Ramona Bennett

Ramona Bennett (born August 23, 1938) She was born to Archie and Gertrude ( McKinney) Church in Seattle but shortly after her birth her family moved to Bremerton, Washington, where her father worked in naval shipyards and was a labor activist. Bennett indicated her White father was racist, despite his marriage to her mother; her mother fiercely instilled knowledge of and pride in her Indigenous heritage.

Bennett earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Evergreen State College and a master's degree in education from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

Political involvement and activism Bennett worked at the Seattle Indian Center in the early 1960s, and she became involved with several community programs, including the American Indian Women's Service League. The fort takeover included involvement by figures like Leonard Peltier.

When the Puyallup people decided to fish from the Puyallup River, they faced intense resistance from both commercial fishers, environmentalists, and local authorities. The banning of fish traps, in particular, violated the Treaty of Point Elliott (1855) that have secured Native people continued access to the "natural resources" and in the "usual and accustomed places" which they had utilized for generations, including fish.

In 1964, Bennett co-founded the Survival of American Indians Association with Janet McCloud (Tulalip). She often worked closely with Hank Adams and other activists on fishing rights to generate political strategies and to push forward a variety of Native American sovereignty and treaty rights issues. Along with Adams, she secured sanctuary for fisherman within the local Puyallup Episcopal church.

She was elected tribal chairwoman in 1976. In an interview, Bennett noted that when she traveled to a meeting of the National Tribal Chairman's Association, she was initially refused entry because she was a woman. She had to insist on her right to be present and not be relegated to sitting with "the chairman's wives". She immediately began arguing for the protection of Native American children, especially those adopted out of the community, who she saw as an endangered resource."

Bennett helped organize a week-long occupation of the Cushman Hospital in 1976; the hospital sat on lands stolen from the Puyallup and given to the state of Washington.