Page 1 of 15 
 
Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Vi Hilbert 
1981  
Cassette 1, Side 1 
 
 
Jill G. Smith  00:15 
I'm just--  
 
Vi Hilbert  00:17 
There's so many departments that [inaudible]. 
 
Jill G. Smith  00:19 
I wish they would put it together for the catalogers coming in. [Inaudible] borrow--  
 
Vi Hilbert  00:19 
Some sugar?  
 
Jill G. Smith  00:30 
No, I just have a cold and I have to keep wiping my nose. Is this the new book? 
 
Vi Hilbert  00:39 
Mm-hmm. Yes. And you've seen the Ways of the Lushootseed book, haven't you? That-- 
 
Jill G. Smith  00:43 
No, I haven't. 
 
Vi Hilbert  00:45 
--one of my advanced classes helped me with?  
 
Jill G. Smith  00:48 
Oh my, can you get that at the bookstore?  
 
Vi Hilbert  00:50 
You can get it at Daybreak Star, or you can buy one from [?these?]. 
 
Jill G. Smith  00:55 
Maybe I should [inaudible]. Because I have [?Yihauʔ?]. That's the one that we were using then. 
This has many more stories.  
Page 2 of 15 
 
 
Vi Hilbert  01:04 
Oh, yes. Yes, I've done two volumes since [?Yihauʔ?]. 
 
Jill G. Smith  01:09 
Busy. [Laughter.}  
 
Vi Hilbert  01:11 
I keep adding. All of this will be added to the next one, probably. 
 
Interviewer 2  01:17 
Oh. Oh, look. 
 
Jill G. Smith  01:25 
[Inaudible.] 
 
Interviewer 2  01:25 
Oh. Is this [?nice?]. 
 
Vi Hilbert  01:26 
They charge $6 for them all at Daybreak Star now. I would charge my students $5 because that's 
what I want them to cost.  
 
Jill G. Smith  01:38 
And it's a introduction to the language? 
 
Vi Hilbert  01:43 
No, it's a-- it's an explanation by my students. We sat for hours and hours and hours working 
over this little back part there so that other students would find it easy to-- [?[Tape cuts.]?] 
Somehow. I hate it. Because I don't like to get irritated at people. And this woman does that to 
me. And she's my boss. 
 
Jill G. Smith  02:10 
Oh no. That can be a definite [inaudible]. 
 
02:17 
I have to count 10. [Inaudible] times.  
 
Jill G. Smith  02:24 
Yes. 
 
Vi Hilbert  02:27 
She's so non-Indian, so untraditional. And I find myself getting very upset. And it's against my 
philosophy to say bad things to anybody [laughs]. It doesn't gain you anything.  
 
Jill G. Smith  02:48 
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Never. [Inaudible] make a comment about the birds in your backyard; it's just quite incredible. 
 
Vi Hilbert  02:56 
Mm-hmm. Yes. 
 
Jill G. Smith  02:56 
You don't see that in Seattle.  
 
Vi Hilbert  03:03 
Starlings, I think. 
 
Jill G. Smith  03:11 
And we've been browsing-- 
 
Vi Hilbert  03:12 
Yes [laughs]. 
 
Jill G. Smith  03:19 
--books. Much expanded. It's nice to see a couple of my favorite stories.  
 
Vi Hilbert  03:25 
And we're included. 
 
Jill G. Smith  03:26 
Yeah. Ones that you brought in on tape that I was madly writing out. [Laughter.] "Oh, I better 
write these down. Maybe I'll never hear them again."  
 
Vi Hilbert  03:36 
Yes, I have some gems that need to get polished up to put in there. I've been working on two free 
translations. And those are ready to go in the next volume. 
 
Jill G. Smith  03:50 
Wow, great. Well. 
 
Vi Hilbert  03:54 
So you have what kind of a project, some kind of a woman study project? 
 
Interviewer 2  03:59 
I guess you didn't get my letter.  
 
Vi Hilbert  04:01 
No. 
 
