James R. Newell, PhD

Marilyn Vann broke barriers last year when she became the first Cherokee citizen of Freedmen descent since Oklahoma statehood to hold a position on a Cherokee Nation government board.

Vann, who spent more than 30 years as an engineer for the U.S. Treasury Department, is a trailblazing leader and now sits on the tribe’s Environmental Protection Commission.

For years, Vann has been fighting for the rights of Freedmen — descendants of people once enslaved by members of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole Nations — and is the president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Tribes.

The Trail of Tears Should be Part of Curriculum in Every School On May 28, 1830, then President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act that established a process for the president to grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their homelands.

The Cherokee Woman Who Changed the Aerospace Game Forever Mary Golda Ross was a pioneer in the fields of interplanetary space travel and rocket science.