Faith Traversie
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Faith Traversie
Faith Traversie (1918-2005), Dakota from Greenwood, on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. She joined her sister, Theodora Means, in the Bay Area during World War II and went to work as a “Winnie the Welder” at the Mare Island Shipyard. After receiving superior marks in her qualifying tests, Traversie attended welding classes and did most of her work on heavy cruisers. Her sister, Theodora, returned home and became the director of the Sioux City Indian Center. After two years, Traversie returned to South Dakota where she and her husband became stalwart supporters of AIM in the 1970s, and where her daughters and Theo’s sons became key organizers.
Along with her sister Theo, she helped establish the first legal defense WKLD/OC office in Rapid City in 1973-74. Traversie also testified on behalf of the Fort Laramie Treaty as part of the Lincoln Treaty Trials in 1974, and served on the board of the first International Indian Treaty Council.
While running the WKLDOC office in Rapid City, from a cottage down by the Rapid Creek, she was constantly assessing threats from the FBI.
A petite but formidable woman, she ran the office with the same strict hand she had learned in her boarding school days which helped protect the space from FBI harassment and infiltration.
[At the WKLD/OC office in Rapid City] “The FBI raided us one time, they just surrounded the whole place. . . They came in and they took us all outside. Leave it to the Indian people cause word got out quick that the FBI had raided us. Instead of trying to stay out of trouble, they were crawling between the legs of the FBI men. They were crawling between their legs to get inside with the rest of us. (chuckles) So, there was twice or three times as many people. But boy, that was funny. Instead of trying to flee, or get away from it, everybody was coming and crawling between the legs of the FBI to get inside. People that weren’t even AIM people came in to support us and crawl through the legs of the FBI; they weren’t even AIM members. They were just people in Rapid City supporting us. They were outnumbered so FBI gave up and just left.”
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