Native American Women

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Georgina LightningGeorgina Lightning is a Native American film director, screen-writer, and actress. Lightning was born in Edmonton, Canada, and is a Maskwacis (Plains) Cree.
In 2007 she was featured in Filmmaker Magazine as one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film. In 2010 she was the recipient of the "White House Project- Epic-Award for Emerging Artist".

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Mary Kim Titla

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Amy Locklear Hertel Amy Locklear Hertel is Director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and a descendant of the Coharie Indian Tribe. Amy also has an appointment as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Social Work. She earned a BA in Communications from UNC Chapel Hill (1997) and an MSW and JD from Washington University in St. Louis where she is presently a doctoral candidate in Social Work. Her area of study is asset building in tribal communities as a means toward tribal self-determination. Amy has experience working in Indian Country with asset building, grassroots giving, capacity building, and community based participatory research. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband, Johann, who is faculty at the UNC School of Medicine, their 4 year old daughter Ava, and their 2 year old son Ahren.

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Tech. Sgt. April CooperTech. Sgt. April Cooper, 23d Wing command section superintendent, is proud to be 100 percent Navajo, and still embraces the culture and traditions she grew up with.
As a young girl who grew up on the reservation in Fruitland, N.M., one Airman remembers happy ceremonies, traditions and family get-togethers. She spoke a different language, had a large extended family and lived in an area that was more than 90 percent Native American.
"As a Native American and a Navajo woman, my heritage is a part of me and I'm very proud of it," said Cooper. "My children are half Navajo, so I try to tell them about their heritage and where they came from to keep the traditions going. It is important to stay involved and keep the traditions in my family so that my kids can carry them on in their life."
One way Cooper gets her children involved is by letting them live on the reservation with family during their summers.

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Lt.Col. Nathele AndersonDespite her five foot-one-inch frame, Lt.Col. Nathele Anderson stands tall as a Native American serving her country.
“I take every opportunity I can to tell people that I am a Native American because I’m proud of my heritage. I want people to ask about being a Native American because I don’t think there’s enough emphasis put on our heritage as this nation’s first Americans,” she said.
Even more than being a Native American, Anderson’s Navajo heritage and her status as a female make her one of the few from her tribe to be a U.S. Soldier.
“In the 20 years that I have served I have never met another Navajo. I have interacted with very few Native Americans while I’ve been in the Army,” she said.
“Because I am an officer, it is very unique for me to be a full-blooded Navajo. I am the first Navajo woman officer in the Army.”
She is even more in the minority as the first Navajo woman to command Army units, first as the commander of a transportation unit at Fort Sam Houston, Texas; then with the 787th Corps Support Battalion in Dothan and now as the Reserve detachment officer-in-charge at the Army Materiel Command’s Logistics Support Activity. She is a Reserve officer with the Army Materiel Command-Army Reserve Element Sustainment Brigade.

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Lori PiestewaSPC Lori Ann Piestewa (December 14, 1979 – March 23, 2003) was a U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps soldier killed during the same Iraqi Army attack in which fellow soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch sustained injuries. A member of the Hopi tribe, Piestewa was the first Native American woman in history to die in combat while serving with the U.S. military and the first woman in the U.S. armed forces killed in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Arizona's Piestewa Peak is named in her honor.

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Native American Women WarriorsFounded in March 2010, the Native American Women Warriors are dedicated to surface recognition of women veterans, especially of Native American descent, and their contribution to the military, that represents our indigenous people and the United States of America.

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Randy’L He-dow TetonRandy’L He-dow Teton (born 1976) is the Shoshone woman who posed as the model for the US Sacagawea dollar coin, first issued in 2000. She is the first Native American woman to pose for an American coin and the only living person whose image appears on American currency.

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Nancy Ward
Born about 1738 at Chota, a “Peace Town” or “Mother Town” in the Overhill region of the Cherokee Nation, Ward came into the world at the beginning of a crucial era in Cherokee history. Raised by her mother, Tame Deer, and her father, Fivekiller (who was also part Delaware or Lenni Lenap‚), Nan’yehi realized at a young age that her people were in turmoil. Missionaries, Moravians (Christians who seek to persuade others to accept their religion and follow the Bible as their rule of faith and morals) in particular, were trying to gain access to the Cherokee people in order to convert them. Still very conservative (resistant to change), preserving their traditional customs and religion, the Cherokees had a mixed reaction to the missionaries. Many regarded them as a threat, others saw them as a blessing.
Ward married a Cherokee man named Kingfisher while in her early teens. Kingfisher was a great warrior, and Nan’yehi was at his side in battle, helping prepare his firearms and rallying Cherokee warriors when their spirits flagged. In 1755, the Cherokees fought the Creeks at the Battle of Taliwa. During the fighting, Kingfisher was killed. Nan’yehi, about 18 years old at this time, took up her slain husband’s gun and, singing a war song, led the Cherokees in a rout of the enemy. Out of her loss was born a decisive victory for her people and a title of honor for her: “Beloved Woman.”
The Cherokee were a matrilineal (tracing family relations through the mother) society, and thus their fields had always been controlled by women. Women of great influence became known as Beloved Women, often working behind the scenes in shaping decisions. The role of Ghigau or Beloved Woman was the highest one to which a Cherokee woman could aspire. It was unusual for one as young as Nan’yehi to be so named, but since the name also translates as “War Woman” and was usually awarded to women warriors (or warriors’ mothers or widows), Nan’yehi had duly earned it. Much responsibility went with the many privileges of the rank, and, although young, Nan’yehi showed herself capable.

