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Cross was a powerful advocate for meaningful change


Tribal Attorney Raymond Cross who entered the spirit world last week at the age of 74.

Native attorney Dick Trudell often talks about how fifty years ago there were only a handful of Native attorneys across the country, but then came a new generation of young, skilled and knowledgeable attorneys, who would have a critical impact on the course of tribal history. Raymond Cross, who entered the spirit world last week at the age of 74, was one of those attorneys.

There was once an agency village called Elbowoods, on the Fort Berthhold Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arickara (MHA). It now lies at the bottom of Lake Sakakawea. Cross was born at Elbowoods in 1948, but the Garrison Dam flooding forced the family to relocate to the white township of Parshall.

Conditions were not ideal. The farmhouse had no water or electricity, and the Cross family was large, ten kids. Despite their circumstance, Raymond’s father, Martin Cross, became tribal chairman, and so Raymond saw from a young age that if a man put his mind to accomplish something, even if he had to struggle from poverty and marginalization, he could get it done.

Cross had a foot in two worlds. His mother, Dorothy, was the daughter of a Norwegian homesteader. But as tribal chairman, his father fought to save the land being flooded by the Garrison Dam, but back in 1953, no tribe had the political connections, or the legal experience and qualifications, to successfully battle the system. Elbowoods disappeared under rising waters.

The loss of Elbowoods was a reflection of how the tribe was losing all of its independence, its home, its heritage, but that loss was dramatically encapsulated in the flooding of a town; the tribe could translate that graphic reality into a larger context of what was happening to every tribe across Indian Country. There was only one way a warrior could fight back, and it wasn’t on the traditional battlefield. Because how could a warrior stop flood waters from destroying his family’s home? The place to battle for justice for the tribe was in the courtroom, and only an attorney could do that. There was no undoing the Garrison Dam, no draining the flood waters from Elbowoods. But under that water were tens of thousands of acres, for which the MHA had received no compensation.

The Indian Relocation Act impacted the Cross family. Cross went west to Santa Clara, California, where his high school guidance counselor helped him secure a BIA scholarship to attend Stanford University. By 1970, Cross had been graduated from Stanford University. Three years later he received a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, and passed his California Bar exam. Cross started his career working for the California Indian Legal Services in Mendocino County. In 1975, he found himself in Colorado, where he served as an attorney for then Native American Rights Fund. Armed with the credentials, the opportunity, and the determination, Cross returned to his reservation in 1981 as a tribal attorney. 

His primary focus would be righting as many of the wrongs as possible that happened with the Garrison Dam project. Obviously, there was no getting the land back, but the land hadn’t gone anywhere, it was still under that water, and that land had value, not for what it was now, but because it had been taken from the tribe when it was above water.

For eight years Cross battled the government in court, and in 1992, he finally won $149 million of reparation for the taking of 156,000 acres. Paul Vandevelder wrote a book about that battle, called Coyote Warrior.

This victory helped him win a Bush Foundation scholarship to the Harvard Kennedy School where he met his wife, Kathy Johnston. Eventually they expanded to a family, with daughter, Helena, and son, Cade.

The crowning legal achievement of his career realized, Cross now took the next logical step—teach others the skill to do the same. Cross started teaching at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, before becoming an expert on federal Indian law and public land law at the University of Montana.

Cross epitomized the advocate with the skill and knowledge to work in the system against the system, instead of an activist outside the system with no actual plan to effect meaningful change. His health failing, Cross was unable to pursue his legal interest as he had in his prime, but social media came along at just the right time, allowing him to network across the country, across the planet, organizing citizen groups, advocating for tribal voting rights, and most importantly, battling the endemic corruption that is tribal government.

Noted Native attorney Mario Gonzlaez (Oglala) said this about Cross: “Ray was one of the first generation of Indian attorneys that had a very impressive academic background and distinguished legal career. His death is not only a loss for his family and the MHA Nation, but also for all of Indian Country.”

The recent loss of attorneys like Raymond Cross, and Alan Parker, creates a vacuum crying to be filled by the next great generation of Native attorneys. Cross faced the pressing issues of his time, head on, and he prevailed in the biggest legal battle of his career, obtaining not just monetary compensation, but helping restore the dignity and pride of the MHA. Attorneys like Cross may not be the romanticized heroes the media clamors for, but they are the true warriors, they win the actual battles, and their determination and skill impacts their tribe deeply, and the benefits of their efforts live on long after they themselves are gone.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

 

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