Henry Roe Cloud: A Granddaughter’s Native Feminist Biographical Account

Henry Roe Cloud (c. 1884–1950), a Winnebago Indian, was my grandfather. The following essay is my attempt to help to fill a gap in history. Even though he has been hailed as the most important Native American policy-maker of the early part of the twentieth century, only one article has been published and one book is soon to be published about him.¹ First, I will discuss a Native feminist approach to biography, which includes highlighting Native agency and perspectives, placing tribal sovereignty and interlocking oppressions at the center of one’s analysis, respecting a Native family’s right to privacy, and putting one’s reflections as both an academic and a descendant in the text, linking together biography and ethnography. Second, I will analyze my grandfather’s life and contributions as an intellectual, a policy-maker, and an educator using a Native and gendered lens.

A Native Feminist Biography

My experience researching and writing about my grandfather has taught me some important methodological lessons about biography from a Native and gendered perspective. The first lesson I learned was that archival material related to Native families can include information not appropriate for public consumption.² Indeed, individuals can choose to place material in archives that Native family members wish were not in the public domain. For example, upon a person’s death, they often donate letters to archives without reading them or discussing with other family members their decision to give the letters away. After my father’s death, for example, his second wife (not my mother) donated to Yale University the letters of my mother’s parents. She did this without consulting my siblings or me. We would have appreciated her discussing this matter with us before choosing to donate the letters. Because archival information can contain material that is sensitive, it is essential to consult with the family and determine what information can be written about. Respecting a Native family’s wishes is fundamental to protecting their right to privacy. This respect is a crucial ethical principle to follow, and, consequently, a Native methodological concern.³ Indeed, rather than viewing Native peoples’ lives as “data” to be used to produce theory by outside researchers, we as indigenous peoples are demanding that our own needs, insights, and research agendas be incorporated into the development and publication of any study, including Native biography.⁴ I occupy a complicated position as both an “insider” and an “outsider,” since I am an academic and Henry Roe Cloud’s granddaughter.⁵ My dual social position encourages me to weave my reflections throughout the text from these two distinct points of view. In this way, I bring together biography and ethnography.

Another methodological lesson I learned was the value of using intersectional analysis when analyzing the primary and secondary documents. Discussing the linkage between various oppressions, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and colonialism, encourages us not to make the mistake of emphasizing one kind of exclusion over another. Placing these intersecting oppressions and tribal sovereignty at the center of one’s analysis is a move toward developing a Native feminist awareness.⁶ Certainly, the first step toward decolonizing our ancestral histories is naming experiences as colonial.⁷ A final methodological lesson was the significance of highlighting our Native ancestors’ agency as well as perspectives and positions. These indigenous perspectives of the past can help us reconstruct a Native-centric history as well as empower us as a people.⁸ All of these methodological concerns explain why I chose to call my biographical account of a Native man, my grandfather, a Native feminist approach. In the following, I used these methodological approaches to construct a biographical account of my grandfather’s life and contributions.

Henry Roe Cloud’s Life and Contributions

Henry Roe Cloud was a pivotal activist, policy-maker, and intellectual in the early twentieth century. A major intellectual contribution was his argument that Native Americans should attend college. As a result, he founded and ran the very first college preparatory school for Indian youth, a revolutionary educational approach, since during...