Amanda Blackhorse has always seen Native American women fighting against injustice. Blackhorse, member of the Navajo, a social worker and mother of two, served as the named plaintiff in the 2006 lawsuit Blackhorse et al v. Pro-Football Inc. Blackhorse continues to fight for justice and respect for Native Americans and is one of many Native American activists who deserves credit for the proposed name change from the Washington Football Team, formally called the “Redskins.” 

Born on February 1, 1982, in Kayenta, Arizona, Blackhorse grew up in the Navajo Nation surrounded by women who fought for what they believed in. Her paternal grandmother, her “nali” in the Navajo language, resisted calls from the U.S. and tribal governments to move from her home on the Navajo Nation.  Blackhorse received her Associates Degree from the Haskell Indian Nations University before attending the University of Kansas to pursue her Bachelor’s Degree. 

Blackhorse was aware of the hundreds of Native American mascots used by professional and school sports teams across the United States and the disrespectful and aggressive ways in which fans interacted with those mascots. Blackhorse recalled in an interview with Mother Jones that she was taught early on, “mascots are meant to be toyed with. They’re meant to be pushed around and disrespected. To have stuff thrown at them.” For Blackhorse, using a Native American mascot was never alright because, “no matter what your intentions are, when you make a Native American person [your mascot], you have no control over what happens at that stadium. And [Native Americans] lose control over what our image is.” 

While at the University of Kansas, she joined a group called Not in Our Honor that was planning a protest at a football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Washington Football Team on October 16, 2005. Blackhorse recalled in an interview, "we assembled peacefully and we carried signs...We carried flags for the tribes we represented, to show that we are proud people and very diverse, from many different tribes. We wanted to show that we are human beings, not mascots." Some fans from both teams did not like the message. 

During the protest, fans screamed slurs and harsh comments at Blackhorse and fellow protestors including, “Go back to the reservation” and “We won, you lost, get over it!” Some fans also threw bottles at them. The protest caught the attention of Suzan Harjo, an advocate for Native Americans, President of the National Council of American Indians, and former Congressional liaison for Indian Affairs. Harjo and others had filed a lawsuit against the Washington Football Team in 1992 that had been thrown out and she was looking for a new generation to continue the fight against the team’s name. Harjo recruited Blackhorse for another lawsuit. 

Blackhorse et al v. Pro-Football Inc. sought to get rid of the “Redskins” name from Washington Football Team. It did so by challenging the trademark on the name on the grounds that it denigrates Native Americans. Dan Snyder, the team owner, had refused to change the name many times over the years, arguing “Redskins” was in honor of Native Americans and not a racial slur. Blackhorse and others disagreed. In 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ended six federal trademarks on the name “Redskins,” a victory for Blackhorse, the other plaintiffs, and the many people who had supported and fought to get rid of the name.  

The Washington Football Team appealed, and after 11 years of court battles, both sides withdrew from the case after another Supreme Court decision rendered any further proceedings practically insignificant. Even though it is legal for the Washington Football Team to use the old name, as of July 2020 the team has decided to change its name due to political pressure and protest. Blackhorse said she is “excited” but will remain “cautiously optimistic” until a new name is officially announced. 

As she fought in court, Blackhorse also received her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Washington in St. Louis. She worked at the Arizona State Hospital and currently lives and works as a psychiatric social worker in the Navajo Nation. She also continues to fight against the use of Native American names and images by sports teams. She argued in an interview, “any team name that references Native Americans, I think should go. No matter which way you swing it, you as a team owner and we Native Americans have no control over the type of imagery fans are going to seize on at your games.” 

By  Emma Rothberg, NWHM Predoctoral Fellow in Gender Studies I 2020-2022

Photo Credit: David Wallace, The Arizona Republic

Lilian Margaret St. Cyr was born on February 14, 1884 on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. She was one of six children born to Julia De Cora (ca. 1846-1885), a Winnebago, and Mitchell St. Cyr (ca. 1834-1888), a farmer whose father was reportedly French Canadian and mother a Sauk. While she identified as a member of the Winnebago Tribe, she specifically was Ho-Chunk. Many of her family members were involved in the arts and many were educated off of the Winnebago Reservation.  Orphaned in 1888, St. Cyr spent ten years in Indian boarding schools before matriculating to the Carlisle Indian School in 1894. She graduated in 1902. 

