Humanities Washington honors Vi Hilbert
with the 2006 Humanities Washington Award

We are pleased to announce that our 2006 Humanities Washington Award recipient is Vi Hilbert. Vi was honored with a luncheon on Wednesday, May 10 at 11 am at McIntyre Hall in Mount Vernon.

This award is given in honor of Heather C. Frank of Yakima and recognizes demonstrated imaginative leadership in the humanities disciplines and extraordinary contributions of time, vision, creativity or support for cultural heritage, community values and humanity's creative achievements. Vi's decades of preservation work in the Lushootseed language, her advocacy for native language and culture and her generosity in sharing her research and storytelling exemplify these ideals and actions and it is our pleasure and privilege to honor her this year.

An elder of the Upper Skagit tribe, Vi (Taq s blu) grew up on the Skagit River listening to her parents speak Lushootseed, the language of Chief Seattle. In 1967, linguist Thom Hess contacted Vi when he began translating a tape of Vi's mother Louise telling a traditional story. Intrigued, Vi began reading and writing Lushootseed at the University of Washington under Hess. The following year she began her seventeen year tenure as a Lushootseed teacher at the University of Washington and Evergreen State College. In 1972 she cofounded the Lushootseed language and culture program at the University of Washington. She has worked tirelessly as a preservationist of Coast Salish language and culture, transcribing and translating several collections of oral literature recordings, assembling and editing story collections, and publishing bilingual books. She established Lushootseed Press to publish much of her translation work as bilingual books including Aunt Susie Sampson Peter and "Gram" Ruth Sehome Shelton. Vi has made her work available to the community through her publications and extensive archives.

Vi describes her work as switulus uyaus: work the creator was wrapping around me. She is the recipient of many honors and was declared a Washington State Living Treasure in 1989. She received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994. Her story is documented in the television program Huchoosedah: Traditions of the Heart.

For her work as a linguist, educator and storyteller and her contributions to our cultural landscape, we are honored to give the 2006 Humanities Washington Award to Vi Hilbert. She has chosen to designate the $1,000 award to support Lushootseed Research.

Past recipients of the Humanities Washington Award: Ron Chew (1995); Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center (1996); John Terrey (1997); Sherry Prowda (1998); Barbara Krohn (1999); Linda Breneman (2000); Delma Tayer (2001); Ralph and Karen Munro (2002); Nancy Pearl (2003); Tom Ikeda (2004), and Ruth Kirk (2005).

Special thanks to www.historylink.org for biographical information.