Our blog tracks Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell Calendar. "As chaos and confusion rise, galactic consciousness based on the Law of Time serves as planetary medicine, lifting us into the awareness that we exist within a higher, more expanded realm of existence than the world of third-dimensional form and appearance. Daily practice will elevate consciousness and increase experiences of synchronicity." (Arguelles)
Lyla June Johnston is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet of Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages. Her personal mission is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper and to support and empower indigenous youth.
She is a student of global cycles of violence that eventually gave rise to The Native American Holocaust and the destruction of many cyclic relationships between human beings and nature. This exploration birthed her passion for revitalizing spiritual relationships with Mother Earth and cultivating spaces for forgiveness and reconciliation to occur between cultural groups. She is a co-founder of The Taos Peace and Reconciliation Council which works to heal intergenerational trauma and ethnic division in the northern New Mexico. She is a walker within the Nihigaal Bee Iiná Movement, a 1,000-mile prayer walk through Diné Tah (the Navajo homeland) that is exposing the exploitation of Diné land and people by uranium, coal, oil and gas industries. She is the lead organizer of the Black Hill Unity Concert which gathers native and nonnative musicians to pray for the return of guardianship of the Black Hills to the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota nations. She is the also the founder of Regeneration Festival, an annual celebration of children that occurs in 13 countries around the world every September.
In 2012, she graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in Environmental Anthropology. During her time there she wrote the award winning papers: Nature and the Supernatural: The Role of Culture and Spirituality in Sustaining Primate Populations in Manu National Park, Peru and Chonos Pom: Ethnic Endemism Among the Winnemem Wintu and the Cultural Impacts of Enlarging Shasta Reservoir.
She currently lives in Diné Tah, the Navajo ancestral homeland which spans what is now called New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. She spends her free time learning her endangered mother tongue, planting corn, beans and squash and spending time with elders who retain traditional spiritual and ecological knowledge.*
Only people with clear perception of their role in the Divine Plan can truly cultivate calm indifference, for they know they have nothing left to lose.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Sharmagne Leland-St. John is a 21st-century poet. Leland-St. John is best known for the poem "I Said Coffee," for which she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. With its “deadpan puncturing of the male ego and its assumption of sexual implication where there is none,” this piece has become one of her most frequently published and requested poems. She has received a total of 7 Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2013 International Book Award honoring Excellence in Mainstream and Independent Publishing for best Poetry Anthology.
Biography
Early years
Her father Jerome was an actor at the time of her birth, but gave up acting to become an animal trapper in the jungles of Tegucigalpa in Honduras. During her childhood he would disappear for months at a time, collecting exotic animals with which to supply zoos and private estates. He also had a pheasant farm and quail ranch in Mexico City, tried his hand at ranching in Las Vegas, and eventually settled down in Tarzana in California’s San Fernando Valley.
Leland-St. John’s mother, child actress Roseanne Gahan, worked with Cecil B. DeMille. Roseanne’s father Arvé, (virtuoso violinist John Harvey Gahan), was a child prodigy in Canada. He began playing at age 3; at the age of 5 he played a command performance for the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). Gahan married Josephine Morong Runnels, the granddaughter of Chief Que Que Tas of the Sanpoil (tribe) in the Pacific Northwest.
Leland-St. John was the second child born to Jerome and Roseanne. Due to Jerome's infidelity, the marriage was rocky from the start. When Leland-St. John was 3 years old, her father left the family, sued for custody, won, and then placed both children in a Catholic convent.
Roseanne's childhood nanny offered to take both girls and raise them while Jerome traveled around the world. He agreed and the girls were placed in a home in downtown Los Angeles with a guardian and the governess. Leland-St. John became an avid reader who devoured dozens of books. She has often been quoted as saying, “Reading is one of the deepest joys I have ever known.” At age 10 she contracted polio and spent the next two years bedridden. During this time she began to write poetry and experiment with writing what would now be termed "flash fiction."
In 1958 her father returned to the U.S. and brought his daughters to live with him and their stepmother in Tarzana, which promptly caused his wife to leave him. The girls enjoyed life as teenagers with a bachelor father.
Leland-St. John’s high school years were uneventful, even though she had left home and had her own apartment while still in school. She enjoyed art and drama, performing in productions such as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and a few other high school productions. She showed a flair for writing short stories as early as junior high school.
