This is a
list of notable Native Americans from peoples indigenous to the contemporary United States, including Native Alaskans,
Native HawaiiansNative Hawaiians refers to the indigenous Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands or their descendants. Native Hawaiians trace their ancestry back to the original Polynesian settlers of Hawaii.According to the U.S...
, and
Native Americans in the United StatesNative Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
.
A
- Nicolas de Aguilar
Nicolas de Aguilar a Mestizo, was a Spanish official in New Mexico. He was tried for heresy and found guilty by the Inquisition.-Early life:...
, P'urhépechaThe P'urhépecha, normally spelled Purépecha in Spanish and in English and traditionally referred to as Tarascans, are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Uruapan and Pátzcuaro...
, New Mexican official, tried by the Inquisition.
- Ai
Florence Anthony was a National Book Award winning American poet and educator who legally changed her name to Ai Ogawa...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
, ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
, Southern Cheyenne, and ComancheThe Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
poet
- Richard Aitson
Richard Aitson is a Kiowa-Kiowa Apache bead artist, curator, and poet from Oklahoma.-Background:Richard Aitson was born on December 26, 1953 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. His mother was the Kiowa traditionalist Alecia Keahbone Gonzales , who taught the Kiowa language at the University of Science and Arts...
, KiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
-Kiowa Apache bead artist and poet
- Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and occasional comedian. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American. Two of Alexie's best known works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , a book of short stories and Smoke Signals, a film...
, (SpokaneSpokane is a city in the U.S. state of Washington.Spokane may also refer to:*Spokane *Spokane River*Spokane, Missouri*Spokane Valley, Washington*Spokane County, Washington*Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos War*Spokane * USS Spokane...
, Coeur d'AleneThe Coeur d'Alene are a Native American people who lived in villages along the Coeur d'Alene, St. Joe, Clark Fork and Spokane Rivers; as well as sites on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, Lake Pend Oreille and Hayden Lake, in what is now northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana.In...
) author and comedian
- Elsie Allen
Elsie Allen was a Native American Pomo basket weaver from the Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California in Northern California, significant as for historically categorizing and teaching Californian Indian basket patterns and techniques and sustaining traditional Pomo basketry as an art...
, Cloverdale Pomo basketweaver
- Paula Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, lesbian activist, and novelist.Born Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, Allen grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation...
, (Laguna PuebloLaguna is a Native American tribe of the Pueblo people in west-central New Mexico, USA. The name, Laguna, is Spanish and derives from the lake located on their reservation. The real Keresan name of the tribe is Kawaik. The population of the tribe exceeds 7,000 , making it the largest Keresan...
, SiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
) poet, literary critic, activist, and novelist
- Marcus Amerman
Marcus Amerman is an award-winning Choctaw bead artist, glass artist, painter, fashion designer, and performance artist, living north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is known for his highly realistic beadwork portraits.-Background:...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
multimedia artist
- Bill Anoatubby
Bill Anoatubby is the present Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, a position he has held since 1987. From 1979 to 1987, Anoatubby served two terms as Lieutenant Governor in the administration of Gov. Overton James[-Early life:...
, (ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
), Governor of the Chicksaw Nation since 1987
- Annie Antone
Annie Antone is a Native American Tohono O'odham basket weaver from Gila Bend, Arizona-Background:Annie Antone was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1955. She learned how to weave baskets from her mother, Irene Antone. Annie began at the age of 19 and sold her first basket for $10. She gave the money to...
, Tohono O'odhamThe Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...
basketweaver
- William Apess
thumb|250px|William Apess' autobiographyWilliam Apess was a Native American writer, preacher, and politician of the Pequot tribe.-Early life:...
, (PequotPequot people are a tribe of Native Americans who, in the 17th century, inhabited much of what is now Connecticut. They were of the Algonquian language family. The Pequot War and Mystic massacre reduced the Pequot's sociopolitical influence in southern New England...
) author and minister
- Anna Mae Aquash
Anna Mae Aquash was a Mi'kmaq activist from Nova Scotia, Canada who became the highest-ranking woman in the American Indian Movement in the United States during the mid-1970s.Aquash...
, (Mi'kmaq)
- Spencer Asah
Spencer Asah was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Five, from Oklahoma.-Early life:Spencer Asah was born around 1905 in Carnegie, Oklahoma. His Kiowa name was Lallo . His father was a buffalo medicine man. His father provided Asah extensive cultural information that he later used in his art.Asah...
, KiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
artist
- Attakullakulla, (Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) chief
- James Auchiah
James Auchiah was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Five, from Oklahoma.-Early life:James Auchiah was born in on 17 November 1906 in Oklahoma Territory, near present day Meers and Medicine Park, Oklahoma...
, KiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
artist
- Marilou Awiakta
Marilou Awiakta is an Eastern Band Cherokee author.She is renowned for writing several books that blend stories, essays and poetry. She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1958 receiving a B.A. magna cum laude, in both English and French. She worked as a civilian liaison officer and...
, (Eastern Band Cherokee) author and poet
B
- Jimmy Santiago Baca
Jimmy Santiago Baca of Apache and Chicano descent is an American poet and writer.- Life and career :...
, ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
-ChicanoThe terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
author and poet
- Dennis Banks
Dennis Banks , a Native American leader, teacher, lecturer, activist and author, is an Anishinaabe born on Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. Banks is also known as Nowa Cumig...
, AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
activist, teacher, lecturer, author and co-founder of the American Indian MovementThe American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...
- Jim Barnes
Jim Weaver McKown Barnes is a Native American author born near Summerfield, Oklahoma and is of Choctaw and Welsh heritage. He received his BA from Southeastern State College in Durant, OK in 1964 and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
editor, author, poet and founder of the Chariton Review Press
- Fred Begay
Fred Begay , aka Fred Young or Clever Fox, is a Native American nuclear physicist. Begay was born in 1932 at Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation in Colorado. His mother was Navajo and Ute and his father was Navajo. As a youth, Begay was trained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to become a...
(DinéThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
), nuclear physicist
- Notah Begay III
Notah Ryan Begay III is an American professional golfer. He is the only full-blooded American Indian golfer on the PGA Tour. He is currently an analyst with the Golf Channel.-Amateur career:...
, Diné-People named Dine:* Jim Dine , an American pop artist* S. S. Van Dine, an art critic and author* Tom Dine, an American government worker-Other meanings:* Beit ed-Dine, a town in Lebanon* Diné, name for the Navajo Nation in the Navajo language...
PGA Tour golfer
- Betty Louise Bell
Betty Louise Bell was born on November 23, 1949. She is a scholar and fiction writer of Cherokee ancestry. Bell is director of the Native American Studies Program and assistant professor of American culture, English, and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor...
, (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) author and editor
- Clyde Bellecourt
Clyde Howard Bellecourt is a White Earth Ojibwe civil rights organizer noted for co-founding the American Indian Movement in 1968 with Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, and Eddie Benton Banai, among others. His older brother, the late Vernon Bellecourt, was also active...
(AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
), activist and co-founder of the American Indian MovementThe American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...
(AIM)
- Rebecca M. Benally, Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
Board of Education President and educator
- Johnny Bench
Johnny Lee Bench is a former professional baseball catcher who played in the Major Leagues for the Cincinnati Reds from 1967 to 1983 and is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
Hall of Fame Catcher
- Chief Bender
Charles Albert "Chief" Bender was a pitcher in Major League Baseball during the first two decades of the 20th century...
, OjibwaThe Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
Hall of Fame pitcher
- Diane E. Benson
Diane E. Benson is an Alaskan politician, inspirational speaker, video production consultant, published writer and dramatist. In August 2010, she became the Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor for the state of Alaska, easily outpacing three other opponents in the Democratic primary on August...
-- (Tlingit) politician, inspirational speaker, poet and author
- George Bent
George Bent was the mixed-race son of the fur trader William Bent, the founder of the trading post named Bent's Fort; and Owl Woman, a Cheyenne. Born near present-day La Junta, Colorado, Bent served as a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War and a Cheyenne warrior...
, CheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
, soldier, warrior, interpreter, and cultural informant
- Martha Berry
Martha Berry is a Cherokee beadwork artist, who has been highly influential in reviving traditional Cherokee and Southeastern beadwork, particularly techniques from the pre-Removal period.-Background:...
, Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
bead artist
- Chuck Billy
Chuck Billy is an American vocalist, who is best known as the vocalist for the thrash metal band Testament.-Testament:Chuck Billy replaced Steve "Zetro" Souza, future Exodus vocalist, in the mid-1980s when the band was still called Legacy. Following his arrival, Testament released their first...
, (PomoThe Pomo people are an indigenous peoples of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point...
) singer for the thrash metal band, Testament
- Lisa Johnson Billy
Lisa Johnson Billy has represented Oklahoma House of Representatives District 42, which includes Cleveland, Garvin, Grady and McClain counties since 2004. She serves as Deputy Whip and Vice Chair of the Republican Caucus.-Biography:...
, Chickasaw NationThe Chickasaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American nation, located in Oklahoma. They are one of the members of the Five Civilized Tribes. The Five Civilized Tribes were differentiated from other Indian reservations in that they had semi-autonomous constitutional governments and...
