Kimberly Teehee  (19656 - )  

Over 200 years ago, the United States signed a treaty with the Cherokee Nation, granting them representation in Congress. However, this position was never filled until Kimberly Teehee entered the scene. In 2019, Teehee became the first Cherokee Nation delegate in the House of Representatives. As a lawyer, activist, and former advisor to President Obama, Teehee has quickly become a monumental figure in history.

Kimberly Teehee was born on March 2, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois. Due to a federal program under the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, Teehee’s parents were moved to Chicago. Although Teehee was born in this city, she grew up in Claremore, Oklahoma. She became a member of the Cherokee Nation and was highly involved in Cherokee Nation affairs. Teehee went on to attend Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma for her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Following this, she earned her law degree (Juris Doctor) from the University of Iowa, College of Law. During her time in law school, Teehee served in leadership positions with the National Native American Law Student Association and the Iowa Native American Law Student Association. Recognized for her work, she received the Bureau of National Affairs Award as a student.

In the early 1980s, Teehee began working actively in politics. She started her career as an intern for former chief Wilma Mankiller. Mankiller was the first and only woman to become chief of the Cherokee Nation, who often mentored young people within the nation. Teehee was influenced early on by Mankiller’s strength, leadership, and her influential friends. One of Mankiller’s best friends, Gloria Steinem, also welcomed Teehee. She said that both of those women “planted seeds firmly in me that I pay forward today to teenagers in rural communities.”[1] Teehee also recalls that Mankiller told her to make a decision that would change her life. “It was Wilma who told me to go to Washington, D.C. to go get greater experience and that I could always bring that back to the Cherokee Nation.”[2] Once in Washington, Teehee became a vocal leader and advocate for Native American rights. She held important positions on the Democratic National Committee and the Presidential Inaugural Committee for President Bill Clinton’s second Inauguration as the Deputy Director of Native American Outreach.

In January of 1998, Teehee became the Senior Advisor to Congressman Dale Kildee of Michigan. Congressman Kildee was the co-chair of the House of Representatives’ Native American Caucus. She served this Caucus for over a decade as a staffer on Capitol Hill. Through her involvement, the Caucus was able to make meaningful progress on a variety of laws affecting Native American issues including education, housing, and health care. By early 2009, President Barack Obama recognized Teehee, and selected her to serve on the White House Domestic Policy Council as the first-ever Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs. In this position, Teehee served to strengthen the relationship between the United States and tribal nations. For three years, she collaborated with various federal agencies to create policies that helped address concerns within Native American communities. Teehee’s work led to an Executive Order from the President to improve Tribal Universities, as well as American Indian and Alaska Native Education. In addition, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum on tribal consultation as a result of her work. During Teehee’s time in the White House, she was able to guide the President’s support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She also pushed for the support of legislation that would hold people accountable when they committed crimes of domestic violence against Native American Women. This was known as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Teehee continued to make an impact in the White House by leading a government-wide team to monitor the progress of tribal policy and legislation, while organizing three White House Tribal Nations Conferences. In 2012, she began working as a Partner for a federal advocacy group called Mapetsi Policy Group. This organization represented the concerns of Native American tribes and tribal organizations. Two years later, Teehee became the Vice President of Government Relations for Cherokee Nation Businesses, and the Director of Government Relations for the Cherokee Nation. Due to her extensive experience, Teehee was the perfect person to fulfil the historic role as the first Cherokee delegate in the House of Representatives. Appointed in September of 2019, Teehee’s position was the result of a treaty signed between the United States and the Cherokee Nation over 200 years ago. This treaty promised the Cherokee Nation representation in Congress. Kimberly Teehee is the first person to fulfill this role.

MLA – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Kimberly Teehee.” National Women’s History Museum, 2019. Date accessed.

Chicago – Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Kimberly Teehee.” National Women’s History Museum. 2019. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/kimberly-teehee.

Mary Golda Ross   (1908 – 2004)  From the Skunk Works to the stars: that was the trajectory of the remarkable and still partly secret career of Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee), the first Native aerospace engineer who was a member of the top-secret team planning the early years of space exploration. She is now being honored on a special $1 U.S. coin.

A Cherokee Education

Born in 1908, Mary Golda Ross grew up in Park Hill, Okla. Her great-great grandfather was Cherokee Chief John Ross, who led the Cherokee Nation during the traumatic and turbulent Indian Removal era of the 1830s that resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of Cherokee people to west of the Mississippi River in present-day Oklahoma.

