Coming to Stay

Coming to Stay is the memoir of Mary Dodds Schlick, who in 1950 moved from the Midwest to the Colville Indian Reservation in north central Washington with her husband Bud, a forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For over fifty years, she has maintained a close connection with the Native people of the Columbia River Plateau as a neighbor, journalist, teacher, and master basket maker on the Colville, Warm Springs, and Yakama reservations. These stories take place against a backdrop of change - from the uncertainty caused by federal efforts to terminate reservations in the 1950s through the growth of tribal self-determination that began in the 1970s. Schlick tells us about community and family, celebration and loss, and how she came to stay in the place she now calls home.