- Oklahoma State Legislator and Chickasaw Tribal Legislator
- Sherwin Bitsui
Sherwin Bitsui is originally from Baaʼoogeedí , on the Navajo Nation. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is Navajo of the Todichʼíiʼnii , born for the Tłʼízíłání ....
-- (NavajoThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
) poet
- Black Elk
Heȟáka Sápa was a famous Wičháša Wakȟáŋ of the Oglala Lakota . He was Heyoka and a second cousin of Crazy Horse.-Life:...
-- (Oglala LakotaThe Oglala Lakota or Oglala Sioux are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people; along with the Nakota and Dakota, they make up the Great Sioux Nation. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the...
) holy man
- Wallace Black Elk
- Black Hawk
Black Hawk was a leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic medicine bundle, he was not one of the Sauk's hereditary civil chiefs...
-- (SaukThe Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym is The Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym is The Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture...
) Leader
- Black Kettle
Chief Black Kettle was a leader of the Southern Cheyenne after 1854, who led efforts to resist American settlement from Kansas and Colorado territories. He was a peacemaker who accepted treaties to protect his people. He survived the Third Colorado Cavalry's Sand Creek Massacre on the Cheyenne...
-- (CheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
) chief
- Andrew Blackbird
Andrew Jackson Blackbird was an "Odawa" Ottawa tribe leader and historian. He was author of the 1887 book, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan.-Early life:...
-- (OttawaThe Odawa or Ottawa, said to mean "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. Their original homelands are located on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, on the Bruce Peninsula in...
) leader, historian, and author
- Kimberly M. Blaeser
Kimberly Blaeser is a Native American writer of mixed German and Anishinaabe descent. She is an enrolled tribal member, and grew up on the White Earth reservation....
-- (Chippewa, AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
) author and poet
- Elias Boudinot
Elias Boudinot , was a member of an important Cherokee family in present-day Georgia. They believed that rapid acculturation was critical to Cherokee survival. In 1828 Boudinot became the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, which was published in Cherokee and English...
-- (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) leader, journalist and publisher
- Billy Bowlegs
thumbChief Billy Bowlegs or Billy Bolek was a leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second and Third Seminole Wars against the United States...
, SeminoleThe Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
chief
- Joseph Brant
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant was a Mohawk military and political leader, based in present-day New York, who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution. He was perhaps the most well-known American Indian of his generation...
-- (MohawkMohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
) leader
- Mary Brave Bird, Brulé Lakota author and activist
- Ignatia Broker
Ignatia Broker was an Ojibway writer and community leader from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is best known for the novel Night Flying Woman, published in 1983, which tells the story of Broker's great-great-grandmother and her family's life before and after contact with white explorers.-External...
-- (Ojibway) author
- Joseph Bruchac
Joseph Bruchac is a writer of books relating to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a particular focus on northeastern Native American and Anglo-American lives and folklore. He has published works of poetry, novels, and short stories. He is from Saratoga Springs, New York, and is of...
-- (Abenaki) author and poet
- Buffalo Bird Woman
Buffalo Bird Woman was a Mandan ]Hidatsa who experienced the traditional life of her people in what is now the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Her Hidatsa name was Maxidiwiac. She learned and practiced traditional Hidatsa skills such as gardening, the preparation of food, weaving and...
-- (HidatsaThe Hidatsa are a Siouan people, a part of the Three Affiliated Tribes. The Hidatsa's autonym is Hiraacá. According to the tribal tradition, the word hiraacá derives from the word "willow"; however, the etymology is not transparent and the similarity to mirahací ‘willows’ inconclusive...
) writer
C
- Gregory Cajete
Dr. Gregory A. Cajete is a Tewa author and professor from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. He has pioneered reconciling indigenous perspectives in sciences with a Western academic setting...
(Santa Clara Pueblo), ethnobotanist, author, and educator
- Ben Nighthorse Campbell
Benjamin Nighthorse Campbell is an American politician. He was a U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1993 until 2005 and was during his tenure the only American Indian serving in the U.S. Congress. Campbell was a three term U.S. Representative from 1987 to 1993, when he was sworn into office as a...
, Northern CheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
chief, U.S. RepresentativeThe United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, U.S. SenatorThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
, and silversmith
- Mary Katherine Campbell
Mary Katherine Campbell was the only person to win the Miss America pageant twice. Campbell was Miss America 1922 and Miss America 1923, and she was also First Runner Up at the 1924 Miss America Pageant...
, Muscogee Creek, Cree The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations / Native Americans in North America, with 200,000 members living in Canada. In Canada, the major proportion of Cree live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, although...
, Mi'kmaq- former Miss AmericaThe Miss America pageant is a long-standing competition which awards scholarships to young women from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
winner
- Canonicus
Canonicus was a Native American chief of the Narragansett. He was a firm friend of English settlers.-Biography:...
, NarragansettThe Narragansett tribe are an Algonquian Native American tribe from Rhode Island. In 1983 they regained federal recognition as the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island. In 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled against their request that the Department of Interior take land into trust...
chief
- Rob Capriccioso
Rob Capriccioso is the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Indian Country Today Media Network. An enrolled citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, he covers the White House, the United States Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States, and...
, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, journalist and writer
- Captain Jack, Modoc chief
- Gladys Cardiff
Gladys Cardiff is a poet and academic, with interests in Native American, African American and American literature. She is an associate professor at Oakland University....
, writer and poet of Eastern CherokeeThe Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians , is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States of America, who are descended from Cherokee who remained in the Eastern United States while others moved, or were forced to relocate, to the west in the 19th century. The history of the...
descent
- Lorna Dee Cervantes
Lorna Dee Cervantes is an award-winning Chicana-Native American poet who is considered one of the major Chicana poets of the past 40 years. She has been described by Alurista, as "probably the best Chicana poet active today." Lorna Dee Cervantes was born in 1954 in California. She grew up in San...
, ChicanaThe terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
writer and poet
- Chainbreaker, Seneca
The Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
) war chief
- Joba Chamberlain
Justin Louis "Joba" Chamberlain is a Major League Baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees.-Early life:Chamberlain was born and grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chamberlain's parents, Harlan Chamberlain and Jackie Standley, were never married and split up when Joba was 18 months old...
, Ho-ChunkThe Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....
pitcher for the New York YankeesThe New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
- Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse
Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse is an American actor. He is a member of the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Nation, the son of Chief Joseph Chasing Horse and Winifred Chasing Horse....
, (Lakota) medicine man, actor
- Chris Chavis
Christopher "Chris" Chavis , is a Native American professional wrestler best known for his work with World Wrestling Entertainment as Tatanka from 1991 to 1996 and from 2005 to 2007...
, (LumbeeThe Lumbee belong to a state recognized Native American tribe in North Carolina. The Lumbee are concentrated in Robeson County and named for the primary waterway traversing the county...
) professional wrestler
- Kelly Church
Kelly Jean Church is an award-winning black ash basket weaver, Woodlands Style painter, birch bark biter, and educator, enrolled in the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.-Background:...
, (Grand Traverse Band Odawa-OjibweThe Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Michigan. Derek Bailey is the current chairman of the Tribal Council, whose offices are in Peshawbestown, Michigan...
) basketweaver, painter, and educator
- Chrystos
Chrystos is a Menominee rights activist and poet. Prior to being published, she worked as a home caretaker, and an activist for Turtle Mountain Band of Chipewa, Norma Jean Croy , and Leonard Peltier....
-- (MenomineeSome placenames use other spellings, see also Menomonee and Menomonie.The Menominee are a nation of Native Americans living in Wisconsin. The Menominee, along with the Ho-Chunk, are the only tribes that are indigenous to what is now Wisconsin...
) activist and poet
- Cochise
Cochise was a chief of the Chokonen band of the Chiricahua Apache and the leader of an uprising that began in 1861. Cochise County, Arizona is named after him.-Biography:...
, Chiricahua Apache chief
- Radmilla Cody
Radmilla A. Cody is a Navajo model, award-winning singer, and anti-domestic violence activist who was the 46th Miss Navajo from 1997 to 1998.As she was the first and thus far only Miss Navajo partially of African-American heritage, her nomination sparked considerable debate over Navajo identity...
, (NavajoThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
)
- Holmes Colbert
Holmes Colbert was a Native American leader of the Chickasaw Nation in what would become Oklahoma. Colbert wrote the Chickasaw Nation's constitution in the 1850s.-Early life and education:...
-- (ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
) government official
- Tom Cole
Thomas Jeffery Cole is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is a Deputy Minority Whip. The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee from 2006 to 2008, he was, during his tenure, the fourth-ranking Republican leader in the...
, ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
Congressman from Oklahoma
- Robert J. Conley
Robert J. Conley is a Cherokee author and enrolled member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, a federally recognized tribe of American Indians. In 2007, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.Conley was born in Cushing, Oklahoma and...
,- Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
-United Keetoowah Band author
- Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is a Crow Creek Lakota Sioux editor, essayist, poet, novelist, and academic, whose trenchant views on Native American politics, particularly tribal sovereignty, have caused controversy....
, Crow Creek Sioux author, poet, editor, and co-founder of the Wicazo Sa ReviewThe Wíčazo Ša Review is a bi-annual interdisciplinary journal of Native American Studies. Dedicated to the mission of assisting Indigenous peoples across the Americas, the Wíčazo Ša Review compiles inquiries into the Indigenous past and its integral relationship to the present...
