Delbert Miller, founder and visionary of Skabob House, Skokomish

Emilie Chen

Communications Manager

Delbert Miller; photo by Mel Ponder

Washington

Indigenous leadership, Storytelling

sm3tcoom Delbert Miller is the founder and visionary of Skabob House, as well as a singer, carver, drummer, and culture keeper. He is honored with a 2024 Indigenous Leadership Award for his lifelong dedication to the cultural, physical, and spiritual healing of Indigenous peoples through art, song, language, and education.

sm3tcoom Delbert Miller is known among Coast Salish communities for his generosity, care, and compassion. He shares all that he knows, from his cultural teachings to his spiritual gifts, from his knowledge of traditional language to his repertoire of songs and ceremonies. “Delbert has dedicated his life to addressing the pervasive effects of intergenerational trauma in the lives of individuals, families, and communities through connecting people with, and grounding people in, culture, language, songs, ceremony, art forms, and the gifts within our ancestral landscapes and waters,” said Guy Miller, Chair of the Skokomish Indian Tribe.

Epitomizing his dedication to community and healing, in 2023, Delbert Miller and his friend Robert Purser completed the building of the Skabob House, the first dedicated doctor house in Puget Sound in more than a century. “Along with an adjacent art studio currently under construction, the Skabob House Cultural Center is managed by a nonprofit organization of which Delbert is the Founder and Treasurer of the Board of Directors,” wrote Karen Capuder, one of Miller’s long-time friends who nominated him for this year’s Indigenous Leadership Award.

From a young age, Miller made a commitment to help others. When, as a child, he witnessed the impacts of alcoholism on a great-uncle, he declared, “When I get big, I’m going to help them—those old men, I’m going to grow up and help them, because that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“

It’s part of what we called swa whi ab, our stu wha s’Tula, which means our ancestral laws, laws of life.

—sm3tcoom, Delbert Miller, Skokomish

Born in McCleary, WA, Miller was born and raised in Skokomish Nation. From his father, Miller and his four siblings learned how to gather, catch trout, hunt grouse and rabbit, as well as raise gardens, milk cows, and butcher cattle. It was a childhood of responsibility, helping the family put food on the table. By age nine, Miller had a working knowledge of the natural environment in Skokomish, participating in hunting camps with other boys for up to five months at a time.

His grandmother, parents, and 29 aunts and uncles shaped the community around him; his earliest memories include the traditional songs, living stories, and ceremonies that they shared. During Miller’s youth, traditional ceremonies were not socially acceptable and practiced privately, in homes, due to the impact of Christian missionaries, and it took many more years before the Skokomish community was able to build a longhouse for cultural uses again.

There was a day in his youth when Miller suddenly realized why his elders were passing down their teachings to him. “It was quite a profound effect. One day I realized what they were doing with me… [My elders] want me to think, to remember.”

After finishing high school, Miller worked as a logger—“Everybody did that here,” he said—and he later accepted a job in law enforcement, in which he worked for over a decade. But Miller felt that “It didn’t matter what I did… it didn’t seem to help anything. I was seeing that the children were coming up in the same footpath, and what I was doing was not working.”

“

Mainstream scientific and social scientific researchers are finally beginning to acknowledge what Indigenous Elders and spiritual leaders such as Delbert Miller have been telling us for generations.

—Cecilia Gobin, Tulalip

Miller then worked as a drug and alcohol prevention specialist, primarily focusing on cultural programming with young people. He became a certified counselor, working in an inpatient mental health treatment facility and began incorporating traditional storytelling into his practice. While in school, he did a comparative study between Skokomish traditional culture and western family therapy and realized, “’Archetypal psychology’ is your fancy word, but we’ve been doing it for ten thousand years. It’s part of what we called swa whi ab, our stu wha s’Tula, which means our ancestral laws, laws of life.”

One of his mentees, Cecilia Gobin, Tulalip, writes, “Mainstream scientific and social scientific researchers are finally beginning to acknowledge what Indigenous Elders and spiritual leaders such as Delbert Miller have been telling us for generations: that traditional spiritual and land-based practices and strong Indigenous identities promote healing of self and of community.”

Drawing from the spiritual training he learned since childhood, Miller began serving as a spiritual leader and traditional healer in the House of Sla’nay on the Skokomish Indian Reservation. Several years ago, he decided to fulfill a vision that he had in his youth: Using his own funds, Miller purchased land along the reservation to build the Skabob House. In spite of significant challenges, including disruptions due to property theft and from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Skabob House began providing ceremonies and intergenerational teaching to Coast Salish people, even before its official opening last year.

“

Despite his lifetime of knowledge, Miller is humble about his skills and ability. He sees himself as a rememberer of ceremonial traditional and art, rather than a renowned artist.

As a mentor, Miller has uplifted countless others. Gobin said, “Delbert has continued to mentor me in our cultural and spiritual teachings in ways that have helped me walk successfully and sustainably in two worlds—that of my traditional cultural way of life and in my career…”

In another letter of support, June O’Brien said, “He uses song and aptly applied traditional oral history to help Native people find a healthier identity and confront problem patterns of behavior that developed from trauma. He not only teaches how to make traditional art objects, including how to gather and process materials and instruction in the use of tools, but also explains the tradition embedded in what is created.”

Despite his lifetime of knowledge, Miller is humble about his skills and ability. He sees himself as a rememberer of ceremonial traditional and art, rather than a renowned artist. As a father and grandfather, Miller wants to pass down not only the practical skills he learned as a boy, but also their hereditary rights, knowledge about the old village sites and knowledge of songs and the ceremonial languages.

To fulfill a promise he made his grandmother, Miller will be passing down the Skabob House to his daughter Jackie. “It will belong to her, and that’s a very old thing to do. The way we’re going to do it hasn’t been done—it will be at least 165 years since these ceremonies have happened. They’re very old ceremonies, and they’re rarely done anymore.”

“

The sacred teachings come from above, on one thin thread of hope.

—Traditional Skokomish song

Miller also described the first traditional song that he was taught to remember, sung to him by a great-aunt: “It happened to be about a spider coming down from above, little bit, a little bit, a little bit, until it got to where I was at. And the words to it were ‘The sacred teachings, the sacredness is coming down from above, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, on one band of web, coming down all the way from above.’ And in the song, that thin thread was called hope. …The sacred teachings come from above, on one thin thread of hope.”