Jacqueline Left Hand Bull-Delahunt, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (Sicangu Lakota), recently was elected chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. She is the first American Indian and the third woman to hold that position.

Jacqueline Left Hand Bull"It's really an honor and humbling," says Ms. Left Hand Bull , who lives in Rapid City, S.D. "Indians have been involved in the Baha'i Faith since Abdu'l-Baha came to the United States in 1912."

Distinguished American Indians who have served on the National Spiritual Assembly include MacArthur Fellow Patricia Locke, Lakota hoop dancer and flutist Kevin Locke, and Navajo artists and brothers Franklin and Chester Kahn.

The new chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly has devoted her life to improving the lives of American Indians. As administrative officer for the Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairmen's Health Board, she helps define and implement healthcare policy for American Indians.

Ms. Left Hand Bull spent her early childhood on a reservation in a household that included her uncle, "a holy man with healing powers. We spoke the Lakota language,"
she says," and very little English.

"We were nominally Catholics because the Church had mission schools there on the reservation. I went to a Catholic girls' high school for one year and was a practicing Catholic until after my children were born. I also participated in traditional Lakota spiritual ceremonies with my family. I wasn't knowingly seeking another religion when I learned of the Baha'i Faith. It just made so much sense and touched my spirit."

Ms. Left Hand Bull says she understood how relevant the Baha'i Faith was to the concerns of Indians.

"We Indians find it difficult to see our way to survival," she says, "but when I found the Baha'i Faith, I saw the path."

It took her a year to fully investigate the religion. All along she struggled with the possibility of alienating her family if she enrolled in the faith.

In assuming the chairmanship of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States, Ms. Left Hand Bull says she asks "many of the early believers, as well the people in my family who have gone on to the next world, to be with me spiritually."

She says she especially looks to her deceased uncle, the healer, to help her share the message with "the more traditional people. "I feel his nearness," she says, "and it's comforting."