After graduation from high school, Leland-St. John was accepted to the University of Mexico. By this time her primary interests were archeology and ballet. However, her new stepmother would not allow her to leave the country, so she pursued a career as a model to pay for college expenses.
At a party in the mid-1960s she met Peter Yarrow from the folk singing group Peter Paul and Mary and they began dating. Through the group's road manager, Tom Law, she was introduced to guitarist Peter Walker with whom she began performing in concert and writing song lyrics. Under the name "Peter and the Countess," they performed the music behind former Harvard professor Dr. Timothy Leary’s “Celebrations,” a series of psychedelic slide shows. They also performed in venues such as The Fillmore East and West, The Psychedelic Super Market in Boston, The Ark in San Francisco, The Ash Grove in Los Angeles, and worked the high school concert route with their band the original Orient Express, which included band members Bruce Langhorne and Lowell George.
In the late 1960s while working for song writer Jimmy Webb, Leland-St. John began writing poetry and song lyrics in earnest and has collaborated with Peter Yarrow, Peter Walker, Darby Slick, Jefferson Airplane, Hedges Capers, Hedge and Donna, Wes Farrell and several other well-known composers. Also during this period, according to author Peter Biskind, Leland-St.John was "a sometime actress who lived for a time with director Harry Falk in the Chateau Marmont in LA.
In the 1970s Leland-St. John acted in TV commercials and briefly in features and on TV; however, she found little satisfaction in this arena, and went back to writing and performing music, stand-up, and poetry.
Marriage
Leland-St. John was married to Richard Sylbert, the Oscar-winning production designer. They had two children: a boy, Nikolai, who lived for only a few hours (her poem “Tiny Warrior” was written about Nikolai), and a daughter, Daisy Alexandra (currently a costumer in the film industry and boutique owner).
In 1980, Richard asked his manager to include her in his contracts and Leland-St. John began working as his assistant and researcher/design consultant. In 2001 she designed her first film Tricks, starring Gail O'Grady and Michael Murphy. It was honored at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina and the Angel City Film Festival in Hollywood. That same year she co-founded and became Editor-in-Chief and publisher of the online magazine and literary journal Quill and Parchment. She co-directed and co-produced the short film Being With Eddie in 2003. It was honored at the USA Film Festival, and The First Native American Film Festival in Ventura County (2004). Her short film screenplay Butterfly Catcher was filmed by the Native American Film and TV Alliance (NAFATA) in 2004.
During Daisy Alexandra’s early school years, Leland-St. John became very active in fundraising which enhanced school libraries in Los Angeles through donations and a recycling program. She worked on creating a library at Pacific Hills School in West Hollywood, funded a playground and created a garden at The Oaks School in Hollywood.
In 1992, Timothy Leary appeared at a library fund raising event at The Oaks. When she asked what he had been up to, he told her he had discovered a new drug, "the Internet!” Leland-St. John began to investigate this new medium and published her first poem on the Internet in 1998.
After an extended illness, husband Richard Sylbert died in March 2002 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Calabasas, California. Three months after his death Sharmagne produced a memorial tribute to him at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Over 700 people attended.
She co-authored the memoir her husband had begun but left unfinished at the time of his death, "Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist" (2006)).
Leland-St. John spends time traveling between her home in the Hollywood Hills and her fly-fishing lodge in the Pacific Northwest. She tours the world performing her poetry either solo or with her band of poets, Poetry in Motion: The Quill and Parchment Poets, and the poet group known as "Emerging Urban Poets."
