Wilma Mankiller

Wilma Mankiller
http://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/academic_journal.htm

The Sonoma State University talk featuring the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller, highlighted some of the problems, misperceptions, and stereotypes of Native American society.  She also discusses historical events but it’s clearly evident that her message was about the active movement of guiding American Indians into the future. 

Ms. Mankiller’s talk provided her audience with a brief historical background of Native American society and an understanding of the differences in tribal nations and tribal governments that existed across the land.  She emphasizes in her discussion that each tribe has it own unique government and has lived in organized societies for “thousands of years before Europeans arrived” claiming to have discovered a “New World.”     

Mankiller goes on to discuss some of the common issues Native Americans are facing today.  Many of these issues focus on the protection of tribal governments, land and water rights and the preservation of language and traditional ways such as medicine, ceremony and relationship to the land.  She explains that regardless of where Natives may live today, they can maintain their connections with their Native communities and still live their life with traditional Indian values to create vital and vibrant communities regardless of the distance between them.  At the same time that these vibrant communities are being created, it was her belief that accurate information about Native American culture had to be made available to the general public.  Mankiller believed it was the lack of information that fueled the negative stereotypes.  She explains that even congress knows very little about the issues Natives are still facing and that some “don’t believe tribal law is real law…”  With this level of ignorance within our congressional leadership, it’s easy to understand Mankiller’s position that the average American doesn’t have a clue. She goes on to give the following example of American ignorance to modern Native American culture by sharing a story about a tourist visiting an Indian town, who stops her to ask “Where are all the Indians?” as if expecting Native Americans to “live in teepees and dress in buckskin” in the 21^st century. I could only hope that this is an extreme example of our ignorance and not a typical expression of an American tourist today.