Interviewer 2  04:02 
No? Oh, I mailed it on Thursday. So I was afraid it wouldn't get here on time. It's called the 
Women's-- Washington Women's Heritage Project. And first part of it was to try to collect 
Page 4 of 15 
 
women's history in Washington State. The premise that the project goes on is that our state 
history books have been written. With all "he"s in them, and no, "she"s in them. And certainly in 
the case of the white history, that's how the history has been written. And the project was funded 
by the national government, the NEH. And the second phase of the project is just beginning. 
We're going to put together an exhibit. And it's going to be 14 different panels showing historical 
pictures of women at work, and women in their relationships. And then there's been a lot of oral 
history done as part of the project. And we've tried to collect quotations from the oral histories to 
go with the pictures. And that exhibit will be coming to Seattle, in the spring-- in winter, I guess. 
February and March of 1982. And then it's supposed to be going around the state. It's going to 
Eastern Washington, and Southwest, and up to Bellingham. And the whole idea is to help women 
get started recovering their history and having women's stories told, as well as the dominant sort 
of thread of history, which has been mostly about men in Washington State. And it's been about 
politics and wars, I guess. I guess the idea behind it is that women have always been there. It's 
just that historians haven't perceived women's activities. And that--  
 
Vi Hilbert  06:07 
There's no importance.  
 
Interviewer 2  06:08 
Yeah, well, what's the-- what's of the importance of ongoing life, sorta? [Laughter.] Oh, well. Or 
translating, or recovering ceremonies, all that kind of activity. From one point of view, it's a very 
radical project. But from another point of view, it's everyday.  
 
Vi Hilbert  06:30 
[Inaudible], finally. Important person in history. 
 
Interviewer 2  06:37 
It's been going on for about a year now. And one of the things that the-- oh, it's a statewide 
project, so I'm the person who's running the office in Seattle. And I just came onto the project in 
July, but I'd known about it for a while. And so I'm running the Seattle office. And then there's 
someone in Pullman, at the Women's Studies office there, and someone in Bellingham, and then 
someone from Olympia. So we get together in these statewide meetings and pool all our 
resources, and we're trying to make an exhibit from this. And along with exhibit, they want to 
make a slide tape. And they've been selecting pictures for that, and now they want to put together 
the tape part of it.  The women I'm working with are coming at the project from a white majority 
point of view. Which is-- okay, that's who they are. But they haven't-- from my point of view, 
they haven't really focused on the inner life of women, and on the story life of women. And I 
thought, "A lot of the pictures are women at work." And that that's interesting. It's-- it will be 
useful, I think, for people to see women working and to validate that, and say that was important 
work. And a lot of cases, people say, "I was just a secretary." Well, on this exhibit, a secretary 
suddenly is transformed into, "Holy crow, the person who held the office together." That's what 
we're hoping will happen. But on the other hand, what's missing is-- 
 
Vi Hilbert  08:31 
An ethnic culture.  
 
Page 5 of 15 
 
Interviewer 2  08:33 
Yeah. And on the other hand-- 
 
Vi Hilbert  08:35 
[Crosstalk] guilty of the same thing that those-- that the men who-- the historians who left out the 
women were guilty of. 
 
Interviewer 2  08:45 
But it gets into questions of art, too, and of what's important to people, their insides and their 
outsides, in some senses. It's a little bit economically oriented, the project so far. But they also 
are including women in their relationships, so there are lots of pictures of women in family 
situations, and women and children, and women-- just women together. But on the slide tape, I 
thought it might be a chance to do what to me is the basic work that has to be done in women's 
history is recovering women stories, women as they tell who they are, is much more important 
than someone coming from the outside and saying who they are. It's women telling from the 
inside what life is like. And that turns out to be a story instead of a history. I mean, for our 
culture, it seems that they divide literature and history into two different departments. And then 
you get all these different divisions; you have poetry, fiction, and, you know, all that [laughs]. 
And-- but it seems if we're going to really recover a sense of what women were doing, you have 
to recover a whole. And it comes out as one story of "what my life was like." And a lot of the 
oral histories are like that. Women tell ordinary things that happened to them, but suddenly, it's 
told in a way that makes it sacred, makes it into a ceremony. They're suddenly-- they see their 
lives as a work of art. And it comes out as a story. And I was hoping that that aspect could at 
least be represented in the slide tape. So what I would like to try to do is find some stories, 
maybe Native American stories -- it seems that it's a little harder with white women who aren't as 
conscious of having a ceremonial heritage, in some cases -- and see if I could find a story or two, 
or find someone talking about the way history is a story. Rather than--  
 
Vi Hilbert  11:06 
Right away I think about my Aunt Susie. [Laughter.] 
 
