Betty Jumper was born in 1923, near Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida. She graduated from a primary school in Carolina and went on to the Kiowa Indian Hospital in Oklahoma where she became a nurse. She worked on the Seminole Reservation with the public health as a nurse. In 1967 she was became the first woman to serve as chairman of the Seminole Tribal Council. In 1970 she was awarded the Top Indian of the Year award. After retirement Jumper published her brief memoir, Legends of the Seminoles, Pineapple Press, 1994.

Tawa Mana (which means Sun Girl) and Youyouseyah are a sister-brother writing team. Their literature is based on their Hopi-Tewa heritage.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller (born November 18, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma) was the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. She served as the Principal Chief for ten years from 1985 to 1995.  Mankiller grew up with her family at her father was Austin Williams Narrows va. moved the family to San Francisco in hopes of a "better life" as promised under the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Relocation Program. By the late 1960s, failed promises led Mankiller to join the activist movement and participate in the occupation of Alcatraz Island and other Indian demonstrations. In hopes of helping her own people, she returned home in 1977 and began a low-level job for the Cherokee Nation . . .

Dr. Henrietta Mann is a full-blood Cheyenne enrolled with the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Dr. Mann holds the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University in Bozeman. She is the first Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College President.  She taught at the University of Montana at Missoula for twenty-eight years, where she was a professor of Native American Studies. Some of the other institutions included in her thirty years of administration and/or teaching at the higher education level are the University of California at Berkeley; the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University; University of Sciences and Arts in Chickasha, Oklahoma; and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. Dr. Mann has served as the Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs and Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; she was the National Coordinator of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Coalition for the Association of American Indian Affairs. In 1983, Dr. Mann was selected as the Cheyenne Indian of the Year; in 1987, she was honored as the National American Indian Woman of the Year; and in 1991, Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the ten leading professors in the nation. In 1997, she was inducted into the Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma. She has been an interviewee and consultant for several television and movie productions, and has lectured throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand. Dr. Mann says that in the way of the Cheyenne, all earth is sacred. But perhaps among the most sacred ground in the United States is the site of the former World Trade Center, said Mann, who was among the first Indian spiritual leaders to conduct sacred ceremonies at Ground Zero.

Lee Maracle was born in 1950 and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After dropping out of school to join the hippie subculture and to work as a political activist, she attended Simon Fraser University. Besides being a professor at the University of Toronto, she has also been the Stanley Knowles Visiting Professor in Canadian Studies at the University of Waterloo. She was one of the founders of the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, BC (1981); a learning institute with an Indigenous Fine Arts Program and an Okanagon Language Program. In 2001, Maracle was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University to engage in activities focused on promoting Canadian culture and awareness. She is a member of the Red Power Movement and Liberation Support Movement. Maracle has been the Traditional Cultural Director of The Centre for Indigenous Theatre and has worked as an instructor of dramatic composition and theatrical representation. Maracle's works reflect her antipathy toward racism, sexism, and white cultural domination.

Markoosie was born in 1942 in Port Harrison, Quebec, Canada. He attended Port Harrison Elementary School and a high school in Yellow knife, Northwest Territories. He has earned a pilot's license and a carpentry diploma. Markoosie's career includes pilot; translator; manager of the Community Council, Inukjuak, Quebec; and administrator of Public Services, Government of Quebec. Markoosie was the first Canadian Inuit to publish a book in English.

Joseph Marshall III was born and raised on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Because he was raised in a traditional native household by his maternal grandparents, his first language is Lakota. In that environment he also learned the ancient tradition of oral storytelling. Joseph taught at the high school and university levels, and developed curriculum as well. Now he writes full time, having published six nonfiction works, and one novel, and was contributing author in four other publications; and has written several screenplays. Several of his books have been published in French, Hebrew, and Korean . . .

Author of Abenaki Indian Legends, Grammar and Place-Names in 1932, Henry Lorne Masta was born on March 9th, 1853.  He received his primary and secondary education on the Reserve, and later attended Sabrevois College near Saint Johns, PQ.  For 31 years he was the schoolmaster at Odanak.  He also served as chief of the tribe for 20 years.

1894-1979.   John Joseph Mathews was an Osage novelist and historian. He was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma where he appears on the tribal roll as one-eighth Osage. His education was interrupted by World War I during which he served as a flight instructor. On returning from the war he received degrees in natural sciences from the University of Oklahoma and Oxford. He then attended he University of Geneva, where he obtained a certificate in international relations. While in Geneva, Mathews did freelance work for the Philadelphia Ledger. After extensve travel in Europe he returned to Pawhuska, where he turned to a life of public service, serving on the Osage Tribal Council, and writing. He represented the tribe in Washington, D.C., and helped the Osage attain rights to natural gas and oil deposits found on their lands. He represented the United States in the 1940 Indians of the Americas Conference in Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico, and was instrumental in establishing the Osage Museum in Pawhuska.