East Central celebrates and recognizes the accomplishments of the peoples who were the original inhabitants, explorers and settlers of the United States with NATIONAL AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE HERITAGE MONTH

November 2020 #ProudlyUnited JOHN HERRINGTON NASA astronaut

John Herrington (born September 14, 1958) of the Chickasaw Nation, was the first Native American to fly in space and perform a spacewalk.

A retired U.S. Navy aviator and NASA astronaut, the Oklahoma native was a crew member aboard the space shuttle STS-113 Endeavour when it launched from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 23, 2002.

During the mission—which delivered crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station —Herrington performed three spacewalks totaling nearly 20 hours.

Alamy In honor of his heritage, he carried with him six eagle feathers, a braid of sweet grass, two EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES arrowheads, and the Chickasaw Nation's flag.

During his military service, he was awarded the NATIONAL Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, Coast Guard Meritorious AMERICAN INDIAN Unit Commendation, Coast Guard Special Operations Service Ribbon, National Defense AND Service Medal, Sea Service Ribbons, and various ALASKA NATIVE other service awards. HERITAGE MONTH NOVEMBER 2020

#PROUDLYUNITED BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL U.S. Senator

Ben Nighthorse Campbell (born April 13, 1933) was elected to serve Colorado in the U.S. Senate in 1992. At the time, he was the only Native American serving in Congress and the first Native American to serve in the Senate in more than 60 years.

Campbell serves as one of forty-four members of the Council of Chiefs of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Tribe.

Campbell also represented his district as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and prior to that, was a member of Colorado State Legislature.

In the 106th Congress, Campbell passed more Alamy public laws than any individual member of Congress. During his tenure, Campbell also EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES became the first American Indian to chair the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

NATIONAL Descended from a Portuguese immigrant and a Northern Cheyenne Indian, he had many lives AMERICAN INDIAN before he was a lawmaker.

AND He was a Korean War veteran, an Olympic judo ALASKA NATIVE wrestler, and even a renowned jewelry artist. HERITAGE MONTH When he retired from the Senate in 2005, his major achievements included passing legislation NOVEMBER 2020 to secure Native American water rights, protect wilderness areas, prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, create Colorado's Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, and establish the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. #PROUDLYUNITED JIM THORPE Athlete

Michael Jordan played professional basketball and baseball, while football great Jim Brown also played college basketball and lacrosse. Perhaps the greatest multi-sport athlete of all time, however, is Jim Thorpe (May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953), of the Sac and Fox Nation. Descended from the famous Chippewa warrior Black Hawk, he was the first Native American athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. In fact, he won two of them at the 1912 Olympics, in the decathlon and pentathlon.

After his Olympic triumph, Thorpe played professional football, baseball, and basketball, and also appeared in 70 films. He even has a town named after him: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Alamy As a professional baseball player, he began his EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES career with the New York Giants and helped them win the National League Championship. He would also have stints with the Cincinnati Reds NATIONAL and Boston Braves. During this time, he also played professional football and was a player AMERICAN INDIAN during he NFL's inception. He was named to the NFL 1920s All-Decade Team and the NFL 50th AND Anniversary All-Time Team.

ALASKA NATIVE The Associated Press named him the "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th HERITAGE MONTH century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame NOVEMBER 2020 inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963.

#PROUDLYUNITED WILMA MANKILLER First female chief of the Cherokee Nation

Women's rights activist Wilma Mankiller (November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was the first woman elected to be chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she lived on her family's allotment in Adair County, Oklahoma, until the age of 11, when her family relocated to San Francisco as part of a federal government program to urbanize Native Americans.

As principal chief from 1985 to 1995—a position she pursued despite considerable obstacles, including rampant sexism and even threats of violence against her—she was known for advancing education, job training, housing, and Alamy health care for her people. She doubled annual Cherokee Nation tribal revenue, and tripled tribal EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES enrollment.

President Bill Clinton awarded Mankiller the NATIONAL nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of AMERICAN INDIAN Freedom, in 1998. When she retired from politics, Mankiller AND returned to activism, authoring numerous books and giving lectures on health care, tribal ALASKA NATIVE sovereignty, women's rights, and cancer HERITAGE MONTH awareness. NOVEMBER 2020 In 2017, she was memorialized in the documentary film Mankiller.

#PROUDLYUNITED N. SCOTT MOMADAY Author

While oral history is sacred in Native American culture, it's easily eroded by the passage of time and the evolution of language. Kiowa Indian Navarre Scott Momaday (born February 27, 1934) became a prolific writer with the goal of saving his tribe's precious stories.

His first novel—1968's House Made of Dawn, about a young veteran returning to his Kiowa pueblo after serving in the U.S. Army—won a Pulitzer Prize and is widely credited with starting a renaissance in Native American literature.

In his subsequent books of poetry, plays, prose and children's stories, Momaday continued to marry Native American oral traditions with Alamy Western literary forms, earning him a National Medal of Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and 12 EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES honorary degrees. In total he holds twenty honorary degrees from colleges and universities, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts NATIONAL and Sciences.

AMERICAN INDIAN In 2018, Momaday won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, the AND only juried prize to honor the best books addressing racism and questions of equity and ALASKA NATIVE diversity. The same year, Momaday became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony HERITAGE MONTH held by the National Native American Hall of NOVEMBER 2020 Fame.

