WASHINGTON, DC—Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin K. Washburn issued a statement on the passing of Chickasaw Nation ambassador Charles Blackwell. It stated:

“Today, Indian Country lost a distinguished leader whose eloquence and diplomacy in promoting self-determination for the Chickasaw Nation and all tribes was legendary. As the Chickasaw Nation’s ambassador to the United States, Charles W. Blackwell personified the nation-to-nation relationship, giving his people a voice at the highest levels of government.”

Charles Blackwell was the founder and Executive Director of First American Business Center in Washington, D.C. A Chickasaw/Choctaw and an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Blackwell was born at Concho Indian Hospital in El Reno, Oklahoma. He was raised deep in the Chickasaw Nation near the Blue River and on the Lower Brule and Oglala Lakota reservations in South Dakota. He was moderately fluent in Lakota, Choctaw, Omaha and Chickasaw.

Further, since the early 1930s, Mr. Blackwell’s family has had strong ties with Picuris Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Consequently, he has a deep appreciation for pueblo tribal customs and traditions. His parents and maternal grandparents were public school and Bureau of Indian Affairs educators.

Mr. Blackwell received his Bachelor of Arts in Education in 1964 from East Central State College in Ada, Oklahoma. He was the founding president of the Epsilon Omega chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, editor of the campus newspaper, and Student of the Year in 1964. After graduation, he taught secondary English at Window Rock High School in Ft. Defiance, Arizona until 1968 when he began his legal studies in Albuquerque. After he received his law degree from the University of New Mexico in 1972, he worked as a staff attorney at the American Indian Law Center until 1974 served as Associate Director of the Special Scholarship Program in Law for American Indians until 1977. During this time, he helped place more than seven hundred American Indians and Alaskan Natives in law schools all over the United States. Concurrently, from 1974 to 1977, he was appointed the Assistant Dean and an Adjunct Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

In 1979 after he left the law faculty, Blackwell established Native Affairs & Development Group which he moved from Albuquerque to Washington D.C. in 1984. From 1985 to 1988, Blackwell commuted to New York City where he worked as a consultant and Special Advisor to Chairman Takuro Isoda of Daiwa Securities America in the World Trade Center. As the first American Indian to work in the financial arena of Wall Street, he gained the foundation for his unique insight and ability to guide successful business relationships between the private and tribal business sectors. He wrote the original guide to federal recognition of non-federally acknowledged tribes and lectures periodically on Indian Law at the University of Virginia Law School and other various law schools around the country.

An avid reader and lover of culinary arts, Mr. Blackwell also collects American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian arts and crafts that adorn the interior of Pushmataha House, which is his home and office on Capitol Hill. He was a member of Foundry United Methodist Church, the Native American Bar Association, and the American Indian Society in Washington D.C.

He has two sons, Geoffrey and wife, Beth, with daughters Megan and Jennifer; and, Jonathan and wife, Jacy, with his eldest granddaughter, Montana.

Washburn’s statement continued: “Ambassador Blackwell was an accomplished advocate for the Chickasaw people. His forceful personality, generous spirit and guidance on the workings of federal government will be sorely missed by all who had the good fortune to know him. Our prayers go out to his family, the Chickasaw Nation leadership, and the Chickasaw people.”