LaNada War Jack was born on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Bingham County, Idaho in 1947. She enrolled at UC Berkeley in January of 1968 as the first Native American student in the university’s history. She took on many leadership roles during her undergraduate career, including recruiting 12 other Native Students to enroll in the school. Together, along with 2 additional Native students on campus, they formed the Native American Students United* group in January ‘69. NASU joined the Third World Liberation Front shortly after the other student groups with War Jack as their chair and representative among the TWLF leaders in the Central Committee. She was also a partial member of the Mexican American Student Confederation. War Jack was the only woman among her co-leaders in the strike and was well respected by all TWLF members. In particular, she spent a lot of her time with Manuel Delgado and Ysidro Macias, co-leaders of MASC. War Jack and the other interviewees recall that the men were very protective of her and ensured she was always well informed and given advance notice of the current happenings of the strike.
“They kind of just pulled me around to make sure I was there. If there was any kind of dispute or anything at all they’d say, ‘Well, I think that we need to have one of the original people of this country; [LaNada] needs to have her place and we want to know what LaNada has to say.’ I mean they would make sure that it was central, all to me you know (laughs). So you know, nobody could really take over, of having the voice or anything. They wanted to know what I thought and in a way, it kind of took away the competition among them because they had to recognize me first.”
When asked to describe her role, War Jack explained that because she was new to TWLF’s political group environment, she would listen to what everyone had to say during meetings and participate in voting on the group’s next move. She says the following about what it was like being the only woman among the chair holders of the TWLF representatives:
“I just had to be there; have a physical presence to show that Native Americans were there and as the only female, then they knew Native Americans were there. All the other groups, maybe they had three or four people representing their groups, but there was just me. So, it was fairly easy to be a part of it because everybody else knew so much more than I did. We were just new into everything but we wanted to support the department and of course, we wanted to have our contact with our community.”
Estella Quintanilla recounts that the Chicanos were very concerned about LaNada and the men (Delgado and Macias) being targeted. At the time of the strikes, War Jack was a single mother living in the University Village. She would have to arrange for a babysitter for her son and would wait to get picked up by someone to bring her to the TWLF meetings on campus. At times, she would get picked up by Ysidro and Manuel and they would drive around at night to discuss their next course of action. On February 27th, 1969, War Jack along with Delgado and Macias were arrested during a peaceful protest turned violent by the national guard.
War Jack recalls that CBS was planning on doing a special about the TWLF strikes.
“We all had to go to the ASUC president’s place to meet up with one of those affiliations [sic] and I had my son with me. They were playing with him and throwing him around and I guess we weren't able to make the cut because they were trying to make us out as these hostile Third World Liberation Front leaders and here they were playing with babies. And we were all laughing and you know getting along and we didn't present the kind of picture that they wanted to present about these really hard Third World people of color, that we were all hostile and everything.”
When asked what the legacy of the TWLF is for her today, War Jack states,
“Just acknowledging that that’s the strength that we have and our potential that we still can use and that's working together with all people of color because that's what really frightened our colonial system, the fact that we all got together. I think we still have that potential and that's what I'm left with; is that we can still do it if we need to.”
Shortly after War Jack’s involvement in the TWLF, she helped to organize the Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she attended Antioch School of Law in Washington D.C and participated in the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in 1972. War Jack carried out a two-year term on the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation of Idaho Tribal Council. She gained certification in permaculture from the Permaculture Institute at Tagari Garden Farm in 1979 and received her master’s degree a few years later in public administration and a Ph.D. in political science at Boise State University. War Jack currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor at BSU where she teaches Law and Tribal Government.
* The student group had undergone a few name changes, but we will refer to it as NASU for now.
