Modern Day Warrior
Wilma Mankiller

 

Being one of eleven children originally from a rural Cherokee community, then relocating and spending time in an urban ghetto, her evolution into a major leader is an inspiration. Her journey was based on her Cherokee history and she said, “I ran in 1983 for election with absolute faith and confidence in our own people and our own ability to solve our own problems, and I began developing programs that reflected that philosophy. And as I began to develop programs, it increased revenue, and as I increased revenue to the tribe, I began to catch the attention of the hierarchy there and began to move up.”

Some of her insights (from a speech she made in 1993 at Sweet Briar College) are presented here so that we all may learn. When my family went to California as part of the BIA relocation program -- yet another attempt to “solve the Indian problem” -- the fellow who conceptualized the relocation program is the very same fellow who thought up the program that interned the Japanese during World War II.

And after World War II was over he didn’t have a job, and so they ended up making him head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And the idea behind the BIA relocation program was to solve the Indian problem by breaking up tribal communities and my family was a part of that.

For my father, who had eleven children, too many bills, or too little money and too many mouths to feed, the idea of having a better life for his children was intriguing to him. And so that “better life” for us ended up being a housing project in San Francisco, which was sometimes flatteringly called “Harlem West,” and much was the same for the other people who went out on relocation programs. What kept us together, I think, as a family during that period of time was the Indian Center. A Claremont woman who always thought I had leadership potential and didn’t just see a ghetto kid, talked me into going to college under a social program that helped minorities get into college, and so I started college under that program.

 

 

 

 

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