Words of Wisdom by the Hon. Wilma Mankiller-
"I hope many of you will be people that question why things are and why we have to do them the way we have always done them. I hope you will take some risks, exert some real leadership on issues, and if you will, dance along the edge of the roof as you continue for life."
Mankiller named fellow at university
By Associated Press
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) – Former Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller has been named Northeastern State University’s first Sequoyah Institute Fellow.
University President Don Betz introduced Mankiller during a ceremony Sept. 4. Her office will be on the university’s main campus
in Tahlequah.
A former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Mankiller plans to use her post to look at intellectual, economic and cultural achievements of American Indians. She says she also wants to explore leadership for women and indigenous people.
Mankiller served as the Cherokee chief from December 1985 until retiring in 1995. At the time she assumed office, she was the first female chief of a major American Indian tribe. The Cherokees are based in Tahlequah.
(Sept.15,2009) Copyright 2009 Associated Press.
Wilma Mankiller was the sixth child of eleven children. Her parents were Charley Mankiller (born November 15, 1914) and Clara Irene Sitton (born September 18, 1921). Sitton is of Dutch and Irish descent and had no Cherokee blood but acculturated to Cherokee life.
The family surname, Mankiller, is a traditional Cherokee military rank and is Asgaya-dihi in Cherokee, which is alternatively spelled Outacity or Outacite.
The Mankiller family lived on Charley’s allotment lands of Mankiller Flats near Rocky Mountain, Oklahoma. In 1942 the US Army declared 45 Cherokee families’ allotment lands, near those of Mankiller’s family, in order to expand Camp Gruber.
The Mankillers willingly left under the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Relocation Program. They moved to San Francisco, California in 1956 and later Daly City.
In 1963, at the age of 17, Mankiller married Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi, an Ecuadorian college student. They moved to Oakland and had two daughters, Felicia Olaya, born in 1964, and Gina Olaya, born in 1966.
Mankiller returned to school, first at Skyline College, and then San Francisco State University. She had been very involved in San Francisco’s Indian Center throughout her time in California.
In the late 1960s, Mankiller joined the activist movement and participated in the Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. For five years, she volunteered for the Pit River Tribe.
After divorcing Hugo Olaya, Mankiller moved back to Oklahoma with her two young daughters in 1977, in hopes of helping her own people and began an entry-level job for the Cherokee Nation
By 1983, she was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation, alongside Ross Swimmer, who was serving his third consecutive term as principal chief. In 1985, Chief Swimmer resigned to take the position as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
This allowed Mankiller to become the first female principal chief. She was freely elected in 1987, and re-elected again in 1991 in a landslide victory, collecting 83% of the vote. In 1995, Wilma chose not to run again for Chief largely due to health problems.
Mankiller faced many obstacles during her tenure in office. At the time she became chief, the Cherokee Nation was male-dominated.
Such a structure contrasted with the traditional Cherokee culture and value system, which instead emphasized a balance between the two genders.
Over the course of her three terms, Mankiller would make great strides to bring back that balance and reinvigorate the Cherokee Nation through community-development projects where men and women work collectively for the common good,based on the Bureau of Indian Affairs "Self Help" programs first initiated by the United Keetoowah Band, and with the help of the Federal Governments Self-Determination monies.
These project include establishing tribally owned businesses, such as horticultural operations and plants with government defense contracts, and improving infrastructure, such as providing running water to the community of Bell, Oklahoma and building a hydroelectric facility.
Under the US Federal policy of Native American self-determination, Mankiller was able to improve federal-tribal negotiations, paving the way for today's Government-to-Government relationship the Cherokee Nation has with the US Federal Government.
Examples of progress included the founding of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department, the revival of Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, and a population increase of Cherokee Nation citizens from 55,000 to 156,000.
"Prior to my election," says Mankiller, "young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief.
After many years working together on Cherokee community development projects, Mankiller married her longtime friend, Charlie Lee Soap, a full-blood Cherokee traditionalist and fluent Cherokee speaker, in 1986. They live on Mankiller's ancestral land at Mankiller Flats.
She won several awards including Ms. Magazine's Woman of the Year in 1987, Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, Woman of the Year, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, John W. Gardner Leadership Award, Independent Sector, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.
Her first book, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, an autobiography, became a national bestseller.
Gloria Steinem said in a review that, "As one woman's journey, Mankiller opens the heart. As the history of a people, it informs the mind. Together, it teaches us that, as long as people like Wilma Mankiller carry the flame within them, centuries of ignorance and genocide can't extinguish the human spirit." In 2004, Mankiller co-authored Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women.
Source-Wikipedia
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