Native American Women

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Lillian Sparks RobinsonLillian Sparks, a Lakota woman of the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux Tribes, is the Commissioner of the Administration of Native Americans. Miss Sparks was confirmed by the United States Senate as the Commissioner on March 3, 2010, and was sworn in on March 5, 2010. She has devoted her career to supporting the educational pursuits of Native American students, protecting the rights of indigenous people, and empowering tribal communities.

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Martha RedboneMartha Redbone is an American blues and soul singer of part Cherokee, Choctaw, European and African-American descent. She has won awards for her contemporary Native American music. Her music is a mix of rhythm and blues, and soul music influences, fused with elements of traditional Native American music.

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Rita CoolidgeRita Coolidge (born May 1, 1945) is a recording artist and songwriter. During the 1970s and 1980s, she charted hits on Billboard's pop, country, contemporary and jazz charts and won two Grammy Awards with fellow musician and former husband Kris Kristofferson.
Honoring her Native American heritage (Cherokee), she performed with Robbie Robertson, who is Mohawk, at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

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Buffy Sainte-MarieBuffy Sainte-Marie, (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian-American Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.

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Suzan Shown HarjoSuzan Shown Harjo is a poet, lecturer and devoted advocate for the rights of Native Americans. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Harjo is president of the Morning Star Institute, a DC-based nonprofit lobbying for the return of tribal lands and sovereignty.
Through her work in government and as the head of the National Congress of American Indians and the Morningstar Institute, she has helped preserve a million acres of Indian land; helped develop laws preserving tribal sovereignty; she’s repatriated sacred cultural items to tribes while expanding museums that celebrate Native life… Because of Suzan, more young Native Americans are growing up with pride in their heritage and with faith in their future. And she’s taught all of us that
"Native Values Make Americans Stronger.”

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Karen Diver

In early February, 2007, UMD alumna Karen Diver was elected chair of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. In her new position, this 1987 economics graduate now heads a tribal government that employs between 1,600 - 1,800 people and has assets totaling over $300 million. She also serves on the governing body of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, made up of the White Earth, Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Bois Forte, Leech Lake, and Grand Portage bands.
Diver, Fond du Lac’s first woman chair, is prepared for the job. Most recently she served as the director of special projects for the Fond du Lac Reservation and before that, she was the executive director of the YWCA in Duluth. The list of the positions she has held and the boards she has served on is impressive and includes: Arrowhead Welfare Reform Partnership, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, American Indian Community Housing Organization, Duluth Community Action Program, Governor's Workforce Development Council, and the Blandin Foundation.

One significant opportunity, and possibly the event that prepared Diver most for her new position, was her participation as a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. There she received the Master in Public Administration degree in 2003. As a student in the Harvard American Indian Economic Development Project, she studied best practices in governance and economic development in Indian Country.

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Dr. Jody E. Noe

Dr. Noé practices traditional Cherokee medicine as taught by her Cherokee elders. This is a practice that encompasses mind, body, and spirit. She was accepted as an official apprentice in 1987 by Crosslin F. Smith, high medicine priest of the Keetoowah, cherokees of the western band of Cherokees in Tahlequah, OK. She was adopted into the Smith family shortly after starting her apprenticeship. This is a unique honor reserved for few.

Prior to this she was taught by the elders of the eastern Cherokees, Mary U. Chiltoskey, "Mama" Geneva Jackson, and Amy Walker. Dr. Noé continues to study with her elders and practices traditional Cherokee ways with patients when appropriate.

The traditional Cherokee medicine way uses plants, earth, air, water, and fire (heat) along with rituals and prayers to invoke Spirit and Healing. The Keetoowah are traditionalists and practice ancient rituals such as the sacred "Stomp Dance" to this day. In Cherokee medicine many aspects of healing are addressed with the focus on the Spirit of each modality affecting the Spirit of the patient to conjoin with the Great Spirit of the universe.

