"This page is dedicated to all those historical and contemporary Visionary/Warrior Heroes who continue to impact Indigenous communities by their wise words and brave acts in the defense of their people. Visionaries, Warrior Chiefs, Orators, Singers, Dancers, Speakers, Educators. By every word and action they kept and continue to keep in mind always the greater good of Indigenous People all over Turtle Island. May their spirits stay forever strong. All My Relations." (Thunderbird)

BLACK ELK, Oglala Lakota Medicine Man
December, 1863 - August 19, 1950
Second Cousin of Crazy Horse

A legendary Oglala Lakota Medicine Man whose great vision formed the basis of the book, "Black Elk Speaks." He participated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, was wounded at the original Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. He was eventually baptized a Catholic but saw no contradiction in being both a Spirit Doctor and an active member of the Catholic Church. He was a keeper of many of the Lakota sacred rituals which were eventually revealed to author, John Neihardt for Black Elk Speaks.

CRAZY HORSE (TUSHUNKA-WITCO - THE SILENT ONE)
(1840 -September 5, 1877)

Respected Lakota Warrior Chief who led the warriors at the Battle of Rosebud Creek and the Little Big Horne in 1876. Both times he routed the American cavalry. He was such a skilled warrior that his tactics are used by West Point Warriors to this day. He was a powerful and unrepentant warrior who fought hard to maintain the land and traditional ways of his people. There are no photographs of him as he refused to allow his picture to be taken lest his spirit be taken from him.  He had a great vision when he was twelve which said he would never be killed in battle. He was injured twice in his life, the second time he died after he  was stabbed by a guard while surrendering at Fort Robinson. No-one know where he is buried. Black Elk once said that it does not matter for where it is, "it is grass." He was the penultimate freedom fighter.

   Geronimo (Goyaate)
 Chiricahua Apache
June 16, 1829 - February 17, 1909
   

Last of the great warrior freedom fighters. He fought the soldiers and the United States government for over twenty-five years as they continued to invoke manifest destiny by spreading throughout Apache territory forcing them to go farther afield to survive. Geronimo never attained the title of Chief, but he was certainly their most prominent military and spiritual leader. He had staggering success in escaping capture for over two decades. At the end of his time he and thirty-five of his followers managed to evade five thousand American troops and Mexican military for over a year. He finally surrendered to Colonel Nelson Miles on September 4, 1886. He lived out the rest of his days in Florida where he died of Pneumonia at age eighty-two. Like Chief Joseph, he was never permitted to return to his ancestral home.

GABRIEL DUMONT
1837-1906

Gabriel Dumont is best known as the man who led the small Métis military forces during the Northwest Métis Rebellion of 1885. He was born in the Red River area, the son of Isidore Dumont, a Métis hunter, and Louise Laframboise.

Although unable to read or write, Dumont could speak six languages and was an amazing athlete, in particular his horseback riding and marksmanship skills were unprecedented. As a result he was a natural-born leader  in hunting buffalo and in warfare, when as a mere lad of fourteen in 1851 he fought against a large contingent of Plains warriors in defense of his ancestral territory. He apparently acquitted himself well. Ironically in 1862 he was part of the negotiating team that reached a settlement with the same Plains group.

In 1872 he became president of a very short-lived government created by the Métis at St. Laurent, located between the Rockies and the Manitoba border. He worked hard fighting for Métis rights but it was to no avail as the newly minted Royal Canadian Mounted Police took up residence in 1875. At the same time buffalo-hunting was on the wane and farming was taking over.  Settlers and the dreaded 'land speculators' began to flood the area. Overwhelmed, Dumont led a contingent to the United States to plea for Louis Riel's return (See his bio below). After Riel's return a provisional government was declared and the North-West Rebellion of 1885 was on. In the early days, the Métis warriors had some success (Duck Lake and Fish Creek). The Métis forces were small and therefore Dumont elected to use more mobile tactics such as raids and ambushes against the less mobile Canadian military. Riel for reasons unknown stopped Dumont's successful tactics and the Métis met their Waterloo at Batoche on May 12, 1885 when they went down to a rousing defeat. It still took the military four days to bring Dumont and his men down.

