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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Lindsay Buxton 
April 24, 1996 
Cassette 4, Side 1 
 
Debbie Guerrero  00:01 
April 24, 1996. Wednesday. My name is Debbie Guerrero. I'm a student at the University of 
Washington working on the Washington Women's Heritage Project. Today, I will be conducting 
a second oral history interview with Lindsay Buxton, who is presently residing in Seattle, 
Washington. This interview is taking place in her home there. This is tape number four. We're 
going to discuss Lindsay's marriages, and then we'll discuss social relationships and community 
and group involvement. How many times have you been married and-- [tape is paused] 
 
Lindsay Buxton  00:41 
Well, let's see. My first marriage was to Leonardo Mandapat, and that was on August 11, 1956. 
The day that we got married was-- my son was six months old. We also had him baptized that 
day [laughs].  
 
Debbie Guerrero  01:03 
Communion? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  01:04 
Yes, it was communion. Very holy day. It was in the chapel at St. James Cathedral and had a 
very typical Filipino wedding. It was a three day celebration. It was very, very nice. My 
husband's best friend, who served as his best man at our wedding, had driven us in his 
convertible. We went through Chinatown, honked the horn, waved to everybody. A lot of people 
were surprised, because we were living as husband and wife. We formally got married in the 
church at the insistence of, you know, the Mandapat family. 'Nardo and I had ran away together, 
lived in Sebastopol with my older sisters. I had to get away from my mom, and he went to get 
away from his stepfather. And when we came back, we thought we were ready to face 
everything, and the first thing that the families wanted us to do is to be finally married in the 
church. So we signed up and married. The first year of our marriage, we lived with my husband's 
father, which was not very good. My father-in-law was always undermining and demeaning, you 
know, my husband because he really wanted him to go back to school at the UW. And the 
conflict came in, that, in the Filipino families, they dictate what careers are going to be going 
into. And my son balked at that, and he thought about joining the service, but he was 
underweight. They wouldn't accept him, so he tried to beef himself up [laughs]. Tried very hard 
to be independent of his stepfather, and I tried too. That-- it just never really worked out. One 
time, when we did break the ties with my father-in-law, we lived in the housing project. We lived 
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in Holly Park, and my husband and I were very happy there. We had our little boy, you know, 
and we were setting up housekeeping with Saint de Paul furniture. Had a little garden. And my 
kid sisters, at that time, became wards of the court. My husband and I were given custody of my 
two kid sisters, and we dreamt about-- 
 
Debbie Guerrero  03:54 
Dolores and? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  03:55 
Dolores and Ruby, yeah. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  03:56 
Ruby. Do you remember how old they were?  
 
Lindsay Buxton  04:01 
Oh, let's see. I think they're only like two years apart, so maybe Dolores was three and Ruby a 
year old.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  04:12 
They were little. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  04:13 
They were small.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  04:14 
So you had three under five. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  04:15 
A handful. Yeah, but it was fun. We both enjoyed, appreciated, you know, family life and we 
looked at this as an opportunity to be giving my kid sisters a family structure. So we took our 
playing house very seriously. You see, my husband, at that time, went into gardening business 
with my father-in-law, and one day, my mother came in and announced that she was getting 
married and wanted the girls back. And well, the court finally granted the girls to go back. That 
was really hard. That was really, really hard. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  05:13 
How long did you have them?  
 
