Sorted by date Results 26 - 49 of 49
Known as one of the Five Moons, celebrated ballerina Marjorie Louise Tallchief (Osage descent) was the younger sister of acclaimed ballerina, Maria Tallchief. Marjorie was born in Denver, Colorado but grew up in Fairfax, Oklahoma, along with her siblings, including her brother, Gerald. The family moved to Los Angeles to further the girls' ballet training. There, Marjorie studied under Ernest Belcher, teacher and dance director, whose school of dance in 1942 was considered the...
Winner, National and International Boxing Titles Model, CoverGirl Cosmetics Community Activist Mary Spencer, an Ojibway athlete originally from the Cape Croker First Nation began her boxing career at age 17. Although she was born in Wiarton, Ontario and lived there for a time, she also lived in Big Trout Lake, Owen Sound and Detroit before settling in Windsor, Ontario. She attended Roseville Public School where she played volleyball and soccer and was also a track and field...
Born to Mi'kmaq parents Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi in a small Indian village in Nova Scotia, Canada, Anna Mae Pictou was the third of four children. Her father disappeared before she was born, leaving Mary Ellen and her children to live in poverty. Even so, Anna Mae attended school on the Mi'kmaq Reserve and did well in her studies. Mary Ellen married again (1949), this time to Mi'kmaq traditionalist Noel Sapier, a migrant farmer, as were many other Mi'kmaq....
Born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1893, Elizabeth (Bessie) Coleman was the 10th of 13 children. Her parents, George (Cherokee heritage) and Susan Coleman (African-American heritage) were sharecroppers. When she was two years old, the family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, and lived there until Bessie was 23 years old. Her father left Texas where he found the racial climate unbearable for people of color and returned to Oklahoma-known then as Indian Country-where he hoped to find better o...
Miss Navajo Nation 1997-1998 *Native American Music Awards Best Female Artist *Advocate for victims of domestic violence Radmilla Cody was born on the rural Navajo Reservation. She was reared by her Navajo, maternal grandmother, Dorothy, who taught her to speak the Navajo language. Even though Dorothy discouraged her granddaughter from speaking English, Radmilla became fluent in both languages. Grandmother Dorothy also taught her to card and spin wool. Cody always wanted to...
"Joy Harjo...transforms personal and collective bitterness to beauty, fragmentation to wholeness, and trauma to healing." -Alicia Ostiker, Chancellor, Academy of American Poets Multi-talented artist Joy Harjo is considered as pivotal in the artistic Native American Renaissance during the latter half of the 20th Century. Born Joy Foster in Tulsa, Oklahoma she took her paternal grandmother's surname when she enrolled in the Muscogee (Mvskoke/Creek ) Nation. She discovered and de...
Madonna Thunderhawk is a member of the Oohenumpa Band of the Cheyenne River Sioux. Reared within the restrictive environment of the boarding school era (1860-1978), she was an early advocate of the Red Power Movement which was part of the 1950s-1970s era of U.S. civil rights activism and has participated in every Native American struggle of the modern era. She is an original member and spokesperson of the American Indian Movement (AIM, organized in 1968) and a founder and...
"My burden and goal is to reach the people in your community who are lost to addiction or abuse."-Yvonne Saint Germaine By her own account, prior to July 26, 2006, seven-time Aboriginal Gospel Award winner, Yvonne Saint Germaine, led a life that was "dark, lonely, abused, and suicidal". Her addictions included alcohol, prescriptions pills, and crack cocaine. Her turning point, she states on her website, came when "demons began revealing themselves in my home." Yvonne knew...
In the Cherokee society of her day, Nanyehi (One who goes about) was known in the English language as Nancy Ward. There are seven clans of the Cherokee: Wolf, Bird, Deer, Long Hair, Blue, Wild Potato, and Red Paint. Members are considered as brothers and sisters and may not marry within their clans. Because the society is matrilineal, clan membership is attained through the mother, and women are the traditional heads of households. According to the SmithDRays Nancy Ward page,...
Recipient, Congressional Gold Medal In 1942 when the United States faced a critical shortage of pilots during World II, U.S. war leaders instituted a program that was, at the time, quite radical. To free male pilots for overseas combat duty, they instituted the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Over 1,100 in total, all were civilian volunteers receiving no military benefits such as back pay or death insurance. Shortly after graduating from high school, Ola Mildred...
Born in Bonners Ferry, Idaho April 26, 1936 Amelia "Amy" Trice was the daughter of Helen and Baptiste Cutsack. She attended the Kootenai (KOOT-nee) Tribal School, Chemewa Indian School, and Bonners Ferry Public School. Although she contracted tuberculosis during her childhood and required periodic sanitarium treatment, she completed her education, and when she was only 20, she served as secretary on the Tribal Council. She married Xavier Aitken in 1954. The couple had six...
Named one of the Top Fifty Women in Oklahoma Was Founder and President, Indigenous Democratic Network Attorney and member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Kalyn Free founded and was president of the Indigenous Democratic Network, known throughout Indian Country as INDN's List, the only political organization that recruited, trained and funded American Indian candidates and staff and mobilized the Indian vote throughout America. It was the only political organization that...
