Mae Timbimboo Parry (May 15, 1919March 20, 2007) was a storyteller for the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation of Utah, activist, and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She is known for her recounting of the Bear River Massacre and for her work with the Shoshone Nation and the state of Utah, as well as for lobbying for legislation that would protect the culture and land-rights of Native Americans. For her work, Parry has received multiple awards.
Early life
Mae Timbimboo Parry was born on May 15, 1919, in Washakie, Utah to her parents Moroni and Amy Hewchoo Timbimboo. Although not an Indian Reservation, at the time of her birth and growing up years, Washakie was home to a significant population of Northwestern Shoshone. Even though the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone believed this land to be theirs, the title to the land belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and would remain that way for decades. She grew up as a middle child in a family of six girls and three boys, though only six of the children would survive past infancy. When she was eight years old, Mae was enrolled with her two older sisters for three years at Sherman Institute, an Indian Boarding School in Riverside, California. She would later remark that she had a positive experience at the boarding school and would even excel making the honor roll. While at the boarding school, she was even able to travel home occasionally. When Parry returned to Washakie, she would attend the local school until the eighth grade when she began high school in Garland, Utah at Bear River High School. When she finished her time there, she was the first Native American to graduate from that school. She would later attend the LDS Business College in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Family life
During her time at LDS Business College in 1938, Mae married her childhood friend, Grant Parry, after the fashion of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Salt Lake Temple and remained together for 68 years until her passing. Together, the couple would raise five children: two boys and three girls. At the time of her death, she would be a grandmother to sixteen, a great-grandmother to twenty-seven, and even have a great-great-granddaughter. One grandson, Darren Parry, would go on to become the Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and would continue his grandmother's advocacy for greater Native American historical awareness. Darren Parry features his grandmother in his book, The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. He attended an unveiling of a painting from Chief Sagwich's perspective that hangs in the Hutchings Museum in Lehi, Utah. In her later years, she would develop Parkinson's disease; she died in Clearfield, Utah at the age of 87.