Crystal Echo Hawk was the leader featured in 4REAL Pawnee. When she was in her mid-teens and early 20s, she wrestled with addiction, depression, thoughts of suicide and low-esteem. Her struggles typified those of many young Native Americans.

Thankfully, she was able to turn her life around with the help of...

Crystal Echo Hawk was the leader featured in 4REAL Pawnee. When she was in her mid-teens and early 20s, she wrestled with addiction, depression, thoughts of suicide and low-esteem. Her struggles typified those of many young Native Americans.

Thankfully, she was able to turn her life around with the help of others. “It was these amazing teachers and mentors who took my hand,” she explains. “They believed in me and gave me the opportunity to learn, work for my people and make a difference.”

Today, Crystal, a member of the Kitkehaki Band of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, works hard to give other Native youth the same type of hope and opportunity, both desperately needed. The Pawnee Nation alone has a 40% unemployment rate and roughly 40% of the population lives below the poverty line.

For the last 10 years, Crystal has served as a front-line advocate, educator, fundraiser, and organizer for Indigenous rights, and Native youth and communities. Her work has taken her from the U.N., to Chiapas, Mexico, to reservations and urban Indian communities across the U.S.

In 1997, Crystal received the Reebok Human Rights Award and was named by Ms. Magazine as one of the rising women leaders under the age of thirty. In 1999, she was nominated for a Macarthur Genius Award for her advocacy work for Indigenous rights in Chiapas.

Crystal served as the tribal planner for the Pawnee Nation from 2004-2006. She assisted her tribe in raising more than $4 million for major community, cultural, and economic development projects that included the establishment of the Pawnee Nation College in 2004.

In 2006 she left the Pawnee Nation in order to found NVision with a collective of some of the top young Native artists, performers, filmmakers and multi-media professionals in the U.S. Crystal serves as President and a founding board member for NVision.

A mother of three children, Crystal holds her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and sociology from the University of Sussex in Falmer, England.