North, Woesha Cloud, 1918-1992

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. Anne Woesha Cloud was born on September 7, 1918, in Wichita, Kansas, to Elizabeth Georgiana (née Bender) and Henry Roe Cloud.[1][2] On her father's side, Cloud was Ho-Chunk and on her mother's, Ojibwe. Cloud obtained an undergraduate degree from Vassar College in 1940. 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.[8][9] After teaching for two years, Cloud married a non-Native, Robert Carver North on August 14, 1943, in Walterboro, South Carolina.
On December 2, 1969, Cloud went to Alcatraz Island to participate in the events unfolding there among Native American people.[8][16] Just over a week later, when the All Tribes Elementary School was founded, she began teaching at the experimental school.[8][17] Along with traditional reading and math courses, students were given classes in Native culture. During the week, North remained on the island but on weekends returned to care for her family.[8] In May 1970, she returned home, but continued commuting to the island two days a week to teach art classes, until the government forced the remaining American Indians to abandon the occupation in June 1971.[18][19]

In the fall of 1970, North joined in the founding of the National Indian Women's Action Corps, an empowerment organization for Native American women. The organizing officers included Dorothy Lonewolf Miller (Blackfoot), president; Grace Thorpe (Sac & Fox), vice president; Stella Leach (Colville-Oglala Lakota), 2nd vice president; North, secretary; Henrietta Whiteman (Cheyenne), treasurer; and Jennie R. Joe (Navajo), sergeant-at-arms.[20] She was also a founder of the American Indian and Alaska Native Caucus for the American Public Health Association.[21] In the early 1970s, she began teaching at San Francisco State College[16] and completed a second master's degree at Stanford in 1972, in art education.[11][12]

In 1975, she and Robert divorced, and North moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.[8] She graduated with her PhD in educational history and philosophy in 1978 from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and then taught in the ethnic studies department at Lincoln. North died on October 10, 1992, in Fresno.