Helen Maynor Scheirbeck

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Helen Maynor Scheirbeck is a Native American educator and activist. Born in Lamberton, North Carolina, she currently serves as the Assistant Director for Public Programs at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of the American Indian. She holds a bachelors degree in education from Berea College in Kentucky, and a doctorate degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Virginia State University. Scheirbeck is best known for her work with young Native Americans, training them to work with Congress and other federal agencies in the United States to promote policies that help Indian communities. She is a member of the Lumbee Tribe, the ninth largest tribal nation in the United States.

Before her work with the Smithsonian Institution, Scheirbeck was the national director for Head Start programs serving American Indian and Alaskan Natives. She has served as a human resources administrator for Save the Children Federation, chairwoman of the U.S. Department of Education Indian Education Task Force, and as a staffer in the U.S. Senate where she helped develop the American Indian Civil Rights Act.

[edit] Professional History

Scheirbeck received her bachelors degree in 1957 and her doctorate in 1980. She began her professional career as an intern for the National Congress of American Indians, where she assissted in the founding of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which lobbies for tribal colleges and universities on the federal level. This work earned her a job as a staff member in the U.S. Senate, working for the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Here she organized the Capitol Conference on Poverty in 1962, where Native American leaders first advocated for Indian participation in the War on Poverty.

She helped establish the Coalition of Indian Controlled School Boards in 1972, and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to chair the Indian Education Task Force. This body, working as part of the American Indian Policy Review Commission, helped define the Indian-controlled schools movement. Scheirbeck would be rewarded for her work, and was appointed director of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Office of Indian Education. Here, she led discussions in 1973 that developed a strategy enabling tribal colleges and universities to obtain start-up funds as developing institutions through Title III of the Higher Education Act.

In 1978, Scheirbeck assisted in the development of the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act, and guided it to passage in Congress. This legislation formed the foundation of the tribal college movement in the United States, and has been credited for inspiring the indigenous-controlled higher-education movement worldwide. Scheirbeck was appointed head of the Indian Head Start Program in 1991, where she was responsible for solving problems with the American Indian and Alaskan Native Head Start Bureau and improving its efficiency nationwide.

From 1987 to 1995, she served on the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian, playing an important role in the museum's founding. After her term as a trustee ended, she became director of the public programs, and has served there until the present day.