By Kara Briggs, American Indian News Service

In 1963, a young Lumbee woman, Helen Maynor Scheirbeck, wrote a letter to political prisoner Nelson Mandela and to a young priest in the Anglican Church of South Africa named Desmond Tutu.

Photo by Marilu Lopez-Fretts. Helen Maynor Scheirbeck, who is Lumbee, recently retired from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, capping a long career in public service on behalf of Indian causes. She was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree in May from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She wrote, “The Indians in America have about the same problem as you do.”

More than four decades later, Scheirbeck met Tutu at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where both received honorary degrees this May. She told the 77-year-old cleric about the letter, she said, and “we laughed about it.”

“The key thing she did in all her positions was she would bring community people into Washington, D.C., and train them to work in the bureaucracy,” said Tom Davis, dean of instruction at Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, N.M.. “And she helped all these people with careers in Washington when they were young—doesn’t matter whether they were white, Indian or black.

Scheirbeck, 74 and recently retired from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree. It recognizes her work advocating for American Indian rights, and particularly acting as champion for the tribes of North Carolina.

“I told them I would accept this degree only for my ancestors, not for Helen Scheirbeck,” she said. “They are the ones who fought so hard for us to remain Indians.”

At the National Museum of the American Indian, Scheirbeck served in many capacities, beginning as a member of its founding board of trustees and rising to assistant director for museum programs before retiring.

In her long career, Scheirbeck also played a leading role in national political events such as the hearings that led to the 1964 American Indian Capital Conference on Poverty that opened the door for tribes to receive poverty-fighting grants; the passage of the 1968 American Indian Civil Rights Act; and the development of tribal colleges and Indian Head Start.

Scheirbeck still gauges her success in life by the guidance she received from her late father, who told her that she would help Indians. Judge Lacy Maynor, a distinguished Lumbee leader, made international headlines in 1958 when he stood up to the Ku Klux Klan.

“He was an enormously articulate man like Helen is articulate,” said Tom Davis, dean of instruction at Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, N.M. “She is an outgoing person, that’s how she got on Senator Sam Ervin’s staff. The only civil rights legislation Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) ever supported was the Indian Civil Rights Act.”

Scheirbeck helped to persuade Ervin to convene the hearings that led to passage of the 1968 act, which extended many rights contained in the Bill of Rights to Indians living on their reservations.

In 1972, she obtained a $40,000 grant to register voters. “Three friends of mine went out and registered every Lumbee and every black we could find,” Scheirbeck said. “It was kind of like Obama supporters in the last election—people really wanted to vote. Now we are the majority of commissioners in Robeson County, and we always have Indian school commissioners.”

Scheirbeck also worked for the U.S. Department of Education, where she was on the staff of the first Indian desk in the early 1970s. She advocated for the Indian Education Act, writing provisions for Indian parent advisory boards to schools. Eventually, she became director of the Indian Head Start, introducing language and culture to the program for low-income preschool students.

“The key thing she did in all her positions was she would bring community people into Washington, D.C., and train them to work in the bureaucracy,” Davis said. “And she helped all these people with careers in Washington when they were young—doesn’t matter whether they were white, Indian or black. That’s where her network comes from.”

Now semi-retired, though busy giving lectures and writing books, Scheirbeck is working to develop an Indian arts co-op in Pembroke, North Carolina. She has many ideas about how she will continue her involvement with the National Museum of the American Indian.

“I am supposed to be retired, but I can’t tell it,” she told the Fayetteville Observer recently. “I love the museum and will always work for it no matter where I am.”