Hanover, NH — In many ways, Wilma Mankiller seems out of place in New Hampshire, a state where 96 out of every 100 residents are white and which refuses to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Mankiller, a former chief of the Cherokee Indian nation, will spend the next nine weeks on fellowship at Dartmouth College, where she hopes to bring to New Hampshire the lessons of nearly two decades of activism and tolerance
“The people [who] don’t have a lot of interaction with minority people or with women in leadership roles or with Native Americans, they are the ones we ought to be talking to,” said Mankiller soon after arriving at Dartmouth. “Because of the lack of diversity throughout the state of New Hampshire, it’s probably more important that I be here rather than be somewhere where there is a lot of diversity.”
Mankiller, now 50 years old, came to Dartmouth as its 1996 Montgomery Fellow after leading the 156,000-member Cherokee tribe for 12 years as its first female chief. During her time as its leader, she gained national recognition not only for her work championing the rights of Native Americans and Native American children, but for her efforts to aid women and minorities in general. She has talked personally with three presidents, was Ms. magazine’s Woman of the Year in 1987, and was recently named one of “50 Great Americans” by the Marquis publication, Who’s Who.
“I had been there long enough,” Mankiller says of her three terms as Cherokee chief. “It was really time for a change for me and for the folks in the Cherokee Nation. I began to sound like the people I used to protest against, and I said if that ever happened. I’d leave.”
Faculty in the school’s highly-regarded Native American Studies department said Mankiller’s acceptance of the prestigious fellowship brings a living bit of history to their program.
“To have her here for a significant length of time will give students access to a prominent native elder, stateswoman and national political figure,” said Michael Hanitchak, who heads the college’s Native American Program. “It’s also a wonderful opportunity to have a positive role model on campus. It gives us a real opportunity to get to know her intimately.”
