Wilma Mankiller

The first woman Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation

In an historic tribal election in July 1987, the members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma elected their first woman Principal Chief, Wilma Mankiller. She was re-elected in 1991 with nearly 83% of the vote. In 1983, Mankiller was elected Deputy Principal Chief, also the first woman to hold that position. She succeeded the previous Principal Chief upon his resignation in December 1985.

Chief Mankiller's roots are planted deep in the rural community of Rocky Mountain in Adair County, Oklahoma. She was born at the Indian Hospital in Tahlequah, and grew up in a rural setting with few amenities. When she as 11, her family moved to California as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Relocation Program.

In 1969, when American Indian activists occupied Alcatraz Island to dramatize the injustices their people had suffered, she experienced an awakening, or call to action, that changed her life. Besides participating in that struggle, Mankiller did volunteer work among Native Americans in California. By 1974, she and her two children, Felicia and Gina, returned to Oklahoma.

Chief Mankiller's initial work for the Cherokee Nation included the recruitment of young native Americans for university training in environmental sciences. In 1979, she completed her college degree, then began commuting to the University of Arkansas for graduate study. 

En route to the school, Mankiller suffered a near fatal head-on automobile collision. To recover from her extensive injuries, she adopted what Cherokee's call "being of good mind," meaning, "one has to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path."

Through her commitment to rural community development, she persistently pursued proposals for various housing, education, and health care projects. She was the founding director of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department.

Mankiller, who left office in 1995, co-authored "Mankiller: A Chief and Her People," which includes the story of the Cherokee Nation, one of the country's largest tribal groups. She also co-edited the "Readers Companion to the History of Women" in the U.S. and served as a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College during the 1996 winter term.

Today, as in her childhood, Mankiller lives in the Rocky Mountain Community of Adair County, Oklahoma on the Mankiller land allotment. Her husband, Charlie Soap, serves as the Chief Professional Officer for the Boys and Girls Club Inc. of Tahlequah, Oklahoma.