Te Ata (actress)

Mary Frances Thompson Fisher (December 3, 1895 – October 25, 1995), best known as Te Ata, was an actress and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation known for telling Native American stories.

[5] Davis encouraged Te Ata to use Native American stories as the basis for her senior performance at Oklahoma College for Women.

[6] Te Ata made her debut as an artist during her senior year of college performing songs and stories from several different tribes.

Upon graduation, Te Ata was offered a part in a traveling Chautauqua circuit by Thurlow Lieurance, who had been in the audience at her senior performance.

[7] The tour gave Te Ata an opportunity to travel across the United States and fostered her talents as a performer.

[7] In 1928, while living in New York City, she shared an apartment with Chickasaw educator and performer Mary Stone McLendon.

[12] In addition to traveling across the United States, Te Ata visited Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, England, Peru, Guatemala, Canada, and Mexico.

Te Ata had many notable friends including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Jim Thorpe (Sac & Fox), and Woody Crumbo (Citizen Potawatomi).

[14][15] Chickasaw playwright JudyLee Oliva wrote a play based on her life, entitled Te Ata, which won the Five Civilized Tribes' Best American Indian Musical Award in 2000.

[16] It premiered at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in 2006 and was performed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in 2012.

[16][17] In 2012, Te Ata was portrayed by actress Kumiko Konishi in the film Hyde Park on Hudson, which centered on the 1939 meeting of Franklin D. Roosevelt and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England; in the film, Te Ata performs for the king and queen as she did in 1939.

The Oklahoma Historical Society notes that her performances are preserved in a film, "God's Drum" (circa 1971), and on a video recording of a storytelling festival sponsored by the Oklahoma City Arts Council, declaring "Te Ata Fisher's influence on the appreciation of Native traditions and on the art of storytelling is an enduring legacy.