was a really young woman?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  11:59 
No, she-- Well, I guess she wasn't real old. She was--must have-- She was-- She had, well, they 
all had braids those days.  
 
Winona Weber  12:07 
Oh, yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  12:08 
And, um, she used to pack wood for Jesuits, and she-- All she owned is the one dress she had on, 
because my grand-aunt showed me the picture, and she told me, "Do you see the dress your 
grandmother, your great grandmother, has on?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "Well, that 
belongs to one of the priests." See her--she had to live there all time, so her, I guess her dress 
started tearing, wore out, so they gave her one of their black dresses to put on, so she put that on, 
and-and they took her picture with one of their black dresses, one of the kind the priests wear.  
 
Winona Weber  12:57 
You mean like a cassock? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  13:00 
And I didn't notice it until my grand-aunt was telling me about it. She's the one that has the 
picture. She's supposed to be making me pictures. I'd like to have one like that, because that's an 
old, old picture. [Inaudible.] 
 
Page 9 of 22 
 
Winona Weber  13:15 
There's going to be a photographer at this thing, and he's going to be copying all the old pictures. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  13:20 
Oooh. There is a lot of old pictures here, over there at, [?Urban?] Health. 
 
Winona Weber  13:27 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  13:27 
Did you see those at the Indian Health--the Clinic? They have Indian pictures inside, and Dick 
Lewis, he was a photographer that was--that was around. He was around quite a while, and he 
used to take pictures. When I was 16 years old, I knew him already because he took pictures all 
around. We used to camp up here at Minnehaha Park on Easter Week, Palm Sunday, the Easter 
Sunday. We'd put up the teepee there, and stay there all during Holy Week. And we used to 
come to church at Saint Al's. And he used to come over there, take pictures of the teepee, take 
pictures of [inaudible], violet, red on the outside. 
 
Winona Weber  14:03 
I think I've seen some of those.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  14:04 
Mhm. And I want some of those pictures, because most of those pictures, my mother and dad 
and grandmother and-- 
 
Winona Weber  14:10 
Oh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  14:11 
Dick Lewis. Dick Lewis just passed away about two months ago. I never did get a hold of him. 
[Inaudible.] Then there was-- I was talking to someone here the other day, and he said that all I 
had to do is go down to the museum-- 
 
Winona Weber  14:26 
Uh-huh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  14:26 
--and they would get me the pictures I wanted. I don't know how I'd pay for it.  
 
Winona Weber  14:30 
Oh, just for the admission. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  14:36 
Mhm. Because I want to get, because they're all my, my people.  
 
Winona Weber  14:40 
Page 10 of 22 
 
Yes, oh, that will be really, really.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  14:42 
Grandfather, my mother, my mother's father, and her mother, my grandmother, my dad, and-- 
My dad passed away about six years ago. 
 
Winona Weber  14:54 
Uh-huh. [Conversation in the background. Murmuring inaudibly back and forth.] Um... Did your 
mother-- Did your mother do all that beading and things like that, too? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  15:22 
Pardon? 
 
Winona Weber  15:23 
Did your mother do the beading? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  15:25 
Yes. 
 
Winona Weber  15:30 
Did-did you have a basket-- Uh, basketry? I don't know a lot about the [inaudible].  
 
Lavinia Alexander  15:35 
No, the Coeur d'Alenes, I don't know. I don't even know if they ever made baskets, but I know 
that the Nez Perces made baskets-- 
 
Winona Weber  15:47 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  15:47 
--and that's where they traded for, for different things like dried salmon, and-- 
 
Winona Weber  15:55 
Oh, the Nez Perce, they'd trade baskets with the Coeur d'Alene for salmon? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  15:58 
Yeah.  
 
Winona Weber  16:00 
Oh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:00 
Well, that's what we did before-- we traded, um, salmon, or traded roots, bitter roots, and 
[?tamas?] with the Yakimas for salmon, dried salmon. 
 
