Birthday of Hishua Adesh (Blossoming Mint), Tillie Fay Walker

Today we remember Hishua Adesh, a member of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, born on Fort Berthold Reservation (North Dakota). Tillie was a member of the MaXho XhaDa or Alkalai Lodge clan, and was a child of the Apukawiku or Low Cap Clan. She grew up in a household were Mandan and Hidatsa were spoken, and her family was relocated for the construction of Garrison Dam which inundated 1/4 of Fort Berthold Reservation lands. According to her tribe, in her later life she "advocated for a fuller accounting of and compensation for the land taking associated with the Garrison Dam. The work she and others did secured an additional $143 million in federal compensation for the eminent domain taking of the heart of the Fort Berthold land base". She is remembered for her lifetime of work for Native peoples and for working with Martin Luther King Jr. organizing the Native American participants in the Poor Peoples Campaign. Her accomplishments for the betterment of Native peoples are many but she considered the implementation of Indian Preference hiring in Indian Health Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be her biggest professional accomplishment. She was an important mentor to later Red Power activists, especially founders of the National Indian Youth Council. When Hank Adams was given the third ever American Indian Visionary Award he noted he would have placed Maiselle Bridges, Ramona Bennett (Puyallup), Tillie Walker (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara) and Suzan Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee) before his name.