Postcards from the Rogue Valley

At age 95, Agnes Pilgrim Baker deserves the title “living cultural legend” as much as anyone I almost know. After watching hours of videos of her talking about being a “voice for the voiceless,” I’m a big fan.

Grandma Aggie, as she is known, is the oldest living female left of the Rogue River Indians, the Takelmas, who lived in Southern Oregon for over 20,000 years. She is the granddaughter of the first elected Chief of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz, which included more than 27 Native American tribes and bands in the Pacific Northwest.  

In 1970, Agnes Pilgrim Baker reluctantly agreed to become a spiritual leader for her tribe. Before that, she’d nurtured a wild resume: hiking far into the woods to gather cascara bark and other wild plants, singing in a band, being a bouncer at a nightclub and a barber in a jail, driving a log truck and setting chokers for the logging of old-growth trees, racing stockcars, working as a scrub nurse at a hospital and managing a restaurant. 

At age 61, Grandma Agnes graduated from Southern Oregon University (SOU)—a “nontraditional student” before that was a thing—majoring in psychology and minoring in Native American Studies. At 80, she became a became a founder of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and won support from the Dalai Lama.

“I travel to a lot of different lands being a ‘voice for the voiceless.”’ Grandma Agnes explains.

All things created need a voice. I am called to pray for the Bengal tigers, for animals in Africa, for wolves, for salmon, and for the Ganges River in India. I went to Australia to pray for the Murry Darling River and its pollutions. I prayed for the Condors and now they are coming back after being gone for over 200 years from Oregon.

What I cherish most about Grandma Agnes, though, is her call to each and every one of us to bless the water. 

Water is sacred, she reminds us. “We are born in water, it’s in our blood, our tears, our brain. We must thank the water every day of our lives: the river, the lake near our house, the glass of water we’re holding in her hand.”

Treat yourself to this short video of Agnes Pilgrim Baker speaking at a 2010 gathering of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.

Happy Thanksgiving. Bless the water.

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