- Polly Cooper
Polly Cooper was an Oneida woman who took part in an expedition to aid the Continental army during the American Revolution at Valley Forge in the winter campaign of 1777-78.-At Valley Forge:...
, Oneida TribeThe Oneida are a Native American/First Nations people and are one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the area of upstate New York...
aid to the Continental ArmyThe Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in...
during the American RevolutionThe American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
at Valley ForgeValley Forge in Pennsylvania was the site of the military camp of the American Continental Army over the winter of 1777–1778 in the American Revolutionary War.-History:...
- Cornplanter
Gaiänt'wakê was a Seneca war-chief. He was the son of a Seneca mother, Aliquipiso, and a Dutch father, Johannes Abeel. He also carried the name John Abeel after his fur trader father...
-- (SenecaThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
) chief
- Jesse Cornplanter
Jesse J. Cornplanter was a Seneca artist and author. His Seneca name was Hayonhwonhish. As an author he wrote Legends of the Longhouse, which records many Iroquois traditional stories.-Personal:...
-- (SenecaThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
) author and artist
- Leonard Crow Dog
Leonard Crow Dog is a Sicangu Lakota medicine man and spiritual leader who became well-known during the takeover of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1973 known as the Wounded Knee Incident. Through his writings and teachings he has sought to unify...
- Amanda Crowe
Amanda Crowe was an Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and educator from Cherokee, North Carolina.-Early life:Amanda Crowe was born on 16 July 1928 in the Qualla Boundary, North Carolina. By the age of four, she had decided to become an artist. Of her children, Amanda said: "Every spare minute was...
, Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and educator
- Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S...
-- (Oglala LakotaThe Oglala Lakota or Oglala Sioux are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people; along with the Nakota and Dakota, they make up the Great Sioux Nation. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the...
) chief
- Pierre Cruzatte
Private Pierre Cruzatte was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He was of French and Omaha tribe Indian heritage. He enlisted with Lewis and Clark on May 16, 1804, at St. Charles, Missouri. Cruzatte had formerly been a trader on the Missouri River for the Chouteau fur interests...
-- (Omaha) member of the Lewis and Clark ExpeditionThe Lewis and Clark Expedition, or ″Corps of Discovery Expedition" was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William...
.
- Rod Curl
Rodney Curl is an American professional golfer best known for being the first full-blooded Native American to win a PGA Tour event....
, (WintuThe Wintu are Native Americans who live in what is now Northern California. They are part of a loose association of peoples known collectively as the Wintun . Others are the Nomlaki and the Patwin...
) PGA tour golfer
- Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis was a United States Representative, a longtime United States Senator from Kansas later chosen as Senate Majority Leader by his Republican colleagues, and the 31st Vice President of the United States...
, (KawThe Kaw Nation are an American Indian people of the central Midwestern United States. The tribe known as Kaw have also been known as the "People of the South wind", "People of water", Kansa, Kaza, Kosa, and Kasa. Their tribal language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan language.The toponym "Kansas"...
, OsageThe Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
, PotawatomiThe Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...
) U.S. SenatorThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
and 31st Vice President of the United StatesThe Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
- David Cusick
David Cusick was Tuscarora artist and the author of David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations . This is an early account of Native American history and myth, written and published in English by an Indian.-Biography:David Cusick was born around 1780, probably on the Oneida...
, TuscaroraThe Tuscarora are a Native American people of the Iroquoian-language family, with members in New York, Canada, and North Carolina...
illustrator and author, ca.1780-ca.1831
- Dennis Cusick
Dennis Cusick was a Tuscarora painter from New York and one of the founders of the Iroquois Realist Style of painting.-Biography:...
, TuscaroraThe Tuscarora are a Native American people of the Iroquoian-language family, with members in New York, Canada, and North Carolina...
painter, ca. 1800-1824
D
- Nora Marks Dauenhauer
Nora Marks Dauenhauer is an American poet and short-story writer and a scholar of the language and traditions of the Tlingit aboriginal nation in Alaska, of which she is a member...
-- (Tlingit) author and poet
- Brent Michael Davids
Brent Michael Davids is an American composer and flautist. He is a member of the Stockbridge Mohican nation of American Indians. He has composed for Zeitgeist, the Kronos Quartet, Joffrey Ballet, the National Symphony Orchestra, and Chanticleer.He holds a B.M...
-- (Stockbridge MohicanThe Mahican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settling in the Hudson River Valley . After 1680, many moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the early 1820s and 1830s, most of the Mahican descendants migrated westward to northeastern Wisconsin...
) composer and flutist
- Susan Deer Cloud
Susan Deer Cloud is a Métis poet and fiction writer of Blackfoot, Mohawk and Seneca heritage.- Biography :Deer Cloud was born to Joseph R. Hauptfleisch and Dorothea Mae Lare in Livingston Manor, New York, and grew up in the Catskills. She received her B.A. in General Literature and Creative Writing...
-- (BlackfootThe Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
, SenecaThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
, MohawkMohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
) author and poet
- Deganawida, (Haudenosaunee), founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, more respectfully called The Great Peacemaker
The Great Peacemaker, sometimes referred to as Deganawida or Dekanawida was, along with Hiawatha, by tradition the founder of the Haudenosaunee, commonly called the Iroquois Confederacy, a political and cultural union of several Native American tribes residing...
- Delaware Prophet -- (Lenni Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
) religious leader
- Ella Cara Deloria
Ella Cara Deloria , also called Ąnpétu Wašté Wįn , was an educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist of Yankton Sioux background...
-- (Yankton Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist
- Vine Deloria, Jr.
Vine Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement...
, Yankton-Standing Rock Sioux theologian, historian, writer and activist
- Micky Dolenz
George Michael "Micky" Dolenz, Jr. is an American actor, musician, television director, radio personality and theater director, best known as a member of the 1960s made-for-television band The Monkees.-Biography:...
, actor/musician
- Michael Dorris
Michael Anthony Dorris was a prominent American novelist and scholar. During his career he presented himself as Native American and this identity was a key part of his professional activities and his public reputation; but its factuality is in doubt...
, Modoc writer
- Dragging Canoe
Tsiyu Gansini , "He is dragging his canoe", known to whites as Dragging Canoe, was a Cherokee war chief who led a band of Cherokee against colonists and United States settlers...
, CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
war chief
- Frank Dufina
Frank Dufina was an early American golf professional. He began his career in 1898 at the just-opened Wawashkamo Golf Club on Mackinac Island, Michigan, where he became the club professional. He was a member of the Mackinac Band of Chippewa Indians and was the first Native American to play golf...
(Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians), professional golfer
E
- Charles Eastman
Charles Alexander Eastman was a Native American physician, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry...
-- (SiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
) author, physician and helped found the Boy Scouts of America.
- Larry EchoHawk
Larry EchoHawk is an attorney and legal scholar. On May 20, 2009, EchoHawk joined the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama as the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. He served as Attorney General of Idaho from 1991 to 1995.-Biography:EchoHawk was raised in Farmington, New...
, Pawnee head of the BIA, former Attorney General of Idaho
- Jacoby Ellsbury
Jacoby McCabe Ellsbury ; born September 11, 1983) is an American professional baseball center fielder with the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball....
(NavajoThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
), outfielder for the Boston Red SoxThe Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
- Louise Erdrich
Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
-- AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
writer and poet
- Chris Eyre
Chris Eyre , an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, is a film director and producer.His films focus on all aspects of contemporary Native American life, while dispelling the usual stereotypes. Eyre's debut film, Smoke Signals , won the coveted Sundance Film Festival Filmmakers...
-- Cheyenne-Arapaho director and producer
F
- Logan Fontenelle
Logan Fontenelle , also known as Shon-ga-ska , was a trader of French and Omaha ancestry, who served for years as an interpreter to the US Indian agent at the Bellevue Agency in Nebraska...
-- (OmahaOmaha may refer to:*Omaha , a Native American tribe that currently resides in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Nebraska-Places:United States* Omaha, Nebraska* Omaha, Arkansas* Omaha, Georgia* Omaha, Illinois* Omaha, Texas...
) chief and interpreter
- L. Frank
L. Frank is the nom d'arte of L. Frank Manriquez, a Tongva-Acjachemen artist, writer, tribal scholar, cartoonist, and indigenous language activist. She lives and works in California.-Art:In 1990, L...
-- (Tongva, Ajachmem) Indian artist, tribal scholar, writer and activist
- Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty
Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty is an award-winning Assiniboine-Sioux bead worker and porcupine quill worker, who creates traditional Northern Plains regalia.-Background:...
, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux quillworker and beadartist
G
- Chief Gall
Gall Lakota Phizí, was a battle leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota in the long war against the United States. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Little Bighorn.-Early years:...
-- (HunkpapaThe Hunkpapa are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota Sioux tribe. The name Húŋkpapȟa is a Sioux word meaning "Head of the Circle"...
Lakota) chief
- Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy was born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri. She is a Cherokee poet, author and playwright. Glancy was awarded a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Missouri in 1964, then later continued her education at the University of Central Oklahoma, earning her a Masters degree in English...