Dumont was one of the lucky ones and managed to escape to the United States where he performed in  Buffalo Bill Coty's wild west show thrilling audiences with his marksmanship skills.  Amnesty was eventually granted to the rebels  and Dumont slipped back into Canada in 1888.  He lived there quietly at Batoche until his death at the age of sixty-nine in 1906.

Emily Pauline Johnson,
Mohawk, Poetess - March 10, 1862 - March 7, 1913

Born at the Six Nations Reservation near Brantford, ON, Pauline Johnson (“Tekahionwake” or “Double Wampum) was the daughter of George Henry Johnson, Mohawk Chief of this great Iroquois tract. Her British-born mother, Emily Howells, was a second cousin of the famous American novelist, William Dean Howells. Her most famous work, Flint and Feather, was published in 1912. Others followed, including Legends of Vancouver (1911) and a collection of short stories, The Shagganappi (1913). Pauline Johnson was a cultural ambassador, a link between her traditional ways and a modern, largely European community.  Bringing two very different but strong-rooted cultures into closer contact and understanding, she was a powerful literary influence. As to why she wore regalia for public appearances (white deer hide dress) for which she was often criticized by her own people, she replied that it was the best way to show who she was and to honour her heritage.

CHIEF JOSEPH,  Nez Percé
HIN-MAH-TOO-YAH-LAT-KEKT (Thunder Rolling In The Mountains
1840-1904

Great spiritual leader, Chief Joseph and his Warrior Chief brother, Oolikut, led eight hundred of their people including fewer than two hundred and fifty warriors on an 1800 mile race for freedom as they desperately tried to escape five thousand well-equipped United States cavalry. They were trying to seek refuge in Canada with Sitting Bull and some two thousand Lakota who'd fled to southern Alberta the year before after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It is a story that emphases that freedom is a basic human right and not a privilege. Chief Joseph gave one of the greatest surrender speeches ever uttered by anyone.  Overwhelming odds, kept their spirits strong and they fought hard for their freedom. Thunderbird's fabulous stage show, Thunder ROlling In The Mountains, describes the events of that dramatic time.

OLIKUT, Nez Percé,  Chief Joseph's younger brother and a Warrior Chief. Died in September, 1877. He was shot through the head by a Crow Scout riding with the U.S. cavalry just forty miles from the Canadian border. His tactics were brilliant and through his leadership two hundred and fifty warriors outfought five thousand well-equipped United States cavalry in seven major battles. The Nez Percé warriors won all of them.

POUNDMAKER (Pitikwahanapiwiyn),
Plains Cree (1842 - July 4, 1886)

Poundmaker was born in 1842, the magic of a Shaman in his blood. He signed treaty six in deference to the will of his people. They settled on the reserve but all treaty promises were broken. His people could not learn to be farmers when no ploughs, farm animals, seed, etc., was forthcoming. The people starved.

With news of the Métis success at Duck Lake in March 1885, Pitikwahanapiwiyin decided to utilize the unrest and fears of government agents to negotiate necessary supplies. Joined by the Stonies, the Cree went to Battleford. His enemies claimed he’d come to kill and conquer. He’d come to plead for food and rations. Indian Agent Rae said no.

Hungry and frustrated, some of Cree and Stonies began looting the empty homes looking for food, Poundmaker couldn’t stop them. They moved west to the Poundmaker reserve and established a large camp east of Cutknife Creek. Lieutenant-Colonel Otter attacked the camp in the early morning of 2 May 1885. After seven hours of fighting, the Cree forced Otter to withdraw. The soldiers had a Gatling Gun, Poundmaker had his brilliant Warrior Chief, Kamiokisihkwew (Fine Day). Poundmaker managed to stop his warriors from attacking the retreating troops. “We have fought, saved ourselves, our women and children. Let them go.”

He wanted to go to Devil’s Lake, but the warriors said no and took the people to join Riel at Batoche. They captured a wagon train carrying supplies for Colonel Otter's column. Poundmaker again prevented bloodshed and the twenty-one teamsters captured along with the wagons were taken prisoner and not killed.

They didn’t reach Batoche, it was too late, the Metis lost, Riel captured. Poundmaker as Peace Chief contacted Major-General Middleton asking for peace terms.