Ross attributed her successes to the rich heritage of her Cherokee people and the importance of tribal emphasis on education. “I was brought up in the Cherokee tradition of equal education for boys and girls,” she said. “It did not bother me to be the only girl in the math class.” Her home town was the original site of the famed Cherokee Female Seminary, the first women’s institution of higher education west of the Mississippi. Its cornerstone was placed by Chief Ross in 1847, and it opened in 1851. The curriculum emphasized science, with courses in botany, chemistry and physics.

In 1909, the seminary became part of Oklahoma’s state educational system and was renamed the Northeastern State Teacher’s College. Mary Ross enrolled here at the age of 16 and graduated with a degree in mathematics. During the Great Depression, she taught science and math in rural Oklahoma. She put her skills to work on behalf of other Native people, first as a statistician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then as an advisor to girls at the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School in New Mexico. (The school later became the Institute of American Indian Arts.)

A Rocket Scientist

It’s a tribute to both Ross’s ability and the quality of her eduction that she was able to launch successfully into the next stage of her career. Pursuing a passion for astronomy, she took a master’s degree at the Colorado State College of Education (now Northern Colorado University).

After earning her degree, Ross joined Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in 1942, helping design the P-38 fighter airplane. Six years later, she was an integral part of what was later called the “space race.” As one of 40 engineers in Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs, what became known as the Skunk Works, the company’s top-secret think tank, she was the only woman on the team aside from the secretary. She was also the only American Indian.

Much of her research and writing at the Skunk Works remains classified, even today. “It is closed even to me,” laughs Willis Jenkins, an engineer in NASA’s Heliophysics Division, “even though I am an official at NASA.” Jenkins was assigned to research Ross’s career, as liaison to the U.S. Mint’s commemorative coin project. Jenkins notes, “I sought to place myself in her shoes by performing calculations to see how I would get a rocket in space. I marveled at the work that had been done to get a rocket outside the Earth’s atmosphere, which is a magnificent accomplishment.

“I have an advantage of a calculator these days versus the slide rule I used in the 1960s, similar to what Mary used working on preliminary design concepts for interplanetary space travel, manned and unmanned earth-orbiting flights, and the earliest studies of orbiting satellites for both defense and civilian purposes.”

As the American missile program matured, Ross found herself immersed in researching and evaluating feasibility and performance of ballistic missiles and other defense systems. She also studied the distribution of pressure caused by ocean waves and how it affected submarinelaunched vehicles. Space flight made use of missile advances originally developed for military purposes, like the Agena rocket. Ross helped develop operational requirements for the spacecraft, which later became a vital part of the Apollo program. Says Jenkins, “Mary worked on the Agena rocket orbital dynamics, calculating the transfer orbit as the rocket left the Earth’s atmosphere. Today’s engineer would use the computer program, MATLAB, and insert the parameter to determine when the rocket would reach its destination.”

Over the years, Ross helped write NASA’s Planetary Flight Handbook, the agency’s comprehensive guide to space travel. She worked on preliminary concepts for flights to Mars and Venus, laying the groundwork for missions that have not yet come to fruition.

A California newspaper reporter who interviewed Ross in 1961 wrote that she was “possibly the most influential Indian maid since Pocahontas” and noted that she was “making her mark in outer space.” She told the reporter, “I think of myself as applying mathematics in a fascinating field.” Another article at the time noted that Ross, who had yet to witness a rocket launch, thought women would make “wonderful astronauts.” But she insisted, “I’d rather stay down here and analyze the data.”

How to Get to Space

The design for the 2019 American Indian coin features an equation representative of Mary Golda Ross’s contribution to the U.S. space program and her skill in mathematics. Because much of her work remains classified, the U.S. Mint staff worked with Willis Jenkins, a NASA engineer from the agency’s Heliophysics Division, to determine an appropriate equation. The challenge was especially meaningful to Jenkins for two reasons. “Mary Golda Ross worked on designs for rockets and I have managed rockets in my career. Also, she was of Cherokee descent and I believe my mother’s family is as well.”

The equation, which is seen in the clouds on the design, was used to help determine the velocity needed to leave the Earth and travel to a distant planet such as Mars.