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Linda Old Horn PurdyLinda Old Horn-Purdy, retired Navy chief petty officer, from the Crow tribe, was one of the first females in the Navy to serve on a combatant ship. Her journey began on the Crow Agency reservation in Montana.
"I grew up around very traditional grandparents, and my father would pass down stories. We had oral history," she said. "They would teach us from our ancestors. Nothing was written down. I grew up knowing some of my language but my first language was English. I went to school off the reservation, so I lived in both worlds."
She said it was a culture shock, when she went to the school off the reservation, but she had to adapt. She said she joined the military for the benefits such as education, training and travel.
"I needed a place to sleep, something to eat and for me, that was good enough, and to learn, that was the main reason," she said humbly. She said she can relate to other military people coming from other countries who are just glad to have some place to sleep, eat and work.
When she got to her ship in 1985, she found out she was among the first group of women on her deployed ship and then in 1999, she found out she was among the first group of women on a combatant ship.
"It was hard but we had to adapt if we wanted to continue and learn and do our job," she said. She was in engineering but wasn't allowed to call herself a machinist at that time. She said at the three-year mark, the career field opened up to women.
"I ended up becoming a machinist, one of the first women in there," she said. "I ended up advancing quickly through that because not too many people wanted to be in there. I don't know if it was because I was nave or young, but I used to think, 'I'm going to be tough. I'm Indian. I'm going to make it.' It was hard to learn the theories and engineering principles. I'm thankful for the co-workers who helped me through it. It was hard, but I got through it.
"I'm appreciative of those particular men who would look beyond my race and gender and would try to teach me and help me to think the way I should think so I have a lot to be thankful for. They helped me learn," she said.
Serving in the military is also a Native American tradition. Her fraternal grandfather, Allen Old Horn served in the Army in World War II and her maternal grandfather, George Thompson, was in the Navy in World War II. Her great uncles Barney and Henry Old Coyote, World War II, and great-grandfather James Red Fox, World War I, were code talkers.
"Linda comes from a long legacy of Chiefs," said her father, Sarge Old Horn Sr. "Her great grandfathers were Chiefs Sits In The Middle of Land, or otherwise known as Chief Blackfoot, married, "Wia Waste, who was the sister to Chief Man Afraid of His Horse. On the Blackfoot side of her relations is, Old Coyote's mother, "Snake Woman," who is the sister to Mountain Chief. Old Coyote fought as a Crow."
Old Horn-Purdy said her dad encouraged her throughout her time in the military and is proud of her time in the uniform.
She said Native Americans have defended America since the beginning.
"Native Americans weren't given medals or accolades that we get now for defending America," she said. "But we still have to protect America, no matter what. It's in our blood."

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Cassandra Manuelito-KerkvlietManuelito-Kerkvliet was born and raised in Laramie, Wyo. at a time when thriving as an American Indian was tough. Her parents, both born and raised on the Navajo reservation near the Four Corners area of the U.S., relocated to Wyoming because it was the only place they could find work.
Manuelito-Kerkvliet said her family was very much rooted in Navajo tradition and culture. This meant traveling 600 miles back to the reservation every weekend so the Manuelito children would not forget the ways of their people.
After high school she enrolled at the University of Wyoming and majored in social work with the intent of offsetting the negativity so many American Indian students feel in transitioning from high school to college, or reservation to city life.
She went on to work for Oregon State University where she saw the stark difference in education programs for American Indian students compared to those offered in Wyoming.
In 2007 she was named the president of Antioch University, and thus became the first Native American female president of a university outside the tribal college system. Administrators chose Manuelito-Kerkvliether from a pool of more than 40 candidates to lead Antioch University Seattle, a liberal arts college with an enrollment of about 800 students.
“I hate to be identified as ‘the first,’” said Manuelito-Kerkvliet, who has spent her entire career in higher education. “I don’t like the phrase myself because it does say we haven’t come far enough.”
Today, Manuelito-Kerkvliet advocates that young Natives develop a future force of leaders to lead the nation. And she knows how: through education.

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Courtney M. LeonardCourtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock) is an artist and teacher who resides on the Shinnecock Reservation on Long Island, New York. After graduating with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Leonard returned to Long Island to teach and to share her passion for the visual arts. She participated in a production workshop in Boston for artists and new media makers developed as a part of the WGBH series We Shall Remain and organized by ReelNative. The short she produced at the workshop reflects her response to the beaching of a whale near her reservation.