Wilma Mankiller
Hillary
Wilma Mankiller was born in 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. The sixth of eleven children of a full-blooded Cherokee father and a Dutch-Irish mother, she spent much of her childhood on a tract of land given to her grandfather by the government as part of a settlement for brutally forcing the Cherokee to move to Oklahoma. When she was ten years old, the government relocated her family to California; Wilma was heartbroken. Years later, she wrote in her autobiography: “I wept tears that came from deep within the Cherokee part of me… tears from my history, from my tribe’s past.”
As a teenager, Wilma found her home away from home at the San Francisco Indian Center. She married a month before her eighteenth birthday and had two daughters. The traditional role her husband expected her to play clashed with the social change she saw all around her in California in the 1960s: the women’s movement, the anti–Vietnam War movement, and the civil rights movement. When a group of Native Americans occupied the abandoned Alcatraz prison and claimed Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay “in the name of all Indian tribes” in 1969, Wilma’s life changed forever. “Just as seeing women speak up had an impact on me, seeing native people on the 6 o’clock news challenge the United States government—go and take over an island, and talk about treaty rights and the need for education and health care—had a profound impact,” she said.
Throughout the nineteen months that the group occupied the prison, Wilma brought supplies and helped raise funds and awareness. It was a turning point for Wilma; the more she did, the more involved she wanted to be with Native American issues. “When Alcatraz occurred, I became aware of what needed to be done to let the rest of the world know that Indians had rights, too. Alcatraz articulated my own feelings about being an Indian.” She started taking college classes in social work. She bought her first car, a symbol of independence. She would dance with her daughters to her favorite song, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”
Wilma’s husband demanded that she remain a traditional housewife—a tension she resolved by divorcing him and moving back to her grandfather’s land in Oklahoma with her daughters. Once back on the Cherokee reservation, she suffered two physical setbacks. In 1979, she was severely injured in a car accident. The driver of the other car—tragically her best friend—was killed. Wilma required nearly a year of recovery. She spent that time reflecting on her future and immersed herself in Cherokee traditions, embracing the idea of “being of good mind.” For her, that meant fighting to keep a positive outlook, even when it wasn’t easy, and searching for ways to serve. “After that,” she said, “I knew I’d lost the fear of death and the fear of challenges in my life.” Once she recovered from the accident, she was diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease that made moving difficult. Still, she never wavered from her commitment to advocating for her community.
As she put her life back together, Wilma organized a self-help project in the small village of Bell, Oklahoma, on the reservation. She engaged the community in identifying its own problems and, through their own work and Wilma’s fundraising, devising a plan to solve them. In Bell, she supervised the construction of a water system and the upgrade and renovation of substandard housing. Because of this work, Ms. magazine named her Woman of the Year in 1987. She also enrolled in courses in community development at the University of Arkansas to further her skills.
During this time, she met her second husband, a Cherokee man who supported her entry into politics. Based on her proven organizing and management skills, she was recruited to run for deputy principal chief in 1983, the first woman to vie for that position. “I expected my politics to be the issue,” she said. “They weren’t. The issue was my being a woman, and I wouldn’t have it. I simply told myself that it was a foolish issue, and I wouldn’t argue with a fool.” She overcame opposition, harsh criticism, and death threats to win the election.
“I’ve run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.”
—WILMA MANKILLER
When the principal chief resigned in 1985, Wilma ascended to chief. Two years later, she ran to be elected in her own right. Once again, she faced sexist attacks. The hostility she endured surprised her because traditional Cherokee societies, families, and clans were organized through the maternal side. To deal with the sexism, she called on the traditions of Cherokee culture where women’s councils historically had participated in making social and political decisions for the tribe. In her autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, she writes about how Cherokee and Native American women had been respected before the conquest of Native American tribes and that the imposition of the conquering culture altered the balance between men and women.
Under her leadership, the Cherokee government built new health clinics and created early education, adult learning, and job-training programs. She negotiated an agreement with the United States government to allow the tribe to manage its own finances, increased the number of enrolled members of the tribe, and improved its budget by developing factories, restaurants, and bingo operations. She also stressed the importance of caring for the environment. She was tireless in working to improve respect for Native Americans across the country. When she retired, she stayed active promoting women’s rights, tribal sovereignty, cancer awareness, and other issues.
When writing about Wilma, I can’t help but think about her tenacity. No matter how many times she got knocked down, she always got back up. She didn’t let anything stand in the way of serving and advocating for her community. Through it all, she kept a sense of humor, sometimes joking that her last name came from her reputation (it’s actually a Cherokee military term for a village guard). On April 29, 1994, she came to the White House for a historic meeting of Native American leaders. At that meeting, Wilma presented me with a piece of pottery on behalf of all the tribes assembled. She was committed to strengthening the relationships between the Cherokee people and the United States government. In 1998, my husband awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and I was proud to be there cheering her on.