In 1906, she married James Young Johnson, who later changed his name to James Young Deer. Due to the popularity of dime novels and Wild West Shows in the early twentieth century, the couple began passing as “Plains Indians” in these theatrical productions. They appeared alongside 100 Lakota Sioux in NYC’s Hippodrome Theater in a production called “Pioneer Days: A Spectacle Drama of Western Life." They entertained mostly white crowds by reenacting stagecoach battled and performing the Ghost Dance. Due to these performances, St. Cyr and her husband caught the attention of film directors and the couple became popular actors to play Native American roles in films.  

St. Cyr began appearing in small roles in both major silent films and shorts. As she acted, she also made sure she was not used as a prop, and she consulted on films as well. Her first possible appearance in a short film was Kalem’s “The White Squaw” in 1908. A year later, D.W. Giffith hired St. Cyr and her husband as technical consultants for his two films featuring Native Americans. By 1912, her character was so popular that competing film companies created their own “Red Wing” stock characters.   

In 1914, St. Cyr made history, not only as a Native American woman but as a film pioneer. She played a leading role in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Squaw Man.” The film, about an ill-fated marriage between a Ute woman and an Englishman, was the first Western to be made in what is now Hollywood. St. Cyr made her own costumes for the film and her performance received rave reviews by the press and her fellow actors. When St. Cyr, who despite playing a main role was paid far less than the male lead in the film, was told she should be proud to be acting alongside an “$1,000-a-week star” she responded, “‘What about him? He’s working with a one hundred percent American.’” By the time her career ended in 1925, she had served not only as an actress, but a writer, prop maker, costume designer, cultural consultant, and her own stunt woman. 

After her film career ended, St. Cyr continued to be involved in promoting Native American culture. Separating from her husband in the 1920s, St. Cyr moved to New York City to join her older sister, Julia. While there, she supported herself and lived independently on the Upper West Side as an educator-performer. She designed, and sometimes sewed, Native American costumes for the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store and the Eaves Costume Company. She also made costumes and regalia for white fraternal organizations, theatrical producers, tribal members, and real and faux Native American performers. 

St. Cyr was also involved in advocacy throughout the 1920s and 30s. She helped start the American Indian Community House, which emerged as the leading urban Native resource in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut). She was involved with the Indian Unity Fraternal Organization, also known as the Indian Unity Alliance, a group that sought to assert the importance of Native American heritage. One of their major goals was to create a National Indian Day as a federal holiday. In an effort to promote the day, St. Cyr and roughly 200 other Native Americans representing many different tribes gathered in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on September 27, 1929 for a show of unity. Throughout the 1930s, St. Cyr continued to lend her name and performance skills to groups and events that sought to promote the general welfare of Native Americans and to promote a National Indian Day. 

A pioneer of film, St. Cyr died on March 13, 1974 and is buried in St. Augustine Cemetery in Nebraska.  Throughout her life, St. Cyr remained fiercely independent, a woman who shaped her own persona in order to educate others on Native American history and culture. 

By: Emma Rothberg, NWHM Predoctoral Fellow in Gender Studies I 2020-2022
National Women's History Museum

President Barack Obama meets with Elouise Cobell in the Oval Office, Dec. 8, 2010. Official White House Photo by Pete Souzare.

An entrepreneur, advocate, and member of the Blackfoot Nation, Elouise Pepion Cobell (“Yellow Bird Woman”), fought tirelessly for government accountability and for Native Americans to have control over their own financial future. During her life, she won countless awards, founded the first Native American owned bank, and successfully won a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Government. 

Cobell was born on November 5, 1945 on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. The middle of nine children, she was the great, great granddaughter of the respected Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Nation who refused to compromise with the U.S. Government in the nineteenth century. Cobell grew up without running water or electricity and three of her siblings died during childhood. When she was 4, her father successfully got a one-room schoolhouse built on the reservation. She attended that school until high school. 

Cobell grew up hearing stories and complaints from family and friends about the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA managed Native American owned land and any proceeds made from its lease in trusts, but Cobell kept hearing stories about missing money. The story that impacted her the most was that of her aunt and uncle—when they sought money to pay for medical care, the BIA agent first refused to see them and then sent a check after a long delay. The delay cost her uncle his life due to the lack of timely medical care. Because of the stories, she started looking into her own trust money at 18 but was told time and again by BIA agents that she did not understand what she was looking at, or for. 