Bibliography
Unsung Songs (2003) ISBN 978-0-9764244-0-6 Quill and Parchment Press
Silver Tears and Time (2006) ISBN 978-0-9764244-1-3 Quill and Parchment Press
Contingencies (2008) ISBN 978-0-9764244-2-0 Quill and Parchment Press USA/WynterBlue Publishing Inc Canada
Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (2006)– Greenwood/Praeger ISBN 978-0-275-98690-2
La Kalima (2010) ISBN 978-0-9764244-3-7 Quill and Parchment Press USA/WynterBlue Publishing Inc., Canada
Empty Shoes: Poems on the Hungry and the Homeless ~ Editor Patrick T. Randolph ISBN 978-1-4495-1779-3 Popcorn Press (Oct. 2009)
Many Mountains Moving – ISBN 978-1-886976-23-8
Literary House Review ~ (Fall 2008)
Emerging Urban Poets (June 2008)
The League of Laboring Poets ISSN 1937-6499 (Best of Issue Award)
Villanelles (March 2012); edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali; ISBN 978-0-307-95786-3; Everyman's Library/Random House UK
Cradle Songs (April 2012) Editor: ISBN 978-0-9764244-5-1. Quill and Parchment Press*
If the biosphere is the region of the Earth for the transformation of cosmic energy, then the noosphere is the region of the Earth for the cultivation of mediumship.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Lozen (c. 1840-June 17, 1889) was a female warrior and prophet of the Chihenne Chiricahua Apache. She was the sister of Victorio, a prominent chief. Born into the Chihenne band during the 1840s, Lozen was, according to legends, able to use her powers in battle to learn the movements of the enemy. According to James Kaywaykla, Victorio introduced her to Nana, "Lozen is my right hand ... strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people".
Victorio's Campaign
In the 1870s, Victorio and his band of Apaches were moved to the deplorable conditions of the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. He and his followers left the reservation around 1877 and began marauding and raiding, all while evading capture by the military. Lozen fought beside Victorio when he and his followers rampaged against Americans who had appropriated their homeland around west New Mexico's Black Mountain.
As the band fled American forces, Lozen inspired women and children, frozen in fear, to cross the surging Rio Grande. "I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse—Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior!", remembers James Kaywaykla, a child at the time, riding behind his grandmother. "High above her head she held her rifle. There was a glitter as her right foot lifted and struck the shoulder of her horse. He reared, then plunged into the torrent. She turned his head upstream, and he began swimming".
Immediately, the other women and the children followed her into the torrent. When they reached the far bank of the river, cold and wet but alive, Lozen came to Kaywaykla’s mother, Gouyen. "You take charge, now", she said. "I must return to the warriors", who stood between their women and children and the onrushing cavalry. Lozen drove her horse back across the wild river and returned to her comrades.
According to Kaywaykla, "She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio." He also remembers Victorio saying, "I depend upon Lozen as I do Nana" (the aging patriarch of the band).
Late in Victorio’s campaign, Lozen left the band to escort a new mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation, away from the hardships of the trail.
Equipped with only a rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a three-day supply of food, she set out with the mother and child on a perilous journey through territory occupied by Mexican and U.S. Cavalry forces. En route, afraid that a gunshot would betray their presence, she used her knife to kill a longhorn, butchering it for the meat.
She stole a Mexican cavalry horse for the new mother, escaping through a volley of gunfire. She then stole a vaquero’s horse for herself, disappearing before he could give chase. She also acquired a soldier’s saddle, rifle, ammunition, blanket and canteen, and even his shirt. Finally, she delivered her charges to the reservation.
There, she learned that Mexican and Tarahumara Indian forces under Mexican commander Joaquin Terrazas had ambushed Victorio and his band at Tres Castillos, three stony hills in northeastern Chihuahua.
End of Apache Wars and Lozen's later years
Knowing the survivors would need her, Lozen immediately left the Mescalero Reservation and rode alone southwest across the desert, threading her way undetected through U.S. and Mexican military patrols. She rejoined the decimated band in the Sierra Madre (in northwestern Chihuahua), now led by the 74-year-old patriarch Nana.
Lozen fought beside Geronimo after his breakout from the San Carlos reservation in 1885, in the last campaign of the Apache wars. With the band pursued relentlessly, she used her power to locate their enemies—the U.S. and Mexican cavalries. According to Alexander B. Adams in his book Geronimo, "she would stand with her arms outstretched, chant a prayer to Ussen, the Apaches’ supreme deity, and slowly turn around." Lozen's prayer is translated in Eve Ball's book In the Days of Victorio:
Upon this earth
On which we live
Ussen has Power
This Power is mine
For locating the enemy.
I search for that Enemy
Which only Ussen the Great
Can show to me.
