Tsetsehestaestse (Cheyenne)

Dr. Henrietta Mann is a beloved affiliate of UVM’s Leadership for Sustainability Graduate programs.  She is Professor Emerita at Montana State University, where she was the first to occupy the Katz Endowed Chair in Native American Studies. She is the founding President of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College.  Her immense contributions to Tribal education and Native American Studies continue to be recognized through many honors and awards.  In 1991, Rolling Stone Magazine named Dr. Mann as one of the ten leading professors in the nation. In 2008 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Indian Education Association. The College Board, Native American Student Advocacy Institute (NASAI) presented her with its first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, and has since created the Dr. Henrietta Mann Leadership Award to acknowledge and thank leaders for their advocacy in improving lives within native communities. 

In 2014 MONEY Magazine named her a MONEY Hero Award Winner, one of 50 Unsung Heroes/50 States, conferred for her extraordinary work with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College in improving the financial well-being of others.  In 2016, she became one of two Native Americans ever to be elected to the National Academy of Education. Indian Country Today has included her in its 2016 “50 Faces of Indian Country.” In 2017, she received a SPIRIT ALIGNED Legacy Leader Award as a carrier of Indigenous community values, memory and wisdom from the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program, based in Akwesasne, New York, which partners with NoVo Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. In 2018, she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  Dr. Mann has served as Elder-in-Residence at Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Most recently, Dr. Mann earned the acclaimed 2021 National Humanities Medal presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities and President Joe Biden during the Arts and Humanities Award Ceremony and dinner at the White House in March 2023. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples and continues to serve on boards at the national and international levels.