Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma, population 16,819. It sits in the northeast corner of the state, at the foot of the Ozark Mountains, and at the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
The town itself dates back to 1839 when the United States government relocated tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands along the Trail of Tears. Tahlequah was one of the settlements in the newly designated federal Indian Territory, founded by people who lost everything and had nothing.
Among the ancestors who settled Tahlequah were John Mankiller’s, a lifelong resident whose granddaughter Wilma would grow up to become the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Wilma Mankiller was born in Tahlequah in 1945 and lived with her family on her grandfather’s allotment (land granted by the US government). The family was incredibly poor, with no electricity or plumbing; they were forced to hunt, fish and grow their own food in order to survive.
In 1956 Wilma and her family moved to San Francisco, part of another federal program that promised housing and employment assistance to Native American families that relocated to urban areas. The family was promised an apartment, but when they arrived there wasn’t one. Instead, they lived in a single room for months, saving money from the parents’ menial jobs to afford an apartment on their own.
Wilma, whose parents immersed their children in Cherokee culture and traditions, was unhappy in San Francisco. Often the only Native American student in school, she graduated from high school in 1963, married right away, and gave birth to two daughters. She led a quiet life at first, raising her girls and volunteering at the San Francisco Indian Center.
That all changed on Nov. 20, 1969 when 89 Native Americans (including 30 women) and their supporters occupied Alcatraz Island, claiming native sovereignty over land that had been abandoned by the government after the penitentiary closed in 1963.
The occupation lasted almost two years and drew international attention to the issues of Native American equality and civil rights. At its height, some 400 people occupied the island, setting up schools and a radio station, and hosting tours for celebrities.
Wilma helped raise money and organize supplies, including blankets, food and water. She also did paralegal research, helping to draft policy changes that eventually led to legislation authorizing the federal government to grant and enter contracts with federally recognized Native tribes.
The Alcatraz Occupation established a model for Native American activism and swept Wilma up in its cause. In 1972 she joined onto another pivotal case involving the Pit River tribe, whose members sought compensation from the federal government for land seized illegally during the California Gold Rush. Wilma helped to raise money for the tribe’s legal defense, and prepared the documentation required for its claim.
She divorced in 1974 and took a job as a social worker with the Urban Indian Resource Center, where she focused on child abuse and neglect, foster care, and the adoption of Native American children. She also founded and was the first director of the native youth center in Oakland.
Two years later Wilma moved back to Oklahoma with her mother and two daughters, and earned her college degree in social sciences with an emphasis on Indian Affairs. After a horrific car accident that left her hospitalized for months, Wilma began working as a grant writer in the Cherokee Nation tribal offices, focusing on economic and community development.
Her specialty was obtaining federal funds for rural and community projects, and she excelled at her job. Wilma believed strongly that to be successful people needed to have equity in their communities, and worked with local leaders to come up with solutions to their own needs and problems.
She became director of Community Development, and in 1983 was elected deputy chief to the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation — the first woman to hold the office. Two years later, she became principal chief when her boss left to join the US Bureau of Indian Affairs; she would be re-elected twice more.
The first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation oversaw a decade of progress. She expanded community development to improve job training, entrepreneurship, health care and housing. The Cherokee government built new health clinics, established ambulance services, created early education and adult education programs, and helped to open manufacturing and retail stores.
As her public profile grew, Wilma leveraged her international publicity to negotiate for a tax-sharing agreement with the state of Oklahoma that — for the first time — allowed chiefs of the Five Civilized Tribes to collect state taxes and keep some of the revenue from businesses operating on tribal land.
She worked with the Reagan administration to grant tribal governments self-governance and control over millions of dollars of federal funds — a major shift in a century of government policy that exclusively favored federal management and oversight.
Even better, the Cherokee tribe was at the time generating revenues of $25 million a year from factories, retail and bingo operations, and securing $125 million in federal assistance for housing, education, health and employment programs.
Not bad for a decade of leadership.
Wilma retired from politics in 1995, in part due to poor health, but continued her activism. She wrote several books, including Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, her best-selling autobiography. She gave speeches and lectures around the world, promoting health care, tribal sovereignty, women’s rights and cancer awareness.
In 1994, President Clinton invited Wilma to moderate the Nation to Nation Summit, the first time ever that the leaders of all 545 federally recognized tribes in the United States assembled to discuss policy with government officials. Two years later, the US Department of Justice established the Office of Indian Justice, the first federal effort to address legal issues specifically affecting tribal communities.
Among dozens of other honors, Wilma was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.
Wilma suffered from kidney disease and recurrences of breast cancer; she died on April 6, 2010 from pancreatic cancer. More than 1,200 people attended her memorial service at the Cherokee National Cultural Grounds in Tahlequah, where she is buried.
While women are valued and active members in Cherokee tribal society, Wilma’s position as chief was the first time a woman moved to the forefront. She explained that part of her legacy in 2008.
“Prior to my election, young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief.”
Photo: Phil Konstantin