Cheyenne scholar and elder Henrietta Mann receives National Humanities Medal
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Renowned Cheyenne educator and elder Henrietta Mann has been awarded a National Humanities Medal, one of the highest honors the U.S. bestows on academics.
The medal goes to scholars and others whose work is deemed to have a lasting cultural impact. President Joe Biden credited Mann for her pivotal role in establishing Native American studies as an academic field in higher education.
“Thanks in large part to her, Native American studies is now taught in universities across the country, strengthening our nation to nation bonds for generations to come,” Biden said of Mann during a March 21 ceremony at the White House.
Mann said her journey to Washington, D.C., began 88 years ago in Hammon, the western Oklahoma community where she grew up learning traditional Cheyenne ways.
Teaching about Native American history and cultures was her way to ensure those lessons of kinship, love, respect, courage and peace endure, she said.
“All of my grandchildren and the people after them also have the right to learn, as well,” said Mann, a Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal citizen who lives in Weatherford.
From the archives: Henrietta Mann exemplifies a life of service
Her four-decade career in higher education spanned the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Montana; Harvard University and Montana State University in Bozeman, where she retired as the school’s endowed chair in Native American Studies.
She then returned to her Oklahoma homelands and started teaching in 2008 at the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribal College in Weatherford. It closed in 2015. She was also instrumental in the founding of the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City.
Mann has focused on teaching the accurate histories of tribal nations and how they were unjustly shaped by colonialization. Boarding schools operated by the U.S. government sought to assimilate generations of Native children. The field of Native American studies now reaffirms and builds up those identities instead, Mann said.
“We are part of the make up of this land by virtue of being here as long as the sun has shone and will continue to shine,” she said. “We have something to contribute.”
'It was a massacre': Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders push to rename Oklahoma site
Mann’s medal citation honors her for “dedicating her life to strengthening and developing Native American education.”
The citation continues, saying her work “led to programs and institutions across the country devoted to the study of Native American history and culture, honoring ancestors that came before and benefiting generations that follow.”
The award is a great honor for all Cheyenne and Arapaho people, who can look up to Mann’s example and learn from her, said Gov. Reggie Wassana, who oversees the joint Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal government in Concho.
“Our elders are just vital to the growth of our tribes,” he said.
Mann learned a month in advance she was one of 12 recipients selected for the honor. She spent her time at the White House watching the ceremonies and accompanying events unfold.
“I just thought, this is my one day in the sun, where I can sit back and just enjoy this kind of acknowledgement, by none other than the country that my ancestors were forced to love,” she said.
"Native America Calling," a longtime daily news radio show that explores the issues facing tribal nations and citizens, also received a National Humanities Medal.
Other recipients for the 2021 medal class were Elton John; authors Walter Isaacson, Ann Patchett, Amy Tan, Tara Westover and Colson Whitehead; poet Richard Blanco; anthropologist Johnnetta Betsch Cole; historian Earl Lewis and justice advocate Bryan Stevenson.
Mann hopes the national recognition for her work signals a turning point in higher education, where Indigenous viewpoints will be incorporated across all areas of study and drawn on to address issues such as climate change and global warming.
“Our teachings say we have to live as respectful relatives in an ocean of relationships in which all life exists,” she said. “We’re not isolated. We’re not above all the other peoples. We just are, and we need to be respectful of this beautiful world in which we are placed.”
Although she no longer teaches in college classrooms, she hasn’t stopped teaching. She has 12 students in the Cheyenne language master apprentice program. She leads the classes by video conference.
“I teach them with the hope and the dreams that they, too, will teach those that have yet to come to walk on this earth,” she said.
Molly Young covers Indigenous affairs. Reach her at mollyyoung@gannett.com or 405-347-3534.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Cheyenne scholar who expanded Native studies awarded top US honor