-- (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
-descent) poet, author and playwright
- Geronimo
Geronimo was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against Mexico and the United States for their expansion into Apache tribal lands for several decades during the Apache Wars. Allegedly, "Geronimo" was the name given to him during a Mexican incident...
-- (ChiricahuaChiricahua are a group of Apache Native Americans who live in the Southwest United States. At the time of European encounter, they were living in 15 million acres of territory in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona in the United States, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico...
ApacheApache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
) leader
- Owl Goingback
Owl Goingback is an American author of horror and children's books, a fiction ghostwriter, and a writer of non-fiction.-Works:Having served as a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force, and the former owner of a restaurant and lounge, Owl Goingback became a full time writer in 1987. He has written...
-- (ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
, CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) author
- Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years working in public television, theatre as well as philanthropy before relocating to the West Coast...
-- (IowayThe Iowa , also known as the Báxoje, are a Native American Siouan people. Today they are enrolled in either of two federally recognized tribes, the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma and the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska....
) writer
- Janice Gould
Janice Gould is a Koyangk'auwi Maidu writer and scholar. She is the author of Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather and co-editor with Dean Rader of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry....
-- (MaiduThe Maidu are a group of Native Americans who live in Northern California. They reside in the central Sierra Nevada, in the drainage area of the Feather and American Rivers...
) writer
- Kiowa Gordon
Kiowa Joseph Gordon is an American actor, best known for his role in the Twilight Saga as Embry Call.- Early life :...
-- (HualapaiThe Hualapai or Walapai are a tribe of Native Americans who live in the mountains of northwestern Arizona, United States. The name is derived from "hwa:l," the Hualapai word for ponderosa pine, "Hualapai" meaning "people of the ponderosa pine"...
) actor
- Jusepe Gutierrez
Jusepe Gutierrez was a Native American guide and explorer. He was the only known survivor of the Umana and Leyba expedition to the Great Plains in 1594 or 1595...
-- AztecThe Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
explorer
H
- Janet Campbell Hale
Janet Campbell Hale is a Native American writer. Her father was a full-blood Coeur d'Alene, and her mother was of Kootenay, Cree and Irish descent....
, Coeur d'AleneThe Coeur d'Alene are a Native American people who lived in villages along the Coeur d'Alene, St. Joe, Clark Fork and Spokane Rivers; as well as sites on the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, Lake Pend Oreille and Hayden Lake, in what is now northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana.In...
-Ktunaxa-Cree The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations / Native Americans in North America, with 200,000 members living in Canada. In Canada, the major proportion of Cree live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, although...
writer
- Handsome Lake
Handsome Lake was a Seneca religious leader of the Iroquois people. He was also half-brother to Cornplanter....
-- (SenecaThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
) religious leader
- Enoch Kelly Haney
Enoch Kelly Haney is an American politician and internationally-recognized Native American artist from Oklahoma, He has served as Principal Chief of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma from 2005 until 2009, and was previously a member of the Oklahoma Legislature.-Early life and education:Enoch Kelly...
-- (Seminole Nation of OklahomaThe Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized Seminole tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the largest of the three federally recognized Seminole organizations, which include the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida...
), tribal leader, Oklahoma state legislator, and artist
- Terri Crawford Hansen
Terri Crawford Hansen is a Native American journalist who focuses on environmental and scientific issues affecting North American tribal and worldwide indigenous communities...
-- Ho-ChunkThe Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....
-PotawatomiThe Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...
, journalist, and author
- Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...
, Muscogee Creek-CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
poet, musician, and author
- Ira Hayes
Ira Hamilton Hayes was a Pima Native American and an American Marine who was one of the six men immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II. Hayes was an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community in Sacaton, Arizona, and enlisted in the Marine...
-- (PimaThe Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...
) One of five Marines, along with a United States Navy corpsman, immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.
- William Least Heat-Moon
William Least Heat-Moon, the byname of William Lewis Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.-Biography:...
-- (OsageThe Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
) writer
- Allison Hedge Coke
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American Book Award-winning American/Canadian poet of mixed Wendat/Huron/Metis/Tsalagi/ Creek/French Canadian/Portuguese/Irish/Scot/English ancestry.-Background:...
- Gordon Henry
Gordon Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe of Minnesota, and was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in Literature from the University of North Dakota and is currently a professor of English at Michigan State University.Henry's first novel, The Light...
-- (Chippewa) writer
- John Herrington
John Bennett Herrington is an American business executive, former US Navy officer and former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of one Space Shuttle mission. He is the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space....
-- (ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
) NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
astronaut .
- Hiawatha
Hiawatha was a legendary Native American leader and founder of the Iroquois confederacy...
-- (OnondagaThe Onondaga are one of the original five constituent nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Their traditional homeland is in and around Onondaga County, New York...
, MohawkMohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
) chief was credited as the founder of the Iroquois confederacyThe Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
- Linda Hogan
Linda K. Hogan is a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories.She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence.-Early life:Linda Hogan is Chickasaw...
-- (ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
) poet, storyteller, academic, environmentalist and writer.
- Janel Horton
Janel Horton is an American professional wrestler and manager, known by her ringname Alere Little Feather, who competes in North American independent promotions including Chikara, MXW Pro Wrestling, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, Jersey All Pro Wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance, National...
, professional wrestler known as "Alere Little Feather"
- LeAnne Howe
LeAnne Howe is an author and scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Howe's work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her book Shell Shaker received the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book...
-- (ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
) author and scholar
- Al Hunter
Al Hunter is an Anishinaabe writer who has published poetry in books and journals, taught extensively, and performed internationally. A member of Rainy River First Nations and former chief, Hunter has expertise in land claims negotiations, and is a longstanding activist on behalf of indigenous...
-- (AnishinaabeAnishinaabe or Anishinabe—or more properly Anishinaabeg or Anishinabek, which is the plural form of the word—is the autonym often used by the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Algonquin peoples. They all speak closely related Anishinaabemowin/Anishinaabe languages, of the Algonquian language family.The meaning...
) writer and poet
J
- Joseph James and Joseph James, Jr.
Joseph James is the name of two Kaw/Osage/French interpreters on the Kansas and Oklahoma frontier in the nineteenth century. Both were usually called “Joe Jim” or “Jojim.”-Joe Jim:...
-- (KawThe Kaw Nation are an American Indian people of the central Midwestern United States. The tribe known as Kaw have also been known as the "People of the South wind", "People of water", Kansa, Kaza, Kosa, and Kasa. Their tribal language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan language.The toponym "Kansas"...
-OsageThe Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
) Interpreters and guides.
- Mickie James
Mickie Laree James , better known simply as Mickie James, is an American professional wrestler and singer of mixed Native American-Caucasian descent, currently signed to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling , where she is a former two-time TNA Women's Knockout Champion.James began her professional...
-- (PowhatanThe Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...
) professional wrestler
- Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author of experimental fiction, horror fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction. He shares a fan base with fellow authors Will Christopher Baer and Craig Clevenger known as . November 16, 2010 Stephen will have a collection of short stories...
-- (BlackfeetThe Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans of the Algonquian language family based in Montana, having lived in this area since around 6,500 BC. Many members of the tribe live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...
) author
- Chief Joseph
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, popularly known as Chief Joseph, or Young Joseph was the leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce during General Oliver O. Howard's attempt to forcibly remove his band and the other "non-treaty" Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho...
-- (Nez Percé) chief and humanitarian
- Betty Mae Tiger Jumper
Betty Mae Tiger Jumper was the first female chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.-Life:Betty Mae Tiger Jumper was born on April 27, 1923, in a Seminole camp near Indiantown, Florida. She grew up in Dania, in Broward County. At night Betty Tiger listened as older members of the tribe told stories...
-- (SeminoleThe Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
) the first female chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, she was also a publisher
- Daniel Heath Justice
Daniel Heath Justice is a U.S.-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History as well as an Indigenous fantasy trilogy, The Way of Thorn & Thunder--Kynship , Wyrwood , and Dreyd --all published by Kegedonce Press...
, Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
author
K
- Maude Kegg
Maude Kegg was an Ojibwa writer, folk artist, and cultural interpreter...
-- (OjibwaThe Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
) writer, folk artist, and cultural interpreter
- Keokuk
Keokuk was a chief of the Sauk or Sac tribe in central North America noted for his policy of cooperation with the U.S. government which led to conflict with Black Hawk, who led part of their band into the Black Hawk War...
-- (SacThe Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym is The Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym is The Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture...
, Fox) chief
- Thomas King -- (Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) novelist and broadcaster
L
- Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the United States Green Party, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader. In the 2004 election, however, she endorsed one of Nader's opponents, Democratic...
, White Earth Ojibwe environmental activist and writer
- Susan La Flesche Picotte
Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first American Indian woman to become a physician in the United States. She grew up with her parents on the Omaha Reservation. She went to college at the Hampton Institute and got her medical degree at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia...
-- (OmahaThe Omaha are a federally recognized Native American nation which lives on the Omaha Reservation in northeastern Nebraska and western Iowa, United States...
) first female Native American physician.
- Carole LaFavor
Carole S. LaFavor is an Ojibwe novelist, activist and nurse. She was a member of the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS from 1995–1997 and a founding member of Positively Native, an organisation that supports Native American people with HIV/AIDS. She was featured in Mona Smith's 1988 film...