Interviewer 2  11:11 
I thought it was your Aunt Susie. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  11:13 
She's our Aunt Susie, everybody who has been able to read and hear her. She's our Aunt Susie 
and the Starchild story. 
 
Jill G. Smith  11:26 
Fine voice, too. 
 
Vi Hilbert  11:27 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Interviewer 2  11:31 
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Do you see the problem with what I'm talking about with the women who are trying to put 
together put together an exhibit, but that have missed the story level? Have you come across that 
before, or? 
 
Vi Hilbert  11:49 
Yeah. Maybe not in a same frame that you're thinking of. 
 
Jill G. Smith  12:01 
I keep thinking as you're talking, there-- I've been reading different poets, but there's one, a 
woman poet, recently who has written a lot-- has been writing a lot, and her-- one of the lines out 
of one of her poems is like, "The story of our lives becomes our lives." And that's-- 
 
Interviewer 2  12:20 
That's good. 
 
Jill G. Smith  12:21 
That was the type of thing and type of point that I think needs to be gotten to.  
 
Interviewer 2  12:27 
Yeah. 
 
Jill G. Smith  12:30 
And so much of what Washington State is, or what this area is, is preserved, and is in all of the 
stories, all the Indian stories from this area. Because the land, the history, the chronology of the 
people are there. And the white society doesn't have that. You may have family stories that you 
tell about relatives, but there's nothing that takes in the community as a whole, the whole society.  
 
Interviewer 2  13:07 
Well-- [crosstalk]. Yeah, we put it in textbooks, but then they separate-- they differentiate 
between history and myth. And so they missed the point. I mean, by putting those things in two 
categories, then there's sort of verifiable history, and then there's stories, which are supposedly 
not true. And by separating it into fact and fiction, you've broken up the experience of it. 
Experience and histories is inside, it sits together. It's both something that happened and it's 
something that you made sense out of by telling a story. 
 
Vi Hilbert  13:41 
I just finished polishing up a history that Ruth Shelton told. She's the one that told a couple of 
stories in the Haboo book. She told 30-- when I finished, it was 37 pages, in both transcription 
and translation. 
 
Jill G. Smith  14:09 
Were these family stories, or? 
 
Vi Hilbert  14:11 
No, this was the early history of [inaudible] the Tulalip area. It's a fascinating bit of work that 
she gave to us. She just sat and talked into the tape. You know, on that-- on the Metcalf tapes. 
Page 7 of 15 
 
 
Jill G. Smith  14:34 
It's-- and you've transcribed those [inaudible]. 
 
Vi Hilbert  14:36 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Jill G. Smith  14:36 
[?In Salish?]. 
 
Vi Hilbert  14:39 
I've transcribed and translated. Yes, just take a quick look at it. 
 
Jill G. Smith  14:46 
Yeah, mm-hmm.  I've got more manila folders than I can shake a stick at.  Oh, my. 
 
Vi Hilbert  15:05 
I don't know if I either have both transcription and translation in that pile. Yeah, she was one of 
my relatives who lived at Tulalip. And her... 
 
Jill G. Smith  15:28 
This really does go all the way-- this is-- this starts with the Coming of the Lights.  
 
Vi Hilbert  15:35 
And yes, it's a history. 
 
Interviewer 2  15:41 
Was she the person who-- to whom the history was told? 
 
Vi Hilbert  15:45 
No, no, she told it. No, she told it.  
 
Interviewer 2  15:47 
Then how did she...?  
 
Vi Hilbert  15:48 
Well, these are from her memories.  
 
Interviewer 2  15:50 
[?This from her memories?].  
 
Vi Hilbert  15:52 
And there were some things that were told to her. But these are things that she remembered. 
 
Jill G. Smith  15:59 
Page 8 of 15 
 
It says here, she was born in 1855 or four years later, so she could-- she very easily could have 
been [inaudible]. 
 
Interviewer 2  16:09 
But she's...  
 
