We move now to Indigenous Peoples' Day, typically observed on the second Monday of October.

In 2021, President Joe Biden issued the first ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples Day, and it was that same year he awarded Henrietta Mann The National Humanities Medal.

A full-blood Cheyenne, she began teaching Native American studies at UC Berkeley in 1970.

Her work, which I was fortunate to discuss with her, led to the creation of programs and institutions across the United States dedicated to Native American History and Culture.

(Henrietta Mann) Education is the lifeblood of my culture.

We believe, as indigenous peoples upon whose land Nevada now sits, Las Vegas sits.

I want to pay tribute to the original peoples of this homeland and thank them for letting me come into their territories and to visit you in their PBS station.

Berkeley, the heyday of activism.

My goodness, it was a time of the Black Power movement at the University of California, Berkeley, and we then created our own Red Power movement.

And heretofore, we had not been as active as other of our brothers and sisters from the White direction, from the Black direction, from the Yellow direction.

But education is so important to us that we were so pleased to become one of the programs in the Ethnic Studies Department at, as we like to say, Cal Berkeley.

Native American Studies as a curricular unit really grew out of the activism of the California at that time.

In fact, California was the first to create and establish ethnic studies programs paying tribute to the cultures of our Black brothers and sisters; our Asian brothers and sisters; at that time, Chicano brothers and sisters; Hispanics; and, of course, us.

And I was ecstatic, as were many of my brothers and sisters and my relatives, to finally have the higher education systems of this land on us, as a people, honor my grandparents, honor our ancestors by including our histories, our contemporary issues, our ways of living, our beautiful and wonderful stories that are rooted in this land.

And it was a new day in education for us.

-What were your expectations for that class?

Did you think you would be teaching fellow Native Americans?

-You thought, Native American Studies?

My classrooms are going to be filled with the children of this land.

And I went to my first class, and there were the children of my Anglo brothers and sisters, and there was not one Native American face there except mine.

The first time that many mainstream children had ever seen a person of color standing in their classroom teaching them.

And the Indian students, being the activists that they became, were out on Alcatraz.

They wanted to claim that island and wanted to establish an all-Indian University where we would learn about the multiplicity of cultures that make us as Native Americans, about 573 nations, recognized by the United States federal government-- many more that are not recognized, some recognized by their respective states.

I really think that that is so far removed from reality that we have been nothing but a lost, invisible page in the history books of this country, in the history of this nation, to be forgotten-- to be forgotten because we remind those that came to live with us that the land upon which they live and walk sometimes was stolen, taken, sold for pennies for those that came to live with us, who came here seeking many of the religious freedom, only to arrive on our shores and to become intense about converting the first peoples of this land to Christianity.

-How well understood do you think that is now compared to when you began teaching Native American Studies in the '70s?

-I hope that that Native American Studies programs have made some inroads into how we look at the reality of this world in which we live, on this beautiful land that we all share, but, regrettably, it's still misunderstood.

There are those that fail to see our kinship and relationship to the land.

There are those that see this only, this place, only to be exploited for the natural resources that are a part of this earth that we call Mother or Grandmother and to begin to extract oil, gas, silver, and now lithium, lithium at Red Mountain that the Indigenous peoples of this land are fighting to, to keep from exploitation and desecration of this land, all because there is this need in a world characterized by climate change that must look to the discontinuation of fossil fuels and look to, let's say, General Motors electric vehicles.

And this lithium at Red Mountain is a vast resource that can power those vehicles, so that it becomes a balancing act of further erosion of this country's land base.

And on the other hand, what do we do about global warming and climate change into which our children and grandchildren are walking?

And we really need the assistance of this country's educational systems to begin to integrate our histories, our views of the world, into what makes up this beautiful place called America that honors all of the peoples who have come to live here with us as the first nations of this land.

-At what age would you propose that public school students begin learning about Native American history?

-In kindergarten.

-And then what about at what point do you introduce the dark side of that history, the horrific mistreatment of the Indigenous people here by the government?

-In junior high.

Their minds are still fresh.

Those young people want to know about this world in which they live, it's beauty, but also it's tragedy.

They have to know that there were others that were here first when their ancestors came to our shores.

They need to know that the first peoples on this land are an old, old people who have a vast knowledge of environmental principles, of ways of living together that honors and respects the other person, strong value systems that have helped us maintain our ways of life for all time--respect, respect for the other person; love, love for that person; to, to walk in humility as but one other person; and to cooperate with one another.

