Wilma Mankiller

Wilma was the founding director of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department, which received several national awards for innovative use of self-help in housing and water projects in low-income Cherokee communities. Then in 1983, she was elected the first female deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation, and president of the tribal council. In l987, she was elected to serve as the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1991. She chose not to seek re-election in l995.

During Wilma?s tenure she met with Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton to present critical tribal issues, and she and Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah co-chaired a national conference between tribal leaders and cabinet members which helped facilitate the establishment of an Office of Indian Justice within the U.S. Department of Justice. Wilma?s tenure was also marked by a great deal of new development, including several new free-standing health clinics, an $11 million Job Corps Center, and greatly expanded services for children and youth. She led the team that developed the core businesses which comprise Cherokee Nation Enterprises.

She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum, a $400 million museum of the news being constructed in Washington, D.C. She also serves as an external diversity advisor to Merrill Lynch. Wilma was inducted into the National Women?s Hall of Fame, the International Women?s Hall of Fame, the Minority Business Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Women?s Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. She has l8 honorary doctorates from universities, including Yale, Dartmouth and Smith Colleges. She was a Chubb Fellow at Yale and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth. She served as the Morse Chair Professor of Law and Politics at the University of Oregon in the fall of 2005. She has presented more than l00 lectures at universities and published more than a dozen papers in journals and newspapers. She is one of a handful of Native American recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She is a trustee of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum, a Museum of the News. She serves on the external diversity advisory board for Merrill Lynch. She co-edited ?A Reader?s Companion to the History of Women in the U.S., Houghton-Mifflin, co-authored, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, St. Martin?s Press, and her newest book, Every Day is a Good Day? was published by Fulcrum Press in the fall of 2004.

Ms. Mankiller lives in the Cherokee Nation in rural Northeast Oklahoma with her husband, Charlie Soap.