Jill G. Smith  16:13 
She's no longer alive.  
 
Interviewer 2  16:14 
Yeah. Well, this was done a while ago?  
 
Jill G. Smith  16:17 
The Metcalf tapes. 
 
Interviewer 2  16:18 
Uh-huh. 
 
Vi Hilbert  16:19 
In the 50s. 
 
Interviewer 2  16:22 
When she was-- 
 
Vi Hilbert  16:23 
About 100. 
 
Interviewer 2  16:23 
--a hundred years old, she told these stories? 
 
Vi Hilbert  16:25 
Yes, yes, uh-huh, almost 100. She-- our people had historians. And, like my Aunt Susie was a 
historian, this lady was a historian, my dad was a historian. 
 
Jill G. Smith  16:41 
But it was all oral?  
 
Vi Hilbert  16:42 
Yes, all oral.  
 
Jill G. Smith  16:44 
Must have taken a lot to get them to put it on tape. 
 
Vi Hilbert  16:47 
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Yes. I think that, no, these were the people with foresight to-- who know that this information 
had to be carried on. And that's why they were historians. They could-- they were big enough to 
see that the future had to know this. 
 
Interviewer 2  17:03 
Were they also-- were historians separated from storytellers? 
 
Vi Hilbert  17:09 
Well, I think that there were people who did both. And usually a historian who was keeping 
family histories and tribal histories, you know, had the capacity to do the stor-- you know, the 
legends and the other stories, because they had practiced and developed their minds to that 
extent.  
 
Interviewer 2  17:36 
Were there any--? 
 
Vi Hilbert  17:36 
And so they were both important, because a lot of our history are built into our legends. 
 
Interviewer 2  17:44 
Were there any particular ways of remembering a story?  
 
Vi Hilbert  17:48 
Yes, you repeated it daily. 
 
Interviewer 2  17:51 
No little aids? Like I talked-- I have a friend who had talking sticks, and they would have little 
signs on sticks to remind them of the story, but they had no--? 
 
Vi Hilbert  18:01 
Not that I know of. No, they just repeated the information daily. If you do that you can 
remember. [Laughter.] It's an art that we have all forgotten. 
 
Jill G. Smith  18:20 
Yeah, it's-- I think, because we just-- we've never been taught to do that. 
 
Vi Hilbert  18:25 
No, we can always refer to the information in a book someplace. But if you don't have a book to 
refer to, the information is not written, then you have to rely on your memory. 
 
Jill G. Smith  18:38 
Were most of people that later became historians or storytellers, they started out younger? And 
then just always-- I mean, it was part of the life. 
 
Vi Hilbert  18:47 
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Now, their parents, their aunts, their relatives, would be sitting there, telling them these things 
over and over and over. And then Martin Sampson said-- when I would marvel at his memory, 
he said, "Well, if you heard this everyday, everyday, everyday like I did," he said, "you'd 
remember." 
 
Jill G. Smith  19:07 
My mother did that with songs. But not so much with stories.  Starting them young. [Laughter.] I 
almost feel it's almost too late for me. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  19:23 
Well I find that when I have-- I know that I have to tell a story to a group, well if I will really 
settle in there and make my mind memorize it. And when I work at it hard enough, I can 
remember it long enough to tell it on that occasion. And if I had to tell it again, I'd have to go 
through the whole process, sit down and... Because my mind doesn't retain for a whole year. So I 
have to memorize things over and over again. But I'm pleased that I at least can do it. My mind 
will respond if I make it. [Laughter.] It's not so sluggish that it can't. I was tickled at my people at 
Swinomish, oh, a couple, three weeks ago, when I was there to tell them that I wouldn't be able 
to come back and see them now until classes were over. Because I need to, you know, during the 
week, and I will be in class every day. And because I bring them material, and read to them, and 
bring tapes, and play for them, and let them listen while I read. And this is, you know, something 
that's delightful to them, because they get hungry for the sound of their language. And they get 
very concerned because they aren't  remembering. Because none of our elders, [?top?], use the 
language anymore. And I thought, "Wait a minute. Who are the elders? We are the elders." All of 
them are my age. I said, "So we have to use the language." So I use it every day. 
 
