Adeline Smith created the first Klallam alphabet with Timothy Montler, a professor of linguistics at the University of North Texas.
[1] Her revitalization work has enabled the Klallam language to be taught to public and private students from preschool through high school.
[3] At age 18 she moved to Seattle with her niece, Bea Charles, to find work, despite the widespread discrimination against Native Americans at the time.
[3] During World War II, Smith worked as a welder at a submarine factory in San Francisco and at a Boeing plant in Seattle.
[3] Smith was working a job in Neah Bay, Washington, as a salal picker when she decided to move back permanently to the Lower Elwha Klallam reservation outside Port Angeles.
Her efforts are credited with helping to win the 1974 Boldt court decision, which upheld the rights of the Lower Elwha and other tribes under past treaties to half the catch of a salmon run.
[1][3][5] The removal of one of the dams in 2012 drained Lake Aldwell, a man-made reservoir created in 1913, revealing the Klallam ceremonial creation site in July 2012.
[1][6] She is featured in the film "Unconquering the Last Frontier" by Robert Lundahl, narrated by actor, Gary Farmer, and seen on Public Television.
Smith championed the preservation of Tse-whit-zen, a historic Lower Elwha village located at the base of Ediz Hook, which dates back to approximately 2,700 years.
[1] As a child, Smith had been warned by adults never to walk on or play on the site of Tse-whit-zen, which is considered sacred by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.
[1] The graving yard project, which was being constructed by the Washington state government, encountered the large village site of Tse-whit-zen, including its cemetery.
More than three hundred bodies were exhumed and removed from the site before Washington Governor Gary Locke intervened and permanently halted the construction in December 2004.
[3] With Smith's death, Hazel Sampson, 103 years old in March 2013, was left as the last living native speaker of the Klallam language.