Mary Jane Fate

Mary Jane Fate
Fate in 2014
Born	Mary Jane Evans (1933-09-04)September 4, 1933 Rampart, Territory of Alaska
Died	April 10, 2020(2020-04-10) (aged 86) Fairbanks, Alaska
Nationality	American
Occupation	Native American activist
Years active	1962–2020
Spouse	Hugh Fate ​ (m. 1954)​
Children	3
Relatives	Dan Sullivan (son-in-law)

Mary Jane Fate (née Evans; September 4, 1933 — April 10, 2020)^[1] was a Koyukon Athabascan activist. She was a founding member of the Fairbanks Native Association and the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and worked as a lobbyist for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. She co-founded the Tundra Times newspaper and served as a director of the corporate board for Alaska Airlines for over two decades. She served as co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives between 1988 and 1989, the first woman to serve in the capacity, and was the third president and a founding member of the North American Indian Women's Association. Fate has served on various commissions and national studies of issues which affect indigenous people. She was the project manager of a study of women and disability, served as the only indigenous member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and was a member of U.S. Census Advisory Committee on indigenous populations. She has received numerous honors and awards for her activism on behalf of Native Americans and was inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.

Early life

Mary Jane Evans was born in 1933 in

After her marriage, Fate returned to work at Wien Alaska Airlines.[6] Fate and her husband were part of the founding members of the Fairbanks Native Association which organized in 1962 and 1963.^[10][11] Around the same time, she became involved in the Tundra Times, the first news organization written by and for Native Alaskans, which served not only to inform the community of important issues throughout the state, but the state's congressional leaders of those issues the indigenous population felt were imperative. Fate was on the executive board of the paper and also served as the secretary to the board for the newspaper.^[12]

Recognizing the limited educational opportunities for Native Alaskans, Fate became involved in the Fairbanks Native Association's education committee ^[10][13] in 1962. She worked on a six-year study of the educational system to evaluate the reasons why education was substandard in Alaska. Fate testified at a state congressional hearing on their findings, showing that the majority of rural students either attended no high school or attended at inadequate facilities located long distances from their homes.^[14] The committee pressed for dormitories to be built for student housing in urban areas to enable students from rural areas to attend high schools.^[15] She served on the executive committee of the Native Alaskan Village for the Alaska 67 Centennial Exposition^[16] and worked on the Hospital Foundation of Fairbanks,^[17] before becoming involved in the Alaska Native claims settlement. Provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) for the first time gave indigenous villages both land and capital to invest in education.^[10] The settlement awarded 44 million acres of land and $962.5 million to allow Native Alaskans to establish twelve regional corporations to manage the assets.^[18] Fate became president of the Rampart Village Corporation, established in 1971 as one of those regional entities^[10] and worked to ensure that indigenous people enrolled to share in the settlement.^[19]

Fate was one of the founders of the

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