Elizabeth Roe Cloud was the 1950 Oregon Mother of the Year, and the first Oregonian to be recognized as the National Mother of the Year®. Elizabeth was born on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota and attended the Hampton Institute in Virginia. After graduating, she became a teacher for the Indian Service in Montana and a member of the Society of American Indians, where she met her husband, Henry Roe Cloud. Elizabeth and Henry started a high school for Native young men called the American Indian Institute while raising their four daughters who all graduated from college. Elizabeth worked at the school and traveled across the country speaking to various groups about Native Americans. Henry went to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Umatilla Reservation where Elizabeth was very active in women’s groups including the Indian Welfare Committee which she chaired. She was appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to serve on the National Child Welfare Committee and served as chair of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs Indian Affairs Division.