-- (OjibwaThe Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
) novelist and activist
- Hyapatia Lee
Hyapatia Lee of Cherokee and Irish descent, is a former American exotic dancer and pornographic actress...
-- (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) actress
- Edmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world...
Ojibwe sculptor
- Sacheen Littlefeather
Sacheen Littlefeather is a Native American activist who donned Apache dress and presented a speech on behalf of actor Marlon Brando, for his performance in The Godfather, when he boycotted the 45th Academy Awards ceremony on March 27, 1973, in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the...
-- (Yaqui) actress
- Litefoot
Gary Paul Davis , better known by his stage name Litefoot, is a Native American rapper and the founder of the Red Vinyl record label. He also portrayed Little Bear in the movie The Indian in the Cupboard.-Personal life:...
(Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
-ChichimecaChichimeca was the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico and southwestern United States, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian"...
), actor, hip hop artist
- Little Turtle -- (Miami
The Miami are a Native American nation originally found in what is now Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is the only federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States...
) chief
- Clayton J. Lonetree
Clayton J. Lonetree is a member of the Navajo Nation who served nine years in prison for espionage. During the early 1980s, Lonetree was a Marine Corps Security Guard stationed at the Embassy of the United States in Moscow....
-- WinnebagoThe Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....
U.S. Marine and SpySPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
for the KGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
- Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf the Younger was the adopted son of Chief Lone Wolf the Elder. His original name was Mamadayte. The elder Lone Wolf adopted the then 15-year-old Mamadayte and gave him his name for his bravery in battle....
-- (KiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
) chief
- Phil Lucas
Phil Lucas was an American filmmaker of mostly Native American themes. He acted, wrote, produced, directed or edited more than 100 films/documentaries or television programs starting as early as 1979 when he wrote/co-produced and co-directed Images of Indians for PBS - a five-part series exploring...
-- (ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
) filmmaker, actor, writer, producer, director and editor
- Luke 'Pocahontas' Harlow -- (Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) Gay Rights Activist
M
- Major Ridge
Major Ridge, The Ridge was a Cherokee Indian member of the tribal council, a lawmaker, and a leader. He was a veteran of the Chickamauga Wars, the Creek War, and the First Seminole War.Along with Charles R...
- Cherokee chief, led Lighthorse Patrol and signed the Treaty of New Echota.
- Mangas Coloradas
Mangas Coloradas, or Dasoda-hae , was an Apache tribal chief and a member of the Eastern Chiricahua nation, whose homeland stretched west from the Rio Grande to include most of what is present-day southwestern New Mexico...
- Apache chief
- Wilma Mankiller
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. She served as principal chief for ten years from 1985 to 1995.-Early life:...
- Cherokee Nation chief
- Joseph Marshall III
Joseph Marshall III is a Lakota Sioux educator and writer. He was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and he writes mainly historical fiction about events in Lakota history...
- María Martínez
Maria Montoya Martinez was a Native American artist who created internationally known pottery...
, San Ildefonso Pueblo potter
- Massasoit
Massasoit Sachem or Ousamequin ,was the sachem, or leader, of the Pokanoket, and "Massasoit" of the Wampanoag Confederacy. The term Massasoit means Great Sachem.-Early years:...
- Wampanoag chief
- John Joseph Mathews
- Janet McAdams
Janet McAdams is an Alabama Creek/Scottish/Irish poet and the author of The Island of Lost Luggage which received an American Book Award in 2001 and the First Book Award for Poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas in 1999...
- Edward "Wahoo" McDaniel
Edward "Wahoo" McDaniel was a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American who achieved fame as a professional American football player and later as a professional wrestler.-Early life:...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
-ChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
professional wrestler
- Alexander McGillivray
Alexander McGillivray, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko , was a principal chief of the Upper Creek towns from 1782. Before that he had created an alliance between the Creek and the British during the American Revolution...
, Muscogee Creek chief
- William McIntosh, Muscogee Creek chief
- D'Arcy McNickle
D'Arcy McNickle was a writer, Native American activist and anthropologist.-Biography:D’Arcy McNickle, an enrolled Salish Kootenai on the Flathead Indian Reservation, became one of the most prominent twentieth-century American Indian activists...
- Mardi Oakley Medawar
Mardi Oakley Medawar is a novelist of Cherokee descent who lives on the Red Cliff Chippewa Reservation. Her novels mostly centre around Kiowa and Crow tribes, and usually work within the mystery genre.-Novels:...
- Russell Means
Russell Charles Means is an Oglala Sioux activist for the rights of Native American people. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement after joining the organisation in 1968, and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage...
, Lakota activist and actor
- Joe Medicine Crow
Joseph Medicine Crow is a Crow historian and author. He is also an enrolled member of the Crow Nation of Native Americans...
(Crow NationThe Crow, also called the Absaroka or Apsáalooke, are a Siouan people of Native Americans who historically lived in the Yellowstone River valley, which extends from present-day Wyoming, through Montana and into North Dakota. They now live on a reservation south of Billings, Montana and in several...
), anthropologist
- Miantonomo, Narragansett chief
- Devon A. Mihesuah
Devon Abbott Mihesuah is a Choctaw historian and writer, and a previous editor of the American Indian Quarterly.Mihesuah's non-fiction work concentrates on stereotypes and misrepresentations of Native American peoples, customs and beliefs in academic writing.-Fiction:*Document of Expectations *Big...
- Billy Mills
William Mervin Mills or "Billy" Mills, also known as Makata Taka Hela , is the second Native American to win an Olympic gold medal....
, Oglala LakotaThe Oglala Lakota or Oglala Sioux are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people; along with the Nakota and Dakota, they make up the Great Sioux Nation. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the...
athlete
- Deborah A. Miranda
Deborah Miranda is a Native American writer and poet. Her father, Alfred Edward Robles Mirada is from the Esselen and Chumash people, native to the Santa Barbara/Santa Ynez/Monterery, California area...
- N. Scott Momaday
Navarre Scott Momaday is a Kiowa-Cherokee Pulitzer Prize-winning writer from Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.-Background:...
, KiowaThe Kiowa are a nation of American Indians and indigenous people of the Great Plains. They migrated from the northern plains to the southern plains in the late 17th century. In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma...
-CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
poet, author, scholar, and painter
- Irvin Morris
Irvin Morris is a Navajo Nation author and has taught at Cornell University, the State University of New York, the University of Arizona, and Dine College. He received his MFA at Cornell University. His work, From the Glittering World: A Navajo Story is a blend of Navajo creation narrative,...
- Mountain Wolf Woman
Mountain Wolf Woman, or Xéhachiwinga , was a Native American woman of the Ho-Chunk tribe. She was born in April 1884 into the Thunder Clan near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Her parents were Charles Blowsnake and Lucy Goodvillage...
- Mourning Dove
Mourning Dove was a Native American author and best known for her 1927 novel Cogewea the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range, which tells the story of Cogewea, a mixed-blood ranch woman on the Flathead Indian Reservation. The novel is one of the first written by a Native...
N
- R. Carlos Nakai
Raymond Carlos “R.” Nakai is a Native American flautist of Navajo/Ute heritage.-Biography:Born Ray Carlos Nakai, in Flagstaff, Arizona, he released his first album, Changes, in 1983...
(NavajoThe Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
), musician
- Nampeyo
Iris Nampeyo was a Hopi potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in present-day Arizona. She received the English name Iris as an infant, but was better known by her Tewa name, Num-pa-yu, meaning "snake that does not bite"....
- HopiThe Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
potter
- Nora Naranjo-Morse
Nora Naranjo-Morse is a Native American potter and poet. She currently resides in Espanola, New Mexico just north of Santa Fe and is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo...
- Nas'Naga
Nas'Naga is the pen-name of Shawnee writer Roger Russell. He was the fourth writer published in the Harper & Row Native American Publishing series....
, ShawneeThe Shawnee, Shaawanwaki, Shaawanooki and Shaawanowi lenaweeki, are an Algonquian-speaking people native to North America. Historically they inhabited the areas of Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania...
- Chuck Norris
Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris is an American martial artist and actor. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist and has since founded his own school, Chun Kuk Do...
- CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
actor, martial artist, author
- Jim Northrup
Jim Northrup is an Anishinaabe newspaper columnist, poet, performer and political commentator from the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation in Minnesota...
- Nila NorthSun
is a Native American poet and tribal historian, one of the best-known figures in the Native American Renaissance. Her gritty, realistic poems about life both on and off the reservation have made her one of the most widely read of all Native American poets....
O
- St. David Pendleton Oakerhater, Cheyenne
Cheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
warrior, artist, deacon, and saint in the Episcopal church
- Samson Occom
The Reverend Samson Occom was a Native American Presbyterian clergyman and a member of the Mohegan nation near New London, Connecticut...
- MoheganThe Mohegan tribe is an Algonquian-speaking tribe that lives in the eastern upper Thames River valley of Connecticut. Mohegan translates to "People of the Wolf". At the time of European contact, the Mohegan and Pequot were one people, historically living in the lower Connecticut region...
clergyman
- Old Tom
Old Tom is the name of an alleged Blackfoot medicine man who lived in Montana during the early twentieth century. Some sources suggest that he may have been Piegan or Sarcee.-Historicity:...
