Wilma Mankiller

Principal chief of the Cherokee Nation (1985-1995)

• Born: November 18, 1945
• Birthplace: Tahlequah, Oklahoma
• Died: April 6, 2010
• Place of death: Adair County, Oklahoma

As the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, or of any major American Indian tribe, Mankiller renewed a long tradition of female leadership in Cherokee affairs. She coupled feminist ideas with Cherokee tradition to form a strong tribe with a renewed spirit of independence.

Early Life

Wilma Mankiller was born in the W. W. Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her mother was Clara Irene Sitton, who was of Dutch-Irish descent, and her father was Charley Mankiller, a full Cherokee; they had married in 1937. Mankiller was the sixth of eleven children. The family lived on Mankiller Flats in Adair County, northeastern Oklahoma. Mankiller Flats was an allotment of 160 acres that had been given to John Mankiller, Charley’s father, in 1907, when Oklahoma became a state.

The name “Mankiller” was a Cherokee military title that had to be earned, like that of the armed forces ranks of major or captain. Mankiller’s great-great-great-grandfather, Mankiller of Tellico, earned the title in the eighteenth century and then established it as a family surname. (During her days as chief, Mankiller often told white males that she had earned the name herself.) Tellico is in eastern Tennessee and was part of the original Cherokee Nation. The Mankillers and most other Cherokee were forcibly moved to the Indian Territory, later the State of Oklahoma, along the infamous Trail of Tears in 1838-1839.

The first eleven years of Wilma’s life were spent on Mankiller Flats and within traditional Cherokee culture. In 1956, however, the Mankiller family moved to San Francisco, California, as part of a government relocation plan to move American Indians to large cities and into mainstream American life. Life in San Francisco was shocking to the family, especially for the Mankiller children, but they soon adjusted.

On November 13, 1963, Mankiller married Hugo Olaya, a member of a wealthy Ecuadoran family, who was then a student in San Francisco. Two daughters, Felicia and Gina, were born to the couple before differences in lifestyles led to a divorce in 1974. During these years, Wilma had earned a degree from San Francisco State College (now university).

Mankiller was poignantly reminded of her Cherokee background again when, in 1969, a group of American Indians occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to gain support for American Indian rights. Alcatraz was considered indigenous territory, and Mankiller and many others in her family participated in that occupation, in which Mankiller’s life of political activism began.

Mankiller’s father, who had become a longshoreman and a union organizer in California, died in 1971. Charley always had encouraged his children, especially Wilma, to read books, which were always in abundance in their home. His body was returned to his native Adair County for burial. Wilma heard older Cherokee men say that her father had “come back” home. The emotions of the day of her father’s burial seemed to be a signal for family members to return, one by one, to Oklahoma. Mankiller returned in 1975, a year after her divorce. Only two older brothers remained in California.

Living in two worlds, Mankiller’s life mirrored that of Nancy Ward, an eighteenth century Cherokee who had earned the title Beloved Woman and who also had lived in the white world as well as the Cherokee. Like Ward, Wilma was able to combine the best of Cherokee tradition with the best of European-American civilization. Mankiller’s balanced philosophy led her to contribute greatly to the welfare of the Cherokee Nation.

Life’s Work

Mankiller began her work to improve American Indian life before she left California. In 1974, with Bill Wahpapah, she cofounded the American Indian Community School in Oakland. However, her return to Oklahoma marked the beginning of her full-time service to her people.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, with 55,000 acres of northeastern Oklahoma and a federally recognized “enrollment,” or population, of about 250,000 people, was ranked second only to the Navajo in size among American Indian tribes in the United States. When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the traditional tribal government of the Cherokee was dissolved. This created a unique political organization, neither a reservation nor an autonomous government, with unique political and social problems and concerns. Mankiller now began directing her energy toward solving those problems.

Mankiller’s first regular job with the Cherokee Nation began in 1977 as an economic-stimulus coordinator. Her job was to guide as many people as possible toward university training in such fields as environmental science and health and then to integrate them back into their communities. She soon became frustrated with the slow-moving male-dominated bureaucracy of the Cherokee Nation, a bureacracy she believed had been imposed on them by whites and which was supported by the insecurity of Cherokee men forced to live in a white-dominated society.