“The happiest people I’ve ever met, regardless of their profession, their social standing, or their economic status, are people that are fully engaged in the world around them. The most fulfilled people are the ones who get up every morning and stand for something larger than themselves. They are the people who care about others, who will extend a helping hand to someone in need or will speak up about an injustice when they see it.”
—WILMA MANKILLER
Not content to simply pursue individual success, Wilma was also dedicated to inspiring future generations and helping them to succeed. She took part in a program through the American Association of University Women that matched Cherokee girls with career mentors in order to help raise their self-confidence and open up opportunities. “Suddenly you hear young Cherokee girls talking about becoming leaders,” she wrote. “And in Cherokee families, there is more encouragement of girls.” She understood from her own experience that celebrating tradition and looking to the future can and should go hand in hand.
Michelle Bachelet
Hillary and Chelsea
In 1975, at the age of twenty-three, Michelle Bachelet, then a medical student at the University of Chile, was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by the secret security agency of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Her mother, an archaeologist, was sent with her to the secret prison; her father, an air force general, had died in prison the year before. Their crime was opposing the coup that brought Pinochet to power against the elected president, Salvador Allende.
After a few weeks, Michelle was released into exile—first to Australia, then to East Germany. She continued her medical education, married another Chilean exile, had her first child, and then returned to Chile. She graduated as a surgeon in 1982 and started practicing medicine, including treating children whose parents had been tortured or were missing. She had her second child in 1984, after which she and her husband separated.
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p; Chelsea
When Chile returned to democracy in 1990, Michelle worked in various public health roles. She also had her third child with a physician who had supported Pinochet. (Now that’s a complicated story!) For four years, she worked in the Ministry of Health, began studying military strategy, and started taking courses at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington. She was ultimately appointed Minister of Health, a position she used to confront inequality throughout the country. Michelle expanded health care coverage and made the public hospital system more efficient. She also authorized free distribution of the morning-after pill at state-run hospitals for victims of sexual abuse—a gutsy decision in what was then one of the most socially conservative countries in South America.
Hillary
In 2002, she was appointed Minister of National Defense, the first woman to hold this position in a Latin American country and one of the few in the world at the time. She used her position to help reconcile the military and victims of the Pinochet years, and modernize equipment. I will never forget the most striking image from that time: Michelle, in the midst of a serious flood, leading rescue operations from the top of a military tank.
When I heard Michelle had become the Socialist Party’s candidate for president, I was delighted. She had experienced the brutality of dictatorship firsthand, but never lost hope in the people of her nation or the promise of democracy. I remember thinking how wonderful it would be for a woman to break through yet another barrier, and help her country break through barriers, too. When we met in January 2005 during her campaign, she spoke with deep passion and even deeper expertise on the challenges facing her nation, from modernizing the military to finishing her work on the health care system.
“We simply can no longer afford to deny the full potential of one half of the population. The world needs to tap into the talent and wisdom of women. Whether the issue is food security, economic recovery, health, or peace and security, the participation of women is needed now more than ever.”
—MICHELLE BACHELET
Chelsea
After a runoff election on January 15, 2006, Michelle became Chile’s first female elected president. One of her first actions was appointing a cabinet with equal numbers of men and women. During her first term, she stressed the economic and social well-being of poor and low-income families. She championed equal pay, maternity care, and—once again—access to emergency contraception pills with no parental consent requirements. She drew fury from the Catholic Church, but didn’t back down. She simply explained that because “not everyone is equal and not everyone has the same possibilities,” it was her job “to guarantee that all Chileans have real options in this area, as in others.” She built a system to provide social services to at-risk children, distributing briefcases filled with books to hundreds of thousands of families and computers to poor seventh graders with good grades. When students organized massive protests demanding better education, she responded by passing reform measures to improve it. She also never forgot the wrongs of Chile’s past; when Pinochet died in 2006, she denied him a state funeral and refused to attend his services, saying it would be “a violation of [her] conscience.” In 2010, she opened the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago to document the brutal abuses of Pinochet’s long dictatorship. Proving her commitment to looking forward as well as back, she created a National Institute for Human Rights.
Hillary
On February 27, 2010, when Michelle was less than two weeks from leaving office, Chile was devastated by an 8.8-magnitude earthquake that killed five hundred people and caused massive property damage. I visited her when she was in the midst of the relief and recovery operations to deliver aid from the United States government and show support in the midst of such a catastrophe.
On March 27, 2013, she announced she would run again for president. Polls at the time showed strong support for her, and she won, becoming the first president of Chile to be reelected since 1932.
