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Aquash, Annie Mae (27 March 1945– December 1975), First Nations (Mi'kmaq) activist and American Indian Movement leader, First Nations (Mi’kmaq) activist and American Indian Movement leader, was born Annie Mae Pictou in the Shubenacadie band (now Indian Brook First Nation) reserve in central Nova Scotia, Canada, the youngest daughter of Mary Ellen Pictou and Francis Thomas Levi. (Most contemporary sources refer to her as Anna, but family members confirmed that Annie is the accurate form of her given name.) Her father left the family shortly before her birth, and Annie Mae spent the first four years of her life in the Shubenacadie reserve. Her mother remarried and brought her three daughters to live in the small Pictou Landing reserve near New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, where she also gave birth to a fourth child....

Bright Eyes (1854–26 May 1903), Indian rights advocate and author, also known as Inshtatheamba or Susette La Flesche, was born on the Omaha Reservation near Bellevue, Nebraska, just south of present-day Omaha, the daughter of Joseph La Flesche, also known as Inshtamaza or Iron Eye, a chief of the Omaha, and his wife Mary Gale, a mixed-blood Omaha and Iowa whose Indian name was The One Woman. Susette’s paternal grandparents were a Frenchman, also named Joseph, who was a trader and trapper for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada, and either an Omaha or Ponca woman named Watunna. Because her husband often was away trading or trapping, Watunna left him and married a member of the Omaha tribe. For a while the younger Joseph La Flesche was raised by two aunts who spent part of their time among the Sioux. Later, when his father returned, the younger La Flesche joined him when he once again left on his trading expeditions....

Deloria, Vine, Jr. (26 March 1933–13 November 2005), Native-American activist, writer, and lawyer, was born Vine Victor Deloria, Jr., near the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in Martin, South Dakota, the son of Vine Victor Deloria, Sr., an Episcopalian priest and missionary who served as archdeacon and assistant secretary of Indian missions for the National Episcopal Church, and Barbara Eastburn. Vine Deloria, Sr., was the grandson of Saswe, whose Christian name was François Des Lauriers, the son of a French fur trader and a Native-American mother. Saswe (the Dakota pronunciation of François) was a noted Sioux shaman and the leader of a mixed-blood band that adopted Christianity. Saswe's son, the father of Vine Deloria, Sr., was the influential Sioux chief Philip Joseph Deloria, one of the first Native Americans to become an Episcopal priest....

Eastman, Charles Alexander (19 February 1858–08 January 1939), Indian author and reformer, was born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, the son of Ite Wakanhdi Ota (Many Lightnings), a Wahpeton Sioux, and Wakantankanwin (Goddess), whose English name was Mary Nancy Eastman, the mixed-blood daughter of Captain Seth Eastman, the noted artist, and Wakan inajin win (Stands Sacred). Eastman’s mother died from complications as a result of his birth. His paternal grandmother and later his uncle raised him in the traditional ways of a Sioux boy. In 1862 he received the name Ohiyesa—meaning “the winner”—when his band defeated another in a lacrosse game. He used the name in conjunction with the English name he acquired later in his life....

Pleasant, Mary Ellen (1812?–1904), legendary African-American woman of influence and political power in Gold Rush and Gilded Age San Francisco, was born, according to some sources, a slave in Georgia; other sources claim that her mother was a Louisiana slave and her father Asian or Native American. Many sources agree that she lived in Boston, as a free woman, the wife of James W. Smith, a Cuban abolitionist. When he died in 1844 he left her his estate, valued at approximately $45,000....

Rickard, Clinton (19 May 1882–14 June 1971), Indian rights advocate, was born on the Tuscarora Reservation, near Lewiston, New York, the son of George Rickard and Lucy Garlow, farmers. Rickard’s family frequently suffered hardship, and food was often scarce as he was growing up. His mother supplemented a meager family income by taking in washing. Rickard went to reservation schools until age sixteen, completing the Third Reader....

Wauneka, Annie Dodge (10 April 1910–10 November 1997), Native-American activist, was born on the Navajo reservation near present-day Sawmill, Arizona, the daughter of Henry Chee Dodge, a rancher, and K'eehabah, one of Dodge's three wives in a tribe where polygamy was permitted. Chee Dodge, as her father was known, was a prestigious Navajo leader, the wealthiest man in the local community, and the first elected chairman of the Navajo Business Council (1922–1928) as well as the fifth chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council, (1941–1947). He was also fluent in English; he had worked as an interpreter on the reservation. Annie spent her early childhood tending sheep on her father's ranch and entered the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Fort Defiance, Arizona, at eight years of age. Four years later she went to the government boarding school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That school included students of many tribes and so all classes were conducted in English, in which Annie became as fluent as her father....

Winnemucca, Sarah (1844?–17 October 1891), spokeswoman for the Northern Paiute, was born near the sink of the Humboldt River in western Nevada, the daughter of Winnemucca, a Paiute chief, and Tuboitonie. In 1857 Chief Truckee, her maternal grandfather, arranged for Sarah and her younger sister Elma to live in the household of his friend, Major William Ormsby, a Virginian who managed a stage line at Mormon Station (Genoa). The girls worked at domestic chores and helped serve passengers at his stage stop. They were also companions to Ormsby’s only child, nine-year-old Lizzi. Here Sarah and Elma learned to read, write, and sing in English, picked up some Spanish phrases, and studied American history and the Bible. One year later the Ormsby family and the Paiute girls moved to Carson City, but in late September 1859 Sarah and Elma were suddenly called home by their father....