• Placed herself on the frontline to save her village • Focus of documentary movie, Kivalina v. Exxon Colleen Swan was born and reared in Kivalina, Alaska a largely Inupiat community. She is a Kivalina City Council member, serves on the Northwest Arctic Borough Economic Development Commission and for 18 years was Tribal administrator. She is a member of the federally recognized Alaska Native Village of Kivalina whose population numbered only 374 persons according to the 201...
Viola Jimulla (1878–1966) was the Chief of the Prescott Yavapai tribe. She became Chief when her husband, who was also a Chief of the tribe, died in an accident in 1940. She remained chief until her death. She was known for improving living conditions, and for her work with the Presbyterian Church. Biography Viola Jimulla was born in 1878 on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. She was named Sica-tuva, "Born Quickly," by her parents, Who-wah, "Singing Cricket" and K...
Otakuye Conroy-Ben (Oglala Sioux) is the oldest of five children born to Vina and Arlo Conroy, and is originally from Porcupine, South Dakota. Located in Shannon County, the third poorest county in the United States. It is where Dr. Conroy-Ben lived for the first five years of her life in a small one-room house that had electricity but no indoor plumbing. Her Lakota name, Titakuye Ota Win (Many Relatives Woman) was given her by her grandmother. Because her parents were among...
Hopi tribe member, Diane Humetewa (hoo-MEE-tee-wah) was born and reared in Arizona and started school on the Hualapai Reservation. Her father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and often took Diane with him as he traveled throughout Indian country. The trips exposed young Diane to Arizona's tribes at an early age. Although she attended public high school at a time when many Indian children were sent to boarding schools far from their reservations, her ties to her family...
Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon (near what is now Auriesville, New York) of an Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father, Kateri was orphaned at four years of age when smallpox took the lives of her parents and brother, left her badly scarred, and with extremely poor eyesight. Following the epidemic, her entire village was burned. Adopted by an uncle, Kateri moved with her new family to the community of Kahnawake. For the first time, she saw Jesuit priests--men the people...
Many little girls wish to grow up to be fashion models, but how many aspire to sit for hours as the model for a historical figure on a coin? Randy'L He-Dow Teton (Shoshone-Bannock/Cree) did just that when she was chosen as the depiction of Sacagawea, the legendary guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Born in southeastern Idaho in the Lincoln Creek district of the Fort Hall Reservation, she is the daughter of Randy Leo Teton and Bonnie C....
The daughter of sharecroppers Johnson and Gaynell Jacobs, Judy Jacobs (Lumbee Tribe) was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, and is the youngest of twelve children. Her family, devout Christians, struggled financially. Judy began singing in church at age six, and at eight, underwent a spiritual conversion experience. Her parents recognized her talents and encouraged her toward a music career. She and her sisters formed the gospel singing group, The Jacobs Sisters. She attended...
As the 1800s drew to an end, tribal women began to enter the armed forces as nurses. In 1898, the Daughters of the American Revolution Hospital Corps contracted four Native American Indian Catholic nuns as nurses to serve in the Spanish-American War. Beginning in the spring of 1898 and lasting fewer than four months, it was the first war involving the United States in which nurses were assigned as a special, quasi-military unit. All four Native American nurses were members of...
A great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief, one of the West's legendary leaders, Elouise Cobell (Yellow Bird Woman) was born into the heritage of Blackfeet activism. She graduated from Great Falls Business College and attended Montana State University. An accountant who was active in community development, Cobell was also involved in many other organizations that benefited Native Indian people. Cobell never planned to be a banker, but when the residents of Browning, Montana...
Born in Candle, Alaska, Laura Beltz Wright was a member of the Eskimo Scouts, also known as the Tundra Army and the Alaska Territorial Guard (ATG). The units were created in 1942 during WWII out of the United States’ concern over enemy invasion of the territory of Alaska. They patrolled 5,000 miles of Aleutian coastline and 200,000 miles of tundra to defend Alaska and provide intelligence on any enemy operations. The Scouts also rescued downed US airmen. Most women served a...
Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008) Aerospace Pioneer The only Native American Indian female member of a “think tank” to design manned orbital space system concepts, Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee) was born in 1908 near Park Hill, a small Oklahoma town. A gifted child, she was taught early that education was a valuable resource, and that it was as important for girls as for boys. To receive the best opportunities for an Indian youngster of her era, Mary was sent to live with her gra...
One of the twentieth century’s most influential Native Americans in politics, Comanche social activist LaDonna Vita Tabbytite Harris was born February 15, 1931 in Temple, Oklahoma on a Comanche allotment to William Crawford who was of European descent, and Lilly Tabbytite. Her parents separated shortly after her birth and LaDonna was reared in Indian Country during the Great Depression by maternal grandparents John and Wick-kie Tabbytite on a farm near tiny Walters, O...
