Rebuilding a Nation : Cherokees: Chief Wilma Mankiller says her job like ‘being president of a tiny country, a CEO and a social worker.’

Sitting behind her desk dressed in a floral blouse, blue jacket and a string of pearls, Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller doesn’t fit many people’s image of an Indian chief--or a man killer.

Although her name, which comes from an 18th-Century warrior, may sound fierce, the woman who presides over the 130,000-member Oklahoma-based tribe is quiet and calm.

But Mankiller, who five years ago was elected the first woman chief of the second-largest North American tribe, exudes an unflappable self-confidence. “It’s hard to rattle me,” she says simply.

Her confidence, she adds, has come from her ability to rebuild herself mentally and physically after several daunting physical challenges. She is tenacious about rebuilding her people community by community, despite the poverty, low self-esteem, health problems, and unemployment that many Cherokees face.

“A big part of setting the stage for having people take control of their own lives and solve their own problems is getting people to believe they can,” she says. “Our folks are a long way away from uniformly believing that, after a couple hundred years of being acculturated to think that other people have the best ideas for us. . . . I always try to emphasize that we can do anything if we set our minds to it.”

Mankiller is a hands-on leader who says her favorite work is helping people in communities develop projects to help themselves. Official duties, however, keep her from spending as much time at the grass-roots level as she would like.

On any typical 12-hour workday, Mankiller may hop on a plane to meet with congressional leaders in Washington, speak with other Cherokee leaders or advise someone seeking better social services.

Her job, she says, is like “being president of a tiny country, a CEO and a social worker.”

Mankiller says the trials she has had to face helped prepare her for the office.

Born 46 years ago in Tahlequah, the Cherokee capital in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, Mankiller was one of 11 children. Her family experienced rural poverty and then urban poverty when they moved to San Francisco as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ resettlement program. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she moved back to Oklahoma with her two daughters and started working at the Cherokee Nation. But she brought a new sense of activism, which started when she began participating in Indian-rights causes in California.

In Tahlequah, she proposed ideas of community empowerment to then-Chief Ross Swimmer. The success of a project in Bell, where she helped a rural community build a 16-mile water line, propelled her into the limelight. She was elected deputy chief in 1983; in 1985 she succeeded Swimmer when he resigned. She was elected chief two years later.

Friends say her ability to lead despite a number of physical problems is remarkable. A car accident in 1979 kept her in a wheelchair or on crutches for a year; not long after that, she had surgery for a nerve disorder. Two years ago she underwent a kidney transplant.

American Indian leaders view her “with great admiration, maybe sometimes with envy that she can do what she does,” says LaDonna Harris, president of Americans for Indian Opportunity, who has known Mankiller for about 30 years.

The hills are tranquil and the valleys green in northeastern Oklahoma, where the Cherokees were settled in 1839. About 18,000 died on the “Trail of Tears,” the forced march here from their homeland in the southeastern United States. Mankiller is optimistic at the direction her people are taking today.

“I think the most positive thing happening is that people are beginning to understand that they can live and work in a very modern, fast-moving society . . . but also celebrate who they are as Cherokees and maintain a sense of self,” she says.

Still, the problems remain: “Some days I feel like everything’s falling apart.” Health problems and health care are worse than in the general population; education levels are low; alcoholism is prevalent.

Unemployment, though not as high as on some reservations, is still in double digits. Mankiller says the Cherokees, who don’t live on a reservation, are not as isolated and have more industries than most Indian peoples. The Cherokees also operate a small Bingo operation. Forty-eight percent of its nearly $67-million income is from the government.

As a woman, Mankiller believes she brings a sense of collaboration to her leadership position. “I’m more of a team builder,” she says. “My unscientific observations are that men make unilateral decisions and charge ahead. . . . There are exceptions to that, but women tend to . . . do things in a more consulting and collaborative way.”

Although she has earned the respect--and, eventually, the votes--of many men, which helped to place her in the chief’s seat, Mankiller says she was unprepared for the sexism she encountered when she ran for deputy chief in 1983. “It’s the first time it ever happened at that level in my life. It was very interesting and very hurtful. I learned to just ignore it,” says Mankiller, who believes bias against women was something that white males brought to Indian culture.

She is encouraged now by the number of Cherokee women, as well women in other Indian societies, who are taking on more leadership roles.

“She’s been one of the leaders both of the women chiefs and chiefs nationally, because she’s taken a real interest in national issues,” says Michael Anderson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. “She’s articulate, she’s visionary. . . . Her views and opinions carry a lot of weight in Indian country.”

Mankiller spends her free moments at her home on Mankiller Flats, a 160-acre tract of land, with her husband, Charlie Soap, who is director of the Christian Children’s Fund for northeastern Oklahoma. He works with youths and in community development.

Asked if the surname “Mankiller” draws a lot of questions, she deadpans with a twinkle in her eye: “Sometimes. Sometimes I tell people it’s a nickname and I earned it.”