Jill G. Smith  21:18 
That's what I miss is-- I use it around the house [laughs]. 
 
Vi Hilbert  21:25 
We have nobody to talk to, they say. And at funerals and things-- if anyone is to give a eulogy, 
it's me now. No one-- even my elders no longer were eulogizing in the language and I think it's 
important. So, even though I don't feel that I'm very good at it, I make myself do it. Maybe this 
will encourage other people to say, "Well, well she-- you know, she doesn't talk real good Skagit, 
but she can do it." [Laughter.] 
 
Jill G. Smith  22:05 
That was one thing I admired and was just very intently listening to was when we went up to the 
smokehouse and Isadore was speaking both in Lummi and in Skagit.  
 
Vi Hilbert  22:17 
Right.  
 
Jill G. Smith  22:19 
I was just amazed. 
 
Vi Hilbert  22:20 
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[?He?] has that gift. And not afraid to make a mistake, either. I see this is the problem with my 
other elders; they were afraid they, you know, they haven't-- not having used the language every 
day that they would [inaudible] and somebody'd laugh at them. I said, "Well, I guess I'm young 
enough and old enough. I'm sort of in between, so it doesn't really matter if my elders laugh at 
me. It pleases me if I make them happy and they laugh." 
 
Jill G. Smith  22:54 
Or maybe someone will remember and come up with the correct translation or word.  
 
Vi Hilbert  23:00 
Yes, I have many of them who delight in correcting me now, and I encourage them. 
 
Jill G. Smith  23:08 
Well that's the way we learn. 
 
Interviewer 2  23:12 
So, are many people recovering the language?  
 
Vi Hilbert  23:16 
Well, those who are willing, who are interested. I tell them this is all they need is the desire to 
learn. I've made all of the materials available to them. 
 
Interviewer 2  23:28 
Are there are there ways for them to learn it? With--  
 
Vi Hilbert  23:34 
Yes-- the textbooks. 
 
Interviewer 2  23:35 
--tapes, and texts?  
 
Vi Hilbert  23:36 
And I have the textbooks and the tapes and the tape stories, they can sit and listen to those. And 
one of my friends who's older than I and you know, knew the language I'm sure much better than 
I did, was listening to one of the stories I brought and she said her -- this is Aunt Susie she was 
listening to -- and she said, "Her Skagit is so complex, because it's the old Skagit." She said, 
"Sometimes she stumps me." And I said, "Of course, of course. That's-- the-- then-- these are the 
things all of us need to relearn. This is our language." When [inaudible], you know, I'm fortunate 
to be able to understand all-- practically everything Aunt Susie says, so I have it all translated. So 
if you don't know what it is, it's written down, now. 
 
Jill G. Smith  24:33 
It's also got a very-- to me a very simple, but complex grammar system. And I learned-- was 
working with the Salish grammar, and it helped me immensely with English grammar. English 
grammar just was [crosstalk]. 
 
Page 12 of 15 
 
Interviewer 2  24:48 
Easy after that. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  24:54 
Yes, and Thom is throwing his hands up in the air mentally; "How are you going to handle 46 
students, Vi?" And I have one blind one. That concerns me a little; I've never had a blind student 
in my class before. 
 
Jill G. Smith  25:15 
Is there a way that the book could be taken to one of the services on campus?  
 
Vi Hilbert  25:19 
Yes, I have been called about that already.  
 
Interviewer 2  25:21 
I have a friend who reads textbooks for blind students. 
 
Vi Hilbert  25:26 
The only problem is they won't be able to read the Lushootseed, of course. [Laughter.] 
 
Interviewer 2  25:32 
I wonder-- I'll have to ask her if she's being asked to read Lushootseed. 
 
Vi Hilbert  25:37 
What she-- what they can do, of course, is-- the Lushootseed part is already on tape. Those 
sentences are taped. So if they will-- you know, the reader will do the English part and then they 
can sort of put them together.  
 
Jill G. Smith  25:52 
Yeah. It could be [inaudible].  
 
Vi Hilbert  25:56 
But this blue book will need to be made available to the reader also. I told-- asked my daughter 
to bring a blue book that I have out at her house in for the reader use, because I think that this 
might help the blind girl, understand [inaudible]. We tried to put it in simpler terms. And Dr. 
Hess does such a beautiful job of explaining linguistically what things are. But sometimes it 
confuses the students who haven't had any linguistics and who are freshmen and scared of the 
whole bit anyway. 
 
