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A celebration of achievement, accomplishments, and courage!
Native American Medal of Honor recipients, Heisman Trophy recipients, U.S. Olympians, a U.S. vice president, Congressional representatives, NASA astronauts, Pulitzer Prize recipients, U.S. poet laureates, Oscar winners, and more. The first Native magician, all-Native comedy show, architects, attorneys, bloggers, chefs, cartoonists, psychologists, religious leaders, filmmakers, educators, physicians, code talkers, and inventors. Luminaries like Jim Thorpe, King Kamehameha, Debra Haaland, and Will Rogers, along with less familiar notables such as Native Hawaiian language professor and radio host Larry Lindsey Kimura and Cree/Mohawk forensic pathologist Dr. Kona Williams. Their stories plus the stories of 2000 people, events and places are presented in Indigenous Firsts: A History of Native American Achievements and Events, including ...
Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., Chickasaw Nation, the first Native female meteorologist in the country
Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Wampanoag from Martha's Vineyard, graduate of Harvard College in 1665
Debra Haaland, the Pueblo of Laguna, U.S. Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior
Sam Campos, the Native Hawaiian who developed the Hawaiian superhero Pineapple Man
Thomas L. Sloan, Omaha, was the first Native American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court
William R. Pogue, Choctaw, astronaut
Johnston Murray, Chickasaw, the first person of Native American descent to be elected governor in the United States, holding the office in Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955
The Cherokee Phoenix published its first edition February 21, 1828, making it the first tribal newspaper in North America and the first to be published in an Indigenous language
The National Native American Honor Society was founded by acclaimed geneticist Dr. Frank C. Dukepoo , the first Hopi to earn a Ph.D.
Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot, became the first Native American in the National Baseball League in 1897 as an outfielder with the Cleveland Spiders
Jock Soto, Navajo/Puerto Rican, the youngest-ever man to be the principal dancer with the New York City Ballet
The Seminole Tribe of Florida was the first Nation to own and operate an airplane manufacturing company
Warrior's Circle of Honor, the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, on the grounds of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian
The Iolani Palace, constructed 1879–1882, the home of the Hawaiian royal family in Honolulu
Loriene Roy, Anishinaabe, White Earth Nation, professor at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Information, former president of the American Library Association
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, U.S. representative and U.S. senator from Colorado
Hanay Geiogamah, Kiowa /Delaware, founded the American Indian Theatre Ensemble
Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Nation, writer, literary critic, and journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune
Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later Donehogawa), Tonawanda Seneca, lieutenant colonel in the Union Army, serving as General Ulysses S. Grant's military secretary
Fritz Scholder, Luiseno, painter inducted into the California Hall of Fame
The Native American Women Warriors, the first all Native American female color guard
Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman to become a board-certified surgeon
Kay "Kaibah" C. Bennett, Navajo, teacher, author, and the first woman to run for the presidency of the Navajo Nation
