CHICKALOON — Tribal elder Katherine Mae Wickersham Wade passed away Sunday night after a life spent preserving the Chickaloon way of life.

Born in Moose Creek in 1923, Katherine learned the tribal traditions from her grandparents. Instead of attending a western school, her education consisted of speaking the Native language and continuing the oral history through songs and stories.

During her life, Katherine saw many changes to that way of life, but she maintained her grandparents’ strong sense of independence throughout, according to her daughter, Patricia Wade.

Courtesy photo From left, Richard “Tiny” Wade, his wife Katherine Wade, her sister Angie Harrison and their friend Pete.

When the borough first formed, an assessor came to value her property. Believing land could not belong to one single person, she denied him access. The assessor then grossly overvalued an old trailer she had on the edge of her property, recalled Wade.

“She had someone haul that trailer down, and she parked it right across from the borough offices,” she said. “She had a big sign on the trailer that my sister drew of a donkey eating buckets of money the people were carrying.”

Always a champion of Native rights, Katherine welcomed everyone into her home regardless of race. With this sprit, she ran the Moose Creek Drive-In from 1956 until 1976 while her husband, Tiny, worked at the coal mine.

All four of her children attended schools in Palmer, but that gave them no opportunity for traditional learning, according to her son, Doug Wade.

“We were the generation that got assimilated,” he said. “A lot of us never knew who we were.”

Seeing a whole generation feeling ashamed of who they were, she started going to the prison to share her knowledge with the Native inmates.

“What she saw was that when they got out of prison, usually they wound up right back in there,” said Patricia Wade. “She knew that if she was going to make a difference, she would have to start with kids.”

In the early 1990s, Katherine started a Saturday school on her front lawn. Students learned the songs, stories and traditions of the Chickaloon people.

As attendance grew, the parents decided they needed a full-time school where their children could get both a Western education and more traditional learning. Moving into the old drive-in, the parents applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for funding to start a tribal school.

Officials from the BIA came up to tour the school. The students explained what life was like in the regular public schools and why they needed their own. The officials then left to make their decision.

“They sent us a letter condemning the building. That was their assistance to us,” said Patricia Wade. “But like Chickaloon normally does, we started a school anyway.”

The students were put on correspondence programs for the regular schooling with in-class instruction consisting of the Native language, singing, dancing and drumming.

The Ya Ne Dah Ah School is still open and moved into a new building funded largely by private donations. Now, Katherine’s great-grandchildren are learning the lessons she first learned from her grandparents.

“Because of her, my grandson can speak the language better than I can,” Doug Wade said. “The kids understand who they are. With that knowledge, they can go on to become better, well-adjusted people.”

If this was not reward enough, the Ya Ne Dah Ah school won the High Honors Award for Self-Governance from Harvard University in 2002.

In addition to her work to establish the school, Wade worked to record the oral traditions of her people and wrote a memoir of her life called “Chickaloon Sprit.”

For her efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of her tribe, Katherine was awarded the Living Cultural Treasures Award in 2000, the CIRI Stakeholder of the Year in 2002, and the Governor’s Award for Native Arts and Languages in 2007.

“She was a warrior at heart,” said one of her grandchildren, Lisa Wade. “Her biggest lesson was to love your family, and her family stretched to the entire tribe. The most important thing for her was to not let anyone fall through the cracks.”

There will be a visitation from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday at Kehl’s Mortuary in Palmer. A more traditional potlatch celebration will be held at the Ya Ne Dah Ah School on Sunday.

Katherine Wade was 86.