“Education is the lifeblood of my culture.”

This is how acclaimed educator and activist Henrietta Mann began an in-depth discussion on Native American education, and how she’s seen it evolve throughout her decades of work. 

She joined Nevada Week ahead of Indigenous People’s Day, a holiday observed the second Monday in October. President Joe Biden issued the first Presidential Proclamation to mark the holiday in 2021. That same year, he awarded the National Humanities Medal to Mann. 

After paying tribute to the Indigenous tribes that call Nevada home, Mann took us back to the early years of her career: teaching Native American Studies at UC Berkeley in 1970. 

“Native American studies as a curricular unit really grew out of the activism in California at that time," she told Nevada Week host Amber Renee Dixon. "In fact, California was the first to create and establish ethnic studies programs, paying tribute to the cultures of our Black brothers and sisters, our Asian brothers and sisters, at that time Chicano brothers and sisters, Hispanics, and of course, us."

"And I was ecstatic as were many of my brothers and sisters and my relatives to finally have the higher education systems of this land honor us as a people,” Mann said.

Mann said that she was surprised her first classes did not include Indigenous students. It turns out those students were protesting at Alcatraz Island, hoping to establish their own Indian University with tribes around the country being recognized. That importance of recognition is something Mann has carried with her throughout her career. 

“We have been nothing but a lost and invisible page in the history books of this country, in the history of this nation. To be forgotten,” she said, “We remind those that came to live with us that the land upon which they live and walk was sometimes stolen.”  

Mann is a full-blood member of the Cheyenne Tribe.  She told Nevada Week she’s known since she was a small child that she wanted to go into education. Growing up, she says opportunities for Native American children were very limited, with rudimentary education and focuses on assimilation and Christianity. But she was undeterred, choosing to get the best education she could while recognizing the need for Indigenous children to learn about their own communities. 

“They need to know who they are as this land’s first children. The values they carry. Their history, with all its beauty and its tragedy. And so that was the world I went out to be educated in. But I never forgot who I was as a Cheyenne Indian person. I’ll never forget that, that’s been my legacy,” she said. 

Mann went on to create and teach Native American history and cultural programs across the United States. When asked her thoughts on how Native American culture is taught and understood around the country, Mann says she hopes that there have been positive changes. But there is room for improvement. 

“Regrettably, it’s still misunderstood. There are those who fail to see our relationship and kinship to the land. There are those who see this place only to be exploited for the natural resources that are a part of this earth that we call Mother or Grandmother,” she said.

Mann recommends schools start teaching Native American studies starting in kindergarten, and to continue this education in age-appropriate ways throughout their years of school. 

“We really need the assistance of this country’s educational system to begin to integrate our histories, our views of the world of what makes up this beautiful place called America that honors all of the peoples who have come to live here with us as the First Nations of this land.”