"Everything that is bad has been laid against me this summer, there is nothing of it true....Had I wanted war, I would not be here now. I would be on the prairie. You did not catch me. I gave myself up. You have got me because I wanted justice."

In August 1885 he was branded a traitor and sentenced to three years in the Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba. They sent him home after seven months his health broken. He died on American Independence Day, July 4, 1886.

LOUIS RIEL
October 22, 1944 - November 16, 1885

Louis Riel, a Métis, led two major resistance movements against the central government. He sought to preserve the rights of the Métis people as their homeland fell more and more under the influence of Ottawa and encroaching white settlements. The Red River Rebellion of 1869-70 took place after Riel established a provisional government  in what is now the Province of Manitoba. Sir John A. Macdonald was the newly elected Prime Minister and this was his first major confrontation since the establishment of Confederation in 1867.  To make a long story short, troops were eventually dispatched to enforce federal authority. This was after a very controversial execution of a man named Thomas Scott. Riel fled to the United States before the troops arrived at Fort Garry, but their arrival effectively put down the rebellion. During his period of exile he became probably today what would be termed as deeply depressed and dillusional. He imagined himself a god-like figure and the saviour of his people. He was also elected in abstentia several times but never took his seat in the House of Commons.

Eventually at the urging of Gabriel Dumont, he returned to Canada, this time to Saskatchewan to help represent the interests of the Métis. The result was the North-West Rebellion of 1885. It ended tragically with his arrest and eventual execution as a traitor on November 16, 1885.

Note 1: Riel is sometimes thought of as the 'Father of Manitoba', the man who actually negotiated the terms by which the province would enter Confederation.

Note 2:  Métis (meaning: 'mixed') people, the first new culture on Turtle Island. A 'pure' Métis were children of marriages between French voyageurs and Woodland Cree, or Ojibwa women.  The next level were children of marriages between Scottish and English Traders and Woodland Cree, Ojibwa, Saulteaux and Menominee women. Since then, the beleaguered Métis have their name attached to anyone who believes they have a cup and a half of Native blood in them! How the various Métis associations sort this out is beyond the scope of Thunderbird.  They are also known as 'Bois Brule' meaning 'mixed bloods'.

Note 3: Was Riel a freedom fighter , a mad man or a terrorist? The debate goes on.

Sacajawea ("Boat Pusher") -  Shoshone (born around 1790). She was part of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Contrary to popular opinion, Sacajawea did not serve as a guide for the party. 

She was stolen during a raid by a Hidatsa tribe when she was a young girl and taken to their village near what is now Bismark, North Dakota. Some time afterward the French-Canadian trapper and fur trader, Charbonneau bought Sacajawea and her companion, Otter Woman, as wives. When her husband joined the expedition at Fort Mandan in the Dakotas, Sacajawea was about 16 years old and pregnant. The expedition spent the winter at Fort Mandan and Sacajawea's baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born on Feb. 11 or 12, 1805. He was also given the Shoshone name, Pomp, meaning First Born.

The expedition resumed the westward trek on April 7, 1805. Their route was along the Missouri River, west to the mountains. On May 14, 1805 an incident occurred which was typical of the calmness and self-possession Sacajawea was to display throughout the journey. The boat she was in was hit by a sudden storm squall. It nearly capsized. As the other members of the crew worked desperately to right the boat, Sacajawea, with her baby strapped to her back, retrieved the valuable books and instruments that floated out of the boat. Thanks to her courage and quick actions, the materials suffered no damage.

SITTING BULL (TATANKA IOTANKA),
Oglala Lakote Holy Man
(1831-December 15, 1890)

The discovery of gold in 1875 in the Black Hills of South Dakota triggered the death knell for the Lakota and their traditional ways. Sitting Bull took up arms in protest of the desecration of their sacred territory. He had a great vision that said the Lakota would defeat the soldiers in a great battle at the Little Big Horn River in 1876. He was right. Several thousand warriors were amassed which surprised General Custer but his arrogance was one that forced him to lead his men into what turned out to be a slaughter. It was the last gathering of warriors of this magnitude.  After the battle with a short-lived victory, Sitting Bull and some of his followers found refuge in southern Alberta in May of 1877. The Canadian government under pressure from Washington forced Sitting Bull into starvation which forced him back over the border where he surrendered on July 19, 1881. He rode in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show and became somewhat of a celebrity. He was also a supporter of the Ghost Dance which ultimately led to his second prophecy, his assassination on December 15, 1890 at the hands of a Lakota police officer who shot him along with his son Crow Foot. His powerful spirit lives on in the hearts of many of his people.

