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. After graduating from high school in 1950, Mann went on to study at the normal school at Southwestern State College in Weatherford, Oklahoma.[3] In 1954, she earned her bachelor's degree[2] in English and her parents gave her the Indian name "The Woman Who Comes to Offer Prayer".[3] She married while working as a high school English teacher, Alfred Whiteman, who died in 1980, and had four children with him.[2][3]
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.[2] 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.[4] She was the "founding president of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal college".[5]
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.[6] 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.[3][4] 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 (Cherokee Nation).[11] Whiteman was selected by the American Indian Heritage Foundation in Washington, D. C., as Indian Woman of the Year for 1987.[12]
Whiteman married Jim Morton in 1988, but they divorced after a decade.[3][9] 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.[6][4] That year, she was featured in Rolling Stone as one of the top ten professors in the United States.[13] 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.[3][14] 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.[3][8]
Mann returned to using her maiden name around 1998.[3] In 2000, she was selected to receive the Montana Governor's Humanities Award.[15] 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 Studies at MSU.[3] Retiring from teaching in 2003, Mann became a special advisor to the president of Montana State University.[14] She served as one of the trustees who guided the Smithsonian'sNational Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004.[3] In 2008, she was honored by the National Indian Education Association with a lifetime achievement award and in 2016, she became one of only two American Indians elected to the National Academy of Education.[16] At age [17]89, Mann has received one of the nation’s highest honors — the National Humanities Medal — presented to her on March 21, 2023, by President Joe Biden. Mann is credited with strengthening and developing Native American studies in higher education.
Mann, Henrietta; Phillips, Anita (2012). On This Spirit Walk: The Voices of Native American and Indigenous Peoples. Muskogee, Oklahoma: Abingdon Press. ISBN978-1-4267-5841-6.
Mann, Henrietta (2018). "Of This Red Earth". In Greymorning, Neyooxet (ed.). Being Indigenous: Perspectives on Activism, Culture, Language and Identity. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 102–112. ISBN978-0-429-84671-7.