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Benito Juárez
Born
A Zapotec who spoke no Spanish until he was 12, Juárez became Mexico's first Indigenous president and drove the Reform Laws separating church and state. Those same liberal laws broke up communal landholdings, which dispossessed many Indigenous villages, a contradiction historians still debate.
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Whina Cooper
Born
Te Rarawa leader Whina Cooper founded the Māori Women's Welfare League in 1951 and at 79 led the 1975 land march from Northland to Parliament under the slogan "not one more acre". The march helped create pressure for the Waitangi Tribunal, set up the same year.
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Matiu Rata
Born
As New Zealand's Minister of Māori Affairs, Rata, of Ngāti Kurī, carried the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 that created the Waitangi Tribunal to hear treaty breaches. Its powers were extended back to 1840 in 1985, opening the historical settlements that followed; he later founded the Mana Motuhake party.
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Ada Deer
Born
Ada Deer led the Menominee campaign that reversed the federal "termination" of her tribe, winning the Menominee Restoration Act of 1973 and helping end termination as US policy. In 1993 she became the first woman to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
More about Ada Deer5
Neville Bonner
Born
A Jagera man, Bonner became the first Aboriginal member of Australia's federal parliament in 1971, as a Liberal senator for Queensland. He crossed the floor dozens of times, including against his own party on Aboriginal issues, and was dropped from the party ticket in 1983.
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Charles Perkins (Aboriginal activist)
Born
An Arrernte and Kalkadoon man, Perkins led the 1965 Freedom Ride exposing segregation in rural New South Wales, which fed the 1967 referendum counting Aboriginal people in the census. He became the first Aboriginal head of a federal department, Aboriginal Affairs, and was outspoken against governments of both parties.
More about Charles Perkins (Aboriginal activist)7
Eddie Mabo
Born
A Meriam man from Mer in the Torres Strait, Mabo led the ten-year case in which the High Court in 1992 rejected terra nullius and recognised native title. He died months before the judgment; the Native Title Act 1993 that followed set up claims nationally, though critics say its thresholds are hard to meet.
More about Eddie Mabo8
Ole Henrik Magga
After the Alta dam protests, the linguist became the first president of Norway's Sámi Parliament in 1989, an elected body with advisory and later administrative powers, and then first chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2002. Norway's Finnmark Act on land management followed in 2005.
More about Ole Henrik Magga9
Wilma Mankiller
Born
The first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, from 1985 to 1995, Mankiller expanded tribal health clinics and community self-help projects and negotiated self-governance compacts letting the nation run federal programmes itself. Tribal enrolment and revenue grew sharply during her tenure.
More about Wilma Mankiller10
Elijah Harper
Born
An Oji-Cree member of Manitoba's legislature, Harper held an eagle feather and withheld the unanimous consent needed to fast-track ratification of the Meech Lake Accord in June 1990, because First Nations had been left out of it. The accord died, and Indigenous peoples were included in the next round of constitutional talks.
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Luis Macas
A Kichwa leader of the CONAIE confederation, Macas led Ecuador's 1990 Indigenous uprising, which forced land and bilingual education negotiations, and helped found the Pachakutik political movement. Ecuador's 2008 constitution recognising a plurinational state reflects demands his movement made for two decades.
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Evo Morales
Born
An Aymara coca growers' union leader, Morales became Bolivia's first Indigenous president in 2006 and oversaw the 2009 plurinational constitution, nationalised gas revenues and cut poverty sharply. His pursuit of a fourth term despite losing a 2016 referendum led to the disputed 2019 election crisis, and he now faces criminal charges at home.
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Phil Fontaine
Born
An Anishinaabe leader from Sagkeeng First Nation, Fontaine spoke publicly about abuse at residential school in 1990 and, as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, negotiated the 2006 settlement that funded compensation and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It led to the federal apology of 2008.
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Jody Wilson-Raybould
Born
A Kwakwaka'wakw lawyer and former regional chief, Wilson-Raybould became Canada's first Indigenous justice minister in 2015 and carried the 2016 medical assistance in dying law and cannabis legalisation. She resigned over the SNC-Lavalin affair, testifying to pressure to stop a prosecution; the ethics commissioner later found the prime minister had broken conflict-of-interest law.
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Mary Simon
Born
An Inuk negotiator, Simon helped secure the recognition of Aboriginal rights in Canada's 1982 constitution and led the creation of the Arctic Council in 1996 as Canada's circumpolar ambassador. As the first Indigenous Governor General, from 2021 to 2026, her limited French drew criticism; her successor took office in June 2026.
More about Mary Simon16
Linda Burney
Born
A Wiradjuri woman, Burney was the first Aboriginal person elected to the New South Wales parliament and then to the federal House of Representatives. As Minister for Indigenous Australians she led the 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which was defeated in every state, before she left parliament in 2025.
More about Linda Burney17
Nanaia Mahuta
Born
Of Tainui descent, Mahuta became the first woman to wear a moko kauae in New Zealand's parliament and its first Māori woman foreign minister. As local government minister she led the Three Waters reform with co-governance roles for iwi, which proved divisive and was repealed by the next government.
More about Nanaia Mahuta18
Joenia Wapichana
Born
Brazil's first Indigenous woman lawyer argued the Raposa Serra do Sol land case before the Supreme Court, which upheld the territory's demarcation in 2009, and became the first Indigenous woman elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies in 2018. In 2023 she became the first Indigenous person to head FUNAI, the federal Indigenous affairs agency.
More about Joenia Wapichana19
Deb Haaland
Born
A Laguna Pueblo citizen, Haaland became the first Native American cabinet secretary as US Interior Secretary in 2021 and launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, whose reports documented deaths at the schools and led to a presidential apology in 2024. On 3 November 2026 she was elected governor of New Mexico, the first Native American woman elected governor of a US state.
More about Deb Haaland
