Wilma Mankiller

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Wilma Mankiller was born on November 18, 1945, in the Hastings Indian Hospital in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to Clara Irene (née Sitton) and Charley Mankiller. She was 1/2 Cherokee by blood; her father was a full-blood descendant of Jackson Mankiller of Turnip Mountain, Cherokee Nation East. Her mother descended from Dutch-Irish and English immigrants. The surname 'Mankiller' (Asgaya-dihi in Cherokee) refers to a traditional Cherokee military rank. Her given Cherokee name, A-ji-luhsgi, means flower. She grew up in a small house with no electricity or plumbing on her grandfather's allotment in Adair County, in 'extreme poverty.' The family hunted, fished, and grew vegetables, peanuts, and strawberries. She attended a three-room schoolhouse through fifth grade. In 1956, after a severe drought, her family relocated to San Francisco under the Indian Relocation Act of 1956. They were housed in a squalid hotel in the Tenderloin District before moving to Potrero Hill. Mankiller struggled in school due to teasing about her surname and clothes, and ran away to her grandmother's farm in Riverbank for a year. She graduated high school in June 1963. That summer she met Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi, an Ecuadorian college student from a well-to-do family, and they married on November 13, 1963. They had two daughters: Felicia (born 10 months later) and Gina (born 1966). Mankiller later enrolled at Skyline Junior College. Inspired by 1960s movements, she participated in the Occupation of Alcatraz and land struggles with the Pit River Tribe. For five years in the early 1970s, she worked as a social worker focusing on children's issues. Returning to Oklahoma in 1976, the Cherokee Nation hired her as an economic stimulus coordinator. She became a successful grant writer and by the early 1980s directed the newly created Community Development Department. Her project in Bell, Oklahoma, was featured in the movie The Cherokee Word for Water, directed by Charlie Soap and Tim Kelly. In 2015, that film was selected as the top American Indian film of the past 40 years by the American Indian Film Institute. Her project in Kenwood received the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Certificate of National Merit. Incumbent Principal Chief Ross Swimmer invited her to run as his deputy in the 1983 tribal elections; when they won, she became the first elected woman to serve as Deputy Chief. She was elevated to Principal Chief when Swimmer took a position in the federal administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, serving until 1995. During her administration, the Cherokee government built new health clinics, created a mobile eye-care clinic, established ambulance services, and created early education, adult education and job training programs. She developed revenue streams including factories, retail stores, restaurants and bingo operations, while establishing self-governance allowing the tribe to manage its own finances. After retiring from politics, she authored books including a bestselling autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, and gave numerous lectures on health care, tribal sovereignty, women's rights and cancer awareness. She suffered from polycystic kidney disease, myasthenia gravis, lymphoma and breast cancer, and needed two kidney transplants. She died in 2010 from pancreatic cancer. She was honored with many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2021 it was announced her likeness would appear on the quarter-dollar coin as part of the United States Mint's 'American Women quarters' program.

Reader's Guide

Wilma Mankiller's significance lies in her role as the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, breaking gender barriers in tribal leadership. Her community development approach, where rural citizens identified their own challenges and participated in solving them through their labor, became a model for tribal self-governance. Under her administration, the Cherokee Nation built new health clinics, created a mobile eye-care clinic, established ambulance services, and created early education, adult education and job training programs. She developed revenue streams including factories, retail stores, restaurants and bingo operations, while establishing self-governance allowing the tribe to manage its own finances. After retiring from politics, she returned to activism, authoring a bestselling autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, and lecturing on health care, tribal sovereignty, women's rights and cancer awareness. Her receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and her selection for the American Women quarters program reflect her enduring impact. Mankiller's life, from extreme poverty in Oklahoma to national recognition, illustrates the potential for Indigenous leadership and community-driven change.

Did You Know?

• Wilma Mankiller's surname 'Mankiller' (Asgaya-dihi in Cherokee) refers to a traditional Cherokee military rank, similar to a captain or major.
• Her given Cherokee name, A-ji-luhsgi, means 'flower.'
• She participated in the Occupation of Alcatraz and land struggles with the Pit River Tribe in the 1960s and early 1970s.
• Her community development project in Bell, Oklahoma, was featured in the movie The Cherokee Word for Water, which was selected as the top American Indian film of the past 40 years by the American Indian Film Institute in 2015.
• She needed two kidney transplants during her life and died from pancreatic cancer in 2010.