Woesha Cloud North

Woesha Cloud North (September 7, 1918, in Ho-Chunk-Ojibwe – October 10, 1992) was an American artist, teacher, and activist. She taught in the Palo Alto Public schools from 1961 to 1969 and then assisted in running the school during the Occupation of Alcatraz. From the early 1970s, she began to teach at the university level, teaching art at San Francisco State College, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and California State University, Fresno. Throughout her life, she was active in women's organizations and organizations focused on indigenous people. Posthumously, her service was honored with an induction into Stanford's Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame in 1995. Early life and education Anne Woesha Cloud was born on September 7, 1918, in Wichita, Kansas, to Elizabeth Georgiana (née Bender) and Henry Roe Cloud. On her father's side, Cloud was Ho-Chunk and on her mother's, Ojibwe. Her father was a teacher who founded the American Indian Institute of Wichita, and later was the superintendent of the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Her mother was a teacher and taught at the Institute, managed the finances, acted as matron, and advised on the school administration. Cloud was the couple's second daughter, and she had an older sister, Elizabeth Marion (born 1917), and three younger siblings, Lillian Alberta (born 1920), Ramona Clark (born 1922) and Henry Jr. (1926–1929). When her brother died, they adopted Jay Hunter, according to Ho-Chunk custom. Her parents were strong advocates of higher education and Cloud obtained an undergraduate degree from Vassar College in 1940. Career After her graduation, Cloud worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, teaching as an apprentice at the Phoenix Indian School, before being sent to teach as an arts and crafts instructor on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After teaching for two years, Cloud married a non-Native, Robert Carver North on August 14, 1943, in Walterboro, South Carolina. Robert served in the U.S. Army during World War II and participated in the Battle of Saipan. While he was away, North completed a master's degree in painting and fine arts under L. C. Mitchell at Ohio University in 1944 and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the late 1940s they had moved to California and both were studying at Stanford University. Robert became a professor at Stanford and North devoted time to raising their five children. Her daughter, Renya K.