Kaitchkona Winema, "The Strong Hearted Woman, or less accurately, "The Little Woman Chief," from the Modoc kitchkani laki shnawedsh, "female subchief," was an important figure on the Modoc War of 1872-1873, and in other affairs of her tribe. Her early life was adventurous, and her fearless exploits, such as shooting a grizzly bear and fighting alongside the men in battle, were greatly admired. The 1860's saw growing friction between the Modoc people and the white settlers moving into northern California in ever-increasing numbers. Winema served as an interpreter, with her husband, in the negotiations between the government and the Modoc which eventually led to the removal of the Natives to a reservation in Oregon.

Many of the Modoc never agreed willingly to this move, and Kintpuash and a group of followers frequently left the reservation to return to their traditional homelands. When they were finally pursued by government forces in an effort to round up the band and end the intermittent resistance, they fled to the nearby lava beds. Winema tried to act as a peacemaker between the warring parties, since she was trusted by both sides, and was fluent in Modoc and English. In February 1873, a peace commission attempted to resolve the situation and Winema was able to persuade Kintpuash to meet with them. However, other Modoc opposed the move, and convinced Kintpuash that the leader of the delegation, General Edward Canby, could not be trusted and must be killed. Winema learned of the plot, and warned Canby, but he decided to go ahead with the peace talks. On April 11, 1873, Kintpuash and several warriors attached the camp, and killed Canby and another commissioner, Eleazar Thomas; a third commissioner, Albert Meacham, was badly injured, but Winema intervened and saved his life. With these murders, all-out war began, and although the Modoc held off the vastly superior Army forces for many months, they were finally defeated. She briefly became an actress when the story of the battles was turned into a play by Albert Meacham, She toured for eight years.

Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony-
Shell Flower)  

Born in 1844 in western Nevada, she was the first Native woman to convert to Christianity; she became an educator (established and ran her own school), lecturer and Native rights activist. She was able to successfully defend the rights of the Paiute people and their beliefs and way of life.  

"Between April 1883 and August 1884 Sarah gave nearly three hundred lectures from Boston and New York to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. She spoke in the homes of many prominent Indian advocates of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Massachusetts senator Henry Dawes, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and her sister Mary Mann, the wife of Horace Mann. Her speeches, along with the work of this group, supported the passage of the General Allotment, or Dawes, Act in 1887. It was also during this period that Sarah wrote her book, which was edited by Mary Mann and published in Boston in 1883." (Catherine S. Fowler, University of Nevada, Reno). She died in 1891.

Gandoox (1912-present),  Coast Tsimshian First Nations. Thunderbird's Mom. This photo was taken when she was eighteen years old. She is now ninety-five! She broke new ground back in the 1930's and 40's as an Opera Singer as there were no First Nations artists to be found in the 'grand arts' in that period. She sang for the troops in Theatre Under the Stars in Vancouver during the 1940's performing the role of Yum Yum from The Mikado numerous times. Her lyric soprano voice was magical, Thunderbird is fortunate to have inherited some of it. She was also a concert pianist and a master puppeteer, creating, designing and making a three-hundred marionette cast of unforgettable characters. As children, Thunderbird and her Sister, Kate, travelled with Gandoox all over British Columbia bringing singing, dancing shows and the puppet theatre to  enthusiastic audiences everywhere. She is a scholar, writer, intellectual, choir-mistress, skilled seamstress and costume-maker and on and on. She triumphed even though she suffered impossible racism during her early life. To this day she continues writing and researching. If the truth be known, she was born way before her time but even so managed to make a difference in the thousands of lives she's touched over sixty years of healing circles, seminars and workshops. Nonetheless, her intellectual and artistic passions are embedded in her two daughters as they carry on her legacy. She is one tough act to follow! 95 years old in 2007 and still going strong. Yeah, Ma!

