Mary Belvin "Laughing Dove" Wade (November 29, 1951 – April 18, 2003) was a Native American (Monacan Indian Nation) community organizer and activist. [1] [2] [3]
Wade was born in Huntington, West Virginia in 1951. In 1981, she married Al Wade.
Wade worked as a receptionist and legal assistant at a law firm in Richmond, Virginia. During her adulthood, she learned of her Monacan Indian heritage. She later became involved with Virginia Native American organizations and causes and was closely associated with Thomasina Jordan.
In 1995, Governor George Allen appointed Wade as a member of the Virginia Council on Indians and she was reappointed to her seat three years later by Governor Jim Gilmore, serving as the council's secretary. [1]
Wade's work included helping to establish November as American Indian Month in Virginia, and lobbying for a successful change to state law which eliminated the fee for American Indians to correct inaccurate racial designations on their birth certificates and other official documents.
In 2001, Wade was a founder and the first president of the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life (VITAL), a political action committee established to support the efforts of Virginia's tribes in influencing members of the Virginia General Assembly and U.S. Congress. [4]
Wade was also an advocate for federal recognition of the eight tribal nations in Virginia. [1]
Wade died in 2003 at the age of 51. [5] In 2005, Wade was named to the Virginia Women in History by the Library of Virginia. [1] [6]
State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established under assorted state government laws for varying purposes or by governor's executive orders. State recognition does not dictate whether or not they are recognized as Native American tribes by continually existing tribal nations.
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is a Native American reservation occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. At roughly 6,952,960 acres, it is the second-largest reservation in area after the Navajo, exceeding that of eight U.S. states. The seat of government is located in Durant, Oklahoma.
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the Indigenous peoples whose tribal nations historically or currently are based in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
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Sarah Deer is a Native American lawyer, and a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies and Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. She was a 2014 MacArthur fellow and has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2019.
Harry James Watson "Jimmy" Belvin was a Native American educator who served as an Oklahoma State Representative and Senator. He was the first elected principal chief of any of the Five Civilized Tribes in the 20th century, and the longest serving principal chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He saw his tribe through termination, restoration, and a rebirth of Native Pride. He was a polarizing leader, seen by some as a semi-dictator who held onto the office of principal chief and used his power to advocate for complete assimilation into the dominant society, suppressing Choctaw traditions, language and ceremonial practices as undesirable remnants of an unrefined history. To others, he was a well-liked, populist leader, who went door-to-door talking with tribe members, informing them on issues, and trying to develop the means the alleviate the poverty and unemployment they faced.
Karenne Wood was a member of the Monacan Indian tribe who was known for her poetry and for her work in tribal history. She served as the director of the Virginia Indian Programs at Virginia Humanities, in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. She directed a tribal history project for the Monacan Nation, conducted research at the National Museum of the American Indian, and served on the National Congress of American Indians' Repatriation Commission. In 2015, she was named one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History".
Sharon Rebecca Bryant was an American tribal politician who served as the Chief of the Monacan Indian Nation from 2011 until her death in 2015. She was the first woman to hold the position of Chief of the Monacan Indian Nation, a state-recognized tribe based in the Bear Mountain region of Amherst County, Virginia. Bryant, who was elected chief in 2011, led the ongoing efforts to win federal recognition for the Monacans.
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