According to Laura Jane Moore in the book Sifters, Native American Women's Lives: In 1885 Geronimo and Naiche fled their reservation with 140 followers including Lozen after rumors began circulating that their leaders were to be imprisoned at Alcatraz Island. Lozen and Dahteste began negotiating peace treaties. One of which was that the Apache leaders would be imprisoned for two years then would have their freedom. The American's leaders dismissed the peace treaty and Lozen and Dahteste continued to negotiate. The Apache rebels believed they had strong resolve until it was revealed all the Chiricahuas had been rounded up and sent to Florida. If they wanted to rejoin their kin, the Apache needed to head east. The Apache warriors agreed to surrender and laid down their arms. Five days later they were on a train bound to Florida.
Taken into U. S. military custody after Geronimo’s final surrender, Lozen traveled as a prisoner of war to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama. Like many other imprisoned Apache warriors, she died in confinement of tuberculosis on June 17, 1889.
In popular culture
Lozen is a major character in the novel The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden, by Robert J. Avrech.*
Any knowledge of which we avail ourselves regarding the noosphere and the psi bank quickens and precipitates the mental/ spiritual quantum shift in our consciousness, and in our own self-perception.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Elaine Miles (born April 7, 1960, in Pendleton, Oregon) is an American actress known for her role as Marilyn Whirlwind in the television series Northern Exposure.
Biography
Elaine Miles was born in Pendleton, Oregon, of Cayuse/Nez Perce ancestry, and lived to the age of three on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon. Her family then moved to Renton, Washington, where her father was a Boeing machinist. She learned many of the traditional skills in her youth—storytelling, beading, pottery and weaving—and is a prize-winning traditional dancer.
Career
Miles was offered the role of Marilyn Whirlwind when she was spotted in the waiting room at an audition. This came as a surprise as she had not come with any intent to audition—she was only there to give her mother, Armenia Miles, a ride. She had no previous acting experience. She gained respect in the American Indian community not only for portraying a Tlingit woman, but for her efforts to make sure the character was a culturally accurate representation. Miles was named Native American Woman of the Year in 1993, and America's Celebrity Indian of the Year in 1995.
In 1995, Miles was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the Northern Exposure cast in the category, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
Since Northern Exposure, Miles has done tours with her dancing and stand-up comedy, has emceed at numerous Pow-wows, and had roles in independent films such as Smoke Signals, Skins and The Business of Fancydancing. With fellow comedian Drew LaCapa (Apache), she has made an exercise video ("RezRobics") addressing diabetes rates among Native Americans. The video mixes pow wow dancing, martial arts and aerobics moves with nutritional advice. In contrast to the usual FBI warning, the creators encourage people to copy the video freely and distribute it among friends and relatives in Indian Country.
Any knowledge of which we avail ourselves regarding the noosphere and the psi band quickens and precipitates the mental/spiritual quantum shift in our consciousness and in our own self-perception.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller (November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was a community organizer and the first woman elected to serve as chief of the Cherokee Nation. A liberal member of the Democratic Party,she served as principal chief for ten years from 1985 to 1995. She was the author of a national-bestselling autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People and co-authored Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women. Mankiller's administration founded the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department and saw a population increase of Cherokee Nation citizens from 55,000 to 156,000.
Early life
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the sixth of eleven children, to Charley Mankiller (November 15, 1914 – February 20, 1971) and Clara Irene Sitton (September 18, 1921 – January 12, 2016). Her father was a full-blooded Cherokee and her mother was a European American woman of Dutch and Irish descent who acculturated herself to Cherokee life.
The family surname, Mankiller, refers to a traditional Cherokee military rank; it is Asgaya-dihi (Cherokee syllabary: ᎠᏍᎦᏯᏗᎯ) in the Cherokee language. Alternative spellings are Outacity or Outacite. Wilma Mankiller wrote that her great-great grandfather was listed as Kaskunnee Mankiller, and that he established Mankiller as the family surname. His wife was Lucy Matoy. One of their sons, Jacob Mankiller. was born in 1853. Jacob married Susan Teehee-Bearpaw. Jacob and Susan had eight children, the oldest being John Mankiller, Wilma's grandfather. John married Bettie Bolin Bendabout Canoe, whose Cherokee name was Quatie. It was John who received the allotment of 160 acres of tribal land in what would become Adair County, Oklahoma when Indian Territory became part of the new state of Oklahoma. Their son, Charley, born November 15, 1914, was Wilma's father.
