Celebrating with some familiar names… and some you may not yet know.
As we celebrate Native American Heritage Month at FRCC, it’s important to look to our past—as well as to the future. In that vein, a colleague and I spent some time researching a number of Native American innovators and their achievements.
We encountered some very familiar names, but also found some that we didn’t know much about (or hadn’t heard of before). As a society, there is always more we can learn about Native American accomplishments—and, of course, we can and should do that year-round.
To get started, below we’re featuring nine great Native Americans and their remarkable endeavors. The idea is to spark your interest, in hopes that you might be inspired to learn more on your own.
We also hope you can join us for one of our events for Native American Heritage Month. FRCC is welcoming the Iron Family Dancers and Singers to our campuses. They will be performing traditional dances and songs.
What:
Native American Heritage Month Presents:
Iron Family Dancers and Singers
When & Where:
Wednesday, Nov. 13 – Westminster Campus | Noon – 1pm in the Rotunda
Monday, Nov. 18 – Boulder County Campus (Longmont) | Noon – 1pm in the Community Room
Wednesday, Nov. 20 – Larimer Campus (Fort Collins) | Noon – 1pm in Longs Peak Student Center
Now, enjoy reading about these accomplished and inspiring Native American leaders…
Joy Harjo
Muscogee (Creek) Nation
1951-present
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022.
She is the author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior. Her many honors include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two NEA fellowships and a Guggenheim fellowship.
As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. She is executive editor of the anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through—A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project.
Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation and is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Jim Thorpe
Sac and Fox Nation
1887 – 1953
James Francis Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated as “Bright Path”; was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics.
Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, Thorpe won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon). He also played American football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball and basketball.
Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory (what is now the US state of Oklahoma). As a youth, he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was a two-time All-American for the school’s football team under coach Pop Warner.
After his Olympic success in 1912, which included a record score in the decathlon, Thorpe added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1913, he played for the Pine Village Pros in Indiana. Later in 1913, he signed with the New York Giants, and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919.
Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships. He later played for six teams in the National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians.
Billy Mills
Oglala Lakota (Sioux)
1938 – Present
William Mervin Mills (born June 30, 1938), also known as Tamakoce Te’Hila, is an Oglala Lakota former track and field athlete who won a gold medal in the 10,000 meter run (6.2 mi) at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
This victory is considered one of the greatest Olympic upsets because he was a virtual unknown going into the event. He was the first non-European to win the Olympic event and remains the only winner from the Americas.
A United States Marine, Mills is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. He was largely unknown as a runner.
Among those favored to win was Ron Clarke of Australia who held the world record. Mills’ time in the heats was a whole minute slower than Clarke’s. Clarke set the tone of the race by using a tactic of surging every other lap.
Halfway through the race, only four runners were still with Clarke:
- Kokichi Tsuburaya of Japan
- Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia
- Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia
- Billy Mills of the US
Tsuburaya, the local favorite, lost contact first, then Wolde. With two laps to go, only Gammoudi and Mills were still with Clarke.
Mills, in a frantic final sprint, surged past both Gammoudi and Clarke to win an electrifying victory by just three yards. He had run a world record time of 28:15.6, having never previously finished the race in less than 29 minutes.
John Bennett Herrington
Chickasaw Nation
1958-present
Herrington was the first Native American to travel to space. He was born in Wetumka, Oklahoma, into the Chickasaw Nation. He grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Riverton, Wyoming; and Plano, Texas, where he graduated from Plano Senior High School.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs before receiving his commission in the United States Navy in 1984.
Selected by NASA in April 1996, Herrington reported to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in August 1996. He completed two years of training and evaluation and qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist.
Herrington was assigned to the Flight Support Branch of the Astronaut Office where he served as a member of the Astronaut Support Personnel team responsible for shuttle launch preparations and post-landing operations.
To honor his Chickasaw heritage, Herrington, an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation, carried its flag on his thirteen-day trip to space. The flag had been presented to him by Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby.
Deb Haaland
Pueblo of Laguna
1960-present
Debra Anne Haaland is an American politician serving as the 54th United States Secretary of the Interior. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as chair of the New Mexico Democratic Party from 2015 to 2017 and as the US representative for New Mexico’s first congressional district from 2019 to 2021.
Haaland is a Native American and enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. Haaland’s congressional district included most of Albuquerque and most of its suburbs. Along with Sharice Davids, she is one of the first two Native American women elected to the US Congress.
