Mary Louise Defender Wilson (born October 14, 1930), also known by her Dakotah name Wagmuhawin (Gourd Woman),[1] is a storyteller, traditionalist, historian, scholar and educator of the Dakotah/Hidatsa people and a former director working in health care organizations.

[1] After she moved to New Mexico with her husband, Defender Wilson worked in a variety of administrative jobs with Native American-related government agencies, including family planning and health care, before returning to the reservation in 1976.

[19] She once gave a presentation to NASA scientists at a workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico about climate change on native lands.

[22] North Dakota folklorist Troyd Geist has said of Wilson's storytelling:[7] The stories she tells speak to the human experience.... Those ancient narratives continue today because they are just as relevant now as they were in centuries past -- love and hatred, joy and sadness, unity and separation, peace and violence, truth and the desire to be better human beings.Starting in 1984[2] and continuing for decades, she portrayed her great-grandmother in a program variously titled as "Good Day, Medicine Woman" or "Good Day, a Yanktoni Sioux Woman".

The Saturday morning show titled Oape Wanzi featured tribal legend, culture and history presented in the Wichiyena dialect and then in English.

She also hosted a Thursday morning call-in show titled Oyate Tawoabdeza ("The Public View") where she and her listeners would discuss local, regional, and national issues important to Native Americans.

[32] In 2010, Defender Wilson was one of four Native American women invited to present the 16th annual Joseph Harper Cash Memorial Lecture at the University of South Dakota.

[5] He was one of the original 29 World War II Navajo code talkers,[43][44] having been recruited for the job by the military when he was only 15 years old, although he claimed to be 18 at the time.

[45] Her husband died in December 1999 and posthumously received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2001 honoring the original Navajo code talkers.

[42] One of her two brothers, Dan Defender, was an underwater demolition technician (Navy frogman) during World War II, who later served in the Peace Corps.

He was a member of Advocates for Human and Civil Rights, working for his community on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

[49] After the fire, she moved a few miles away to Porcupine, North Dakota,[8] a community of less than 150 people on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where she still resides as of 2018.