During World War II, Thorpe joined the Women’s Army Corps and was awarded the Bronze Star for her service in the Battle of New Guinea. After the war ended, Thorpe remained in Japan as chief of the Recruitment Section, Department of Army Civilians, at General MacArthur Headquarters in DN Tower 21. Facing the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the building was designated a historical site in 2004.

In the late 1960s Thorpe moved to Arizona and became involved in Native American activism. She worked as the economic development conference coordinator for the National Congress of American Indians.

Alcatraz, a small island in San Francisco Bay, was once a federal prison that held many Native Americans. In 1969, a group of college students claimed the island and hoped to use the land for new buildings. They advocated building a Native American university, cultural center, and museum. Thorpe joined the occupation, managing publicity. After 19 months, the government forced the activists to leave. Their occupation raised public awareness and political action for Native American issues.

Thorpe next turned to public policy, serving in many roles. She worked as a legislative assistant with the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs and as a task force program and planning analyst for the American Indian Policy Review Commission. Here she meets President Gerald Ford at the White House.

Returning home to Oklahoma in 1983, Thorpe served as a tribal judge and the Sac and Fox health commissioner. She organized her community to oppose storing dangerous nuclear waste on their land. Other tribes invited her to help their own anti-nuclear protests. She continued to advocate in leadership roles in the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans and the Native American Affairs Council of Greenpeace.

In 1992 the U.S Department of Energy needed land to store nuclear waste; radioactive material that can cause cancer. They asked every state for acreage, and each one rejected them. The agency was willing to pay millions of dollars for land, which attracted the interest of 17 Native American tribes. The tribes joined a study to see if it would be possible to store the waste on their land. Today, a nuclear power plant adjacent to the Prarie Island Indian Community still serves as a storage site.

When Thorpe learned her tribe, the Sac and Fox Nation, was considering taking on the storage of poisonous nuclear waste, she took action. Three decades after participating in the occupation of Alcatraz to protest the U.S government's history of seizing indigenous lands, she began a new fight for environmental justice. She led door-to-door petitioning, educating her neighbors about the dangers of nuclear radiation. Due to her efforts, the Sac and Fox Nation voted 70-5 to withdraw from the study.

Thorpe didn't stop there. In 1994 she traveled the country promoting nuclear-free zones; co-founding the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans. Her work persuaded 14 tribes to say no to nuclear waste. Over time more than 70 tribes joined her coalition.

Grace Thorpe blazed her own trail through history, from WWII to her environmental activism. Tenacity ran in her family. She was a child of Jim Thorpe, the most accomplished athlete of the early 20th c. In 1983, the family won a 70 year fight to have Jim Thorpe's 1912 Olympic gold medals reinstated, after being revoked over a technicality. The home where Grace was born in 1921 is now a museum dedicated to her father. Grace passed away in 2008. This photo is signed ‘To my little girl Grace.”

This Guide comes to you from the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). We are one museum with two locations; the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The DC museum has offered live, online webcasts since its spectacular opening ceremony on the National Mall in 2004. You can tune-in to the latest events from both locations, and explore two decades of past events, by visiting our library through the link below.

The National Museum of the American Indian is multi-local. In New York City you'll find the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center, at the tip of Southern Manhattan, located in the historic Beaux-Arts style Alexander Hamilton US Custom House, at One Bowling Green. The Heye Center hosts exhibitions, research, educational activities, performing arts, and programs for all ages.

The National Museum of the American Indian’s final location is The Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, MD; home to the museum's collections, conservation, repatriation, digital imaging programs, and research facilities. The facility also hosts off-site outreach efforts, often referred to as the "fourth museum," including websites, traveling exhibitions, and community programs.