Native America Heritage Month Spotlight Fawn Sharp
This month, in celebration of Native American Heritage Month, we will be highlighting some of the many remarkable contributors to Indian country. In no way is this list comprehensive or extensive. For the next 30 days we will present a brief biography a day.
Fawn R. Sharp, President of the NCAI.
Fawn R. Sharp serves as the 23rd President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native tribal government organization in the country. Fawn is the third woman to hold this position.
Fawn is an ideal role model for students. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington at the age of 19. She received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Washington in 1995 and has subsequently received certificates from the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada, and from the International Human Rights Law at Oxford University.
Before Fawn became the third NCAI President, she was the 5-term Quinaunlt president. Fawn is a lifelong resident of the Quinault reservation of Washington State.
Fawn has been instrumental in pushing for state government environmental regulations. In October of 2018, Fawn embarked on a bus tour. She and her fellow “Road Warriors” as they called themselves, visited all 28 tribes in 10 days. This brought Washington tribes together to lobby for support of a carbon fee that would promise to financially support the Washington communities most affected by pollution. Now, as NCAI President, Fawn will be a warrior for all tribes.
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