Before Europeans came to North America, Cherokee women such as Ward occupied leadership roles in tribal affairs. The original Cherokee Nation was matrilineal, and the name Beloved Woman was given to those who performed extraordinary service. Women had a major voice in choosing chiefs and in other tribal affairs. The first Europeans to contact the Cherokee accused them of having a “petticoat government.” After this contact, the influence of Cherokee women began to decrease. In her autobiography Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (1993), Mankiller declared her belief that the Trail of Tears, combined with the tremendous strain of relocation in the West, was the final step in the forced development of a more subservient position for women.

A significant development in 1971 helped to open the way for a return to more female participation in Cherokee affairs. A revision of the tribal constitution provided that, for the first time since Oklahoma statehood in 1907, the principal chief would be elected by the people of the tribe rather than being appointed by the president of the United States. An entirely new constitution in 1976 solidified that change and provided for the election of a new fifteen-member tribal council.

In 1979, after working for two years as an economic-stimulus coordinator, Mankiller was made a program-development specialist and grant writer. Her immediate success in this position, especially in writing grant proposals, brought her to the attention of the tribal council and Principal Chief Ross Swimmer. This phase of her work was soon interrupted by tragedy. On November 9 she was seriously injured in a head-on collision on a country road. The driver of the other car was Sherry Morris, a white woman who was a very close friend of Mankiller. Morris was killed. Within a year of the accident, Mankiller developed a rare form of muscular dystrophy.

These back-to-back experiences caused Mankiller to reach more deeply into her Cherokee background and led to a change in her philosophy of life. In 1981, although still undergoing physical therapy, she was able to return to her work with the Cherokee Nation, and she did so with her old energy. In that year she helped establish the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department and became its first director.

The next step in Mankiller’s career came in 1983, when Chief Swimmer asked her to join his reelection ticket as his deputy chief. This request was unusual for two reasons: Mankiller was a woman, and she was a liberal Democrat; Swimmer was a conservative Republican. After first declining, Mankiller accepted the offer as a way to help her people.

One of Mankiller’s opponents for deputy chief was Agnes Cowan, the first woman to serve on the tribal council. Mankiller was surprised when gender became an immediate issue in the campaign. The hostility she faced included the slashing of her car tires and death threats. She fought the negative campaigning by conducting a positive and cheerful campaign based primarily on her past service to the Cherokee people. The victory for the Swimmer-Mankiller ticket meant that, on August 14, 1983, Mankiller became the first female deputy chief in Cherokee history.

In 1984, Deputy Chief Mankiller participated in a significant meeting a reunion between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee from North Carolina. The Eastern Band had descended from those who escaped the Trail of Tears by hiding in the mountains. This meeting, the first full tribal council since 1838, was held at Red Clay in Tennessee, on the Georgia state line. Red Clay was the last capital of the original Cherokee Nation. At that reunion, an eternal flame was lit and still burns at Red Clay. In her autobiography, Mankiller emphasized the tremendous historical and emotional impact that this event had on the Cherokee people.

A major career surprise for Mankiller came in 1985, when U.S. president Ronald Reagan nominated Chief Swimmer as assistant secretary for the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result, on December 14, Mankiller became the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Without hesitation she declared that economic growth would be the primary goal of her administration. She described her guiding theory as bubble-up economics, in which the people themselves would plan and implement projects that would benefit the tribe in future years. In a famous quotation, she reminded her people that, in traditional Iroquois society, from which the Cherokee descended, leaders considered seven generations past and seven generations future when making major decisions.

Until the next scheduled election in 1987, Chief Mankiller, governing without a mandate from the people, faced strong opposition that limited her real power. In October of 1986, while considering whether to run for a full term, Mankiller had married Charlie Soap, a full Cherokee who she had met in 1977. She described her new husband as the most well-adjusted male she had ever known. It was Soap who persuaded her to run in the 1987 election, which she won in a runoff. Because the Cherokee Nation had now returned to the strong female leadership of its past, Chief Mankiller described her election as a step forward and a step backward at the same time.

