Mankiller

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She was raised on Mankiller Flats in rural Oklahoma, long before the modern Native American movement emerged. Despite her family's poverty, she recognized her heritage as part of a proud and courageous people. At ten, she was relocated to California, becoming a citizen of two contrasting worlds: the Cherokee community in Adair County and the often harsh realities of modern America. In this autobiography, Chief Wilma Mankiller shares her personal journey through pivotal decades in American history, detailing the beginnings of the Native American civil rights struggle and her own quest for identity as a woman navigating two cultures. A child of the sixties, she found her political voice during the occupation of Alcatraz Island. Balancing her roles as wife and mother, she eventually stepped into her position as a leader of a sovereign nation. Mankiller candidly recounts her challenges, including a near-fatal car accident that claimed a close friend and a life-threatening kidney transplant. Uniquely, her narrative intertwines her personal experiences with the complex history of the Cherokee Nation, including the tragic Trail of Tears, which resulted in the loss of over four thousand lives. She also reflects on the brief prosperity of the "Golden Age of the Cherokees," the hardships of Reconstruction, the Dawes Act, and the impact of boarding schools on Cherokee children.