#PROUDLYUNITED MARIA TALLCHIEF Ballerina

Like so many young people before her, and so many after, Maria Tallchief (January 24, 1925 – April 11, 2013) moved to New York City at the age of 17, chasing a dream. What made her pursuit so unique, however, was her Native American heritage: Tallchief wanted to be a ballet dancer, and American ballet companies did not hire Native American dancers.

That changed in 1942, when she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Tallchief, of Oklahoma's Osage tribe, was the country's first prima ballerina, dancing for the New York City Ballet in 1946, and she became the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet the following year. Alamy She retired from the stage in 1965, then served EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES as director of ballet for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, after which she co-founded the Chicago NATIONAL City Ballet. Tallchief was honored by the people of Oklahoma AMERICAN INDIAN with multiple statues and an honorific day. She was inducted in the National Women's Hall of AND Fame and received a National Medal of Arts. In 1996, Tallchief received a Kennedy Center Honor ALASKA NATIVE for lifetime achievements.

HERITAGE MONTH When she died in 2013, The New York Times NOVEMBER 2020 called her "one of the most brilliant American ballerinas of the 20th century."

#PROUDLYUNITED WILL ROGERS Actor, Humorist

William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.

Known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son," Rogers was born to a Cherokee family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies") and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns.

By the mid-1930s Rogers was hugely popular in Melbourne Spurr the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES Rogers's vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of NATIONAL his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances AMERICAN INDIAN increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided AND Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style ALASKA NATIVE allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of HERITAGE MONTH other controversial topics in a way that found NOVEMBER 2020 general acclaim from a national audience with no one offended.

#PROUDLYUNITED POCAHONTAS

Pocahontas (c.1595–March 1617), was a Native American woman notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.

She was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribes . Pocahontas, meaning playful one (her real name was said to be Matoaka), used to visit the English in Virginia at Jamestown.

According to the famous story, she saved the life of the captured Capt. John Smith just as he was about to have his head smashed at the direction of Powhatan. In 1613, Pocahontas was captured by Capt. Samuel Argall, taken to Jamestown and held as a hostage for English prisoners then in the Getty Images hands of her father. At Jamestown she was converted to Christianity and baptized as EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES Rebecca.

John Rolfe, a settler, gained the permission of NATIONAL Powhatan and the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and married her in April 1614. The union brought AMERICAN INDIAN peace with the Native Americans for eight years. With her husband and several other Native AND Americans, Pocahontas went to England in 1616. There she was received as a princess and ALASKA NATIVE presented to the king and queen. She started back to America in 1617 but was taken ill and HERITAGE MONTH died at Gravesend, where she was buried. NOVEMBER 2020 Pocahontas bore one son, Thomas Rolfe, who was educated in England, went (1640) to Virginia, and gained considerable wealth.

#PROUDLYUNITED GERONIMO

Geronimo (June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909), which stands for "the one who yawns," was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Apache tribe.

From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands —the Tchihende, the Tsokanende and the Nednhi —to carry out numerous raids, as well as fight against Mexican and U.S. military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started Archivo General de la Nación Argentina with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES 1848.

While well known, Geronimo was not a chief of NATIONAL the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and AMERICAN INDIAN warfare, he frequently led large numbers of men beyond his own following. At any one time, he AND would be in command of about 30 to 50 Apaches.

ALASKA NATIVE During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886, he "surrendered" three times and HERITAGE MONTH accepted life on the Apache reservations in NOVEMBER 2020 Arizona.

#PROUDLYUNITED SACAJAWEA

Sacagawea (May c. 1788 – December 20, 1812 or April 9, 1884) was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who, at age 16, met and helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in achieving their chartered mission objectives by exploring the Louisiana Territory. She was the only woman in the party.

She is generally called the Bird Woman in English, although this translation has been challenged, and there has been much dispute about the form of her Native American name and origins.

Sacagawea traveled with the expedition thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, helping to establish cultural contacts with Native American populations in Edgar Samuel Paxson - Personal photograph taken at Montana State Capitol addition to her contributions to natural history.

EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES Sacagawea was an important member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Her husband Charbonneau was engaged as an interpreter for NATIONAL the expedition, and she proved invaluable as a guide and interpreter when Lewis and Clark AMERICAN INDIAN reached the upper Missouri River and the AND mountains from which she had come. The National American Woman Suffrage ALASKA NATIVE Association of the early 20th century adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, HERITAGE MONTH erecting several statues and plaques in her NOVEMBER 2020 memory, and doing much to spread the story of her accomplishments.

#PROUDLYUNITED VOTAN HERNRIQUEZ

Henriquez, a Los Angeles native who is Maya and Nahua, has a distinctive visual voice expressed primarily on city streets.

Right now, as a student of street art and graffiti culture, his unique perspective on Native and mainstream U.S. creative expression is especially compelling. Graffiti is deeply tied to New York City's urban environment, especially so in the '70s.This muralist, street artist and clothing designer works primarily in Los Angeles, but his recent project in collaboration with the Minneapolis American Indian Center will be his largest.

Like so many American street artists, Henriquez

Votan Henriquez/Steve Zeigler and his work both reflect the passion and devotion to community. "L.A. is full of art, crime, EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES justice, abuse and many other things like any other city, but this is where we live," he wrote on NATIONAL Facebook. "So make it a beautiful place!" He blends the knowledge of his ancestry, his AMERICAN INDIAN experience of graphic design and art, and awareness of the issues facing native people to AND create artworks which include blending contemporary art techniques with old Mayan ALASKA NATIVE symbology. HERITAGE MONTH NOVEMBER 2020

#PROUDLYUNITED