Jill G. Smith  26:23 
It scared me, but I've had some linguistics since then that I can understand now. 
 
Vi Hilbert  26:44 
Oh, great. Did you have [?Alan Case?]?  
 
Jill G. Smith  26:48 
Page 13 of 15 
 
No, [inaudible] working with Carolyn Allen in the English department. Wow. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  26:58 
Yes, I've never let the linguistic part of it intimidate me. Because those students who are 
concerned with complicated linguistics, you know, can ferret that information out if they're 
interested. What I'm there to teach is the language and the philosophy of the language. And the 
[?pot pot?] [laughs]. The other part is [?pot pot?], unimportant to me. 
 
Interviewer 2  27:22 
Is that the German equivalent of the German word "Quatsch?" Sort of--  
 
Jill G. Smith  27:22 
Yeah [laughs]. 
 
Interviewer 2  27:26 
--the rest of it's all Quatsch? [Laughter.] It sounded so much like it. Maybe every language has 
some word for, "Oh that's all... Quatsch." 
 
Vi Hilbert  27:40 
I find the students who have had German have an easier time in my class.  
 
Interviewer 2  27:45 
Oh, really? It must be then the language is inflected. 
 
Vi Hilbert  27:48 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Interviewer 2  27:49 
Lots of cases. 
 
Vi Hilbert  27:50 
We have the same glottal-- glottalization. 
 
Interviewer 2  27:55 
Mm-hmm. That's, that's what I heard, I guess. 
 
Jill G. Smith  27:58 
You have to warm your throat up for it daily. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  28:03 
I have a granddaughter who will be in my class. She will be in both classes. So I told-- was 
telling my husband, "Now I'll have my granddaughter two solid hours. Daily." Then I had my 
grandson last year. 
 
Jill G. Smith  28:18 
What treats. 
Page 14 of 15 
 
 
Vi Hilbert  28:21 
Now I have a great grandson coming along. If the University has money enough when he's ready 
for college and I'm still alive, why, maybe I'll have him. This was the director who just, you 
know, called me. She said that she had had letter that I would not be reemployed next year. 
 
Interviewer 2  28:45 
What? 
 
Vi Hilbert  28:45 
And it doesn't really matter.  
 
Interviewer 2  28:47 
At the university?  
 
Vi Hilbert  28:47 
Mm-hmm, yeah. Because of the funds.  
 
Interviewer 2  28:49 
Budget cuts? 
 
Vi Hilbert  28:50 
As I expected it. And it doesn't concern me. I have many other things that I need to do. If my life 
depended on it, then I'd be crushed. And I think anyone with any intelligence, you know, could 
have seen this coming a long time ago and should have prepared themselves. 
 
Jill G. Smith  29:14 
I think we're all under the budget ax. 
 
Vi Hilbert  29:16 
My daughter who's director of the Indian Division of EOP is getting reshuffled [inaudible] she 
just made director of the division. And they're reshuffling. But, you know, several years ago, 
they were talking about putting all the ethnic studies under one head, which to me makes sense. I 
don't really think that it's necessary to break it all up. I think they could have one director and 
have everybody. 
 
Jill G. Smith  29:53 
Oh, well, keep everyone. 
 
Vi Hilbert  29:56 
Yes, because I don't see that Indian Studies needs to be there as a department. As far as I'm 
concerned, they have been of no help to me.  
 
Jill G. Smith  30:10 
Yeah. The courses need to be maintained, but... 
 
Page 15 of 15 
 
Vi Hilbert  30:15 
And that can all come under one heading.  
 
Jill G. Smith  30:18 
Sure. Just [inaudible]. Actually, it'd be easy to find them. [Laughter.] 
 
Vi Hilbert  30:24 
So... Because the secretary can do nothing for me there. And she's even too busy to handle my 
books. Bring the books to my office and let the students buy them from me.  
 
Jill G. Smith  30:49 
That's-- this is a sad news.  
 
Vi Hilbert  30:54 
I have an idea that-- 
 
 
 
 
 
 