Winona Weber  16:14 
Page 11 of 22 
 
Oh, I see. And they needed that salmon to trade it for baskets, too.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:18 
Right? And that's how we traded back and forth-- 
 
Winona Weber  16:21 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:22 
--for things that we needed that we didn't have.  
 
Winona Weber  16:30 
Mhm. Who--Who did the trading in the family? Did the father do the trading, or your mother?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:35 
No. None of the men did any trading-- 
 
Winona Weber  16:38 
It was always the women, interesting.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:40 
--it was always the women that have to make the appointments, or whatever you call it. I don't 
know how they ever, how they got. Well, they used to move, you know, all the time. 
 
Winona Weber  16:51 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:52 
They're always moving. Wintertime got a place to go, stay for the winter. In the summer, they 
move back-- 
 
Winona Weber  16:58 
To another-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  16:59 
--to another place where--  
 
Winona Weber  17:00 
They just kind of knew where each other were going to be.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  17:02 
Right. So they. They'd get a hoard that Nez Perces somehow, and trade with them, or the 
Yakimas. They still trade. Even now today, they still trade.  
 
Winona Weber  17:13 
Oh, yeah.  
Page 12 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  17:14 
They still trade for salmon. 
 
Winona Weber  17:16 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  17:18 
And sometime now they use some-- They use blankets, [inaudible] blankets. They use roots, and 
they'll trade it. Anything then or else, they'll buy it. They don't have anything to trade, because 
nowadays, there's many people to go out into the groups. Especially on the-- my tribe. The Coeur 
d'Alene tribe is all-- There's no one there that goes out and things are-- 
 
Winona Weber  17:45 
Hmm! 
 
Lavinia Alexander  17:45 
I think there's just one that my grand-aunt, she's the one goes out, and she still bakes it right out 
there, and she's abut the only one that does it now that's on the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. But the 
Spokane Tribe, there's quite a few women there that still bake and dig, and the Yakimas are a 
bigger-bigger tribe, so they still-- 
 
Winona Weber  18:09 
Oh, yeah, they have more people [crosstalk]-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  18:10 
They dry salmon. Mhm. They have huckleberries and all that. They have, um, bitter roots. 
[Conversation in the background.] But it's mostly the women that do everything. 
 
Winona Weber  18:25 
When you-- When you talk about dried salmon, how did they dry it? What-what did they do the 
salmon? To preserve it, you know? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  18:34 
Well, they, um-- They have a certain way to cut it. And the Indian women is one that, you know, 
they cut it, they cut it all up. And then they, um, they, uh, cut the whole salmon, and they cut 
them, you know, in half.  
 
Winona Weber  18:50 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  18:50 
And then slice in about four ways. Then they stick these little sticks in through there to hold 
them flat.  
 
Winona Weber  18:55 
Page 13 of 22 
 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  18:56 
Then they hang them up. Well, I don't know-- Years ago, they just took them and kind of hung 
them up, you know, made some kind of-- hung them up on there. But now, they are getting more 
modern. They have, they call them smoke shacks. They have buildings sometimes, big as this 
room.  
 
Winona Weber  19:18 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:18 
About this high, then the rest of it's all screen. 
 
Winona Weber  19:21 
Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:21 
And they have a fire right in the center, then they have their salmon [inaudible]. 
 
Winona Weber  19:25 
Yeah, that's--that's how we've always done ours.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:27 
Mhm. That's the way they do it. But years ago, in my grandmother's days, they didn't have 
anything like that. They just took them and dried them right outside and had the sun.  
 
Winona Weber  19:37 
Just in the sun.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:38 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  19:40 
I was wondering about that because you said dried salmon. We say smoked salmon-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:43 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  19:44 
--because our salmon is smoked. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:46 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  19:46 
Page 14 of 22 
 
We smoke ours. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  19:48 
No, they just dried them with no smoke at all that they never used to use smoke. They just dried 
them, natural, from the sun. That's what they did, they did with the berries, [?cyrus?] berries, 
chokeberries.  
 