Jenkins identified the equation as “an example of a formula that Ms. Ross would have used to calculate interplanetary space travel, determine the departure plane orbit and transfer orbit energy.

V²∞ = V²- 2μ / r

V, is the speed of an orbiting body
V∞, is the orbit velocity when the orbit distance tends to infinity
μ = GM, is the standard gravitational parameter of the primary body, with mass M
r, is the distance of the orbiting body center

“Obviously,” says Jenkins, “there is no simple formula to be had for the complexity of going into space and reaching a planet. Several calculations are needed to reach space and the surrounding planets for which orbital dynamics play a major part in the operation. There are just too many variables.”

The Commemorative Coin

The earth-bound achievements of Mary Ross was the centerpiece in early 2019 of a new coin honoring American Indians in the Space Program. Each year since 2009, the United States Mint has produced and issued a $1 coin that celebrates significant contributions Indian tribes and persons have made to the history and development of the United States. Ross will represent both her own work and that of several other prominent Indians, such as astronaut John Herrington (Chickasaw) and flight controller Jerry C. Elliott High Eagle (Osage/Cherokee). Herrington manned the International Space Station in 2002. Elliott plotted the re-entry of the troubled Apollo 13 mission and received a Prsidential Medal of Freedom for his role in saving the astronauts.

The Ross proposal, like many of the Native American $1 coins, started as a narrative provided by and design concepts developed in consultation with the National Museum of the American Indian. The Native American $1 Coin Act requires consultation with the Committee on Indian Affairs of the Senate, the Congressional Native American Caucus of the House of Representatives, and the National Congress of American Indians. Once the design concepts are defined, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) discusses them during its public meetings.

Emily Damstra, an American freelance science illustrator living in Guelph, Ont., was selected to create the design for the 2019 coin.

She explains, “I first learned about Mary Golda Ross upon receiving the assignment to design this coin celebrating the contributions of American Indians to the United States space program. Her achievements deeply impressed me, and I was excited for the opportunity to tell her story through numismatic art. From the beginning of my design process, before I had anything else worked out, I knew that my design would include a figure of her.” Damstra’s only regret is that she could not fit in a feather into her design.

A figure representing American Indian astronauts is included, she says, because, “I knew Ross was not the only American Indian who contributed to the space program. Though we don’t see his face, the astronaut in my design is outfitted as John Herrington would have been for extravehicular activity. I liked the idea of including an astronaut in space because such a feat was ultimately made possible by the work of people like Mary Golda Ross.

“I came up with the general design elements pretty quickly,” she admits, “but the details and configuration went through several iterations before being finalized. For example, I originally drew Ross using a Friden calculating machine, but it looked too much like a typewriter so I replaced it with paper, a pencil and a slide rule. Ross undoubtedly employed these tools while working on the Agena rocket program at Lockheed Martin. The small tools may not be obvious at coin size, but their purpose is evident in the large equation inscribed across the Atlas-Agena rocket exhaust behind Ross. I’m very grateful to NASA for providing that equation.”

Inspiring the Future

Although humble, Ross herself likely realized the important legacy of her work. After retiring from Lockheed at age 65, she pursued her interests in engineering by delivering lectures to high school and college groups to encourage young women and Native American youth to train for technical careers.

In 2004, at age 96, she attended the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Wearing a traditional green calico Cherokee dress she had asked a niece to make especially for the occasion, she marched in the opening procession of 25,000 Native people. Said a friend, “She felt she was a part of history being made, again.” She herself said, “The Museum will tell the true story of the Indian, not just the story of the past, but an ongoing story.” Ross died four years later, a few months before her 100th birthday. She lived long enough to see her work help launch an American Indian astronaut into orbit.

AUTHOR: HERMAN VIOLA

Dr. Herman Viola serves as senior advisor for the Museum’s National Native American Veterans Memorial Project, is curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and is a member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland  (1941 - )

At the age of 10, while visiting her grandmother, a friend “dared” her to walk over to the side of town where Black residents lived.

There, she saw an entirely different world than the one she knew, according to writer Kaleena Fraga. “I could see with my own eyes the difference between the Black school and the white school,” she said. “That really struck me.”