Wilma's mother, Clara Irene Sitton, was born in Adair County, Oklahoma on September 18, 1921 to Robert Bailey and Pearl Irene Sitton, whose Dutch and Irish ancestors had settled in North Carolina. Orphaned at an early age, Clara was sent to live with a relative in Washington County, Arkansas. In 1903, 19-year old Clara left Arkansas to visit friends living in the community of Wauhillau, Indian Territory. There she met and soon married Robert Sitton, the son of William and Sarah Sitton, quickly starting a family. Between 1904 and 1921, the couple had three sons and four daughters, of which Clara Irene was the last child.
The Sittons moved to Foraker, Oklahoma, where William had gotten a job with the railroad. Then they bought a farm near the community of Rocky Mountain, Oklahoma where Irene was born. While growing up, she met Charley Mankiller and decided to marry him. She was then 15 and he was 21. Grandma Sitton strongly opposed the marriage. She did not want Irene to marry a full-blood Indian. Moreover, he could barely eke out a living as the owner as a subsistence farm. The couple disregarded Grandma's opposition and eloped to marry in the Baptist church in Mulberry, Oklahoma on March 6, 1937.
The Mankiller family was destitute, and initially resided on Charley’s allotment lands of Mankiller Flats near Rocky Mountain, Oklahoma. In 1942, during World War II, the United States Army exercised eminent domain for military purposes and took over the land of 45 Cherokee families, including the Mankillers, in order to expand Camp Gruber. The Mankillers willingly left Oklahoma under the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Relocation Program. The family relocated to San Francisco in 1956, and later settled in Daly City.
In 1963, at the age of 17, Mankiller married Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi, an Ecuadorian college student. They moved to Oakland and had two daughters, Felicia Olaya, born in 1964, and Gina Olaya, born in 1966.
Mankiller returned to school, first at Skyline College, and then San Francisco State University. Her bachelor's degree in the social sciences was from Flaming Rainbow University in Stilwell, Oklahoma and she did graduate work at the University of Arkansas. She had been very involved in San Francisco’s Indian Center throughout her time in California. In the late 1960s, Mankiller joined the activist movement and participated in the Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. For five years, she volunteered for the Pit River Tribe.
After divorcing Hugo Olaya in 1977, Mankiller moved back to Oklahoma with her two young daughters, in hopes of helping her people. She began an entry-level job for the Cherokee Nation.
Political career
By 1983, Mankiller was elected deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation, alongside Ross Swimmer, who was serving his third consecutive term as principal chief. In 1985, Chief Swimmer resigned when appointed as assistant secretary of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. Mankiller succeeded him as the first female principal chief of the Cherokee. She was elected in her own campaign in 1987, and re-elected again in 1991 in a landslide victory, collecting 83% of the vote. In 1995, Mankiller chose not to run again for chief, largely due to health problems.
Mankiller faced many obstacles during her tenure in office. At the time she became chief, the Cherokee Nation leadership was male-dominated. Such a structure contrasted with the traditional Cherokee culture and value system, which tended to include both sexes in leadership positions, though in somewhat different capacities.
Over the course of her three terms, Mankiller reinvigorated the Cherokee Nation through community-development projects where men and women work collectively for the common good. These were funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs "Self Help" programs, initiated by the United Keetoowah Band, and with the help of the Federal government's self-determination monies. The projects included establishing tribally owned businesses (such as horticultural operations and plants with government defense contracts), improving infrastructure (such as providing running water to the community of Bell, Oklahoma), and building a hydroelectric facility.
Under the US Federal policy of Native American self-determination, Mankiller improved federal-tribal negotiations. She helped prepare for today's Government-to-Government relationship which the Cherokee Nation has with the US Federal Government.
Her administration founded the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department, revived the tribal Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, and saw a population increase of Cherokee Nation citizens from 55,000 to 196,000. "Prior to my election," says Mankiller, "young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief."
