Ofelia Zepeda was born and raised in Stanfield, Arizona, which is near the Tohono O'odham and Pima reservations. Zepeda received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. She is a professor of linguistics and former director of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Arizona. Zepeda is considered the foremost authority in Tohono O'odham language and literature. She has actively helped her tribe to improve literacy in their native language and English. She also directs the American Indian Language Development Institute, an annual summer institute for American Indian Teachers.

[Gertrude Simmons Bonnin] 1876-1938: Zitkala-Sa was born at the Yankton Sioux Agency in South Dakota. Her mother was a full-blood Sioux, while her father seems to have been an Anglo-American. She attended a Quaker mission school for native children in Wabash, Indiana, then completed her studies at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Bonnin was active in Indian rights, at both local and national levels, forming the National Council of American Indiens, a major Indian rights organization that kept Native people from diverse regions abreast of legislative concerns and provided them with a centralized focus for a variety of local issues. She published sketches and short stories in several popular magazines and two book-length collections. Old Indian Legends and American Indian Stories, a collection of her fiction and sketches. Bonnin collaborated with William E. Hanson on an Indian opera, Sun Dance, that was selected as the 1937 Opera of the Year by the New York Light Opera Guild.

Robert Zuboff, a chief of the Beaver Clan at Angoon, Admiralty Island, who spent hours sharing tribal lore with the children and coauthored Tlingit Tales: Potlatch and Totem Pole with Lorle and Lorie K Harris.