This is the country's highest award to a Native American for lifetime achievement in science, engineering, mathematics,and technology.  One cannot apply for the award and the name of the recipient is kept secret until it is announced.  The following announcement was prepared by prior years recipients Dwight Gorneau and Robert Megginson, University of Michigan and delivered by Prof. Megginson at the annual meeting of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society on November 10th at a traditional dinner sponsored by Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies.  Approximately 2,000 from universities (including his alma maters Stanford and Harvard), major corporations, national research institutions, and native communities attended the banquet.

It is my very great honor and pleasure to announce the 2000 Ely S. Parker Award. (Note the pronunciation: Eelee, not Eeleye.) This is AISES's highest award, and is intended to recognize those American Indian people who have made significant contributions in the fields of Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or Technology, but, just as importantly, who have served the American Indian community with distinction. Through this recognition, AISES develops an academy of role models for future generations to emulate.

This academy already has seventeen members, many of whom are here tonight, and who can be recognized by the rainbow ribbon on the Ely S. Parker Award medallion they wear. Could I ask those previous Parker Award recipients to stand for a moment so we can recognize them?

Tonight's recipient will be the eighteenth person to receive the Ely S. Parker Award.

For those of you who are not aware of who Ely S. Parker was, he was born in 1828 and raised in the Seneca tradition on the Tonawanda reservation in the state of New York. Though trained as a lawyer, he was not allowed to practice law because, as a Native American, he was not considered to be an American citizen. Having been barred from the law practice, he then turned his considerable talents to civil engineering, designing and constructing canals and buildings. Those who have lived in Illinois, as I once did, may have seen some of his marvelous engineering accomplishments in federal buildings that still stand in the northwestern parts of the state. Along with a most distinguished career in engineering, he also served as an officer working directly with Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War, and wrote the draft of the terms of surrender that Lee signed at Appomattox to bring peace back to our land at that troubled time. He then entered public service as the first American Indian to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the second not to follow for almost a century, and gave much service directly to his own tribe. You can learn more about Parker by reading the book "Warrior in Two Camps" by William H. Armstrong, and looking at the video "Warrior in Two Worlds" on Parker's life, available from AISES.

There are several characteristics that seem to distinguish American Indians of high achievement, among them

1.  They all seem to have a deep understanding and affection for their heritage and their people.

2.  They were challenged, and many times struggled, to determine how one will walk life's path, applying personal courage to work through life's challenges and disappointments.

3.  They attained a high level of achievement by acting on their vision, utilizing their intellect, learning from life's experiences, and demonstrating exceptional persistence.

4.  And finally, they serve their fellow human beings and their people with no expectation of reward or recognition. They give from the heart.

Our recipient tonight has shown all these characteristics in abundance.

The Ely S. Parker Award for the year 2000 goes to Dr. James H. May, currently Community Technology Coordinator for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and recently retired Dean of the Center for Science, Technology, and Information Resources for California State University at Monterey Bay, who is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee speaking Indians. I would like to ask Dr. May to come to the podium to receive this award, and I would also like to ask Dwight Gourneau if he would come up to help with the presentation. While they are coming I will describe just a few of Dr. May's accomplishments. It would truly take much more time than we have available to mention all of the areas on which he has made his mark.

Dr. May has had an academic career that is truly stellar, and is reminiscent of Ely Parker's career in its diversity and some of its specific accomplishments. Just as Parker distinguished himself as a civil engineer, Dr. May's Bachelor's Degree is in civil engineering, from Stanford. His doctorate is from Columbia, in Library and Information Science, and along the way he also managed to receive a Harvard MBA in his spare time!

After an academic career that led him to the position of Vice Provost for Information Resources and Professor of Computer Science at California  State University at Chico, in 1994 he became the first nationally recruited appointment to the new CSU campus at Monterey Bay, where as Dean of the Center for Science, Technology, and Information Resources he was responsible for almost all of the implementation of technology in education on that campus.

Having recently retired from that position (although retired is a relative term; he still does much work for that campus), he has taken up new challenges with the National Museum of the American Indian, where he has been closely involved with the Fourth Museum concept, an electronic outreach effort to provide access to the Museum's collections to all Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

Along the way, really throughout his career, he has continually made contributions

  - to building the technical infrastructure for telecommunications in Indian country;

  - to access to information and databases by Native peoples;

  - to language preservation and restoration;

  - and in many other areas too long to list here.

Dr. May's accomplishments have made him a truly deserving recipient of this award. Please join me in congratulating him.
 

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ï Robert E. Megginson
ï Professor of Mathematics
ï University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
ï 4076 East Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109
ï (734) 936-0155   -   FAX:  (734) 763-0937
ï e-mail:  meggin@math.lsa.umich.edu
ï WWW: http://www.math.lsa.umich.edu/~meggin
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