Gladys Ray walked onto the stage. She moved with a silent dignity: her eyes drooping with age, but filled with a youthful enthusiasm. Her skeletal legs carried the heritage of the Ojibwe people. On Martin Luther King Day, while most Americans honored the famous members of the African-American community, about 700 people crammed into the Fargo Theatre to watch Ray receive an award from Fargo’s Human Relations Commission. She held up a multi-colored circle, painted on a white sheet of cardboard, which she had divided into four equal sections. “The power of the medicine wheel is equality,” said Gladys Ray. “The four colors—black, white, yellow, and red—represent the great races of man. My vision is that our community can recognize and honor their differences.”
     Born and raised among the Ojibwe people, Gladys Ray has become a shining representative of her traditional culture. Ray’s grandparents exposed her to the Ojibwe language, practices, legends, and religion, passing along a legacy that would persist into the 21st century. She has put these ideas into practice. She transformed Fargo, N.D., into a stronger community, helping construct the Indian Parent Committee, a local health program, and the Indian Center, which made her aware of the poverty and discrimination against the Native-American people. She has become an outspoken civil rights advocate.
      One disturbing memory focused the importance of negative stereotypes for Ray. She wanted to visit an old friend on the White Earth Reservation, home of the Mississippi band of the Ojibwe people. She loaded her family into the truck. “We’re in Indian country now,” she said, once they crossed the reservation line. “My old stomping grounds. I grew up here.” The three children scrambled for the window, struggling for a glimpse of the “Indians.” They searched for the painted faces, seeking that famous image: the savage Indian, dressed in leather pants and a feathered headdress, prancing through the plains on a courageous horse. Ray’s three-year-old boy started to look frightened. “The Indians don’t come out of the woods until night, do they, Dad?” he said. “By that time, we'll be home, won’t we?”
      “Here is my own child, being afraid of Indians,” she said. “He had not been to school, because he was only three years old. He learned it from television. In his mind, Indians were people on the warpath.” This experience would be a helpful reminder during her entire career. Because she was raised by her grandparents, she understood the truth about her culture. Yet the community had attempted to destroy the Ojibwe heritage.
      Missionaries lured them into church with promises of food and clothing. The government forced children into boarding school. “When people were sent away to the classroom, they discouraged the use of the language,” she said. “So later generations didn’t teach their children. But along with it went the culture. Because you can’t do the beliefs, ceremonies, legends, and songs without the language.” Ray is one of the last native speakers for her tribe: a woman raised with Ojibwe, complete with the cultural background to understand centuries upon centuries of unwritten poetry. She carries around the remaining threads of a fading oral tradition.
      Around 1960, after her children had grown a little older, she helped conduct a survey for Fargo’s Community Planning and Development department. She located Native-Americans living in the Fargo area, where she conducted interviews at homes, questioned people on the streets, and visited the local colleges. She focused on the common list of problems: education, health, crime, housing, and poverty. But while she talked with the people, she noticed they inherited certain skills from their culture. “I’d go to their house and fill out my little forms,” she said. “I would discover someone good at beading, dancing, or singing. They might not have any money, but they have a certain amount of talent.”
      She organized these people into a club, which strengthened the resolve of the community. They held meetings in local churches and homes. Based on her findings about their living conditions, they decided to develop an Indian Center to help out those with financial difficulties. Entire families did not have enough food, health care, or clothing. So people donated essential products and canned goods, such as a carton of milk, a loaf of bread, or a pound of butter, which they distributed to those in need. Through donations from St. John’s Hospital and the United Way, they managed to transform an abandoned school into an office building. They started to provide several important services. They organized multicultural events, provided money for local art shows, and alerted people to growing problems in the Indian community.
      Because of the pressures of family life, she quit her job at the Indian Center in 1972, but she remained active in related activities. A few years later, she used a federal education grant to form the Indian Parent Committee in Fargo, N. D. They focused on increasing awareness of stereotypes, starting with the classroom textbooks. “That was a monumental project,” she said. “But I had some readers that helped me out. I tried to come up with something positive. You can’t go too negative, or you won’t get your foot in the door.” She helped bring artwork into the community from local tribes. She organized a health program for poverty-stricken Native-Americans. “She is always helping,” said Bernice Grandbois, director of Native-American Affairs at Concordia College. “She never asks for anything back.”
      After she received the civil rights award, Gladys Ray received another important honor. They recognized her lifetime achievements at the Concordia College Powwow. Unlike in Western culture, where young Americans throw their families into nursing homes, Native-Americans respect their elders like sacred treasures. During the same ceremony, two young women followed in her footsteps. Her granddaughters had been chosen to be the head dancers. Ray spoke of the continuity of the tradition: “I train the girls in the right behavior. There are lots of rules to follow. You need to be respectful at the powwow. It makes you feel good to watch the songs and dances get passed down.”