She has received numerous honors and awards for her activism on behalf of Native Americans and was inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.

Mary Jane Evans was born in 1933 in Rampart, in the United States Territory of Alaska, to Sally (née Woods, later Hudson) and Thomas George Evans, Jr.[2][3] She was born into a subsistence life on the Yukon River, living with her family in tents in the winter during trapping season, fishing to survive in the summers.

Provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) for the first time gave indigenous villages both land and capital to invest in education.

[21] Fate became president of the Rampart Village Corporation, established in 1971 as one of those regional entities[13] and worked to ensure that indigenous people enrolled to share in the settlement.

[22] Fate was one of the founders of the North American Indian Women's Association (NAIWA) which formed in 1970 in Fort Collins, Colorado.

[26] Concern over the health of Native Alaskans was also an issue for Fate, and in the 1970s, she both spoke at conferences regarding the problems[27] and with Nancy Murkowski and others founded a Breast Cancer Detection Center in Fairbanks in 1975.

In addition, the program evaluated social service availability to deal with these types of issues, including assessment of the facilities and qualifications required for caregivers.

The commission's purpose, was to establish national scientific research policy for the Arctic region, which was sensitive to residents and natural resources.

In 2003, she was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Census Advisory Committee on American Indian and Alaska Native Populations.