Lindsay Buxton  05:14 
I think we only had them for about four, maybe six months. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  05:20 
Was it a situation where you had to go to court? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  05:23 
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Yeah, well, it really, it really-- no, it really wasn't a court thing. It was just paperwork that had to 
do, you know, go through. I don't remember, you know, because I had been in and out of court 
so much. Maybe it had been, I don't recall that. I do know that social worker did come by and 
said that my mother's new husband seemed very good, and you know, da-da-da. You know, my 
mother was genuine, and I had hoped that they'd be happy. Living in the Holly Park,  we moved 
from there. It was just a lot of little crimes that was going on, and we had decided that was really 
not a good place to bring up our little boy. And I had discovered I was pregnant with second little 
boy in a row, so we moved back with my father-in-law in a duplex. So [audio skips]-- Well, 
Grandpa would live [audio skips] downstairs and we would live upstairs in the apartment. So if 
any emergencies came about, at least we would have, you know, Pa downstairs, and you know, 
we would have independence. With 'Nardo, his emotional state of being under the watchful eye 
of his stepfather all the time really posed a lot of problems, and found himself staying out with 
the buddies after work, playing cards, mahjong, drinking, not coming home. I talked to him 
about this, because he said, You know, it was really important for me to have a role model father, 
that I didn't want my children to grow up, you know, in that environment, because I had been 
through it. I left him and then moved in the International District. My mother got it, you know, 
my own housekeeping apartment there, and hoped, really, that it would wake my husband up. 
Anyway, make a long story short on that, we finally, you know, separated and eventually-- we 
never divorced for a long, long time. In fact, we even double-dated. Mind you that my husband 
was my best friend and we double-dated. In fact, he had fallen in love with one of my close 
girlfriends that I was going to school-- at that time, I decided, well, I'm not always going to be a 
waitress or a house cleaner, you know. So I went to back to school to do secretarial work and 
befriended a non-native, a woman, Danielle, and they got along fine. Got along fine. Then I 
eventually started dating myself, now that I finally divorced.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  08:59 
Do you remember what year that was? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  09:00 
No, I think it's a deliberate white out [laughs]. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  09:06 
Understandable. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  09:09 
Yeah. Not too long after our divorce, 'Nardo was killed in Alaska, and at that time, I had married 
my second husband, Sonny Buxton. Sonny was black and half Indian, a manager of KYAC, a 
black jazz program-- 
 
Debbie Guerrero  09:44 
Radio station. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  09:45 
Yeah, radio station. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  09:46 
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I remember. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  09:47 
Yeah. He was the first black man to be on TV with KOMO. I got a job with KOMO and public 
relations. Got picked up by network, we had a choice of either going to New York or San 
Francisco and Sonny let me choose. I decided San Francisco [audio skips], and we set up 
housing there. We were married for 25 years, but we only lived together for seven. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  10:20 
Really? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  10:21 
Yeah. It got so in our marriage, where it became polarized. He identified more with being black, 
and my identity became stronger, you know, for Indianness. Brought the children to Seattle, and-
- 
 
Debbie Guerrero  10:41 
You did? By yourself? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  10:42 
Yep. Strong, independent woman [laughs]! 
 
