The American environmentalist and Native rights activist Grace Francis Thorpe served with the Women’s Army Corps and received a Bronze Star Medal for her service as a Corporal in the New Guinea campaign.
She began her environmental activism in 1992 when she learned from a Daily Oklahoman article that her Sac and Fox tribe had accepted a federal grant to study the placement of radioactive waste on tribal land.
The Sac and Fox, as well as sixteen other Native American tribes, accepted the grant, believing that the money would come without strings attached and would help alleviate their high unemployment.
Her father was a well-known American football player and Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. The Grace F. Thorpe Collection is held by the National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center.
Was Grace Thorpe related to Jim Thorpe?
Yes, Grace Thorpe is related to Jim Thorpe because he is her father. She was born on December 10, 1921, to her parents James (Jim) Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox), and Iva Margaret Miller. Her tribal heritage included Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Sac and Fox, and Menominee ancestry, and she was a direct descendant of Sac and Fox chief Black Hawk.
She was born in Yale, Oklahoma in the only house her father ever owned which is now a museum, it is fondly known as the “Jim Thorpe House” and can be visited by tourists year-round.
Grace was the youngest of four; her oldest sister Gail Margaret was born in 1917, her brother James in 1918, and her sister Charlotte Marie in 1919. Her brother James died from polio before reaching adolescence.
She then joined the Native American Activists’ occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in 1969 and 1970.
She served as a Congressional Intern for Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota in 1974. While in Washington, she also served as a legislative assistant for the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs.
Grace Thorpe graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Antioch School of Law, and went on to become a tribal district court judge.
In 1999, she received a Nuclear-Free Future Award for opposing storing toxic and radioactive waste on indigenous land.
Source: nflfaqs.com
