By Kat Fulwider

Frank Grayshield, Retired Public Health Educator and Washoe Elder Sees a Way Forward for Community Healing

On a snowy March evening, cedar and pine smoke escape the Grayshield home’s chimney, dancing with the winter air of the Carson Indian Colony. Cedar is offered to the flames with prayers as the embers nestled in the Iron Wood Stove heat the Grayshield home. Inside, Frank Grayshield is seated at his dining room table, surrounded by traditional Washoe cradleboards, portraits of his ancestors, colorful Kachina dolls, and artifacts from tribes around the US and beyond. It is clear that family, community, and cultural heritage are at the center of this Washoe Elder’s world.

At 80 years old, Frank Grayshield is an elected Community Council Member of the Carson Indian Colony, a Navy veteran, an Indigenous lands activist, and a retired public health educator for the Indian Health Services. Standing well over six feet tall, he emanates a strong presence and a warm strength. As he speaks, his stoic demeanor is broken with jolly smiles and grand gestures. 

When asked about who he is, Grayshield begins by introducing the people he came from. “My background is from three different tribes: My grandmother spoke Paiute, my grandfather spoke Quechan, and my dad spoke Washoe, from here [Carson Indian Colony].”  

Grayshield told the stories of the people who came before him as an extension of himself. One could not know him without first knowing the strength of his mother and father, and his grandparents who endured the Stewart and Phoenix Indian Boarding schools. “When you talk about my life, my life seems to have come forward from a lot of those things that happened and affected a lot of the Indian people, like The Boarding School system, and then it affected me,” explains Grayshield. 

In these government-mandated Boarding Schools, his ancestors were forbidden to speak their native languages or engage in their traditional customs. They were stolen from their families and forced to change their names to white names and their last names to that of US Presidents, surplanting their identity with a “white” one. This cultural genocide that is colonization happened for generations. So before answering the question of ‘Who are you?’, Grayshield first insisted on examining necessary history for context - bringing the past into the light.

“The whole thing [boarding school system] was to assimilate the Indian people into the alien world. Because everything is alien for Indian people who are here. Everything that was coming at us was to assimilate us into the alien world. That had a devastating effect on Indian tribes because the policy at that time was to get the kids. Every kid goes to school. Take them wherever, and send them away. They spend years away from their families and they’re not bonding with their family so there’s a whole breakdown in that social structure.” 

Grayshield went on to talk about the paramount importance of family structure and connection to cultural identity in order to have a healthy community. Highly educated and articulate, it is no surprise that he received a bachelor's in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from the Northern Arizona University and then his Masters of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Throughout his career as a Public Health Educator, Grayshield has served on various Indian Colonies and Territories around the US. His home gives a glimpse into his lived experience; colorful Kachina figurines are at home in a display case in his dining room, speaking to his time spent on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Personal experiences combined with his expertise, have garnered him a powerful perspective on how generational trauma has - and continues to - impact Native American people.

He has witnessed the chronic illnesses of Diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness become all too common in the Native American population. Not only does he have a professional connection to these illnesses, but also a personal one. “Almost every member of Frank’s family had diabetes. And that's what is happening to Native Americans today,” said Clinta Grayshield, Frank’s wife. “Oftentimes what happens is, it's not ‘are we going to have it, it's when are we going to have it?; that is unless we take control of our own Heath, stop eating the colonizers' foods and using pharmaceuticals. We all know it’s time to embrace food sovereignty- a return to traditional and traditional-like foods; this is the only way we are going to regain our health as a people” Frank’s daughter, Lisa Grayshield, Ph.D. stated. 

Today, Frank has advanced Diabetes and attends dialysis multiple times a week. He wears a green knit cap upon his newly shaven head, which until recently, was adorned with long hair. When he began dialysis he shaved his head, which he alludes is symbolic of him entering the last stage of his life. He speaks matter-of-factly about his own mortality and what he wants to accomplish with his ‘few years left.’ It was this realization of finality that inspired Frank to run for and obtain the Community Council Member position in November of 2022. “It is my last stand to make a difference in politics…That is why I am putting my spear in the ground and said, well this is where I’m going to make my last stand, right now.”

Frank traveled for much of his career as a Public Health Educator, but when he returned to the Carson Indian Colony in 2004 he saw an illness manifesting in a new form. The youth, the tribe’s future, were losing respect for their culture, their people, their elders, and the land. They were getting involved with drugs and gang violence and bringing those things back to the community. 

With his background in psychology, sociology, and public health education, he knew that the violent and addictive behaviors were stemming from a place of disconnection from themselves and their community. “They had lost touch with the very essence of who Indian people are. And it is tied into our spiritual understanding of who we are in our beliefs. We are one with the Creator. And we weren’t teaching our kids the basic things, of harmony and balance, how to live together, respect for elders, respect for the warriors, because they protect the community, they protect the village, they protect the people… And so how do we bring that back?”

In 2009 Frank, along with a group of Washoe elders founded the Washiw Zulshish Goom Tahn-Nu (WZGT) or Washoe Warriors’ Society.  Frank is now the president of the WZGT, which aims to help people heal by reconnecting them with their traditions and heritage. Frank explains  “When you know yourself, you can heal the community.”

The Washoe Warriors’ Society's mission statement is as follows:

“Washiw Zulshish Goom Tahn–Nu is committed to create, promote and mentor leadership and healthy lifestyles for the Washoe people and thier families. We are committed to demonstrate respect to everyone who wants to join this goom tahn-nu (society). We are committed to instill respect for the land, the water and the animals who dwell on the land. Our land contains our history, our legends and the wild plants and animals that once fed us. The land contains our medicine as well as our traditional food. Native People have always protected and preserved their land and water.” -- WZGT Board of Directors, 2021

The Washoe Warrior’s Society has the vision of building Washiw Tahn-Nu Ung-Gal (The People's House) near the traditional homelands of Da’oh aga (Lake Tahoe.) It will serve as a gathering place to collectively heal the wounds of generational trauma by reconnecting with Washoe traditions and ceremonies, strengthening the connection with the land, and speaking the Washoe Language. “There are only five fluent Washoe speakers left,” Frank said earnestly.  “We need to create a sacred place, a respected place that everybody who goes into understands what it's there for. And that's important because we [the Washoe] are like a fire. We're down to the embers; we can blow on them and bring it back and start a fire again. We want to create that place. We want to take those embers that we have left.”