Anna May Pictou Aquash - Born on March 27, 1934. Raised in Canada's Mi'kmaq  culture and religion, her treatment at an off-reserve school where she faced overwhelming racism led to her involvement in the American Indian Movement (AIM).  She was among the Native militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee in a 71-day standoff with federal authorities in 1973. Aquash, 30, disappeared in late 1975 from a home where she had been staying in Denver.

At the Pine Ridge morgue, a doctor and nurse found blood on the woman’s head. However, BIA pathologist Dr. W. O. Brown, described the case as “awfully routine,” reported no blood, and concluded the woman had died from “exposure” two weeks earlier, in early February. The FBI refused to identify her even though they'd interviewed her just week earlier. On their instructions, Brown severed the victim’s hands for later identification and approved a quick burial without death certificate or burial permit. Her parents in Nova Scotia were advised she died of 'natural causes'. Her family requested a second autopsy and the body was exhumed where it was determined that the bulge in her head was from a  .32 calibre bullet shot at close range to the back of her head. She had, in other words, been assassinated.

The FBI now claims that she was assassinated by American Indian Movement member, John Graham as it was suspected she was an FBI informant. They claim she was kidnapped from her home in December of 1975, by Graham, Looking Cloud and another AIM member, Theda Clark. 

John Grahan, native of the Yukon and father of eight had been living quietly in Vancouver was charged in the United States on March 30, 2003, along with Arlo Looking Cloud with the first-degree murder of Anna Mae in 1975. Arlo Looking Cloud is currently in prison convicted of aiding and abetting the murder. He received a mandatory life sentence on April 23, 2004 even though there was no physical evidence linking him to being even present at the crime.

  WARD CHURCHILL
Political Activist and University Professor, American Indian Movement

The latest in a long line of intelligent, forward-thinking people who have had numerous attempts made to silence their contrary voices due to American paternalistic imperialism, a screaming far right-wing that pervades American society and tries to render those with opposing view voiceless.  Fortunately, Mr. Churchill will not be silenced even though he was fired under trumped up charges from the University of Colorado. He continues to stand tall and strong in the world as he travels cross-border on speaking engagements. For more on the trials of this very courageous man: www.wardchurchill.net

TANTOO CARDINAL
(Born July 20, 1950, Fort McMurray, ON) Cree (Metis)

Twenty-Five years in film makes Tantoo the most recognizable Indigenous actress in television and movies. Nonetheless it has been difficult for her to find roles as Hollywood is less forgiving in creating roles for strong Indigenous women. Like all high-profile Native people, she works hard to offset the stereotypical attitudes and understandings people have about Turtle Island's First People.  "You don't come through generations and generations of genocide and holocaust to be portrayed as monotoned and one-sided characters. That's just not possible!" For example, Maclean's magazine declared her Actress of the Year in 1991. In 1993 she was given the American Indian Film Festival Best Actress award. She also received the first Rudy Martin Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Native American in Film for her roles in Legends of the Fall, and The Education of Little Tree. Toronto Women in Film and Television honoured Tantoo with an Outstanding Achievement Award. And for her appearance on North of 60 she won a 1996 Gemini award for best performance by an actress in a guest role, dramatic series. In 2006, Tantoo was honoured by the City of Edmonton by being added to their Dreamspeakers Walk of Honour.

Jeannette Vivian Corbiere - born on the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. It was her case that was fought all the way to the Supreme Court that eventually repealed the Canadian Indian Act to re-enfranchise those Native women who lost their Native status for marrying non-Native men. She is a founding member of the Ontario Native Women's Association.

CHIEF DAN GEORGE,
Salish
(July 24, 1899 - September 23, 1981)

Chief of the Tsleil-Waututh. Salish First Nations in British Columbia until 1963. Academy-award nominated actor, author, mystic and residential school survivor. He was sixty-years old when he first started acting and spent his career working to promote a better understanding of Indigenous people. He was probably best known for his Oscar-nominated role in the movie, Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman. He wrote two books: My Spirit Soars,  My Heart Soars.