After studying accounting at Great Falls Commercial College, Cobell went to the University of Montana to study business. While there, she interned as a clerk at the reservation’s BIA office and saw many people turned away when they came to the office asking for their money. 

After graduation, Cobell became the Treasurer for the Blackfoot Nation. In this role, she saw that the numbers just did not add up; for all the product going out of the reservation money was not coming in. She began attending government meetings and asking questions. Officials told her she did not know how to read an account statement despite the fact she had a degree in business and had studied accounting. 

When the only bank on the Blackfeet reservation closed, and no other bank wanted to open a branch, Cobell took matters into her own hands. In 1987, she helped found the Blackfeet National Bank, now the Native American Bank, the first American bank owned by a tribe. After she stepped down as bank director, she served as director of the Native American Community Development Corporation, the bank’s nonprofit affiliate. In recognition of her work, she received a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1997. She joked “about having made the leap from ‘dumb Indian’ to ‘genius’ in one lifetime.” In 2000, the Blackfoot Nation honored her with warrior status. In 2002, she received an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University. 

Cobell also went to court in order to demand accountability from the government for abuse of Native American property and to receive moneys owed. On June 10, 1996, Cobell, along with the Native American Rights Fund, filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Interior for the mismanagement of the Indian Trust Funds belonging to over 300,000 individual tribal members. Cobell v. Salazar remains one of the largest class-action lawsuits ever filed against the United States government.  The lawsuit alleged that the BIA had been mismanaging and abusing the Indian Trust Funds for over a century, leaving Native Americans in poverty and without alternatives.  

Cobell was not only the lead plaintiff but raised money for the suit, donating part of the $310,000 from her “Genius Grant” to the cause. After 13 years of contentious court battles, Cobell and her lawyers agreed to a $3.4 billion settlement with the U.S. Government in December 2009. The settlement included $1.5 billion for the members of the lawsuit, $1.9 billion for a Land Consolidation Program, and $60 million for a college scholarship fund for Native American youth. The settlement was given the final stamp of approval in June 21, 2011. 

Cobell died after a long battle with cancer on October 16, 2011. Besides her MacArthur grant and status as a warrior, the Montana Trial Lawyers Association gave Cobell its annual Citizens Award in 2011. She posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 2016 from President Barack Obama; and Montana Governor Steven Bullock issued a 2015 proclamation recognizing November 5 as Elouise Cobell Day. The Cobell Scholarship, named in her honor, is a merit and need-based scholarship to support students enrolled in U.S. Federally-Recognized tribes who are seeking post-secondary degrees. The University of Montana has an Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute, a learning center for students focusing on collaborations with Tribal Colleges and the story-telling traditions in Native American culture. 

An entrepreneur, advocate, and member of the Blackfoot Nation, Elouise Pepion Cobell (“Yellow Bird Woman”), fought tirelessly for government accountability and for Native Americans to have control over their own financial future. During her life, she won countless awards, founded the first Native American owned bank, and successfully won a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Government. 

Cobell was born on November 5, 1945 on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. The middle of nine children, she was the great, great granddaughter of the respected Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Nation who refused to compromise with the U.S. Government in the nineteenth century. Cobell grew up without running water or electricity and three of her siblings died during childhood. When she was 4, her father successfully got a one-room schoolhouse built on the reservation. She attended that school until high school. 

Cobell grew up hearing stories and complaints from family and friends about the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA managed Native American owned land and any proceeds made from its lease in trusts, but Cobell kept hearing stories about missing money. The story that impacted her the most was that of her aunt and uncle—when they sought money to pay for medical care, the BIA agent first refused to see them and then sent a check after a long delay. The delay cost her uncle his life due to the lack of timely medical care. Because of the stories, she started looking into her own trust money at 18 but was told time and again by BIA agents that she did not understand what she was looking at, or for. 

After studying accounting at Great Falls Commercial College, Cobell went to the University of Montana to study business. While there, she interned as a clerk at the reservation’s BIA office and saw many people turned away when they came to the office asking for their money. 