She is a political progressive who supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. On December 17, 2020, then President-elect Joe Biden announced that he would nominate Haaland to serve as Secretary of the Interior. She was confirmed by the US Senate on March 15, 2021, by a vote of 51–40.
Following her swearing-in on March 16 of that year, she became the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary and the second to serve in the president’s Cabinet, after Republican former vice president and Kaw Nation citizen Charles Curtis.
Bethany Yellowtail
Northern Cheyenne Nation
1989-present
Bethany Yellowtail is a fashion designer based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for her work that reflects her indigenous heritage stemming from Northern Cheyenne and Crow tribes.
She serves as designer and CEO for her line B. Yellowtail. She began working in fashion with the BCBG Max Azria Group, then became a pattern maker for private labels before founding her own company in 2014. In 2015, Yellowtail was selected by the First Peoples Fund as an Artist in Business Leadership fellow.
As a Native designer, Yellowtail confronts cultural appropriation in the fashion industry. PBS Indie Lens Storycast featured B. Yellowtail as part of a series of short films called alter-NATIVE by Billy Luther.
Yellowtail is an active supporter of women’s rights. For the 2017 Women’s March on the National Mall in Washington DC, Yellowtail collaborated with fellow Montana artist John Isaiah Pepion to create a custom-designed scarf featuring Native American women, each wearing a War Bonnet. In Crow Nation culture, women traditionally do not wear a full headdress, except for the special occasion of the Shoshone War Bonnet Dance.
Squanto (Tisquantum)
Patuxet Tribe
1585 – 1622
Tisquantum more commonly known as Squanto was a member of the Patuxet tribe best known for being an early liaison between the Native American population in Southern New England and the Mayflower Pilgrims who made their settlement at the site of Tisquantum’s former summer village.
The Patuxet tribe had lived on the western coast of Cape Cod Bay, but they were wiped out by an epidemic infection, likely brought by previous European explorers.
Tisquantum was kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt who carried him to Spain, where he sold him in the city of Málaga. He was among a number of captives bought by local monks who focused on their education and evangelization.
Tisquantum eventually traveled to England, where he may have met Pocahontas, a Native American from Virginia, in 1616–1617. He then returned to America in 1619 to his native village, only to find that an epidemic infection had wiped out his tribe. Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxent and went to live with the Wampanoags.
Irene Bedard
Inupiaq/Yupik/Cree Nations
1967-present
Irene Bedard was born July 22, 1967, in Anchorage, Alaska, and is a member of the Native Village of Koyuk in Alaska. She is of Inupiaq and French Canadian/Cree (Métis) descent.
In 1985, Bedard completed her education at Dimond High School in Anchorage, Alaska. Bedard studied musical theater at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Her debut appearance was as Mary Crow Dog in the 1994 television series Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee. The show was based on the 1970s standoff at South Dakota’s Wounded Knee between members of the US government and many Native tribes, including several from the Pine Ridge Reservation. She received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a miniseries or television film for this performance.
Irene is arguably best known for providing the voice of the titular heroine in the Disney animated films Pocahontas (1995), Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018). She played Nonoma Winanuske Matatiske, Pocahontas’s mother, in Terence Malick’s 2005 film The New World, which depicted the tale in a different way.
John Kinsel, Sr.
Navajo Nation
1921-present
During World War II, the military needed a quick and secure way to communicate on the battlefield. They often sent radio messages but ran the risk of the Japanese military intercepting them. This means of communication presented a real danger to US troops.
As a result, the United States military developed secret codes—but unfortunately, the Japanese military broke these codes. Finally, someone recommended asking the Navajo for help.
They had a complex language that very few people understood. Initially, 29 Navajo men helped the US Marine Corps. They began the code work early in the war in 1942.
They devised a code built on word substitution in which common military terms were assigned a Navajo code word. Each letter of the English alphabet was also assigned at least one code word so that other terms could be spelled out using the code.
Kinsel was a member of the second cohort to be trained as Code Talkers, and he remembers working together with some of the “First Twenty-Nine” to develop additional code terms.
Throughout the war, 400 men trained to be Code Talkers for the military. They were stationed with different units. They could both send and interpret messages.
In February 1945, Kinsel took part in the Battle of Iwo Jima. On his sixth day on the island, he was wounded by falling rock after the Japanese set off a large explosion inside a cave network. He had to wait on the beach for a day for medical evacuation, but eventually found himself safely onboard a Navy hospital ship.
In 2001, the Code Talkers were honored by President George W. Bush. He commended their contribution to turning the course of the war and expressed the nation’s gratitude for their heroic service.