Chelsea
In her second term, Michelle proposed free university education. She ran into problems from both the right, which wanted to know how it would be funded, and the left, which argued it didn’t go far enough. Eventually, she worked out a compromise that sent 200,000 students from low-income families to college at no cost to them. She reformed the tax system by shifting taxes from individuals to corporations, created new national parks and marine reserves, and taxed carbon emissions. Michelle also passed a civil union law for LGBTQ couples and sent a bill legalizing marriage equality to Congress—though it has yet to become law. And she legalized abortion under certain circumstances. Her second term, though, was marred by corruption allegations involving her son and daughter-in-law’s business dealings. Michelle denied knowing about their activities and appointed an independent commission to investigate those charges and recommend new reforms to guard Chile against corruption. She carried out the reforms, but her approval rate never fully recovered to its previously high levels.
Hillary
After leaving office, she became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a position she has used to criticize abuses by governments from China to Saudi Arabia to the United States. “I have been a political detainee and the daughter of political detainees,” she said in her first speech. “I have been a refugee and a physician—including for children who experienced torture and the enforced disappearance of their parents.” For her, human rights is personal; it should be for the rest of us, too.
Danica Roem
Chelsea
The night Danica Roem made history in Virginia in 2017 as the first openly transgender person elected to a state legislature, she climbed up on a table and delivered her victory speech. She dedicated her win “to every person who’s ever been singled out, who’s ever been stigmatized, who’s ever been the misfit, who’s ever been the kid in the corner.” And then she went on to talk about one of her core campaign promises: fixing congestion on Route 28 in Fairfax County. “That’s why I got in this race,” she said. “Because I’m fed up with the frickin’ road over in my hometown.” The crowd went wild.
Throughout her campaign, Danica had reiterated the crucial points of her story to her dedicated team of volunteers: She was a thirty-three-year-old stepmom, she had lived in her district of Manassas nearly her entire life, and she had worked as a journalist covering local public policy issues. (The fact that she had also been a vocalist in a metal band didn’t make the top three list, but it definitely helped pique national interest in her campaign.) Those volunteers delivered her message to her future constituents, knocking on more than seventy-five thousand doors in the district and talking about what Danica saw as the most important issue in the race: traffic. “When people see me doing this, they’re going to be like, ‘Wow, she’s transgender, I don’t get that,’ ” she said in an interview. “ ‘She’s a metalhead, I don’t get that; and she’s weird, I don’t get it. But she’s really, really focused on improving my commute, and I do get that.’ ”
“I don’t have to pretend to be someone else. I still listen to the same music I did before, still love to play guitar, and I still love to see shows. I want to make sure that when people see me, they go: ‘Yeah, she’s transgender, and she’s a really, really good policy wonk. Yeah, she’s transgender, and she has a really good bill to fix Route 28.’ It’s not trans but. It’s trans and.”
—DANICA ROEM
Meanwhile, she was up against an incumbent who had held his seat in the Virginia House of Delegates for a quarter century and called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.” He had sponsored a cruel and mean-spirited “bathroom bill” intended to bully and shame the transgender community, supported a proposal to ban LGBTQ people from serving in the Virginia National Guard, and written a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. He refused to debate Danica, and he incorrectly and insultingly referred to her with male pronouns.
“I understand the national implications of my race,�
� Danica said. “I mean, I’m not stupid.” But she refused to let her opponent drag her down to his level. She was going to run on her terms, not his. As she reminded voters, “I’ve always seen my role as a public servant. And public servant in this case means upholding myself with the same ethics and integrity that I did as a reporter for ten and a half years.” When she was asked to comment on her opponent on election night, her response was simple, elegant, and honorable: “I don’t attack my constituents. Bob is my constituent now.”
HILLARY
One of my favorite parts of Danica’s story is that she was an early candidate supported by Run for Something, which was started by a staff member and a volunteer from my 2016 campaign. They’re working hard to elect young progressives to office, and changing the face of politics in America. Danica is a great example of someone whose potential they spotted early on!
“What I hope people across the country are able to see in [our victories] is that transgender people can be really good at doing their jobs in elected office; we can make really good legislators. Just by being in office, our mere presence fundamentally changes the equation.”
—DANICA ROEM
After Danica and her fellow members of the Virginia House of Delegates were sworn in in January 2018, they got to work. They passed Medicaid expansion and voted to raise teacher pay. During her second session in the House of Delegates, she passed three pieces of her own legislation. Two were requests from her constituents. “You have to realize as a delegate that your number one job is still to represent eighty-three thousand people back home, to legislate on their behalf, to get bills passed on their behalf, and to vote on their behalf,” she said in an interview. And she never forgot her core campaign promise to tackle congestion. Route 28 is currently under construction, being widened from four lanes to six—but as Danica reminds her constituents and colleagues, there’s still a lot of work to do.
The Book of Gutsy Women Page 34