Debbie Guerrero  10:46 
On the move! Woman on a mission. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  10:53 
I guess you can look at it like that. A foolish bride. Anyway. I was-- left Sunny with great 
admiration, love, and respect. During my marriage with Sonny, 'Nardo died in Alaska.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  11:16 
Yeah, right. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  11:18 
That was pretty-- it was pretty hard. Even though we were no longer legally married, he was still 
a friend. He died very tragically. He was in Cordova, and there for a seasonal job, and setting up 
the cannery, and was in a bar, got into an argument with a fella, and some fella met my husband-
- ex-husband after the bar was closed with two of his buddies, and they stabbed him to death. 
Because they were setting up the cannery, medical facilities were not there, so he bled to death. 
All three men were-- are still in prison to this day, it's really hard for my children. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  12:13 
My god. Mm-hmm, yeah, to know that that happened to their father. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  12:18 
Yeah, the children to this day, are very close to their stepfather. He had an awful lot to do with 
their formative years. They have a great love and admiration, respect, you know, for, you know, 
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Sonny, as I do. We still communicate. We divorced finally after 25 years, when I met my third 
husband, John Skan, who impressed me. He was tall, muscular, intelligent, ambitious. One thing 
that really impressed me about John was that he told me that he used to be a drunkard, got sick, 
and never touched another glass of alcohol. And to me, this was a terrific sign of character that I 
really-- willpower as well. He was a board member for a village corporation in southeast Alaska, 
called Klawock Heenya Corporation. We had a whirlwind romance. Got married in Reno, 
Nevada. This is in 1990. And we divorced last year. We'd only been married for five years. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  13:54 
Do you remember the date you got married? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  13:58 
December 15, 1990. Unfortunately, after we got married, we moved to the village. His whole 
attitude and character had changed around the village people. He was macho. During our 
courtship, he admired the fact that I was an independent woman, that I was involved in a lot of 
community activities. I had just finished coordinating the last six months of Seattle's Seattle 
Goodwill Games focusing on the Native Americans. It was a fantastic, horrendous job. So I 
thought, wow, this is really a terrific man, you know, he understood and appreciated, you know, 
where I was in the community and my goals and aspirations. And I thought it was a union made 
in heaven. I had learned since then that John had married [inaudible]. He was in love with 
another woman, and had told her that if she didn't leave her husband and marry him, that he 
would marry someone else, and that someone else was me. He made the mistake of telling me 
that. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  15:41 
How hurtful. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  15:45 
I thought that I, you know, my love would-- eventually he would fall in love with me and love 
me just as much. The union was not all that bad, because it really had gave me a tremendous 
exposure to subsistence living. My sisters-in-law taught me how to fish, clean fish, dry fish, put 
up fish. Pick sea greens, berry pick. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  16:25 
Sounds like it. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  16:25 
Yeah. And while I was in Klawock, I was asked to coordinate their totem pole raising event with 
the Blackfish Totem Pole. It afforded me an opportunity to use some of my coordinating skills 
that I had learned on an urban setting, and being so new to the village, I was objective about, you 
know, the internal politics that's going on with the mayor's office, you know, city council and 
IRA, and Tlingit and Haida ABANS. It was terrific. Very proud of that project. But 
unfortunately, as I got more involved, I got to know, you know, the elders and the political 
leaders in the area, my husband seemed to resent it. And at that time, I was also an officer, 
Sergeant Arms with the Grand Camp, our parent organization, Alaska Native Sisterhood, and I 
had to do some traveling for them. And he resented that I would even think of traveling without 
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his permission, and it shocked me. What do you mean I need your permission? Well, we came 
back to Seattle and we divorced.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  18:01 
That was, like, the straw? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  18:02 
That was the straw. That was just too bad. So here I am today, starting over. But the bare lessons 
in that, especially  that union, I've come to terms of the fact that I need to be specific about my 
own expectations. I need to be right up front about what my own goals and aspirations are. I see 
the fault in bending, if you will. Keeping quiet, putting my life on [tape skips] hold. I've learned 
a lot. Yeah, that's pretty good for being 55.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  18:49 
You bet. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  18:50 
[Laughs] So I guess-- 
 
Debbie Guerrero  18:54 
Those were great lessons. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  18:55 
Yeah, so I guess what I'm doing right now is pulling myself up by my own boot straps. Thinking 
again about, you know, following up on my own education, you know, financially struggling. 
That's life, yeah. I certainly could have made things easier for myself, but apparently [laughs]. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  19:25 
[Inaudible]. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  19:26 
Yeah. Yeah. So now you know about my three marriages. [Tape skips] Was just very confused. I 
did everything that a wife should do. I devoted my life, you know, to helping my husbands with 
their careers. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  19:46 
Once again.  
 
Lindsay Buxton  19:46 
And both of my husbands did not want me to work, did not want me to go to school. And, yet, 
here I am, you know, now as my third divorce, no money in the bank, no social security 
retirement, you know, no, no-- I lost a lot giving to the men in my life that were important, and I 
had nothing. It jolted me to realize that, oh, wow, I'm near 55, and here I, you know, sit, and woe 
is me. I really had to come out of that. And I think in two years, I had undergone a depression. I 
returned to chanting. I went back to my Buddhist practice, and fortunately for me, that has 
helped me pull myself up on my bootstraps. So, in essence, I guess what I'm saying is that 
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although there have been frustrations and heartaches, you know, with my marriages, I become a 
stronger person because of them. I-- you know, a lot of stuff still happens in my life, but I can't 
blame anybody anymore. And you know, and it's a sad state that women are placed in that 
position. And it's not just an Indian thing, where when you give a gift, you expect something in 
return. I did truly expect that if I help my husbands with their careers and help with the house, 
you know, that there would be a rainbow, you know, that would ensure harmony. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  21:53 
[Inaudible] at the end of the rainbow. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  21:53 
Right? Yes. Quite a jolt, quite a shock. You know, so... 
 