Although Mankiller’s first full term was successful in terms of economic progress, her level of personal involvement was curtailed by a resurgence of kidney disease from which she had suffered for many years. This led to a kidney transplant in June, 1990. The donor was Mankiller’s older brother, Don. By 1991, only a year after her transplant, Chief Mankiller had sufficiently recovered to run for a second full term. She won that election by an overwhelming 82 percent of the vote. The same election put six women on the fifteen-member tribal council. With a resounding voice, the Cherokee had returned to their ancient tradition of shared gender leadership. Mankiller’s work of improving the everyday lives of her people continued during her second term of office. During her ten years as chief, the population of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma increased from 55,000 to 156,000 people.

Mankiller’s impact reached far beyond the borders of the Cherokee Nation. In 1988, she was named Alumnus of the Year by San Francisco State University. This was followed, in 1990, by an honorary doctorate from Yale University. In 1993, Mankiller gave a well-known speech at Sweetbriar College, “Rebuilding the Cherokee Nation,” in which she reviewed the progress made by the tribe and expressed her hopes for its future. Poor health forced Mankiller to retire from her position in 1995. A fitting tribute to her wide-ranging influence was the election of Joyce Dugan as the first female chief of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee in North Carolina.

In her years after retirement, Mankiller continued her work, including much literary output, as a political, cultural, and social leader of the Cherokee and as a spokesperson for the rights of all women. The honors bestowed upon her, in addition to her 1993 induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, are proof of her lasting influence. Other honors include Woman of the Year from Ms. magazine (1987); the John W. Gardner Leadership Award, Independent Sector (1988); the Indian Health Service Award, U.S. Public Health Service (1989); and the Oklahoma State University Henry G. Bennett Distinguished Service Award (1990). The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, was bestowed on her by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Significance

Mankiller’s leadership led to both tangible and intangible changes for the Cherokee Nation. The most significant tangible changes were the benefits for the Cherokee that came from the development of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which was created soon after Mankiller’s 1987 victory. The Commerce Department helps to coordinate the business enterprises of the Cherokee tribe and is mandated to balance tribal income with the needs of tribal members; this, in turn, creates jobs and profits. The intangible results include a renewed spirit of independence for all Cherokee and a renewed confidence that Cherokee women once again could influence the destiny of the tribe.

In 1990, Mankiller signed a historic self-governance agreement that authorized the Cherokee Nation to administer federal funds that previously had been administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The same year saw a revitalizing of tribal courts and tribal police as well as the establishment of a Cherokee Nation tax commission.

Bibliography

Edmunds, R. David., ed. The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Features a variety of American Indian leaders, including Mankiller, as part of a generation who rose to the challenges of the twentieth century.

Janda, Sarah Eppler. Beloved Women: The Political Lives of Ladonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007. A fascinating look at the two American Indian activists Mankiller and Harris who were at the forefront of American Indian relations with the U.S. government and in tribal development. Focuses on how feminism coupled with a sense of “Indianness” shaped the political lives of the two leaders.

Mankiller, Wilma. Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women. New York: Fulcrum, 2004. Mankiller and eighteen other indigenous women of the Americas discuss their lives and those of their people, living in a Eurocentric world.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. This autobiography is by far the best source for Mankiller’s life, career, and philosophy. Includes many excellent photographs of the Mankiller family, other key individuals, and major events in Mankiller’s life.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, et al., eds. The Readers’ Companion to U.S. Women’s History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Among the five editors of this volume, Mankiller is listed first. In addition to several references to her in other essays, she contributed two essays: on the Iroquois Confederacy and on feminism.

Van Viema, David. “Activist Wilma Mankiller Is Set to Become the First Female Chief of the Cherokee Nation.” People Weekly, December 2, 1985. Based on an interview with Mankiller by Michael Wallis, this article conveys the initial impression she had of her new job as chief. Reveals Mankiller’s identification with her Cherokee roots.

Wallace, Michele. “Wilma Mankiller.” Ms., January, 1988. Wallace emphasizes the role of women in Cherokee history. Also covered is Mankiller’s philosophy of leadership and her influence on women’s rights in general. Includes her plans for Cherokee progress.