Wilma Mankiller Biography

Wilma Mankiller was a Native American activist, community developer, and social worker from the Cherokee community. She was the first woman to be elected as the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. She was born in Oklahoma, to a Cherokee father and a Dutch–Irish immigrant mother. Her huge family, consisting of 10 siblings, survived in extreme poverty. She attended school at Rocky Mountain but had very little formal education. In 1955, a severe drought caused calamity in the area where she lived. Following this, under the ‘Indian Relocation Act’ of 1956, the family settled in San Francisco. After graduating high school, Wilma worked as a clerk in a financing firm. She began her journey in activism in 1964, after she got involved in the “Occupation of Alcatraz” movement. In the early 1970s, she worked as a social worker for Cherokee people, mainly working toward children’s issues. In the early 1980s, she was hired as the director of the ‘Community Development Department’ of the Cherokee Nation. In 1985, she was appointed as the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and continued serving in the position until 1995. She mostly worked for the welfare of her people. She was later honored with a ‘Presidential Medal of Freedom.’