Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: William Paul, first Native legislator in Alaska

William Paul, born May 7, 1885 in Tongass Village, Alaska, was a member of the Raven (Tlingit) moiety.  He and his brothers attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and William received his Bachelor of Arts from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. 

He and his brother Louis founded the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB), which pressed for voting rights, desegregation, social services, and advancing land claims for Tlingit in Alaska.  He was the first Alaska Native to become an attorney, the first to be elected to the Alaska Territorial House of Representative, and the first to serve as an officer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

He was a major player in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, signed by President Nixon in December 1971.  The law established Alaska Native claims to land by transferring titles to twelve Alaska Native regional corporations and two hundred village corporations.

Paul died in Seattle, Washington in March 1977.

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Juanita Howling Buffalo, first woman chair of Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes

Juanita Howling Buffalo, born September 6, 1930 in Canton, Oklahoma, became the first woman to chair the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. After finishing her education she served in the Women's Army Corps where she met John W. Learned, whom she married and had 10 children with.

In 1965, she was a write-in candidate for the Cheyenne-Arapaho Business Committee and was not elected.  She obtained an injunction and was successful. A new election was held in 1966, and she and two other women won council seats. 

She became the first woman to serve as tribal chair in 1982.  During her term, she led protest against closing of the Concho Indian School and managed to obtain an injunction, but the school closed in 1983. 

Learned went to Washington DC with other tribal leaders in 1990 to reclaim the land and facilities of Fort Reno (near El Reno, Oklahoma) which had been vacated by the military in 1948 and transferred to the Dept. of Agriculture. In 1991, she helped reorganize the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

She passed away in Oklahoma City in 1996.

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Mary Golda Ross, first Native American female engineer

Mary Golda Ross, born August 9, 1908 in Park Hill, Oklahoma, was the first Native American female engineer.  Her great-grandfather was Cherokee Chief John Ross.  She attended primary and secondary school in Tahlequah, where she lived with her grandparents.  She earned a Bachelor's degree in mathematics from Northeastern State Teachers' College in 1928, and received her Master's degree from Colorado State Teachers College in 1938.  

Ross taught in rural Oklahoma schools for nine years.  She worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a statistical clerk.  She was hired as a mathematician by Lockheed Corporation in 1942 and was a founding engineer of the secretive Skunk Works. During her tenure there, she worked on the Agena Rocket program, and early studies of orbiting satellites.  

She passed away in April 2008, just a few months shy of her one hundredth birthday.

Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Ben Reifel, first Native American elected to US Congress

Benjamin Reifel, or "Lone Feather" born September 19, 1906 in a log cabin on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, near Parmelee, South Dakota, was the first Native American  to be elected to the US Congress.  His mother was a Lakota Sioux and he became a public administrator and politician for the Lakota Sioux tribe.

He worked for the Department of the Interior starting in 1933 and served during WWII, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel.  He retired from the South Dakota area administrator of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in March 1960 and ran for Congress.  He was elected to the 87th Congress and served four more turns, from January 1961-January 1971. 

He passed away from cancer in January 1990.

Chief Wilma Mankiller, first female chief of the Cherokee Nation, born 1945

Wilma Mankiller, born November 18, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, was the first woman to serve as Chief of the Cherokee Nation.  When she was 11, her family was relocated to San Francisco by the federal government as part of an "urbanization" of Native Americans.  

She returned to Oklahoma in 1976 and was hired by the Cherokee Nation as an economic stimulus coordinator.  Principal Chief Ross Swimmer invited her to run as his deputy in the 1983 elections.  Despite fierce opposition based on her gender, she and Swimmer won, becoming the first woman elected as Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation.  In 1985, Swimmer took a position with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Mankiller became the first woman to serve as Principal Chief, serving until 1995, when health problems led to her retirement.  

She passed away in April 2010.