The Economist 24/4/2010 p.76 has a moving obituary for Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be elected chief of the Cherokee Nation, and someone who did an extraordinary amount of practical good against extraordinary odds. She co-wrote Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women (2004) with Vine Deloria, Jr., and Gloria Steinem.
The obituary doesn’t mention her involvement in the Institute of Cherokee Literacy (where apparently Sequoyah‘s orthography was taught). But it does note that the modern equivalent of the Trail of Tears forced relocation of Native Americans was the attempt to persuade Cherokee like Mankiller’s father that they could find a better life off the tribal lands in a “drab violent housing-project” in California. Wilma Mankiller thought the Cherokee had been most damaged by the loss of commonality and interdependence caused by the 1907 breakup of tribe land into allotments. At a time when the worldly powers in Australia are pressuring Aborigines into something quite similar – change common title to individual title, move to the cities, we should think about the costs that Mankiller observed.
On 14 April, the US House of Representatives passed House Resolution 1237 honouring her life.
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