Essie Pinola Parrish (1902–1979), was a Kashaya Pomo spiritual leader and exponent of native traditions.
She collaborated with Robert Oswalt, a linguist at University of California, Berkeley, to write a dictionary of Kashaya Pomo.
Parrish's religious work is especially significant due to the assimilation of other Pomo communities at the time.
[6] While she emphasized the importance of going to school and integrating "into the white world to survive," she also forbad her tribe from intermingling, to avoid "losing their Indian blood line and of the chaos it might bring into their way of life," alcohol, and gambling.
Parrish was also involved in local civic life, advocating for Sonoma county Indians through her testimony to the American government.