-To the parents who would say, I don't think my student should be learning about the injustices that the federal government, state governments were responsible for against the Indigenous people here--it makes them feel guilty and less than-- what would you say?

-I'm sorry, but that was their history that they committed.

-We have to own our views of the world.

They have to own theirs.

Although it might not be them specifically, it's their grandparents, it's their great-grandparents, it's those that "so called" discovered this land.

How can you discover a land that has been peopled for all time?

It is a history of their making.

They need to know the role that they have played in terms of our continuing evolution and love of life as this land's first peoples.

-And how do you go about explaining to a non-Native American person that connection to the land?

-Let me just simplify that very quickly and say that the land is us.

We are the land.

If you stop and look at the fact that we as human beings are made up of earth, a loving, kind earth mother, grandmother who continues to support our feet and give us as First Nations, as we see it, spiritual rootedness in this land that gives us life.

And we need to know who we are, who I am.

I am very proud of being American Indian, and so are all of my brothers and sisters and grandchildren, but we also know that we live in a world that is now peopled by many other nationalities and cultures.

We need to recognize our common commonality and respect those differences, that differences are strengths rather than weaknesses, that we each have something to offer one another, and that in this time in which our grandchildren and children are walking, they need to have every bit of knowledge that they can possibly acquire from each of the people in the four directions-- from the White direction, from the Red direction, from the Yellow direction, and from the Black direction.

We have to respect and love each other because of our great and profound love for our children and grandchildren.

We have to climate-proof them.

-Do you mind sharing what you experienced as a child going to public school?

-I wanted to go to school so badly because my older brothers and sisters--and I do not have a biological brother or sister, but my cousins.

There is no relationship for a cousin; we are all brothers and sisters.

And so my older sister, she would come home from school and she said, Today, I'm going to teach you what I learned.

We learned something called the vowels, so you will learn them too.

Repeat after me--she was my teacher--a, e, i, o, u. I fell in love with that kind of learning because I knew that we were walking into a different time, that we were no longer isolated as the Cheyenne people, Tsetsehestahese, the like-hearted people, in that we had to learn to navigate and live in this world that was dominated by those that came to live with us from the east direction, from the White direction.

And unfortunately, in the early education of our young people by the federal government, they were subjected to an assimilationist type of education comprised of a rudimentary education, a trade, and Christianity.

Dreams have changed a little for us now that we know that there are programs like Native American studies.

But this world was so phenomenal and big out there, and I was expected to go out there and learn it and come back and share what I learned.

I did go out, and I got a good education, the best that this country can offer anybody.

It took me a long time to get my doctorate degree.

I got it about mid '40s or so.

But our young people need to not just know how to navigate in this world and become the best scientists, the best educators, the best medical doctors, the best administrators, the best people that can work in public television, they need to know who they are as this land's first children, the values they carry, their history with all its beauty and its tragedy.

And so that was the world I went out to be educated in.

But I never ever forgot who I was as a Cheyenne Indian person.

I'll never forget that.

That's been my legacy.

-And what was the experience that prompted you to say, I want to become a teacher?

-An unfortunate experience of discrimination of Cheyenne children attending our public school.

Unfortunately, they were singled out as children to be taken out in the hall--so was I--and our heads searched for a head lice.

The non-Indian children were not taken out.

And so it was a very difficult lesson for me to learn at about age eight or nine that some individuals can be singled out and made to feel less than with complete disregard for the places they lived, for their poverty, for not being able to have the kind of running water in their homes.

They had to get their water from a little spring, and so that-- we had an Indian camp when I was growing up.

So my little classmates and I included were singled out for this humiliating experience.

I got on the bus home that evening and rode the three miles, to taunt, south: lousy Indian, dirty Indian, dumb Indian, lazy Indian.

I never responded.

I didn't react, except in my own mind, but particularly in my heart.

I got off the bus, and that big yellow bus that I had longed to ride drove away.

Only then did I give in to tears, because I could see my grandfather coming down to meet me.

I cried and ran to his arms, and he just held me.

And he said, Let's go home.

We sat on the porch, and that is the day that I made my commitment to become a teacher, an educator.

So that teaching has been the fulfillment of a promise I made to my beloved grandfather long ago.

-Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you for having me.