- BlackfootThe Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
shaman
- Opechancanough - Pamunkey
The Pamunkey nation are one of eleven Virginia Indian tribes recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The historical tribe was part of the Powhatan paramountcy, made up of Algonquian-speaking tribes. The Powhatan paramount chiefdom was made up over 30 tribes, estimated to total about...
Indian chief
- Oratam
Oratam was sagamore, or sachem, of the Hackensack Indians living in northeastern New Jersey during the period of early European colonization in the 17th century...
- sachem of the Hackensack Indians
- Simon J. Ortiz
Simon J. Ortiz is a Native American writer of the Acoma Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second wave of what has been called the Native American Renaissance...
, Acoma PuebloAcoma Pueblo is a Native American pueblo approximately 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the United States. Three reservations make up Acoma Pueblo: Sky City , Acomita, and McCartys. The Acoma Pueblo tribe is a federally recognized tribal entity...
poet
- Osceola
Osceola, also known as Billy Powell , became an influential leader with the Seminole in Florida. He was of Creek, Scots-Irish and English parentage, and had migrated to Florida with his mother after the defeat of the Creek in 1814.Osceola led a small band of warriors in the Seminole resistance...
, SeminoleThe Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
leader
- Chief Oshkosh
Chief Oshkosh was the chief of the Menominee Indian tribe from 1827 until his death. He played a key role in treaty negotiations as the Menominee tribe tried to protect their lands in Wisconsin from the resettling New York Indians and the American pioneers...
, MenomineeSome placenames use other spellings, see also Menomonee and Menomonie.The Menominee are a nation of Native Americans living in Wisconsin. The Menominee, along with the Ho-Chunk, are the only tribes that are indigenous to what is now Wisconsin...
leader
- Chief Ouray
Ouray was a Native American chief of the Uncompahgre band of the Ute tribe, then located in western Colorado...
, Ute TribeThe Ute are an American Indian people now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico . The name of the state of...
leader
- Louis Owens
Louis Owens was a novelist and scholar of Choctaw, Cherokee and Irish descent. He is known for a series of Native-themed mystery novels and for his contributions to the then-fledgling field of Native American Studies...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
-CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
author
- Owl Woman
Owl Woman , was a Cheyenne princess. She married an Anglo American trader named William Bent, with whom she had four children. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame for her role in managing relations between Native American tribes and the Anglo American men...
, CheyenneCheyenne are a Native American people of the Great Plains, who are of the Algonquian language family. The Cheyenne Nation is composed of two united tribes, the Só'taeo'o and the Tsétsêhéstâhese .The Cheyenne are thought to have branched off other tribes of Algonquian stock inhabiting lands...
negotiator, peace-maker, Colorado Women's Hall of FameThe Colorado Women's Hall of Fame is a non-profit, volunteer organization that recognizes women who have contributed to history of the U.S. state of Colorado.-History:...
P
- Ely S. Parker
Ely Samuel Parker , was a Seneca attorney, engineer, and tribal diplomat. He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel during the American Civil War, when he served as adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant. He wrote the final draft of the Confederate surrender terms at Appomattox...
- U.S. Army Brigadier General
- Quanah Parker
Quanah Parker was a Comanche chief, a leader in the Native American Church, and the last leader of the powerful Quahadi band before they surrendered their battle of the Great Plains and went to a reservation in Indian Territory...
, ComancheThe Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. Historically, the Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian...
chief
- Elise Paschen
Elise Paschen, a poet of Osage descent, is the co-founder and co-editor of Poetry in Motion, a program which places poetry posters in subways and buses across the country. The daughter of renowned prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief, and Chicago builder Henry D. Paschen, she was born and raised in...
- Pawhuska, Osage
The Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
Chief
- Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement . In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine...
, OjibwaThe Ojibwe or Chippewa are among the largest groups of Native Americans–First Nations north of Mexico. They are divided between Canada and the United States. In Canada, they are the third-largest population among First Nations, surpassed only by Cree and Inuit...
-Lakota activist
- William S. Penn
William S. Penn is a mixed-race Nez Perce author and English professor at Michigan State. His work explores the issues his father faced coming to terms with his Indian heritage. His work may be classified as magical realism. He has also written a nonfiction work, All My Sins are Relatives about...
- Robert L. Perea
Robert L. Perea is a Mexican-American and Oglala Sioux author, Vietnam War veteran and a graduate of the University of New Mexico. He teaches philosophy and history at Central Arizona College near Phoenix...
- Lori Piestewa
SPC Lori Ann Piestewa 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...
, HopiThe Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
veteran, Died in the 2003 invasion of Iraq
- Lawrence Plamondon, Odawa
The Odawa or Ottawa, said to mean "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. Their original homelands are located on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, on the Bruce Peninsula in...
-Ojibwe activist and storyteller
- Pocahontas
Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
, PowhatanThe Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...
diplomat
- Leopold Pokagon
Leopold Pokagon was a Potawatomi Wkema . Taking over from Topinbee, who died in 1826, Pokagon became the head of the Potawatomi of the Saint Joseph River Valley in Michigan, a band that later took his name....
, PotawatomiThe Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...
- Simon Pokagon
Simon Pokagon was a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, an author, and a Native American advocate. He was born near Bertrand in southwest Michigan and died on January 28, 1899 in Hartford, Michigan. Dubbed the “Red Man’s Longfellow” by literary fans, Pokagon was often called the...
, PotawatomiThe Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...
- Chief Pontiac
Pontiac or Obwandiyag , was an Ottawa leader who became famous for his role in Pontiac's Rebellion , an American Indian struggle against the British military occupation of the Great Lakes region following the British victory in the French and Indian War. Historians disagree about Pontiac's...
, OdawaThe Odawa or Ottawa, said to mean "traders," are a Native American and First Nations people. They are one of the Anishinaabeg, related to but distinct from the Ojibwe nation. Their original homelands are located on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shores of Lake Huron, on the Bruce Peninsula in...
chief
- Popé
Popé or Po'pay was a Tewa religious leader from Ohkay Owingeh , who led the Pueblo Revolt against Spanish colonial rule in 1680.-Background:...
, Ohkay Owingeh religious and military lear
- Susan Power
Susan Power is a Standing Rock Sioux author from Chicago. She earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a JD from Harvard Law School...
, Standing Rock Sioux author
- Powhatan
The Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...
, PowhatanThe Powhatan is the name of a Virginia Indian confederation of tribes. It is estimated that there were about 14,000–21,000 of these native Powhatan people in eastern Virginia when the English settled Jamestown in 1607...
chief
- Pushmataha
Pushmataha , the "Indian General", was one of the three regional chiefs of the major divisions of the Choctaw in the nineteenth century. Many historians considered him the "greatest of all Choctaw chiefs"...
, ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
chief and U.S. Army Brigadier General
R
- Red Cloud
Red Cloud , was a war leader and the head Chief of the Oglala Lakota . His reign was from 1868 to 1909...
, Oglala Sioux chief
- Red Jacket
Red Jacket was a Native American Seneca orator and chief of the Wolf clan...
, Seneca NationThe Seneca are a group of indigenous people native to North America. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League in New York before the American Revolution. While exact population figures are unknown, approximately 15,000 to 25,000 Seneca live in...
chief
- Delphine Red Shirt
Delphine Red Shirt is a Native-American writer.-Biography:Red Shirt spent her earliest years off the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in a small town in northern Nebraska where she attended public school, learning to speak English for the first time...
, Oglala LakotaThe Oglala Lakota or Oglala Sioux are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people; along with the Nakota and Dakota, they make up the Great Sioux Nation. A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the eighth-largest Native American reservation in the...
author
- Ben Reifel
Benjamin "Ben" Reifel, also known as Lone Feather was a public administrator and politician of Lakota Sioux and German-American descent. He had a career with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, retiring as area administrator...
- Sioux activist and U.S. representative from South Dakota
- Carter Revard
Carter Curtis Revard is an American poet, writer and scholar. He is part Osage on his father's side. He is also known by his Osage name, Nom-Peh-Wah-The given to him in 1952 by his grandmother, Mrs. Josephine Jump....
- Chief G. Anne Richardson
G. Anne Nelson was born in 1965 to Chief and Mrs. Captain Nelson of Indian Neck, Virginia.Anne was elected Assistant Chief to her father in 1980...
(Chief of the Rappahannock tribeThe Rappahannock are one of the eleven state-recognized Native American tribes in Virginia. They are made up of descendants of several small Algonquian-speaking tribes who merged in the 17th century.-17th century:...
- first female chief in Virginia since the 18th century)
- Will Rogers
William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
, CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
actor and humorist
- Will Rogers, Jr.
William Vann Rogers, generally known as Will Rogers, Jr. , was a son of legendary humorist Will Rogers and his wife, the former Betty Blake . He was a Democratic U. S. Representative from California from January 3, 1943 until May 23, 1944, when he resigned to return to the United States Army...
, Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
journalist and politician
- John Rollin Ridge
John Rollin Ridge , a member of the Cherokee Nation, is considered the first Native American novelist.-Biography:...
, CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
author
- Wendy Rose
Wendy Rose is a Hopi/Miwok writer. Having grown up in an environment which placed little emphasis on her Native American background, much of her verse deals with her search for her personal identity as a Native American...
