Marie Mason Potts
Marie Mason Potts was a Mountain Maidu cultural leader, activist, educator, writer, journalist, and editor. She was an influential California Native American activist who travel lectured on tribal sovereignty, heritage, and cultural preservation. Potts had authored two books, "The Northern Maidu" and "Honey Run Bridge". She was also known as Chankutpan, "One With Sharp Eyes", and née Marie Mason.
Early life and education
Marie Mason was born in 1895, in Big Meadows, Plumas County, California. Her father was a minerals prospector of European-origins that had sexually assaulted her mother; and then left her as a single parent. She was a member of the Maidu Tribe of the Federated Indians of California.She attended the Greenville Indian School in Greenville, California, from 1900 to 1912; and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from 1912 to 1915. She wrote for The Carlisle Arrow, a student newspaper. Potts was the first of California Indians to graduate from Carlisle School.
In 1915, she married her former classmate from Greenville, Hensley Potts, and together they had 7 children. Starting in 1942, the family moved to Sacramento, California.
Career
In 1946 and 1947, she participated in the founding of the Federated Indians of California, an organization formed to support land claims case before the judicial relations arbiter Indian Claims Commission, against the United States government. For three decades Potts was an editor of the FIC alternative newspaper, "The Smoke Signal". It has been reported as the earliest Native American newspaper.Potts was a founding member of the Sacramento Indian Center, and the American Indian Press Association Intertribal Council Center. She was a part of a group that later became the California Education Association. Potts taught American and Californian Native American history at California State University, Sacramento.
Potts was a participant in the Occupation of Alcatraz protests in 1969 to 1971.
Death and legacy
She died on June 24, 1978, in Susanville, Lassen County, California, when traveling.In 1975, she was honored by the state of California; and in 1977 the California State Park and Recreation Department. The California State Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had a building named after her and included a lobby plaque in her dedication.