Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin

Native American lawyer and suffragist Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin was a prominent advocate on behalf of Native women and on Native Americans’ position in mainstream America.

As a clerk in her father’s law office, she moved with him to Washington, D.C., to help defend treaty rights for their tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Baldwin as a clerk to the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA). She was also a respected member and active speaker for the Society of American Indians (SAI). The SAI was often critical of the OIA and Federal policies encouraging assimilation, but initially Baldwin believed her position in the OIA allowed her to advocate for Native men and women. She would later change her stance.

In 1912, at the age of 49, after years of working for lawyers, she enrolled at Washington College of Law. She graduated in two years becoming the first woman of color and Native American to earn a law degree from the college. Continuing her political work, Baldwin marched in the 1913 woman suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., and shifted her message from assimilation to extolling the values of Native Americans.