Roberta Lynn Armstrong
With deep sorrow, we share that our cherished friend and the visionary founder of the Stewards of Indigenous Resources Endowment (SIRE), Roberta Lynn Armstrong, concluded her three-year battle with cancer and embarked on her final journey on July 11, 2025. In accordance with her wishes, she passed peacefully at her home in Tucson, Ariz., surrounded by loved ones –– family, dear friends and her ever-faithful companion, Bubbles.
She was born June 20, 1970 in Seattle, Wash., and moved to Yelm in 1974 on her family farm and lived many years there in the house her father built, very close to the Nisqually Indian Reservation.
She attended school in Yelm and went on to attend the South Puget Sound Community College and earned two Engineering Degrees and Patent Law, and worked at the Kimberly- Clark Paper Mill for several years before deciding to pursue a Juris Doctorate Degree.
She started her studies at Arizona State University and eventually transferred and completed her studies at the University of Washington where she graduated June 20, 2006, on her birthday, and also the same day APRA (American Indian Probate & Reform Act) became law. She took this as a sign.
During the summer of 2004 she participated in the Indian Estate Intern Program on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation and fell in love with Indian Law, which became her life’s work. She went on to establish the Stewards of Indigenous Resources Endowment (SIRE) and this became her mission to protect Indian lands and keep them in Indian hands, by providing estate planning services to protect families and individual Indian rights.
She was licensed to practice law on 22 Indian Reservations nationwide. She was well known to many, as far south as the Tohono O’odham Reservation, and as far east as the Fort Bertold Reservation and the Makah Reservation in the Pacific Northwest, and of course her beloved Warm Springs Reservation, which she always considered her homebase. She even had begun to visit the indigenous peoples south of the border in Mexico. She was and is well respected in all Four Directions.
Her passing is truly a great loss to all her friends and family, and the Fight to Preserve Indian Rights. Her work helped many families.
She is survived by her three brothers: Percie, Larry and Walter; one sister, Regina and was proceeded in death by her sister, Gloria.
She has a host of loving nieces and nephews in Seattle, Wash., Hugo, Okla., and Pixley, Calif., (Where her mother is buried).
As quoted by one of her beloved friends...
“When we visited Pixley we stayed at a motel in Wasco, Calif. I am a Wasco tribal member.
As she said, ‘amazing.’ It was her wish that she be buried next to her father in Hugo. He is on the Freeman Rolls of the Choctaw Nation there in Hugo. I was with her the one time she visited her father’s grave, and we prayed together.”
We will forever keep Roberta’s loving memory in our hearts, forever. In Jesus name (NahMePiUp), Amen.
Remembrances can be made to the American Cancer Society, in her honor.
Interment arranged and handled by Rogan Funeral Home.
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