Dr. Henrietta Mann, 70, a full-blood Cheyenne Indian who is the special assistant to the president of Montana State University-Bozeman, told a BYU-Hawaii audience on Feb. 17 that her people value peace and those traditional leaders who help bring it about.
Dr. Mann, a former high-level official with the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) who was named the 1988 National American Indian Woman of the Year, explained that her people — the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma — traditionally formed councils of "peace chiefs" who "relinquished their warrior role to assume peace-keeping duties."
She explained that peace chiefs felt a calling to protect the people. "They were to be endlessly loving, strong, patient, humble, trustworthy and generous. They had to be of high moral character, in keeping with the demands of ethical leadership, and lead by example," she said.
"They were men who possessed inner peace and calm wisdom. They were also brave, respectful and compassionate, whose every action was oriented toward peace," Dr. Mann continued. "I believe I have just described your leaders from these beautiful islands."
Dr. Mann recalled that her own paths led her to become "one of the buffalo people — a member of our spiritual community" after a sun dance in 1980, at which time one of the leaders told her, "You are now in a spiritual vehicle in which there is no reverse."
"It's a lifelong commitment," she acknowledged, adding that "all I have ever wanted to do, with integrity, is to be responsible for this small place that I occupy on this earth. I have never considered myself a leader."
Still, she soon chose to lead through education. "Teaching is an act of peace. Teaching is an act of leadership," said Dr. Mann, who earned a Ph.D. in 1982 and was the first individual to fill the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at MSU-Bozeman, where she's now a professor emeritus. In 1991 Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the 10 leading professors in the nation. She has also lectured extensively and written several books.
Dr. Mann said a friend reminded her, "There is a big difference between leaders and politicians. As indigenous people, we are blessed with ongoing leaders . . . who serve with characteristic humility, integrity, honesty and with sacred trust."
"Leaders must also be very hopeful about life, and they must be able to foster joy and hope in others," Dr. Mann continued, adding that if she were limited to teaching two things, she would first stress that "reciprocity and interdependency characterize life. We breath in the air that our relations, the trees, breath out."
Second, "the longest road you have to walk in your life is from your head to your heart," she said, quoting a friend, and pointing out "tribal elders say you must also make the return journey." To illustrate, she explained that the English translation of the Cheyenne's name for themselves is "the people of the like heart...which is often just shortened to the people."
Dr. Mann told of how one of her early students, a Northern Cheyenne woman, has gone on to become an attorney who formed the equivalent of a "Cheyenne women's warrior society," working on revoking illegal coal leases on over 400 square miles of reservation land and taking other legal and political actions that have helped their people.
Dr. Mann noted she also worked for a while with the BIA, rising to the position of Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs/Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs, "even though that was a role I didn't want for myself." But she left after one year.
"The administration had no heart," she said. "I knew that my personal integrity and what was in my heart would be destroyed if I stayed. I made a moral choice, and I did what I believe is right for Indian children."
Dr. Mann said she returned to teaching and her own "personal spiritual journey. I have since tried to live out my life with those qualities that were planted in my heart when I was a baby."
She added that each of us faces the challenge to maintain the integrity of our cultural traditions, and that we should "be ever mindful that we have to maintain a sense of responsibility to our ancestors — a great respect for yesterday and tomorrow."
"We need to draw on the strength of our cultural ways," she added.