BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Gladys Ray was an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe, and she grew up on the White Earth Reservation. She moved to Fargo in 1954 after serving in the Women's Army Corps. As a parent, she became involved in visiting schools to teach about Indian culture. She participated in the establishment of the Fargo-Moorhead Indian Center in 1971, thus fulfilling her goal of creating a place where American Indians could seek community support. She also helped organize Project Bridge, an organization through which she helped the Fargo Schools to review portrayals of Indians in their History curriculum.  She passed away in February 2006, after serving for many years as a community leader and educator on issues of social justice. 

This interview details her extensive work in the Fargo-Moorhead community on behalf of education, her attempts to advance the quality of life available to Native Americans, and how her life has been shaped by her strong hold on her ethnicity.

Ms. Ray was interviewed on April 22, 2004 by Keith Johnson, Jorrie Rarick, and Kim Harper.

 

 

SAMPLES FROM THE INTERVIEW

ON BEING A MINORITY:

"I was almost always the only American Indian in the group. The Women’s Army Corps were smaller groups anyway and I was definitely always the one and only. And it appeared an advantage for me, I think for minority people it’s found that if you’re not a threat to anybody you can get along pretty good. But if you are a larger group of people then you become a threat."

ON THE IMPACT OF HER EARLY INVOLVEMENT:

"I think it was a good learning experience ‘cause there I read some of the statistics that were pretty earth-shaking to me, at the condition that the American Indian people were in. You know, the poverty, although I lived in poverty all my life, I didn’t know anything else existed. You know, I guess, how much more poverty there was. The high infant mortality rate for the Indian people compared to the rest of the people. The high incidence of suicide, especially among the young people, the high unemployment rate… We were high on all the wrong things. And they were low on all, and there was a high drop out rate. There was a low life expectancy, among the American Indian, then all the rest of them. All these statistics put together really made me think, you know, there must be, it made you feel like you had to do something about it."

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

LISTEN TO INTERVIEW