List of Wilma Mankiller Quotes

A Lot Of Young Girls Have Looked To Their Career Paths And Have Said They'd Like To Be Chief. There's Been A Change In The Limits People See.

We Celebrate Thanksgiving Along With The Rest Of America, Maybe In Different Ways And For Different Reasons. Despite Everything That's Happened To Us Since We Fed The Pilgrims, We Still Have Our Language, Our Culture, Our Distinct Social System. Even In A Nuclear Age, We Still Have A Tribal People.

My Name Is Mankiller, And In The Old Cherokee Nation, When We Lived Here In The Southeast, We Lived In Semi-autonomous Villages, And There Was Someone Who Watched Over The Village, Who Had The Title Of Mankiller. And I'm Not Sure What You Could Equate That To, But It Was Sort Of Like A Soldier Or Someone Who Was Responsible For The Security Of The Village, And So Anyway This One Fellow Liked The Title Mankiller So Well That He Kept It As His Name, And That's Who We Trace Our Ancestry Back To.

One Of The Things My Parents Taught Me, And I'll Always Be Grateful As A Gift, Is To Not Ever Let Anybody Else Define Me; That For Me To Define Myself. And I Think That Helped Me A Lot In Assuming A Leadership Position.

We Are A Revitalized Tribe. After Every Major Upheaval, We Have Been Able To Gather Together As A People To Rebuild A Community And A Government. Individually And Collectively, Cherokee People Possess An Extraordinary Ability To Face Down Adversity And Continue Moving Forward. We Are Able To Do That Because Our Culture, Though Certainly Diminished, Has Sustained Us Since Time Inmemorial. This Cherokee Culture Is A Well-kept Secret.

It Should Be Remembered That Hundreds Of People Of African Ancestry Also Walked The Trail Of Tears With The Cherokee During The Forced Removal Of 1838-1839. Although We Know About The Terrible Human Suffering Of Our Native People And The Members Of Other Tribes During The Removal, We Rarely Hear Of Those Black People Who Also Suffered.

People Say That Crisis Changes People And Turns Ordinary People Into Wiser Or More Responsible Ones.

I Want To Be Remembered As The Person Who Helped Us Restore Faith In Ourselves.

Western Movies Always Seemed To Show Indian Women Washing Clothes At The Creek And Men With A Tomahawk Or Spear In Their Hands, Adorned With Lots Of Feathers. That Image Has Stayed In Some People's Minds. Many Think We're Either Visionaries, `noble Savages,' Squaw Drudges Or Tragic Alcoholics. We're Very Rarely Depicted As Real People Who Have Greater Tenacity In Terms Of Trying To Hang On To Our Culture And Values System Than Most People.

It's Like Everybody's Sitting There And They Have Some Kind Of Veil Over Their Face, And They Look At Each Other Through This Veil That Makes Them See Each Other Through Some Stereotypical Kind Of Viewpoint. If We're Ever Gonna Collectively Begin To Grapple With The Problems That We Have Collectively, We're Gonna Have To Move Back The Veil And Deal With Each Other On A More Human Level.

I Hope Many Of You Will Be People That Question Why Things Are And Why We Have To Do Them The Way We Have Always Done Them. I Hope You Will Take Some Risks, Exert Some Real Leadership On Issues, And If You Will, Dance Along The Edge Of The Roof As You Continue For Life.

A Significant Number Of People Believe Tribal People Still Live And Dress As They Did 300 Years Ago. During My Tenure As Principal Chief Of The Cherokee Nation, National News Agencies Requesting Interviews Sometimes Asked If They Could Film A Tribal Dance Or If I Would Wear Traditional Tribal Clothing For The Interview. I Doubt They Asked The President Of The United States To Dress Like A Pilgrim For An Interview.