Yvonne Toon Nee Mu Sh Dupuis Peterson invites us to “sit beside” each other to learn—the way her mother showed her to live a caring life.
A master weaver from the Hazel Pete family, Yvonne is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. Growing up rich in salmon, berries, and much natural bounty,
Yvonne was taught to work hard for family, community, and self in the prairie and river lands of her people. Her ancestors are woven into her consciousness and actions, she breathes their same breath,
and walks the paths they created for her generations ago. Weaving is the foundation of her cultural understandings. Weaving baskets connects her to the Chehalis natural world, as strands of plants and
memories coming together in a beautiful, contained wholeness to carry into the next generation.
Expressing her prayers as poems, Yvonne seeks, in her own words, to transform the past into the future through a prism of caring. She is a political scientist, educator, and intergenerational cultural awakener who weaves together traditional and academic methods at home and at Evergreen State College, where she is a founding member of the Indigenous studies program and where she has taught for the past thirty-six years. In our culture, she likes to remind us, “You don’t teach everyone the same weave because then they won’t need each other.”
Yvonne received bachelor’s degrees in elementary education and ethnic studies from Western Washington University, and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Arizona. With her husband and teaching partner, Gary Peterson, Yvonne has collaboratively designed and teaches interdisciplinary courses that center Native arts, culture, education, political science, and advocacy to shape the next generation of Indigenous leaders, creators, and agents of change. In recognition of her decades of service to Native students and communities, Yvonne was awarded the Enduring Spirit Award from the Native Action Network in 2015.
Literature featuring Yvonne Toon Nee Mu Sh Dupuis Peterson