Winona Weber  20:02 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  20:02 
Just lay them out and let the sun dry them. Then they put them in cornhusk bags. 
 
Winona Weber  20:15 
Uh-huh. [Shifting around.] Mosquitos attacked me. When your, um-- Did your mother work 
when you were little to help you support the family, you know, outside of your house, to bring in 
money?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  20:36 
No, only thing, my mother did. She never did work to earn money. She had a garden, and she did 
all the garden work. My dad did, you know, he, he um, plowed and everything, but she put in all 
the garden things-- 
 
Winona Weber  20:56 
Oh, gee.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  20:57 
--corn and everything, and then we had to dig it. That was in my days. Then we had to go out 
[inaudible] all that corn. She used to dry the corn. Dad, all he done was, you know, he'd plow the 
place and that was it. The rest of it was up to us. We used to be up there bright and early in the 
morning, sometimes before the sun came out. We was out there weeding.  
 
Winona Weber  21:27 
Oh, yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  21:27 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  21:28 
Oh, I suppose it gets kind of hot around here. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  21:30 
Mhm. It really does. [Crosstalk.] My mother never--didn't work, neither did my grandmothers. 
 
Winona Weber  21:37 
Mhm.  
Page 15 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  21:37 
But my one of my grandmothers, my mother's mother, did work. She worked for some white 
family, I think. Laundry woman, washed-- 
 
Winona Weber  21:49 
Uh-huh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  21:49 
--you know, washed clothes and washed, [inaudible], and then she knew how to speak English. 
And that was my mother's mother's mother. My mother's mother's mother. 
 
Winona Weber  22:03 
Yeah , [inaudible].  
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:04 
That's been quite a wild [?bunch?].  
 
Winona Weber  22:06 
Boy, really. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:07 
And she [inaudible]--there was a lot of Indian women that did that. They went to work for white 
settlers that came in, and they washed--you know, washed clothes, something like that. They, I 
guess they earned some money. I don't know, but they worked. Them and they--they--they 
would-- Well, they talked good English.  
 
Winona Weber  22:29 
Oh, yeah, they did.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:31 
Mhm.  
 
Winona Weber  22:31 
[Inaudible.] Did they have to take the money home and turn it over to the husband? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:36 
Yes. 
 
Winona Weber  22:39 
That was [inaudible, chuckles]. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:41 
Yes, they did. They turned it over to the husband, and he went out. And I think I'm sure he was 
one went out. No, they didn't--they didn't go out and get food. [Inaudible] that--those days-- 
 
Page 16 of 22 
 
Winona Weber  22:54 
They were still trading. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  22:55 
--they really didn't buy anything. They--only thing they bought was sugar and-- 
 
Winona Weber  23:01 
Flour, I mean.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:02 
Flour, cotton, something like that. 
 
Winona Weber  23:07 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:07 
Everything else was. Everything.  
 
Winona Weber  23:10 
Hm! You--you were talking about, um, your school. But after--after you went to-- What was the 
name of that [inaudible]? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:24 
Parochial school.  
 
Winona Weber  23:25 
Parochial school you went to? Did--did--I can't remember.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:30 
De Smet. De Smet. Uh-huh.  
 
Winona Weber  23:32 
[Laughs.] I keep wanting to say-- 
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:33 
That they held at the De Smet Mission. 
 
Winona Weber  23:36 
Yeah, I get--I get [inaudible]. I need to write that down. Where-where did you go to school 
when, hhen they pulled you out of that and put you in the non-Indian school? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:49 
I went to, um, Worley, Idaho. 
 
Winona Weber  23:54 
Oh, I see.  
Page 17 of 22 
 
 
Lavinia Alexander  23:55 
That's where my grandmother, my mother's, my dad's mother, lived. 
 
Winona Weber  24:00 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:00 
And my dad had a home there, and that's why we--that's why they took me there, till I was in the, 
till I was a junior. [Conversation in the background.] 
 