After seeing the inequalities, she vowed then to make a difference.

~~~~~

You may have seen her images floating around on social media.

One of the images is a mugshot, showing a young, white woman. She was 19 at the time. She didn’t look like she belonged in prison, but there she was, on Death Row, subjected to physical and psychological abuse at a high-security prison.

Another iconic image shows the segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter, where a group of men is pouring sugar, ketchup, and mustard over the heads of demonstrators. The protesters were doused in food, cut with broken glass, hit with brass knuckles, and burned with cigarettes, while the police stood by.

She recalled, “They called me ‘race traitor.’”

Like John Lewis, she always seemed to be getting in “good trouble.”

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland is a Civil Rights Icon who participated in over 50 sit-ins and demonstrations by the time she was 23 years old,” according to the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation.

“She was a Freedom Rider, a participant in the Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-in, the March on Washington, the Meredith March and the Selma to Montgomery March. For her actions she was disowned by her family, attacked, shot at, cursed at, put on death row and hunted down by the Klan for execution. Her path has crossed with some of the biggest names in the Civil Rights Movement: Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Diane Nash and Julian Bond.”

It was as a Freedom Rider that she was imprisoned for refusing to leave a bus waiting area. She and others were taken to Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi, a jail in the Delta, not far from where Emmett Till had been murdered.

“Since there was no women’s wing of the prison then, she was housed on death row for two months and kept in a cramped, segregated cell with 17 other women,” according to the Arlington Public Library.

In May 1963, Mulholland, John Salter, and Anne Moody participated at the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in downtown Jackson. For three hours, they were subjected to what is often considered the most violent of the sit-ins.

She and four other activists were also stopped by the KKK as they left Canton, Mississippi. The Klansmen surrounded the car and beat the driver. “That night on the road out of Canton,” Mulholland said, “we were all convinced that it was the end.”

“Luckily Mulholland and her friends were able to escape, but not without some consequence,” according to the National Museum of American History. “An informant within the KKK later confirmed that their assailants had been ordered to kill them and because they weren’t successful, the Klansmen killed three other civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.”

~~~~~

Joan Trumpauer was born on Sept. 14, 1941, and spent her childhood in the segregated city of Arlington, Virginia.

“Her mother, a segregationist from Georgia, descended from enslavers,” according to writer Jasmine Daniel. “Despite this, Mulholland developed a keen awareness of the systemic racism that surrounded her daily life and a desire to stop it. She secretly attended integrated Bible studies that expanded her worldview and solidified for her the belief that all people are “God’s children.”

She would become a Freedom Rider, knowing full well her actions could lead to being assaulted, arrested or, at worst, killed.

She was featured in the PBS documentary, “Freedom Riders”, as well as an award-winning documentary produced by her son, Loki Mulholland, entitled “An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (2013).

She is a recipient of the 2015 National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award.

~~~~~

Today, at the age of 80, she’s still fighting for equal rights, wrote Fraga.

In an interview Aug 24, 2021, she said, “Part of the reason why we still speak today is because many can’t, they were killed and some were permanently damaged from the movement.”

In 2014, she founded the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, dedicated to involving new generations in activism and social justice.

The goal for the foundation is to provide learning materials for schools to educate the students on the part of American history that is often "misunderstood or skipped over".

“Racism is a learned behavior. Adults and children alike can benefit from a change in perspective and an increased awareness of the past,” according to the Foundation.

“I want to show the younger folks that you can do something that will have an effect,” she said in 2015. “It’s just a matter of starting.”

“Even if it’s no more than speaking up a little bit when someone says something you know is wrong. If you see a problem in your own place, do something."

"If it’s, say, a Muslim woman being hassled for wearing a hijab, walk with her, befriend her,” she said. "When you see racism or discrimination of any sort, speak up.”

~~~~~

“Anyone can make a difference,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember, you don’t have to change the world … just change your world.”

AWARDS

• 2015 National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award

• 2018 “I Am a Man” Award, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated

  • Annual Award of Honor
• 2019 International Civil Rights Museum Trailblazer Award
• The Anti-Defamation League Annual Heroes Against Hate Award.

JON S. RANDAL PEACE PAGE

https://www.jonsrandalpeacepage.com/about/

“I am a writer, who enjoys sharing what I have learned. I hope to encourage understanding, share awareness, and promote love, peace, and hope for all. ” Jon S. Randal 

For more information about The Joan Trumpauer Mullholland Foundation, see the listing in our Resource  Library   womensvoicesmedia.org