Mankiller established the law that limited tribal membership by excluding the Freedmen section of Cherokee Indians listed on the Dawes Rolls, generating the later Cherokee freedmen controversy. This law was ruled unconstitutional in 2006 by the Cherokee Nation's Judicial Appeals Tribunal (now called the Cherokee Supreme Court). Mankiller's administration was involved in many conflicts with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB), the other federally recognized Cherokee tribe headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her administration questioned the jurisdiction of the UKB, culminating in the closure of the UKB's smoke shops. A lawsuit was filed by the Cherokee Nation against Mankiller with allegations of embezzlement of tribal funds at the end of her final term in office. The case was regarding $300,000 paid out to tribal officials and department heads who left at the end of her term in 1995. The case, titled Cherokee Nation v. Mankiller, was withdrawn by a vote of the tribal council. "We've had daunting problems in many critical areas," Mankiller has been quoting as saying, "but I believe in the old Cherokee injunction to 'be of a good mind.' Today it's called positive thinking."
After her term as chief, she became a guest professor at Dartmouth College, where, in 1991, she also received an honorary degree. In 1998, Bill Clinton awarded Mankiller the Medal of Freedom.
President Obama said:
"I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Wilma Mankiller today. As the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief, she transformed the Nation-to-Nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was recognized for her vision and commitment to a brighter future for all Americans. Her legacy will continue to encourage and motivate all who carry on her work. Michelle and I offer our condolences to Wilma’s family, especially her husband Charlie and two daughters, Gina and Felicia, as well as the Cherokee Nation and all those who knew her and were touched by her good works."
Personal life and death
In 1979, she was involved in a near-fatal car accident which required multiple surgeries. She had multiple other health problems including myasthenia gravis, a kidney transplant, breast cancer, and lymphoma. After many years working together on Cherokee community development projects, Mankiller married her longtime friend, Charlie Lee Soap, a full-blood Cherokee traditionalist and fluent Cherokee speaker, in 1986.[28] They lived on Mankiller's ancestral land at Mankiller Flats. In March 2010 she was reported to be terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. She died of the disease at her home in rural Adair County, Oklahoma, on April 6, 2010. She was survived by her husband and both her daughters. About 1,200 people attended her memorial service at the Cherokee National Cultural Grounds in Tahlequah on April 10. Her interment was at Echota Cemetery in Stilwell.
Achievements[edit]
She won several awards including Ms. Magazine's Woman of the Year in 1987, Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, Woman of the Year, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award,[ John W. Gardner Leadership Award, Independent Sector, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1993, Mankiller received the American Association of University Women's Achievement Award.
Her first book, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, an autobiography, became a national bestseller. Gloria Steinem said in a review that, "As one woman's journey, Mankiller opens the heart. As the history of a people, it informs the mind. Together, it teaches us that, as long as people like Wilma Mankiller carry the flame within them, centuries of ignorance and genocide can't extinguish the human spirit." Steinem went on to become one of Mankiller's closest friends. In 2004, Mankiller co-authored Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women.
Mankiller is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first woman chief of a Native American tribe. In the twentieth century, Alice Brown Davis became Principal Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma in 1922, and Mildred Cleghorn became the Chairperson of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in 1976. In earlier times, a number of women led their tribes.
In 1994, Mankiller and the singer Patsy Cline were among the inductees into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas. She was also inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1994.
A 2013 feature film, The Cherokee Word for Water, tells the story of the Bell waterline project that helped launch Mankiller's political career, and was also the start of her friendship with her future husband, Charlie Soap. In the film, Mankiller is portrayed by actress Kimberly Norris Guerrero, and Soap by actor Moses Brings Plenty.
The 2017 documentary film, Mankiller tells the story of Mankiller's life and her time as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Mankiller's published writing
Hurtado, Albert L., editor. Mankiller, Wilma Pearl, introduction. Reflections on American Indian History: Honoring the Past, Building a Future. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. ISBN 0-8061-3896-3.
Mankiller, Wilma, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Gloria Steinem. Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-55591-516-7
Mankiller, Wilma and Michael Wallis. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. ISBN 0-312-20662-3
Smith, Barbara, Gloria Steinem, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Wilma Mankiller, editors. A Reader's Companion to the History of Women in the U.S. Boston: Mariner Books, 1999. ISBN 0-395-67173-6
Kauger, Yvonne, Richard Du Bey, Wilma Pearl Mankiller, Judy A. Zelio. Promoting Effective State-Tribal Relations: A Dialogue. National Conference of State Legislatures: 1990. ISBN 1-55516-975-9.
Mankiller, Wilma P. The chief cooks: traditional Cherokee recipes. Muskogee, OK: Hoffman Printing Company, 1988. ASIN B000728364.*