Lament for Confederation

"How long have I known you, Oh Canada? A hundred years? Yes, a hundred years. And many, many seelanum more. And today, when you celebrate your hundred years, Oh Canada, I am sad for all the Indian people throughout the land.

For I have known you when your forests were mine; when they gave me my meat and my clothing. I have known you in your streams and rivers where your fish flashed and danced in the sun, where the waters said 'come, come and eat of my abundance.' I have known you in the freedom of the winds. And my spirit, like the winds, once roamed your good lands.

But in the long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to sea. The white man's strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breathe.

When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed his way of life, I was called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my authority.

My nation was ignored in your history textbooks - they were little more important in the history of Canada than the buffalo that ranged the plains. I was ridiculed in your plays and motion pictures, and when I drank your fire-water, I got drunk - very, very drunk. And I forgot.

Oh Canada, how can I celebrate with you this Centenary, this hundred years? Shall I thank you for the reserves that are left to me of my beautiful forests? For the canned fish of my rivers? For the loss of my pride and authority, even among my own people? For the lack of my will to fight back? No! I must forget what's past and gone.

Oh God in heaven! Give me back the courage of the olden chiefs. Let me wrestle with my surroundings. Let me again, as in the days of old, dominate my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and through it rise up and go on.

Oh God! Like the thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success-his education, his skills- and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society.

Before I follow the great chiefs who have gone before us, Oh Canada, I shall see these things come to pass. I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedoms of our great land.

So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So shall the next hundred years be the greatest in the proud history of our tribes and nations. "
 

LEONARD GEORGE

Chief Leonard George (youngest Son of the late Chief Dan George) is the primary leader and was the elected chief, between 1989-2001 of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (which translates as "People of the inlet") in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia. A Coast Salish, George is a lecturer, humorist, film and script consultant, and actor in such films as Americathon, Shadow of the Hawk, White Fang, and Little Big Man. He is also a traditional Native singer and dancer. He worked for seven years as executive director of the Vancouver Aboriginal Centre, which provided support for urban Natives. He is now the Chief Negotiator and CEO of Takaya Developments.

Honours: Governor General of Canada Citizen's Medal of Honour

Kenojuak (Ashevak) is generally regarded as Canada's foremost Inuit artist. Since her first print appeared in a 1959 collection, she has established an international reputation; her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe. Although most widely renowned for her prints, two of which have appeared on Canadian postage stamps, Kenojuak has worked in a variety of two- and three-dimensional media, including sewing, sculptures, copperplate engravings, paintings and drawings. She was among the first group of Canadians to receive the prestigious Order Canada Medal of Service, an award honoring achievements in all fields of Canadian life. Elected into the Royal Canadian Academy in 1974, Kenojuak has also been awarded numerous commissions, including the mural for the 1970 World's Fair.

 Tom Longboat,
Onandaga, Six Nations of the Grand River
(June 4, 1887-January 9, 1949)

• one of the more famous Olympic athletes. In 1999, he was named by McLean's Magazine as athlete of the twentieth century. He was a dominant long distance runner beginning his career in 1905.  He was a world champion long-distance runner and won the Boston Marathon in 1907 in record time. In 1909 he won the world professional marathon championships in New York. At the age of twenty-nine he set aside his celebrity and enlisted in the military. He became a dispatch carrier with the107th Pioneer Battalion in France. He ran messages and orders between units.  He was wounded twice and nearly died once. He returned to Canada in 1919. He died in 1949 at the age of sixty-two. He is a member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.

Sandra Lovelace, (Maliseet, Activist). Sandra Lovelace was born on the Tobique Reserve in New Brunswick in 1947. In 1970 she married American Airman Bernie Lovelace and moved with him to California. When her marriage ended a few years later, Lovelace and her children returned to the Tobique Reserve and found they were denied housing, education and health care provided to those with status under Canada's Indian Act. It took her nearly ten years to have her status restored. Lovelace took her case to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations. The Committee acted slowly, the Canadian government acted slowly. In August 14, 1979 the Committee asked for more information and allowed the Canadian government to defend its actions. The Canadian government claimed that it would like to change the law, but did not feel it could without the agreement of First Nations people, who were divided on the issue. Ultimately she was successful which shows how one person can correct an injustice and change the law of a nation. Awarded the Order of Canada in 1992 she now sits in the  Senate as a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