Winona Weber  24:14 
How much--how much school did you have then, Lavinia? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:16 
Just the two.  
 
Winona Weber  24:18 
Two? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:19 
De Smet and, uh, this--the one in Worley.  
 
Winona Weber  24:22 
Till junior high, okay.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:23 
Pardon? 
 
Winona Weber  24:24 
You dropped down in junior high? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:26 
Mhm. I went-- That's when I went [?into a coma? ?to Tacoma?] at the Cushman Hospital. 
 
Winona Weber  24:30 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:31 
So then I didn't graduate from high school. 
 
Winona Weber  24:34 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:35 
Page 18 of 22 
 
And then in 1960--'67, I think, something like that, I went back to school down here. They called 
it the Washington School. 
 
Winona Weber  24:46 
Uh-huh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:46 
Went to school there for my GED.  
 
Winona Weber  24:49 
Oh, I see.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:51 
Then I was already married and I had nine kids. 
 
Winona Weber  24:54 
[Laughs.] Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  24:55 
And I went to school and I got my GED, and then I went to a community college, and took 
nurse's aid training, and I got a certificate from there. And then after I got my certificate, I 
decided I didn't want to be a nurse's aid. 
 
Winona Weber  25:11 
Yeah. That's my mom.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  25:12 
So they, um, wanted some-- They wanted an Indian lady for Indian culture-- 
 
Winona Weber  25:21 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  25:21 
--at the--through school district. Once, I applied, and they hired me. So when I worked for the 
school district for about, oh, I don't know, maybe four years. And then my husband passed away. 
 
Winona Weber  25:39 
Oh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  25:39 
He passed away two years ago. And I didn't work for those two years. 
 
Winona Weber  25:42 
Oh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  25:43 
Page 19 of 22 
 
I just couldn't. Well, I found I was wrong. I guess I should have just kept on working to help me, 
but I didn't. 
 
Winona Weber  25:50 
Oh, yeah? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  25:51 
I stayed home and brooded till I found out nobody cared that I was brooding. [They laugh.] So I 
decided I better get out of here. So, then I-- Anyhow, I see then that they wanted an Indian 
culture specialist under [?CETA?]. 
 
Winona Weber  26:08 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  26:09 
So I went down, took my application, and I didn't know I was gonna be sent here.  And so... Next 
day, they called me, they told me to come down here. So I came down here. So [?Serena?] says, 
"Oh, you're hired right now!" Because I knew all of them [inaudible].  
 
Winona Weber  26:14 
Uh-huh.  Oh, right! 
 
Lavinia Alexander  26:26 
And I've been here ever since. And then my-- [?CETA?] has extended now for another year till-- 
 
Winona Weber  26:30 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  26:31 
--September. 
 
Winona Weber  26:31 
Oh, that sounds... 
 
Lavinia Alexander  26:34 
I'll be here for another... And I enjoy it. I like it. Although I am-I am 61 years old, but there's a 
lot of things that I still don't know.  
 
Winona Weber  26:44 
Mhm. There's a lot of things.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  26:45 
I want and to learn-- I'm-- and not keep, um, keep looking in books and things like that. But then 
all those that's in books is already-- but I-I try to remember a lot of things that my grandmother 
and grandfather and them tell me, and I should have listened when they were [?talking?]. 
 
Page 20 of 22 
 
Winona Weber  27:04 
Uh-huh, I know what you mean. [Chuckles.] 
 
Lavinia Alexander  27:11 
[Inaudible]--very few things that I can remember, but my grandmother used to tell fairy tales at 
night to put us to sleep, and I used to remember that, but I don't remember some of the stories 
she told. But sometimes, you know, I'd read Indian legends, and then I say, "Oh, there's one that I 
remember my mother, my grandmother, used to tell me." 
 
Winona Weber  27:35 
Did she--did she tell it to you in the Coeur d'Alene language? 
 
