Ada Deer was born on August 7th, 1935 and grew up on the Menominee Reservation in northern Wisconsin. In l953, she won the tribal college scholarship and attended the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a B.A. in social work in 1957. She went on to receive a master's degree from Columbia University in 1961. Deer spent two years as a social worker in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York City, then worked for three years as the director of the Edward F. Waite Community Center in Minneapolis. She also worked as a coordinator of community services for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Minneapolis. In 1969, she accepted a position as the Director of the Upward Bound program for minority students at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. In 1970, she moved to Madison to attend law school.
In part through her mother, Constance Deer, an outspoken opponent of termination, Ada Deer, during her year at Superior, became aware of the hardships suffered by the Menominees after the termination of reservation status in 1961, and became an activist for Menominee rights. Deer and members of her family hired Joseph Preloznik, a Madison attorney, and Wisconsin Judicare, a legal organization, and won a court action which caused Menominee Enterprises, Inc. (MEI) to open its books to the rest of the tribe. In 1970, Deer helped to form DRUMS (Determination, Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders). Deer was elected to the voting trust of MEI. Deer took a leave from her law studies and moved to Washington, D.C. to lobby for Menominee restoration. In 1973, Congress passed the Menominee Restoration Act, which became effective in 1975. Deer served as tribal chair from 1975 to 1977.
In 1977, Deer was hired as an instructor by the U.W.-Madison School of Social Work, where she helped to develop the Native American Studies Program. In 1978, she was a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