, HopiThe Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
-MiwokMiwok can refer to any one of four linguistically related groups of Native Americans, native to Northern California, who spoke one of the Miwokan languages in the Utian family...
author
- John Ross
John Ross , also known as Guwisguwi , was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828–1866...
, Cherokee chief
S
- Juan Sabeata
Juan Sabeata was a Jumano Indian leader in present day Texas who tried to forge an alliance with the Spanish or French to help his people fend off the encroachments of the Apaches on their territory. -Life:...
, JumanoThe Jumano Indians were a prominent Native American tribe or several tribes who inhabited western Texas and adjacent New Mexico, especially near the La Junta region. They were discovered by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. but had nearly disappeared as a people by 1750.-The Jumano...
chief
- Sacajawea, Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
interpreter
- Samoset
Samoset was the first Native American to make contact with the Pilgrims. On March 16, 1621, the settlers were more than surprised when Samoset strolled straight through the middle of the encampment at Plymouth Colony and greeted them in English, which he had begun to learn from an earlier group of...
, AlgonquianThe Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
Abenaki leader
- Carol Lee Sanchez
Carol Lee Sanchez is a poet, visual artist, essayist, teacher and mother of three adult children. She is a native of New Mexico and her cultural heritage is mostly Laguna Pueblo and Lebanese-American. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Art Administration from San Francisco State University in 1978...
- William Sanders
William Sanders is an American science fiction writer, primarily of short fiction, and was the senior editor of the now defunct online science fiction magazine Helix SF....
- Greg Sarris
Gregory Michael Sarris is a college professor, author, screenwriter, and a member and current Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He was chosen in 2005 to fill the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Sonoma State University...
, Federated Indians of Graton RancheriaThe Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok, is a federally recognized American Indian tribe of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Indians. The tribe was officially restored to federal recognition by the U.S. government pursuant to the Graton Rancheria...
tribal chairman, author, and professor
- Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, also known as Bamewawagezhikaquay is the first known American Indian literary writer. She was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry...
- Chief Seattle
Chief Seattle , was a Dkhw’Duw’Absh chief, also known as Sealth, Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth. A prominent figure among his people, he pursued a path of accommodation to white settlers, forming a personal relationship with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard. Seattle, Washington was named after him...
, SuquamishThe Suquamish are a Lushootseed-speaking Native American Tribe, located in present-day Washington in the United States.The Suquamish are a southern Coast Salish people; they spoke a dialect of Lushootseed, which belongs to the Salishan language family. Like many Northwest Coast natives, the...
leader
- Selena
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez , known simply as Selena, was a Mexican American singer-songwriter. She was named the "top Latin artist of the '90s" and "Best selling Latin artist of the decade" by Billboard for her fourteen top-ten singles in the Top Latin Songs chart, including seven number-one hits...
, (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) legendary Latin pop singer
- Sequoyah
Sequoyah , named in English George Gist or George Guess, was a Cherokee silversmith. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible...
(CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
), inventor of the Cherokee syllabaryThe Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in the late 1810s and early 1820s. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. He first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed...
- The Prohet, Shawnee religious leader
- Leslie Marmon Silko
Leslie Marmon Silko is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the second wave of what Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
, Laguna PuebloLaguna is a Native American tribe of the Pueblo people in west-central New Mexico, USA. The name, Laguna, is Spanish and derives from the lake located on their reservation. The real Keresan name of the tribe is Kawaik. The population of the tribe exceeds 7,000 , making it the largest Keresan...
poet and novelist
- Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull Sitting Bull Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake (in Standard Lakota Orthography), also nicknamed Slon-he or "Slow"; (c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government policies...
, Hunkpapa Lakota chief
- Chad Smith, Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
- Andrea Smith
Andrea Lee Smith is a intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist. Smith's work focuses on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women...
- Cynthia Leitich Smith
Cynthia Leitich Smith is a New York Times best-selling author of fiction for children and young adults. A member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, she writes fiction for children centered on the lives of modern-day American Indians. These books are taught widely by teachers in elementary, middle...
- Keely Smith
Keely Smith is an American jazz and popular music singer who enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. She collaborated with, among others, Louis Prima and Frank Sinatra.-Career:...
, (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) singer
- Smohalla
Smohalla Wanapum nineteenth-century dreamer-prophet associated with the Dreamers movement among Native American people in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia Plateau region.-Biography:...
, WanapumThe Wanapum tribe of Native Americans formerly lived along the Columbia River from above Priest Rapids down to the mouth of the Snake River in what is now the U.S. state of Washington. About 60 Wanapum still live near the present day site of Priest Rapids Dam...
chief and religious leader
- Sonuk Mikko
Sonuk Mikko , commonly known as Billy Bowlegs and also known as So-Nuk-Mek-Ko, was a Seminole who gained recognition as a captain in the American Civil War...
, Captain in the Indian Home GuardThe Indian Home Guard were volunteer infantry regiments recruited from the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory to support the Union during the American Civil War....
during the American Civil War often referred to as Billy BowlegsthumbChief Billy Bowlegs or Billy Bolek was a leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second and Third Seminole Wars against the United States...
- Louis Sockalexis
Louis Francis "Chief" Sockalexis , nicknamed The Deerfoot of the Diamond, was an American baseball player...
(Penobscot), Major League Baseball player
- Ian Somerhalder
Ian Joseph Somerhalder is an American model, actor and producer, best known for playing Boone Carlyle in the TV drama Lost and Damon Salvatore in the TV drama The Vampire Diaries.-Early life:...
, (ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
) actor
- Eddie Spears
Eddie Spears is an American actor. He is a member of the Kul Wicasa Oyate Lakota Lower Brulé Tribe of South Dakota.He has 5 brothers and 1 sister. His older brother Michael is also an actor....
, (Lakota)
- Michael Spears
Michael Spears is an American actor.Spears was born in Lower Brulé Tribe, South Dakota to Native American parents. He is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Lower Brule Tribe of South Dakota...
, (Lakota)
- Squanto
Tisquantum was a Patuxet. He was the Native American who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in the New World and was integral to their survival. The Patuxet tribe was a tributary of the Wampanoag Confederacy.-Biography:Squanto's exact date of birth is unknown but many historians...
, PatuxetThe Patuxet are an extinct Native American tribe of the Wampanoag tribal confederation. They lived primarily in and around the area of what has since been settled as Plymouth, Massachusetts.-Devastation:...
interpreter
- Standing Bear
Standing Bear was a Ponca Native American chief who successfully argued in U.S...
, PoncaThe Ponca are a Native American people of the Dhegihan branch of the Siouan-language group. There are two federally recognized Ponca tribes: the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska and the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma...
Chief
- Luther Standing Bear
Luther Standing Bear , aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin, was a Native American writer and actor....
- James Thomas Stevens
James Thomas Stevens is an American poet and academic. He is a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and currently teaches at the College of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.-Background:...
- Wes Studi
Wesley "Wes" Studi is a Cherokee actor, who has earned notability for his portrayal of Native Americans in film. He has appeared in well-received Academy Award-winning films, such as Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans, the award-winning Geronimo: An...
, Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
actor
T
- Chief Tahachee
- Maria Tallchief
Maria Tallchief was the first native-American prima ballerina. From 1942 to 1947 she danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but she is best known for her time with the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1965.-Early life:...
-- Osage NationThe Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
ballerina
- Marjorie Tallchief
Marjorie Louise Tallchief was a ballerina of the Osage Nation.-Career:Tallchief was the first American Indian to be "première danseuse étoile" of the Paris Opera Ballet and performed with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. During her career she also performed for politicians such as John F....
-- Osage NationThe Osage Nation is a Native American Siouan-language tribe in the United States that originated in the Ohio River valley in present-day Kentucky. After years of war with invading Iroquois, the Osage migrated west of the Mississippi River to their historic lands in present-day Arkansas, Missouri,...
ballerina
- Margo Tamez
Margo Tamez is an Nde' indigenous Lipan Apache and Jumano Apache scholar and poet. She was born and grew up in South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley, along the Texas-Mexico border. Tamez's 2007 work, Raven Eye, is considered the first fusion of creative non-fiction, biography, and poetry...
- Luci Tapahonso
Luci Tapahonso is a Navajo poet and lecturer in Native American Studies.-Early life:Born on the Navajo reservation, to Eugene Tapahonso , and Lucille Tapahonso, , Luci Tapahonso was raised in a traditional way along with 11 siblings. English was not spoken on the family farm, and Tapahonso...
- Tecumseh
Tecumseh was a Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy which opposed the United States during Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812...
-- ShawneeThe Shawnee, Shaawanwaki, Shaawanooki and Shaawanowi lenaweeki, are an Algonquian-speaking people native to North America. Historically they inhabited the areas of Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, and Pennsylvania...
warrior and statesman
- Kateri Tekakwitha
Kateri Tekakwitha or Catherine Tekakwitha was a Mohawk-Algonquian woman from New York and an early convert to Catholicism, who has been beatified in the Roman Catholic Church.-Her life:...
-- MohawkMohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
-AlgonquianThe Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
convert, beatified in the Roman Catholic Church
- Randy'L He-dow Teton
Randy'L He-dow Teton is the Shoshone woman who posed as the model for the US Sacagawea dollar coin, first issued in 2000. She is the only living person whose image appears on American currency.-Biography:...