After graduation, Cobell became the Treasurer for the Blackfoot Nation. In this role, she saw that the numbers just did not add up; for all the product going out of the reservation money was not coming in. She began attending government meetings and asking questions. Officials told her she did not know how to read an account statement despite the fact she had a degree in business and had studied accounting. 

When the only bank on the Blackfeet reservation closed, and no other bank wanted to open a branch, Cobell took matters into her own hands. In 1987, she helped found the Blackfeet National Bank, now the Native American Bank, the first American bank owned by a tribe. After she stepped down as bank director, she served as director of the Native American Community Development Corporation, the bank’s nonprofit affiliate. In recognition of her work, she received a “Genius Grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1997. She joked “about having made the leap from ‘dumb Indian’ to ‘genius’ in one lifetime.” In 2000, the Blackfoot Nation honored her with warrior status. In 2002, she received an Honorary Doctorate from Montana State University. 

Cobell also went to court in order to demand accountability from the government for abuse of Native American property and to receive moneys owed. On June 10, 1996, Cobell, along with the Native American Rights Fund, filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Interior for the mismanagement of the Indian Trust Funds belonging to over 300,000 individual tribal members. Cobell v. Salazar remains one of the largest class-action lawsuits ever filed against the United States government.  The lawsuit alleged that the BIA had been mismanaging and abusing the Indian Trust Funds for over a century, leaving Native Americans in poverty and without alternatives.  

Cobell was not only the lead plaintiff but raised money for the suit, donating part of the $310,000 from her “Genius Grant” to the cause. After 13 years of contentious court battles, Cobell and her lawyers agreed to a $3.4 billion settlement with the U.S. Government in December 2009. The settlement included $1.5 billion for the members of the lawsuit, $1.9 billion for a Land Consolidation Program, and $60 million for a college scholarship fund for Native American youth. The settlement was given the final stamp of approval in June 21, 2011. 

Cobell died after a long battle with cancer on October 16, 2011. Besides her MacArthur grant and status as a warrior, the Montana Trial Lawyers Association gave Cobell its annual Citizens Award in 2011. She posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in 2016 from President Barack Obama; and Montana Governor Steven Bullock issued a 2015 proclamation recognizing November 5 as Elouise Cobell Day. The Cobell Scholarship, named in her honor, is a merit and need-based scholarship to support students enrolled in U.S. Federally-Recognized tribes who are seeking post-secondary degrees. The University of Montana has an Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute, a learning center for students focusing on collaborations with Tribal Colleges and the story-telling traditions in Native American culture. 

By: Emma Rothberg, NWHM Predoctoral Fellow in Gender Studies I 2020-2022

National Women's History Museum

President Barack Obama meets with Elouise Cobell in the Oval Office, Dec. 8, 2010. Official White House Photo by Pete Souzare

The name she was given when she was born about 1860 into the Gros Ventres nation in Montana is not known. While no one is certain, it is believed she is the person “Pine Leaf” described by James Beckwourth in his autobiography. Ultimately she became known as Biawacheeitchish, in English - Woman Chief, a warrior of the Crow Tribe.

She was taken as a prisoner when she was 10 years old and was adopted and raised by a Crow warrior. Her stepfather encouraged her to be strong and supported her interest in traditionally male pursuits. She earned acclaim for her horse riding, marksmanship, and ability to field-dress a buffalo. She was a Two-Spirit, a term used by indigenous North Americans to describe gender-variant individuals. However, unlike other Two-Spirits, Woman Chief never wore men’s clothing but always wore typical female clothing.

When her father died, she assumed leadership of his lodge. She gained fame when she fought off many attackers during a Blackfoot raid on a fort where Crow families lived. She was described as being instrumental in turning back the assault. Woman Chief later raised her own band of warriors and raided Blackfoot settlements, taking many horses and scalps. She attracted considerable attention for her fetes and was likened to the mythological Amazon warriors by white men who met her.

Woman Chief rose to the third rank in the Council of Chiefs. Following the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, she became involved in many negotiations with the tribes of Upper Missouri and brought peace between the Crow people and the tribe of her birth, the Gros Ventres. Several years later she was ambushed and killed by members of her birth tribe.

The first Native American to become a prima ballerina.