curricula for the first degree program for ethnic studies in the United States, while at Berkeley. That same year, she joined with other Native American women in the founding of the National Indian Women's Action Corps, an empowerment organization. The organizing officers included Dorothy Lonewolf Miller, president; Grace Thorpe (Sac & Fox), vice president; Stella Leach (Colville-Oglala Lakota), 2nd vice president; Woesha Cloud North (Ho-Chunk), secretary; Whiteman, treasurer; and Jennie R. Joe (Navajo), sergeant-at-arms. After teaching for two years at UC Berkeley, in 1972, she was hired to direct the Native American Studies program at the University of Montana, in Missoula. She would be a key designer of the curricula and taught at the university for 28 years. As a Danforth Fellow, Whiteman continued her education, earning a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1982. That year, she was honored as Cheyenne Indian of the Year, for the American Indian Exposition. Between 1986 and 1987, she took a leave of absence from the University of Montana, teaching at Harvard University and serving in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Education Office. She was the first woman American Indian woman to hold the position of director of Indian education programs and was selected by Assistant Department of the Interior Secretary, Ross Swimmer. Whiteman was selected by the American Indian Heritage Foundation in Washington, D. C., as Indian Woman of the Year for 1987. Whiteman married Jim Morton in 1988, but they divorced after a decade. In 1991, Morton stepped away from her duties as director of the Native Studies Program and was promoted to a professorship which would give her more time to focus on writing. That year, she was featured in Rolling Stone as one of the top ten professors in the United States. During her time at the University of Montana, she took eight sabbaticals and became a widely respected speaker nationally on the issue of Indian education. During one of those leaves in 1993 and 1994, she helped design a Native American Studies Program for Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. Mann returned to use of her maiden name around 1998. In 2000, she was selected to receive the Montana Governor's Humanities Award. In 2001, Mann moved to Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman, to accept a position as the first person to occupy the endowed chair of Native American