Each modality is looked upon as an independent people, for example the traditional Cherokee name acknowledges 'plant people', 'rock people', etc. The Cherokee Way honors not only the medicine that is used to affect the physical being of people, but the Spirit that is in each and every living thing, that effects us all concurrently.

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Professor Jace DeCory

Jace DeCory, a BHSU faculty member since 1984, is a Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a professor emeritus of history and American Indian studies. She retired last week after 33 years of teaching.

Under BHSU’s proposal, the university would change the name of its Center for American Indian Studies in Jonas Hall to the Jace DeCory Center for American Indian Studies.

“Her research is in the areas of American Indian women, elders, art and traditional healing,” according to a document provided to the board this week. “She is one of BHSU’s most highly respected faculty members, both by her peers and students, and as such, received the distinguished faculty award in 2014.”

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Marcella Ryan Le Beau
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Two Kettle Band

In 1943 Marcella Le Beau had just finished her nurse’s training in her native South Dakota and was working at a hospital in Pontiac, Michigan, when she heard about the Army’s need for nurses. A year later, she was camped out in a cow pasture in Normandy, in the wake of the D-Day invasion, on her way to Paris. That December she was in Liege, Belgium, where she and her comrades were told to open their Christmas presents ten days early, as the Battle of the Bulge had just begun and they might have to evacuate. She never encountered discrimination because of her background; in fact, when colleagues learned that her great-grandfather was a chief, they assumed she must be an Indian princess.

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Deb Haaland
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Representative Deb Haaland, a first-term congressperson from New Mexico, to be his secretary of the interior. If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland will be the first Native American to run the Department of the Interior and the first to serve on a presidential cabinet. She’ll oversee agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service, in addition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In a statement, the National Wildlife Federation says that choosing Haaland for the position is “a clear sign the new administration is deeply committed to tackling America’s wildlife and climate crises and authentically engaging with Native American Tribes and Indigenous communities.” Biden says he has commited to “a cabinet that looks like America.”

Haaland, 60, is the daughter of two military veterans. Her mother, a Native American, served in the U.S. Navy. Her father, a Norwegian American, was a Marine and received a Silver Star for courageous service in the Vietnam War. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo Native American people. She describes herself as a 35th generation New Mexican.

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Somáh Haaland

Native American performer, poet, congresswoman’s daughter, empath, stage manager, activist: Somáh Haaland has many identities. But it is what she does that most embodies who she is. Her belief in other people and support for expanding their opportunities reminds us all that a little bit of work can go a long way toward making the world a more equitable place.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began its rampage across the country in March, Haaland was working as a production assistant on a Netflix show in New York, charging walkie-talkies and taking inventory. Now she’s collecting donations for Indigenous communities, teaching in an online circus camp for children, and advocating for change on social media.

After returning home to Albuquerque, N.M., Haaland started working at two nonprofit organizations that do mutual aid work for the Indigenous population in the state. The organizations, Seeding Sovereignty and Pueblo Action Alliance, are collecting COVID-19 resources and relief aid for the Navajo Nation and the 19 pueblos that stretch from Taos to the Arizona state line.

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Chef Loretta Barrett Oden

Loretta Barrett Oden was raised in Oklahoma, a state she calls a “melting pot” as it is populated by 39 federally recognized Native American tribes from all parts of North America. She grew up surrounded by cooking and often accompanied her mother, grandmothers, and aunts while they prepared traditional dishes. As an adult, she realized the potential opportunity to educate others about Native American history and culture through cuisine. Loretta has spent the past thirty-plus years, cooking, studying, teaching and adapting recipes to preserve the culinary legacy of her upbringing. In the early 1990s, she and her son, the late chef Clayton Oden, opened the Corn Dance Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first restaurant to showcase the bounty of food indigenous to the Americas. She is best known in the public eye for her five-part television series, “Seasoned With Spirit: A Native Cook’s Journey,” by PBS. Her work has opened minds (and mouths) to the diversity within Native American culture, a history that is often overlooked by the average population. Her work in educating others and sharing her love for history through food has earned her numerous awards and honors, including an Emmy for her PBS series.