Standing in front of her high school English class on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota for the first time, Denise Juneau was struck by the responsibility. Looking at the sea of faces in front of her, she knew many of them faced challenges that posed barriers to their education, but she also knew that, as a teacher, she was in a position to help.

That was 20 years ago, when Juneau, an enrolled member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribes, was about to embark on a lifelong career in education.

“I have a deep respect for teachers,” she says—a respect that she believes has informed her two terms as Montana’s superintendent of public instruction.

That job—to which she was first elected in 2008—made Juneau the first Native American woman in the country to win statewide executive office, and now she’s attempting to make history once again. One hundred years after Montana voters elected the first woman to Congress, the state’s voters may make Juneau, 49, the first Native American woman to serve there.