Paul, William Lewis, 1885-1977

William Lewis Paul (May 7, 1885 - March 4, 1977) was an American attorney, legislator, and political activist from the Tlingit nation of southeastern Alaska. He was known as a leader in the Alaska Native Brotherhood.

Attorney and Native Alaskan rights activist, Alaska and Wash.

Born in Port Simpson, B.C., in 1885, Tlingit attorney William Lewis Paul was a leading campaigner for Native Alaskan rights. Paul attended Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and Whitworh College in Spokane, Wash. He then obtained a law degree from La Salle University and in 1920 became the state's first Native American attorney. Paul lobbied for Native Alaskan rights through the Alaska Native Brotherhood and in the courts. He was the first Native Alaskan to serve in the Alaska legislature (1925-1929). In 1936 he served as a field agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska, where he became involved with the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (CCTHITA). The Council was formed in 1935 to prosecute a land claim suit against the government and became a leading Native Alaskan rights organization. Paul's sons, William and Louis, worked as attorneys on the case until their replacement by James Curry and Israel Weissbrodt. Compensation of $0.5 million was awarded to the CCTHITA in 1968. In 1957 William Paul moved to Seattle, where he remained until his death in 1977.

William Lewis Paul (1885-1977) was a pioneering Indian rights attorney and a leading figure in the campaign for native Alaskan rights. Paul was born in 1885 to parents who both had Tlingit mothers and European fathers. His mother, Matilda Kinnan Paul (Tamaree), was a Presbyterian missionary who worked at the Sitka Industrial Training School. Paul was educated at this school and later at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. He adopted the Carlisle School’s assimilationist ideals and its assertion that Indians should have the same rights and privileges as other American citizens. Paul later graduated from Whitworth College in Spokane and studied law through correspondence courses offered by LaSalle University. In 1920 he returned to Alaska. His brother Louis was Grand Secretary of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB), and he convinced William to stay in Alaska and work for the ANB.

The Paul brothers dominated the ANB from 1920 to 1940. William was elected Grand Secretary in 1920, the same year he passed the bar, making him the first Alaska native attorney. The ANB re-elected him Grand Secretary in 1921, 1922, 1935, 1938, and 1951. He won the office of Grand President in 1928, 1929, and 1955. Louis served as Grand Secretary twice and as Grand President three times between 1919 and 1939. The ANB, founded in 1912 by Tlingit Presbyterians associated with the Sitka Industrial Training School, originally saw its mission as civilizing the Indians of Southeast Alaska. In 1915 the ANB successfully lobbied the territorial legislature to pass a law giving citizenship and voting rights to natives who learned English and held jobs in the cash economy. The Pauls retained the ANB’s focus on assimilating and Christianizing Indians. They argued, however, that Alaska natives were already US citizens by birth, and were therefore entitled to the rights and privileges associated with citizenship. The district court finally adopted this position in 1922, when William Paul successfully defended the right of his brother’s father-in-law to vote in US vs. Charlie Jones.

William Paul made the ANB a major force in Alaskan politics. He spent much of the early 1920s organizing new ANB chapters throughout southeast Alaska, boosting membership from 100 in 1920 to 2,200 by 1935. He also started and edited a newspaper, Alaska Fisherman, published in Ketchikan from 1923 to 1932. The paper devoted much of its space to denouncing white cannery owners who monopolized native fishing grounds. William Paul used his newspaper and his ANB connections to great advantage in his successful 1924 and 1926 campaigns for the Alaska legislature, becoming the first native Alaskan to serve in that body. He passed a bill that made Alaska natives eligible to receive assistance under the territory’s widows, orphans, and old age pension laws. Paul also fended off a challenge to native voting rights in the form of a literacy test. The law passed, but Paul amended it to exclude from its provisions all those who had previously voted. Without this amendment, the literacy test would have disenfranchised most of the native population. Charges that Paul accepted campaign contributions from canneries cost him his bid for re-election in 1928. He also lost his campaigns for territorial attorney general in 1930 and 1932. Nonetheless, Paul continued his successful private law practice. He tried many Indian rights cases, including one that forced the Ketchikan public schools to accept Indian children in 1929.

In the mid 1930s, William Paul worked for the ANB in Washington, DC. He authored a bill that allowed the Tlingit and Haida Indians to sue the government in a test case to determine the validity of their land claims; Congress passed this law in 1935. Paul was also instrumental in extending the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) to Alaska in 1936. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) then hired Paul to help villages draft IRA constitutions. Paul, however, suffered several setbacks in the late 1930s. In 1937 the Alaska Bar Association prohibited Paul from practicing law on the grounds that he had defrauded a client. The BIA fired Paul shortly thereafter.

The ANB was divided sharply over whether to allow William Paul a major role in planning the Tlingit-Haida land claims suit. Paul would not be readmitted to the Bar until January 1959. His disbarment reduced his influence in the ANB, which turned to the rival Peratrovich family for leadership. Nonetheless, the BIA required the Haida and Tlingit to form a joint council to decide how to prosecute the suit and how to distribute the benefits, and Paul was elected head of this council in 1941. The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (CCTHITA), founded in 1935, became one of the leading organizations campaigning for native Alaskan rights from the 1940s onwards. Paul’s two sons, William Lackey Paul (often referred to as William L. Paul, Jr.) and Louis Frederick Paul (known as Fred Paul), were designated attorneys for the case against the government. The BIA and the Peratroviches removed the Pauls from the case in 1944, hiring instead the nationally known attorney James Curry.

William Paul dissented from Curry’s contention that the Tlingit and Haida were distinct tribal groups whose land holdings had been usurped by whites. Paul argued that the ‘Tlingit’ and ‘Haida’, as represented by the CCTHIA, reflected linguistic rather than tribal groupings. He believed that class action for Native lands claims must be brought by individual tribes rather than the CCTHIA. Paul helped BIA Commissioner Dillon Meyer remove Curry from the case in 1953, forcing the Tlingit and Haida to hire attorney Israel Weissbrodt. Meanwhile, Paul and his sons, despite great opposition from the ANB, brought a series of cases designed to force the courts to accept Paul’s theories about the Haida and Tlingit claims. The cases culminated with Tee-Hit-Ton vs. US (1955). The Supreme Court stated that compensation could not be awarded for Native Land Claims unless recognized specifically by Congress, and rejected Paul’s theory about the Tlingit and Haida. The CCTHIA was later re-organized, however, in order to reflect more accurately tribal structures in Southeast Alaska. Although considered a setback for Native rights, the Tee-Hit-Ton case did not end the Tlingit-Haida Land Claims action. The Court of Claims ruled in 1959 that the Tlingit and Haida had occupied and owned the entire area of southeast Alaska at the time the state was purchased by the US in 1867. Compensation of $7.5 million was awarded to the CCTHIA in 1968. Organizations including the ANB and the Alaska Federation of Natives International would continue meanwhile to campaign for Native land claim settlements across Alaska.

Paul moved to Seattle following the Tee-Hit-Ton case, and became gradually less active within the ANB. He adopted the role of an advisor rather than a leader within the organization. He frequently sent open letters to the ANB membership that set out his goals for the organization and his opinions of its leaders’ policies. Although he was not active in the passage of the landmark 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, his sons were and corresponded with him on the matter. The settlement awarded both land and compensation to Alaskan Natives, to be administered by twelve regional corporations within the state and one outside. Paul would remain involved with Native rights issues and organizations through the final years of his life. He practiced law as late as 1972, and paid active dues to the Alaska Bar Association until 1974. William Lewis Paul died in 1977.