Faith Smith

Faith Smith is a Native American activist and educator. Her career included work at Chicago's American Indian Center, with the Native American Committee, and most notably as the president of the Native American Educational Services College from 1974 to 2004.

Early life Smith spent her early childhood on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation in Wisconsin. She attended the Kinnamon School there. Her family relocated to Chicago, She commented that "because of affirmative action, colleges were vacuuming Indian communities across the country, finding the brightest Indians, but after college, a lot of them couldn't make the transition back home. They had changed. Their communities had changed." Member Helen Whitehead (Ho-Chunk-Ojibwe) described NAC: "Our main thrust is to start at the time they're very young and to build a positive self-image."

Smith was an assistant to Robert Reitz, an anthropologist and long-time director of AIC, when Reitz died unexpectedly in 1971. Smith was appointed interim director. In August of that year, the AIC board of directors voted to dismiss Smith for "insubordination and questionable banking practices." Smith's supporters responded by convening a meeting of the full AIC membership, which both reinstated Smith and replaced numerous members of the board of the directors.