September 25 — Cherokee Wilma Mankiller on “Community Centered Leadership: Leading from the Heart”
As the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller sought to resotre traditional Cherokee practices called gadugi, where men and women work collectively for the common good. Find out if it worked (without threatened males feeling she lived up to her name), and what non-Cherokees can learn.
When: Thursday September 25, 7:00 PM
Where: Clowes Memorial Hall, Butler University
Part of Butler University’s 21st annual Celebration of Diversity Distinguished Lecture Series. The event is free, but a ticket is required. Tickets will be available beginning at 10 a.m. Sept. 5 at the Clowes Memorial Hall box office, (317) 940-6444.
From Butler’s blurb:
Mankiller was the first female in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. She served for two years as the first female elected deputy chief and for 10 years as the first female principal chief of the 137,000-person Cherokee Nation, overseeing an annual budget of more than $75 million and more than 1,200 employees spread over 7,000 square miles. Through her leadership and with her expertise in governance and community development, she implemented an extensive array of business enterprises and social development programs and services for the benefit of the Cherokee Nation. She is credited with bringing about important strides for the Cherokees, including improved health care, education, utilities management and tribal government. Mankiller spent her formative years in San Francisco, where she learned about the women’s movement and organizing. When she returned to her native Oklahoma, she used her skills to help the Cherokee Nation, starting community self-help programs and teaching people ways out of poverty. In 1983, she ran for deputy chief and in 1985 she became principal chief.
Mankiller is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and holds 18 honorary doctorates. A distinguished author, she chronicled her life as an icon in Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. Her latest book, Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections of Contemporary Indigenous Women, offers a passionate gathering of the voices of proud indigenous women.
Why does Provocate think you should attend this event?
Every opportunity to hear ways to overcome multiple overlapping and often reinforcing obstacles is important. Gender-bias, crippled cultural practices, poverty, and so on … many of us need to know how to work cooperatively on these issues.
If you think this sounds interesting, be sure to check out …
More on Native Americans on November 14 with the Native American Indian Education Conference at IUPUI; November 15 to February 15 “Our Land: Contemporary Art from the Arctic,” an exhibition of Inuit art, is showing at the Eiteljorg. Meet with a couple of important writers this fall: September 29 hear Sherman Alexie, one of the country’s great writers, at Butler; then October 1 Native American poet Diane Glancy comes to University of Indianapolis. IUPUI is showing a film about Native American women on November 20.
