Wilma Mankiller Passes
Posted by Bobbie | Posted in Women's Spirituality | Posted on 09-04-2010
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She was the first woman to be Chief of the Cherokee Nation. She was the first at a lot of things. Wilma Mankiller was a true American heroine and a voice for the masses. Tuesday morning, Wilma Mankiller passed away, but not forgotten. She was only 64.
Mankiller and her family announced last month that she was suffering from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Friends and family gathered around her. Mankiller had survived lymphoma and breast cancer, but metastatic pancreatic cancer isn’t something even a fierce willed woman like Mankiller could beat.
During Mankiller’s 10 years as principal chief, the tribe grew to become the second largest in the United States. Mankiller was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton in 1998.
“Our personal and national hearts are heavy with sorrow and sadness with the passing this morning of Wilma Mankiller,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith is quoted as saying on the organization’s website. “We are better people and a stronger tribal nation because (of) her example of Cherokee leadership, statesmanship, humility, grace, determination and decisiveness. Her gift to us is the lesson that our lives and future are for us to decide.”
Carolyn McClellan, a Cherokee who is assistant director of community and constituent services at the National Museum of the American Indian, said “She was faced with so much adversity in her life, but you couldn’t keep her down. She had such an effervescent spirit. She would not take no for an answer.”
She was on the board of the Freedom Forum and Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations, which plans to name a scholarship for her. WEWIN founder Susan Masten said “She was a true warrior and an excellent leader in the sense that she worked tirelessly to improve the lives of everyone else, including her own people, and she did it in a humble way. With all the attention she got and the awards she received… that never changed who she was as a person. She had a very big heart.”
As Pagans, we view the work of Wilma Mankiller as invaluable. She was a sister to all of us, as well as a mentor. We learned from her as we read her books. She was a feminist who fought for the rights of women everywhere, for child’s rights, for Native people’s rights, for all people’s rights.
“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.”
She brought health care to the Cherokee Nation. Mankiller was a veteran of the 1960’s Native American rights movement. She led a drive to institute health and social services on tribal lands and marshaled a self-governance agreement with the federal government. During her tenure, membership in the Cherokee Nation budget grew to $150 million a year. Mankiller put much of that money back into health care and educational resources for the tribe.
In 1969, Mankiller became involved with the Native American rights movement when she helped support a group who occupied Alcatraz, the former federal prison in San Francisco Bay.
She is survived by her husband Charlie Soap, a Cherokee who championed tribal language and tradition.
We close our remembrances of Wilma Mankiller with her own words, words that all Pagans embrace:
“I think the Cherokee approach to life is being able to continually move forward with kind of a good mind and not focus on the negative things in your life and the negative things you see around you, but focus on the positive things and try to look at the larger picture and keep moving forward … also taught me to look at the larger things in life rather than focusing on small things, and it’s also awfully, awfully hard to rattle me after having faced my own mortality … so the things I learned from those experiences actually enabled me to lead. Without those experiences, I don’t think I would have been able to lead. I think I would have gotten caught up in a lot of nonsensical things.”
She had told the world that she had accepted her own passing, and now it is the world that must come to terms with it. We loved you Wilma! We will not forget you … what is remembered lives! Deep peace.













