Mankiller: Activist, Feminist, Cherokee Chief

Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010), the subject of filmmaker Valerie Red-Horse Mohl’s PBS-aired documentary, was the first female leader of the Cherokee Nation. She spent her early years in Oklahoma before going to California as a result of the Indian Relocation Act. While living in San Francisco's Hunters Point projects, she associated with members of the Black Panther Party and the National Farm Workers Association, which led to her participation in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969, a "watershed moment," as she describes it in an archival interview. When her husband attempted to curtail her activist efforts, the pair divorced, and she returned to Oklahoma with her daughters. Jay Hannah, former secretary treasurer of the Cherokee Nation, describes it as a matriarchal clan. In their mythology, the Sun is female and the Moon is male, but during the 20 years that Mankiller lived in the Bay Area, the patriarchy had taken over. Once she began to work on behalf of the Cherokee people, Mankiller set out to improve their economic fortunes, starting with a volunteer project that brought running water to a community. After the Cherokee Nation's chief left to take a government position, Mankiller, his second in command, took charge, and then ran for reelection (along the way, she also remarried). All the while, she faced resistance from tribal members who did not believe a woman could lead them, but she persisted and under her leadership, education, jobs, and healthcare became priorities. Mohl also looks at her subject’s health challenges, including a near-lethal car accident, kidney failure, lymphoma, and the cancer that claimed her life. A worthy testament to an admirable woman, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)