RUSSELL MEANS
Born: November 10, 1939

Helen Betty Osborne, In 1971, the nineteen-year old Cree student was abducted,  raped and murdered in La Pas, Manitoba. Despite knowing the truth, townspeople refused to to help. Four young local white men were eventually implicated in her death:  Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan and Norman Bernard Manger. It was not until December 1987, sixteen years after her death, that any of them were convicted of the crime, and then only Johnston was convicted, as Houghton had been acquitted, Colgan had received immunity for testifying against Houghton and Johnston, and Manger was never charged. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission conducted an investigation into concerns surrounding the length of time involved in resolving the case. The Commission concluded that the most significant factor prolonging the case was racism.

Francis Pegahmagabow ('Peggy')
(Ojibwa - March 9, 1891 -August 5, 1952)

Most highly decorated Native Canadian in the First World War. Awarded Military Medal (MM) plus two bars for bravery in Belgium and France. Most effective Sniper specialist in World War I with iron nerves, patience and superb marksmanship. Credited with killing 378 Germans and capturing 300 more. Served for nearly the entire war until he was wounded in 1919 and returned to Canada. Eventually became chief of the Parry Island Band and later a Councillor. A member of Canada’s Native Hall of Fame. Died on reserve in 1952. A quiet, peaceful man who rarely spoke of his wartime heroics.

  LEONARD PELTIER
(September, 1944 - present)

An original member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was falsely arrested, convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of two FBI Agents during the 1975 siege at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. To this day despite overwhelming evidence that he was not even present when the murders occurred he continues to languish in a penitentiary in Lewisberg, Pennsylvania. Many organizations including Amnesty International consider him a political prisoner.

TONITA PENA (Quah Ah)
Pueblo Artist, 1893 - 1949

Quah Ah (White Coral Beads) was the first Pueblo woman artist to throw off the traditional restrictions that were usually imposed upon women tin Pueblo culture, and painted just as freely as her esthetic sensitivity directed. She came from a family of artists, but quickly began to exceed them. She had very little in the way of formal artistic training, her natural talent, however, was unmistakable. She was ambitious and an inspiration to other Pueblo women and artists. At the introductory Exposition of American Indian Art in 1931, her painting, "Spring Dances" was labeled best in show.

She was the only woman in a group of early pueblo artists referred to as The San Ildafonsto Self-Taught Group. She was a successful artist by the time she twenty-five and to this day is still considered one of the best female Native artists of all time. She painted what she knew, Pueblo life which included ceremonial dances and everyday life. The painting is entitled: Buffalo Dance.

Buffy Sainte Marie
(Cree, Borne: February 20, 1941)

Singer-Songwriter, Artist and long-time political activist who popularized protest songs in the 1960s about Native conditions and history.

She has worked tirelessly for Indigenous peoples' rights including women's issues. Born on a Cree reserve in Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, she was adopted and raised in Maine and Massachusetts. She received a PH.D in Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts. Her degree in Oriental Philosophy also influences her music, visual art and social activism. She is also a very gifted painter and her magical works are sold all over the world.

SARAH SMITH, MOHAWK
Six Nations of the Grand River

Grandmother Sara is a member of the Turtle Clan, a wife, mother, grandmother and she lives in Ontario, Canada at the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, ON. She travels widely bringing the sacred teachings of her people to audiences everywhere. She is now a world voice in the ways of the Tree of Peace. She is a powerful speaker with straight eyes and  a determined, soft voice that holds the wisdom of the ages.

Luther Standing Bear ((Ota Kte, Mochunozhin)
1868-1939
Oglala Lakota Chief

He held various jobs including teacher, minister and clerk. In 1898 he toured with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show which lead him to California and the world of acting. In the 1920's and 1930's he fought to improve conditions for Natives on the reservations, writing several books about Native life and government policy. Standing Bear was a member of the National League for Justice to the American Indian, Oglala Council, Actor's Guild of Hollywood, and Indian Actor's Association.