Debbie Guerrero  22:02 
That's some of your social relationships, your community group involvement. Um, you've talked 
about the ANS [inaudible] projects in Alaska, but I know you're very heavily involved down 
here.  
 
Lindsay Buxton  22:12 
I call it my labor of love. [Coughs] Excuse me. For a long time, it's always bothered me, and I 
never really realized how much there was inside of me that was aware and resentful about a lot 
of prejudice towards Native American, and specifically, women. I had always been ashamed that 
so many of our people were alcoholics. And living in the International District, my playground 
was also Pioneer Square, the marketplace, and I was always aware that there were a lot of 
alcoholic Indians that also lived under bridges, homeless people. Now, I was also aware that 
there were whites and Blacks, you know, that were homeless, that were alcoholics and do drugs. 
But it pained me more to see Indian men and women, you know, in that state. I didn't really 
realize how much until, I think it was 1965, when I was 25. Anyway, I'm married to Sonny 
Buxton-- just before I married Sonny Buxton, in fact, I had a job with the Seattle King County 
legal services. They provided legal services to Indigent community people, except for divorces 
and criminal cases, and when the community had learned that there was a Native American 
woman on staff, a lot of Indian people were coming to the office and asking to speak to the 
Indian lawyer. And my title at that time was [inaudible] law assistant, which is really a glorified 
secretarial PR person. And a lot of times, my job was interrupted because a lot of the new people 
were coming in requesting to me-- talk to me. So my-- the director at that time was Robert 
Ashley, a Boston attorney who headed this program, and he brought me into his office, and he 
said, You seem very uncomfortable about dealing with your people. And it struck me odd that he 
referred to the people that were coming in as my people. And he kept me in his office for a 
couple of hours, and he said, You know, I want you to know that there are a lot of educated, 
talented, you know, Indian people. And I said, Oh, really? He cited some people that were, you 
know, in sciences, in the opera, law, you know, the legislature. This was new to me. I enjoyed 
hearing what I was hearing. Anyway, to make a long story short, he said, Lindsay, I want you to 
go to the Indian Center's meeting and go and tell them what services our program, you know, 
offers. Introduce yourself. I had never done anything like that, but I saw that what he was talking 
about was part of my job, and I said, Well, might as well target, you know, the Indian 
community, since obviously there is a need for legal services, and we found ourselves referring a 
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lot of the Indian people to the Native American Rights Fund. Doing a test case, a law firm, and... 
So I went to my first American Indian Women's Service League meeting, and there were about 
200 Indian women there. And... Of course, I had called prior to that meeting and asked for some 
time in their agenda to explain the services we provided. I was very impressed with the women 
there. They were educators, social workers, University of Washington students, Master's 
candidates, doctorate candidates. I had a couple of ladies from Washington, D.C., that were 
talking about scholarships, trying to encourage, you know, Native students going back to school. 
I was awed. 
 
Debbie Guerrero  23:02 
Yeah. You had no idea, right? 
 
Lindsay Buxton  25:18 
Sophisticated. Right. I was awed. And I, you know, I gave my little spiel about our services, and 
during our break, this-- I was surrounded by these women, encouraged me to go to school and 
how proud they were of the position that I had held, and, you know, it was just-- it was so nice to 
be complimented by these wonderful women. One woman really stuck out, and who ended up 
being my best friend. We've been friends now for over 35 years. That's Joyce Reyes, and she was 
telling me that there were changes happening in the community, that they needed a chair for a 
new location for the Seattle Indian Center. We needed to focus on getting funds for indian legal 
services. I promised her that I would help with that. I chair both of those committees, and in the 
process of chairing those committees-- things were brewing before I came on the scene. Alcatraz 
became-- United Indians of All Tribes that occupied Alcatraz in the Bay Area.  
 
Debbie Guerrero  29:37 
I remember that. 
 
Lindsay Buxton  29:38 
And we were having a hard time trying to get Mayor Wes. Uhlman to help the Indian community 
upgrade its facilities for our community. We were always being shown dilapidated, you know, 
storefronts, you know, facilities, and fire stations that were-- [tape cuts off]. 