Look Forward. Turn What Has Been Done

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.

Prior To My Election, Young Cherokee Girls Would Never Have Thought That They Might Grow Up And Become Chief.

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.

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.

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.