Peterson, Helen L.

Helen L. Peterson, born in 1915 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux tribe. She attended Chadron State College in 1932, beginning an educational process that included course work at Colorado State College of Education and the University of Colorado. She received a B.S. degree in Business Education from Chadron State College in 1957.

Her first important job was with the Department of Agriculture's Resettlement Administration, a New Deal Agency, in 1935. She served as director of the Rocky Mountain Council on Inter-American Affairs at the University of Denver Social Science Foundation and set up the Colorado Inter-American Field Service Program which later came under the Extension Division of the University of Colorado.

In 1948 she was appointed the first director of the Mayor's Committee on Human Relations in Denver. As the Commission on Human Relations, the committee became a permanent part of city government in 1949; in 1959 it became the Commission on Community Relations.

Mrs. Peterson was an adviser to the United States Delegation to the Second Inter-American Indian Conference in Cuzco, Peru in 1949. In 1953 she was selected as the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), a position she held through 1961. During these years, NCAI experienced tremendous growth, becoming firmly established as a national organization during her tenure.

Mrs. Peterson returned to Denver in 1962 as the director of the Commission on Community Relations. From 1967 to 1970 she donated her services as part-time executive director to American Indian Development, Inc. She was appointed Assistant to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1970.

Mrs. Peterson was named "Outstanding American Indian of 1955" at the Anadarko Exposition. She received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Colorado in 1973. She is the recipient of distinguished service awards from Columbia University, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Congress of American Indians, the White Buffalo Council of Denver, the Multnomah County Commissioners, and the National Institute for Women of Color.

From the guide to the Helen L. Peterson papers, circa 1944 to circa 1990, (National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center)