Lavinia Alexander  27:38 
No, my grandmother was Spokane. She was enrolled-- 
 
Winona Weber  27:41 
I mean, did she speak it in English, is what I meant?  
 
Lavinia Alexander  27:43 
No, she didn't talk in English. She didn't talk that much English. Did have a few words of 
English, but not that much. When she had to talk English, like when she went to the store, well, 
then she-- 
 
Winona Weber  28:00 
She knew what to do. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  28:03 
Mhm. So she talked Indian most of the time, and she always, you know, if I didn't talk Indian  
back to her, she'd just stand there till I had to say everything to her in Indian. 
 
Winona Weber  28:12 
She ignored you! [Chuckles.] Yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  28:14 
So it was kind of rough on us a long time, because of-- when were were in parochial school, we 
couldn't talk Indian, and then when we got home, we had to talk Indian, we couldn't talk English, 
and it was-- 
 
Winona Weber  28:29 
Yeah! 
 
Lavinia Alexander  28:29 
Um... I am sorry that I kind of lost track of my Indian language. I can understand it pretty well. I 
can sing Indian hymns, you know, in the Catholic religion for Indian, they have a book of Indian 
hymns.  
 
Page 21 of 22 
 
Winona Weber  28:40 
Oh, yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  28:41 
And I can sing Indian hymns. But I can't speak it. I can. I'm sure I can, if I would just, but there's 
nobody to talk to-- 
 
Winona Weber  28:52 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  28:52 
--you know, someone that I could, you know, talk to every day. It would all come back, uh-huh.  
 
Winona Weber  28:59 
Uh-huh.  Sometimes when you just go talk to someone, you'll sit there and you'll talk to them 
and they'll talk back to you, and their words will spark something in you, "I know [inaudible]!" 
 
Lavinia Alexander  29:10 
That's true. You know, when I lived in Chicago for four years--I-we moved over there. On 
relocation, dear. Remember they had that--? Relocation. They called it relocation. Anyhow, they 
were trying to relocate Indian families out of their reservation so that they learned to live alone 
and learn how to support themselves. Well, my husband and I signed, they sent us to Chicago.  
 
Winona Weber  29:11 
Boy [chuckles]. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  29:34 
That was my husband. I had six kids. 
 
Winona Weber  29:42 
Boy. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  29:43 
And we didn't know anybody over there. But, um, it was a good experience. We lived in a, um, a 
colored neighborhood.  And a whole lot of them told us that we should move, we shouldn't stay 
with them. But then we had no choice, but I, said, "Well, I'll stay right here. They're same as 
anybody else. There's a lot of good, you know--" 
 
Winona Weber  29:52 
Uh-huh.  Good ones and bad ones.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  30:06 
That's first time that I ever got to know them, is when I moved over there. I found out 
[inaudible]. There's a lot of good people there. 
 
Winona Weber  30:14 
Page 22 of 22 
 
Uh-huh.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  30:15 
But here in Spokane, you know, I never, I-- You know, I don't even--wouldn't even try to talk to 
them, but over there, they were my neighbors, so [inaudible].  
 
Winona Weber  30:28 
Mhm.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  30:29 
I couldn't get over how nice they were, the ones that I met over there. They were real nice. So we 
stayed over there for four years. I liked it over there, because, see, we didn't have no-- There was 
no jobs here on the reservation. We had to move somewhere else in order to live. And we lived 
real good over there. My husband had a school. [Inaudible] at a mechanic's school, got a 
certificate from there, then they worked and they gave good transportation.  
 
Winona Weber  30:48 
Oh, yeah.  
 
Lavinia Alexander  30:49 
As a mechanic. He was a mechanic. And-- we [inaudible]. Then I went to school, upholstery, and 
I went and I worked in an up-- upholstery factory down there.  
 
Winona Weber  30:49 
Uh-huh.  Uh-huh. 
 
Lavinia Alexander  31:16 
And we really was making money like this. I liked it down there, but you [recorder cuts off]. 
 