Elaine M. Stately; Indian Movement Co-Founder

Elaine M. Stately, 57, an Indian activist and co-founder of the American Indian Movement. Stately was chairwoman of the Minneapolis American Indian Center for several years and worked for the city of Minneapolis as a liaison with the Indian community. She had preached the value of education even as she struggled to raise a family by herself on welfare, and while four of her children were still at home, received her high school equivalency degree. She attended the University of Minnesota before starting work in Minneapolis. Rebecca Stately, a daughter, said she remembers tagging along as a little girl with her mother in July, 1968, to the first gathering of the Concerned Indian Americans, an activist group that later changed its name to the American Indian Movement. In White Earth, Minn., on April 27 of cancer.