BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Sunshine Manning is a citizen of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Idaho and Nevada and a descendant of the Chippewa-Cree Tribes of Rocky Boy, Montana. She has devoted 25 years to working for Indigenous communities across Turtle Island, working in Indian education, community organizing and advocacy, journalism, storytelling, media consulting, narrative change, and communications.Sarah is a published writer, a multimedia producer, and an award-winning journalist, with works featured in digital and print publications including the Washington Post, YES! Magazine, Indian Country Today Media Network (now known as ICT), and several others. She has been a featured voice on both radio and television, making appearances on MSNBC, Native America Calling, CBC Radio, and the New York Times, reporting from the frontlines of Standing Rock in 2016. Sarah shifted her focus from journalism to non-profit communications, working for seven years at NDN Collective – a national organization dedicated to building Indigenous power – building and leading a multifaceted communications and narrative strategy, and also producing and hosting the While Indigenous podcast.
As a longtime advocate of the arts and traditional ecological knowledge, Sarah is a practitioner of Shoshone and Paiute traditional methods of hide tanning, beading, and sewing. She is a devoted student of learning Numu yaduana, the Paiute language, and takes pride in honoring the cyclical practices of land-based teachings, including harvesting traditional foods and plant medicines from the land with her family.
Sarah holds bachelor's degrees in American Indian Studies, Social Science-History, and Secondary Education from the University of Minnesota Morris, and a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from South Dakota State University.
