Henrietta Mann (Cheyenne, b. 1934) is a Native American academic and activist. She was one of the designers of the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Montana and Haskell Indian Nations University's Native American studies programs. In 2000 she became the first American Indian to hold the endowed chair of Native American studies at Montana State University and was honored with the Montana Governor's Humanities Award. She retired in 2004 and became a special advisor to the president of Montana State University. Early life and education Henrietta Verle "Henri" Mann was born in 1934 in Clinton, Custer County, Oklahoma to Lanora E. and Henry Mann. The Manns were enrolled in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Her father was a farmer and raised cattle on his family's allotment near Hammon, Oklahoma and her mother raised chickens. Her great grandmothers were White Buffalo Woman, one of the survivors of the Sand Creek massacre, and Vister, a survivor of the Washita Massacre. Her mother was a Christian, but the rest of her family followed traditional belief systems, and were peyotists. Mann's first language was Cheyenne and even after she started school in Hammon, an aunt came daily to give her after-school lessons in Cheyenne culture. Graduating from high school in 1950, Mann went on to study at the normal school at Southwestern State College in Weatherford, Oklahoma. In 1954, she earned her bachelor's degree in English and her parents gave her the Indian name "The Woman Who Comes to Offer Prayer". She married, while working as a high school English teacher, Alfred Whiteman, who died in 1980, and had four children with him. Career As an elected board member for the Tribal Council, she was one of the authors of the federal legislation which resulted in a $15 million judgment from the US government in favor of her tribe in 1967 as part of the settlements of the Indian Claims Commission. She advocated for the creation of Native American studies programs to develop not only self-awareness, but to allow American Indians to be empowered with self-determination. She was the "founding president of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal college". In 1970, Whiteman completed her master's degree in English literature at Oklahoma State University and was hired as part of the faculty for ethnic studies created after the Third World Liberation Front strike at University of California, Berkeley. She helped develop the