TRIBAL MEMBER NEWS
Arthur Bensell Receives
Posthumous Award
By Rosemary Breon Landis
I was privileged to represent the
Siletz Tribe in accepting the first
Outstanding Alumni Award for former
Chairman Arthur Bensell from
Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. Reg
Pancoast, class of 1936, had suggested
Art’s name to Lee Martin, director of
development, for the award.
Reg attended class with Arty and
remembered his athletic, academic, and
singing abilities. I was told that every
president of the Excelsior Men’s
Society has to learn the entire list of
past presidents every year. So every
year, Uncle Arthur’s name is recited in
memory of his past achievement at
Heidelberg College.
The Siletz Education Committee
will have the award on display before
the Arthur S. Bensell Scholarship is
awarded at the August pow-wow.
The president of Heidelberg, Dr.
Richard H. Owens, presented the award
to me after Lee Martin read the
following words:
Benjamin Franklin has been
credited with the wonderful quotation,
“We make a living by what we get. We
make a life by what we give. ” No words
better describe the recipient of our first
Outstanding Alumni Award, presented
to an alumnus or alumna in recognition
of lifetime accomplishments and
contributions to their profession,
community, and society.
Arthur Sutherland Bensell was
born in Siletz, Oregon, the son of Siletz
Indian fanners. Early in life, he learned
determination and the spirit to
overcome odds. He married Margaret
Egbert, the daughter of the local Indian
agent, and they eventually moved back
to Ohio, near Bellevue, where
Margaret’s family had a farm.
In 1931, Art enrolled at Heidelberg
College, where he participated in a
variety of activities including glee club,
quartet, and solo groups. He
particularly excelled at football, making
the Associated Press All-Ohio
Conference team twice and being
inducted into the Indian Athletic Hall
of Fame He was president of the
Leslie Lundy, a candidate for Little
Miss Siletz, is shown with Sen.
Gordon Smith. She attended a
reception for Sen. Smith at the
Yaquina Head Interpretive Center in
Newport, Ore., on July 3.
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Arthur Bensell
Excelsior Men’s Society and in 1934,
graduated with honors.
For 18 years, Art was a teacher and
administrator at schools in Minnesota,
North Dakota, and Alaska. In 1952, he
moved back to Siletz, where he and his
wife operated Bensell’s family store. He
soon became mayor and was re-elected
six times to that position.
In the late ‘60s, Art and a core
group of Siletz Tribal members
recognized the desperate need to
establish programs to rekindle the
bonds of brotherhood between tribes.
This re-emergence of a common destiny
led the tribe to embark upon a 10-year
odyssey of intense diplomacy and
constant cross-country traveling to
testify before Congress.
In 1977, their dreams were realized
when President Jimmy Carter signed
Public Law 95-195, which restored the
Confederated Tribes of Siletz to federal
recognition, only the second tribe in the
United States to ever do so. For the next
six years, Art worked to establish
economic enterprises that would benefit
his fellow tribal members.
Today in his hometown of Siletz, there
is a health clinic, which treats all members
of the community, both Indian and non
Indian. He helped to create services that
provide programs for housing,
employment, education, job training,
alcohol rehabilitation, and a variety of
other social initiatives for the benefit of
more than 2,900 tribal members.
Years of travel and constant stress
took their toll on Art’s health and he
retired to Siletz, His life can be understood
best through the words of his grandson,
who wrote: “Art Bensell possessed the
same blend of personal qualities as did
people such as Mahatma Gandhi,
Abraham Lincoln, Benito Juarez, and
Martin Luther King. Yes, their stages were
larger. But Art was fundamentally like
them in that all of them achieved deep
and lasting social progress against
seemingly insurmountable odds. ”
Perhaps that statement is the
greatest testimony to this noble and
generous man. Indeed, you make a
living by what you get and a life by what
you give. Art Bensell gave until he could
give no more. He died quietly, with
grace and dignity, in 1988 and is buried
not far from where he was born on top
of Government Hill. Some men give to
their families and others to their place
of work, some to their church or other
ideology. Art Bensell, however, started
out on a path to improve the simple lives
of his fellow tribal members, but in the
end, he touched the heart of America
by helping to undo the wrong imposed
more than 100 years ago upon a proud
and noble culture.
Heidelberg College is honored to
present the first-ever Outstanding
Alumni Award in memory of Arthur S.
Bensell, who changed forever, for the
better, the lives of Native Americans
across this country. Here to accept the
award is Art’s niece, a member of the
Tribal Council of the Confederated
Tribes of Siletz, Rosemary Landis.
August 2001
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Siletz News
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