For Dr. Henrietta Mann, stressing the importance of education has been a lifelong mission. At a very young age, she developed a passion for learning that blossomed into an unrelenting quest to promote education — for Natives and non-Natives alike — and led to a career of teaching at the pre-college, community college, undergraduate, and graduate levels.
Dr. Mann is the last remaining founding member of the AISES Council of Elders, a distinguished group of dedicated individuals who provide cultural guidance and support to the entire AISES family. In 2012, Dr. Mann was recognized with the Ely S. Parker Award, the highest AISES honor.
Still actively involved as a mentor, Dr. Mann recently participated in the American Indian College Fund Native Pathways Summer Camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., and offered the blessing at the 2019 AISES Leadership Summit in Cherokee, N.C.
She recalls her early life on her grandfather’s allotment near Hammon, Okla., where the Cheyenne language thrived. “It was the happy place where we came together to sustain our culture,” she says. But during the 1950s and ’60s, local authorities ended the Cheyenne’s communal living arrangement, and moved them into town or to government lands nearby.
Prayers in the Cheyenne tradition were part of Dr. Mann’s upbringing. Her great-grandmother, White Buffalo Woman, prayed for her at birth, lifting the baby up to the Four Directions. Dr. Mann was given the Cheyenne name Standing Twenty Woman, which she interprets to mean one woman with the abilities and knowledge of 20 women.
To live up to her name, Dr. Mann decided at an early age to go to school, which required permission from the Indian agent. She recalls that he told her mother, “She’ll get tired of school and you can take her out.” His comments left Dr. Mann determined to learn all she could.
It wouldn’t be long, though, before she would encounter discrimination when the Native students were called out of class to be examined for lice. “I remember the Anglo students called us names,” Dr. Mann says. “I was humiliated and cried. My paternal grandfather, who was my first and dearest friend, asked what had happened.” Through the wisdom of her grandfather, Dr. Mann began to understand that Natives need education to become self-reliant. “My grandfather explained, ‘They look at us differently, and you will have to deal with what Indian-Anglo relations are all about. Your great-grandmother prayed for you to lead a good life. Always remain Cheyenne and try to make them better people,’” says Dr. Mann. “And that is why I decided to become a teacher.”
She graduated from Hammon High School in 1951 and went on to earn her BA in English, with a minor in business education, from Southwestern Oklahoma State University — the first Cheyenne woman to earn a college degree. In recognition of this achievement, her family gave her a new name, Prayer Cloth Woman, after her paternal grandmother, Lucy Whitebear Mann. “Some tribes give their members a new name after a significant event in that person’s life,” she explains. “I would always strive to live up to this name and never dishonor my grandmother.”
In 1970, she earned her master’s degree with an emphasis in English from Oklahoma State University. By this time, Dr. Mann had married and was raising a family. That same year, Dr. Mann began her college teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley. “Colleges were beginning to offer courses in Native American studies,” she says. “I had already taught at the junior high and high school levels, so when I learned of an opportunity to teach at Berkeley, I took it.”
This was an era of activism, and Dr. Mann saw a propitious opening to share information about Native culture and traditions at a public college. “It was here that I found my voice,” she recalls. “I felt inspired to share our wonderful Native ways with the students, the majority of whom were non-Natives. I said to myself, ‘this is where I belong.’”
After teaching at Berkeley for a few years, Dr. Mann relocated with her family to the University of Montana (UM) in Missoula, where she directed the Indian Studies Program and taught. She left in 1986 to serve as deputy to the assistant secretary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and director of the Office of Indian Education. But after a year, what she describes as “deep philosophical differences with federal policy” led her to return to the University of Montana. There she taught intermittently for 28 years and served as director of Native American Studies for 19 years. After leaving her administrative role, she continued as full professor for some nine years.
“I felt inspired to share our wonderful Native ways with the students, the majority of whom were non-Natives. I said to myself, ‘this is where I belong.’”
While teaching at UM, Dr. Mann decided to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. “While I had my master’s, I didn’t possess the same credentials as the other professors,” she says. “I didn’t want to be a weakness in fostering Indian education. My ancestors deserve to have their traditions and history legitimized.”
Tragically, the same day she learned she was officially a doctoral candidate, her husband died. But Dr. Mann persevered, completed the program in three years, and was promoted to full professor.
She became the first to occupy the Katz Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University (MSU) and served in that capacity for three years. After retiring from MSU as professor emerita, she continued to serve as special assistant to the university’s president from 2003 to 2016.
Her numerous distinctions include being named one of the 10 leading professors in the nation by Rolling Stone magazine in 1991 and being inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame in 2018.
She encourages today’s Native students to explore their purpose. “In life’s journey, we are taught to develop our inherent treasured gifts,” says Dr. Mann. “It is critical to develop our minds in both cultural and non-tribal ways, which means pursuing the path of education by attending college.”
