Mankiller

A veteran of the 1960s Native American rights movement, Wilma Mankiller became the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, one of the largest tribes in the U.S. Ms. Mankiller, who died Tuesday at age 64 of pancreatic cancer, led the Cherokee Nation as elected chief for a decade starting in 1985. During that period, she led a drive to institute health and social services on tribal lands and marshalled a self-governance agreement with the federal government. Enrollment in the tribe tripled during her leadership, in part after Ms. Mankiller streamlined the registration process.

"Her gift to us is the lesson that our lives and future are for us to decide," the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chad Smith, said in a statement.

As her stature grew, Ms. Mankiller became a symbol of the revival of Indian cultural heritage and the women's rights movement. She insisted that the Cherokee had historically been matrilineal and that her leadership was a return to tradition. "Early historians referred to our government as a petticoat government because of the strong role of the women in the tribe," Ms. Mankiller told Ms. Magazine in 1988. "So in 1687 women enjoyed a prominent role, but in 1987 we found people questioning whether women should be in leadership positions anywhere in the tribe."


Born in Tahlequah, Okla., the heart of Cherokee Nation tribal land, Ms. Mankiller was the daughter of a Cherokee father and a white mother. After their farm failed, the family was moved under a federal Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation program that sought to assimilate Indians into wider society. Instead, the Mankiller family found themselves living in a San Francisco housing project with few prospects. "I guess they figured we could open a liquor store," she told the Associated Press in 1985.

In 1969, Ms. Mankiller became involved in a growing Native American rights movement when she helped support a group who occupied Alcatraz, the former federal prison in San Francisco Bay.

After training as a social worker in her 20s, she divorced the non-Indian husband whom she had married at 17 and moved with her two daughters back to her family's land in Oklahoma. She became a community organizer, helping to implement water projects and other community works. She was elected deputy chief in 1983, and became the Cherokee Nation's first principal chief when the sitting chief resigned to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1986, she married Charlie Soap, a Cherokee who championed tribal language and tradition.

She won two further elections, in 1987 and 1991, then retired. In 1998, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Charismatic and insistent, Ms. Mankiller reveled in her unconventional name, which derived from an 18th Cherokee warrior.

"Sometimes I tell people it's a nickname and I earned it," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1992.

The Wall Street Journal - REMEMBRANCES - APRIL 7, 2010


First Woman to Lead Cherokee Nation
By STEPHEN MILLER