saʔsiʔ dub-bəš – David Spencer Sr.
David D. Spencer Sr. (Tulalip)
June 7, 1937 – October 28, 2023
David’s mother, Agnes Sese Spencer (Tulalip), died six days after his birth in 1937. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Katrina ‘Kwi-tee’ (Tulalip) and her husband Ambrose Bagley (Duwamish). They also raised his sisters Grace Meninick Goedel (Yakama) and Nancy Spencer Harvey (Yakama). In their household, both the Northern and Southern Lushootseed were spoken by their grandparents. The three grandchildren learned the Lushootseed language. David admitted after the death of his grandmother, Kwi-tee in 1950 and the death of his grandfather, Ambrose in 1956, that he had forgotten much of the Lushootseed Language.
David started to relearn the Lushootseed in the summer of 1991 from his language mentor, Toby Langen. She was working for The Tulalip Lushootseed Language Department at that time and still employed by the language department. He took numerous Lushootseed classes from Toby. He worked part-time with the department at least five years. While working for the department and after his employment – David crafted numerous Lushootseed stories, poems, crossword puzzles, word search puzzles, and songs. One of his personal Lushootseed projects included a compiled Lushootseed word concordance of traditional stories by our late tribal elders. Another Lushootseed project was compiling the Lushootseed affixes in a dictionary format. David still considers himself a lifetime student of the Lushootseed Language.
David attended the Marysville School District, the Everett Junior College (ECC Now) and the University Of Washington. After he served in the U.S, Army as a guided missile technician for three years. He was employed and retired in 1991 from the General Telephone Company after 30 years of service.
He is a painter, a block printer, a wood/cement sculptor, a mixed media artist, writer, and a Lushootseed and English poet. David currently lives on the Tulalip Indian Reservation.
David was married to Viola Jones Spencer (Tulalip) and they had three children: Doreen, Janel, and David Jr. (Tulalip).
