Wilma Mankiller
+Matriarch Monday+
Wilma Pearl Mankiller
(November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was a community organizer and the first woman elected to serve as chief of the Cherokee Nation where she served as principal chief for ten years from 1985 to 1995.
banner by Alleanna Harris
Mankiller was also an author, her autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People gained national recognition. She also co-authored Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women. Wilma Mankiller also was the first woman to be elected Chief of the Cherokee Nation’s tribal government. She was Principal Chief from 1985 to 1995. During this time Mankiller increased the nation’s membership from 68,000 to 170,000. She also opened three rural health centers and expanded the Head Start program for Cherokee children. Mankiller was born in November 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She grew up on a 160-acre tract given to her grandfather as part of a federal government settlement. Mankiller was greatly impacted by the Alcatraz Island occupation where Indigenous people reclaimed Alcatraz for 19 months. This direct action was aimed at drawing the government’s attention to the poor treatment of Native Americans.
In this week’s #matriarchmonday publication, Mankiller talks about the great Vine Deloria Jr. This article was published in Indian Country Today in January of 2005. 11 months before his death that November. She wrote these praises of Vine Deloria while he was alive and well. There is so much beauty in that. Perhaps he needed a pick me up. Perhaps he needed that encouragement. We too should strive to lift each other up. Rather then bring each other down, we should work collectively. In the end the work each of us is doing is interconnected. We must support one another but also as Wilma said, "The secret to OUR success is that WE never, never give up." We too must strive to encourage one another, our men, our boys. Give and nourish with matriarch love.
An original thinker with a warrior’s spirit
Vine Deloria Jr. has added more to the public understanding of Native people than any other leader of his time.
He has done this by word and deed as an activist, scholar, religious philosopher and organizational leader. He has written a dozen books and countless essays and articles, given hundreds of lectures, inspired new organizations and led existing ones, and never sacrificed his own authentic voice or his commitment to a communal truth.
I can testify as his contemporary that reading his books encouraged me to be a more critical thinker and affirmed my own beliefs about Native people. His provocative and revolutionary ideas have also had a monumental impact on Indian policy and public perceptions toward Native people. He has won more awards than I could list in this space, yet his true importance can only be measured in the enormous distance his influence covers, from young Native people whose spirits and lives he has literally saved with his words, to TIME Magazine whose editors have recognized him as one of the greatest religious thinkers of our time.
For those of us inside the Native community, he is a champion. His stature and moral integrity, knowledge of tribal law and history, and ability to debate misinformed journalists, politicians and academics have earned him our admiration and respect. He has been able to articulate things that an entire generation felt but could not name. By affirming for us the importance of our governments, our culture, our families and our land, he has strengthened our ability to fight against threats. By action and word, he has provided a model of consistency, whether he is appearing in court as an expert witness or refusing an honorary doctorate from a university that refuses to take violence against women seriously.
There is a profound spiritual dimension to all of the work that Vine Deloria Jr.’s does. It can be attributed in part to his father’s influence, and even more so to his great grandfather, Saswe, a legendary Yanktonai medicine man whose early 19th century vision quest on a hill in what is now called Blunt, S.D., foretold many of the events that have unfolded in the life of Vine and his family. I know that Saswe is never far from Vine, whether he is writing about science, politics, law, indigenous culture and government, or speaking out against injustice against oppressed people everywhere.
His organizational and practical abilities would be rare in anyone, but especially in a visionary. They allow him to make those visions real. For example: In 1964, 20 years after the National Congress of Amencan Indians was formed to promote Indian self-determination and fight efforts to terminate federal recognition of tribal governments, the NCAI faced many critical challenges. Though termination remained a threat, and the United States continued to assert considerable control over the assets, resources and daily lives of Indian people, NCAI was losing membership, and its prominence was being challenged by such newly emerging and seemingly more activist organizations as the National Indian Youth Council. Helen Peterson, Alvin Josephy Sr., Hank Adams and other Indian leaders were strongly advocating for federal policies that would provide more self-determination, and the NCAI was the logical home for such a coordinated national strategy.
Vine Deloria Jr., who had served in the United States Marine Corps and earned a master’s degree in Theology, successfully ran for the executive directorship of NCAI. He wanted to shake things up a bit and ensure that NCAI would have the strongest possible presence in Washington. In his first newsletter, a message to dues-paying members who were a dwindling number in 1965, Vine wrote an editorial “Now is the Time.” He encouraged members to help rebuild NCAI into a significant national voice for Indian people – and it was indeed the time. During his tenure Vine revitalized NCAI and used his formidable intellectual skills to set the standard for how the federal government should view treaty and tribal rights.
But in his family’s tradition of spirituality, intellectual pursuits and sense of history – and wanting to become a writer like his aunt, the anthropologist Ella Deloria – Vine revitalized the NCAI, then left to produce his first book “Custer Died for Your Sins.” It was a fitting title for a book written by a descendant of Sitting Bull, one of the leaders whose brilliant strategic thinking helped defeat the 7th Calvary at Little Big Horn.
That book challenged the conventional wisdom about federal Indian policy, not by presenting page after page of mind-numbing facts, but by describing the inherent rights of tribal people. It drew attention to the tenacity, strengths and cultural assets that were reflected in their ability to survive unspeakable hardship, yet maintain tribal cultures, traditional values and lifeways.
For many readers, this was the first view that went beyond economic poverty and described the unique base of knowledge that might be said to make Native people the wealthiest in America. For Native readers “Custer Died for Your Sins” was a call to arms because Vine was able to articulate a hopeful vision for the future.
Over the next three decades Vine became the most prolific Indian writer and scholar of our time. His dozens of books include such ground-breaking texts as “God is Red”, still the seminal work on Indian religion, and “Red Earth, White Lies”, an expose of the shifting sands and shaky foundation of conventional scientific thought. “Scholars should not worry that pristine historical study is undermined by new ideas or efforts to correct ancient wrongs,” as Vine wrote. “That is the nature of continuing scholarship.” He not only challenged the academy and critiqued Western ideology; he challenged tribal leaders, pseudo-Indians and Native American Studies’ scholars. That last group he once described as people who have definitely arrived in the academy since they can now speak in terms only comprehensible to other Native American Studies scholars.
Always humorous and often self-deprecating, he does not suffer fools gladly, and relishes countering any orthodoxy. In an academic environment where vegetarianism is common, he eats red meat. While fellow academics sip herbal tea, he drinks strong coffee, and occasionally lights up an unfiltered cigarette, preferably near an anti-smoking sign. If his legions of readers and admirers flock to his lectures hoping to hear someone with a Dalai Lama-like presence, he soon dispels that notion by opening his lectures with a joke, or a statement like: “Okay, let’s get this out of the way. I know I don’t look like your impression of an Indian, especially a Lakota. Now, we can move forward?”
Indian rights attorney Charles Wilkinson once described Vine Deloria as “our Martin Luther King,” an apt description given the almost universal respect that Native people have for Vine. One of his roles as a great leader is to help the people see a way forward, particularly during times
of crisis. No matter what challenges the Creator sent us during the past four decades, Vine has always been at the forefront, urging us on, helping us face current crises and see a clear path for the future.
It is my prayer that the Creator will allow Vine Deloria Jr. to continue to do this for many years to come.
Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, is active in community development and American Indian philanthropy.