Home > Work > Mankiller: A Chief and Her People
1 " One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself . . . and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position. "
― Wilma Mankiller , Mankiller: A Chief and Her People
2 " Women can help turn the world right side up. We bring a more collaborative approach to government. And if we do not participate, then decisions will be made without us. "
3 " During the long healing process, I fell back on my Cherokee ways and adopted what our elders call "a Cherokee approach" to life. They say it is "being of good mind." That means one has to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path. "
4 " Women can help turn the world right side up. We bring a more collaborative approach to government. And if we do not participate, then decisions will be made without us. Wilma Mankiller, Denver, September 1984 "
5 " In our tribal stories, we have heard of a Woman's Council, which was headed by a very powerful woman, perhaps the Ghigau. This oral history is frequently discredited by Western historians as "merely myth." I have always found their repudiation fascinating. An entire body of knowledge can be dismissed because it was not written, while material written by obviously biased men is readily accepted as reality. "
6 " know what the misfortune of the tribes is. Their misfortune is not that they are red men; not that they are semi-civilized, not that they are a dwindling race. Their misfortune is that they hold great bodies of rich lands, which have aroused the cupidity of powerful corporations and of powerful individuals.… I greatly fear that the adoption of this provision to discontinue treaty-making is the beginning of the end in respect to Indian Lands. It is the first step in a great scheme of spoliation, in which the Indians will be plundered, corporations and individuals enriched, and the American name dishonored in history. California Senator Eugene Casserly, 1871 "
7 " Europeans brought with them the view that men were the absolute heads of households, and women were to be submissive to them. It was then that the role of women in Cherokee society began to decline. One of the new values European brought to the Cherokees was a lack of balance and harmony between men and women. It was what we today call sexism. "