-- ShoshoneThe Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
model for the US Sacagawea dollar coin, first issued in 2000. She is the first Native American woman to appear on an American coin.
- William Clyde Thompson
Captain William Clyde Thompson was a Texas Choctaw leader who rallied against the Dawes Commission for Choctaw enrollment. He was born in 1839 near Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nation.-Background:...
-- Texas ChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
leader who fought against the Dawes CommissionThe American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893...
for Choctaw enrollment.
- Jim Thorpe
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28 * americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete of mixed ancestry...
(Sac and Fox NationThe Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sac and Meskwaki Native Americans. They are located in Oklahoma and are predominantly Sac....
), Olympic Gold medalist and football and baseball player
- George Tinker
George E. "Tink" Tinker is a prominent American Indian theologian and scholar who is the author of many articles, the books Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Theology, and co-author of Native American...
- Gordon Tootoosis
- Touch the Clouds
Touch the Clouds was a chief of the Minneconjou Teton Lakota known for his bravery and skill in battle, physical strength and for his diplomacy in counsel. The youngest son of Lone Horn, he was brother to Spotted Elk, Frog, and Roman Nose...
-- (Mahpia Icahtagya), great Teton Lakota Sioux chief
- Sheila Tousey
Sheila May Tousey is an Native American actress.-Biography:Born in Keshena, Wisconsin, Tousey is a Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee Indian, raised on both Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee Reservations.-Filmography:-External links:*...
, (MenomineeSome placenames use other spellings, see also Menomonee and Menomonie.The Menominee are a nation of Native Americans living in Wisconsin. The Menominee, along with the Ho-Chunk, are the only tribes that are indigenous to what is now Wisconsin...
)
- Mark Trahant
Mark Trahant is an independent print and broadcast journalist. He writes a weekly column and posts often on Twitter . Trahant was a reporter on the PBS series, Frontline, with a story called "The Silence," about sexual abuse by clergy in Alaska. Trahant was recently a Kaiser Media Fellow. At the...
-- ShoshoneThe Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
-BannockThe Bannock tribe of the Northern Paiute are an indigenous people of the Great Basin. Their traditional lands include southeastern Oregon, southeastern Idaho, western Wyoming, and southwestern Montana...
, print and broadcast journalist, and author
- Haunani-Kay Trask
Haunani-Kay Trask is a Native Hawaiian academic, activist, documentarist and writer. Trask is a professor of Hawaiian Studies with the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has represented Native Hawaiians in the United Nations and various other...
- Mililani Trask
Mililani Trask is a leader of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and a political speaker and attorney. One of Trask's contributions to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement was her founding of Na Koa Ikaika o Ka Lāhui Hawaii, a native Hawaiian non-governmental organization.Outside of Hawaii, Trask has...
- Gail Tremblay
Gail Tremblay is a Mi'kmaq and Onondaga writer and artist.-Background:Trembley was born on 15 December 1945 in Buffalo, New York. She received her BA in drama from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in English from the University of Oregon, Eugene in 1969.-Writing and education career:She...
- David Treuer
David Treuer is a writer of Ojibwe and Jewish descent. He was born in Washington, D.C. and raised on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. He attended Princeton University and was graduated in 1992 after writing two senior theses, one in the anthropology department and one in...
- John Trudell
John Trudell is a Native American-Mexican author, poet, actor, musician, and former political activist. He was the spokesperson for the United Indians of All Tribes' takeover of Alcatraz beginning in 1969, broadcasting as Radio Free Alcatraz...
-- SiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
, musician, poet, activist
- Mark Turcotte
Mark Turcotte is a Native American poet. He has published two books of poetry, Exploding Chippewas and Feathered Heart.Turcotte is currently a visiting assistant professor of English at in Chicago, IL.- External links :* * *...
- Richard Twiss
Richard Twiss is a Native American educator and author. He is a member of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate from the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota...
- E. Donald Two-Rivers
E. Donald "Ed" Two-Rivers was Anishinaabe...
V
- James Vann
James Vann was an influential Cherokee leader, one of the triumvirate with Major Ridge and Charles R. Hicks, who led the Upper Towns of East Tennessee and North Georgia. He was the son of Wah-Li Vann, a mixed-race Cherokee woman, and a Scots fur trader...
-- (CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
) richest man in the Cherokee NationThe Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
and was one of the richest men in the Western Hemisphere in the early 19th century.
- Victorio
Victorio was a warrior and chief of the Chihenne band of the Chiricahua Apaches in what is now the American states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua....
-- Chiricahua Apache chief
- Gerald Vizenor
Gerald Robert Vizenor is a Native American writer, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. One of the most prolific Native American writers, with over 30 books to his name, Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where...
-- White Earth Ojibwe writer and professor
W
- Velma Wallis
Velma Wallis is an Athabascan Indian and bestselling U.S. novelist. Her work has been translated into 17 languages.-Life and work:...
- Anna Lee Walters
Anna Lee Walters is an award-winning Pawnee/Otoe-Missouria author from Oklahoma.-Career:Walters works at the Diné College in Arizona, where she directs the college press. She lives in Tsaile, Arizona with her husband Harry Walters...
-- Pawnee-OtoeThe Otoe or Oto are a Native American people. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and closely related to that of the related Iowa and Missouri tribes.-History:...
author
- Nancy Ward
Nanyehi , known in English as Nancy Ward was a Ghigau, or Beloved Woman of the Cherokee Nation, which meant that she was allowed to sit in councils and to make decisions, along with the other Beloved Women, on pardons...
-- Cherokee warrior, diplomat, and "Beloved Woman"
- Stand Watie
Stand Watie , also known as Standhope Uwatie, Degataga , meaning “stand firm”), and Isaac S. Watie, was a leader of the Cherokee Nation and a brigadier general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
-- CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
leader and a brigadier general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
- William Weatherford
William Weatherford, also known as Lamochattee by the Creek , was a Creek chief of the Upper Towns who led the Red Sticks offensive in the Creek War against the United States...
-- Muscogee Creek chief
- James Welch
- Floyd Red Crow Westerman
Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman, also known as Kanghi Duta was a Sioux musician, political activist and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life, he became a leading actor depicting Native Americans in American films and television. He is sometimes credited simply...
- White Hair (Pawhuska), the name of several Osage chiefs.
- White Plume
White Plume , also known as Nom-pa-wa-rah, Manshenscaw, and Monchousia, was a chief of the Kaw Indians. He signed a treaty in 1825 ceding millions of acres of Kaw land to the United States. Most present-day members of the Kaw Nation of Oklahoma trace their lineage back to him...
-- KawThe Kaw Nation are an American Indian people of the central Midwestern United States. The tribe known as Kaw have also been known as the "People of the South wind", "People of water", Kansa, Kaza, Kosa, and Kasa. Their tribal language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan language.The toponym "Kansas"...
chief
- Sarah Winnemucca
Sarah Winnemucca was a prominent female Native American activist and educator, and an influential figure in the United States' nineteenth-century Indian policies...
-- PaiutePaiute refers to three closely related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; the Owens Valley Paiute of California and Nevada; and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah.-Origin of name:The origin of...
leader, warrior, and interpreter,
- Craig Womack
Craig Womack is an author and professor of Native American literature. Creek-Cherokee by ancestry, Womack is best known for Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism, a book of literary criticism which argues that the dominant approach to academic study of Native American literature is...
- Wovoka
Wovoka , also known as Jack Wilson, was the Northern Paiute religious leader who founded the Ghost Dance movement. Wovoka means "cutter" or "wood cutter" in the Northern Paiute language.-Biography:...
, PaiutePaiute refers to three closely related groups of Native Americans — the Northern Paiute of California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon; the Owens Valley Paiute of California and Nevada; and the Southern Paiute of Arizona, southeastern California and Nevada, and Utah.-Origin of name:The origin of...
religious leader and founder of the Ghost DanceThe Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
religion
Y
- Yellow Bird, Walla Walla
Walla Walla |Native American]] tribe of the northwestern United States. The reduplication of the word expresses the diminutive form. The name "Walla Walla" is translated several ways but most often as "many waters."...
chief
- Ray Young Bear
Ray Young Bear is a Native American poet and novelist of the Meskwaki tribe.Growing up on the Meskwaki Tribal Settlement in Iowa, he was encouraged to learn English by his maternal grandmother, and he began to translate his poems into that language...
Z
- Peterson Zah
Peterson Zah was the first Navajo President and the last Chairman of the Navajo people. Since 1995, he has been working at Arizona State University as the Special Adviser to ASU President on American Indian Affairs...
, Diné-People named Dine:* Jim Dine , an American pop artist* S. S. Van Dine, an art critic and author* Tom Dine, an American government worker-Other meanings:* Beit ed-Dine, a town in Lebanon* Diné, name for the Navajo Nation in the Navajo language...
politician
- Ofelia Zepeda
Ofelia Zepeda is a Tohono O'odham poet and intellectual. Zepeda is a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and is well known for her efforts in the preservation of her native language and promotion literacy in it. She is also known for her work as a consultant and advocate on...
, Tohono O'odhamThe Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...
poet and intellectual
- Zitkala-Sa
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin , better known by her pen name, Zitkala-Sa , was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She published in national magazines. With William F...
, Yankton Sioux writer and activist
See also