M5 - Wilma Mankiller



M5 – Blog Post
Question #3 asks us to reveal the purpose of making a Native American focused journal into a blog, and to share why that is important.

My answer to that would be that, as with any focused learning it is important to be able to incorporate the learning into our own words, thoughts, and actions. A blog may be one way to express how the learning has affected us.

Throughout this course my attention has been on quality, as opposed to quantity. I feel like there is so much history and so much to really learn that I have needed to look more deeply at little snippets, so to speak, to gain a fuller understanding of how they have affected me. I also feel like it is important to have a breadth of knowledge, and this course has certainly provided that opportunity as well. Treuer’s Atlas of Indian Nations, by itself, is years’ worth of study!! But we’ve also had access to so many other works and great resources that will keep me busy!
In the Wilma Mankiller video, where she is speaking about 21st century challenges, she talks about a cultural renaissance that is happening among indigenous people, and what it means to be an indigenous person in today’s society. There is a privileged feeling that happens, she says, when you know you are part of a bonded community that no matter where you are in the world and what is happening in your life you are always part of this particular indigenous community. It is a heartening feeling.

She covers a lot of ground in her talk about challenges, but she also is a visionary. She cites a Mohawk proverb that, to me, helps to sum up the encouragement to move on and progress forward. It is this: “It’s hard to see the future with tears in your eyes.” I think she is saying that at some point, we’ve got to pick ourselves up, acknowledge the pain of the past, but not let it become paralyzing, and move towards a workable future that finds solutions to problems.


Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 19, 2018 at 6:36 AM

    It seems that both of us were effected by the quote from a Mohawk proverb that Wilma Mankiller used in her presentation. To me it provided inspiration and hope to understand what has happened to indigenous people but to not give up but rather try to improve the future. At the beginning of this course I was angry and sad at what they had to endure but now I have taken on the optimism that is being presented by the Pan-Indianism movement.

    Apparently Wilma Mankiller found a way to deal with ridiculous questions about her name:

    “I’ve taken a fair amount of teasing amount my name during this conference and I finally got a little tired of it last night when I got on the elevator and a man again teased me about my name—which is Mankiller. He asked me about the origin of it and I said it was a nickname and that I’d earned it.” – Wilma Mankiller

    I have to agree that this course provided so much information that I was unable to read and absorb only a small part of it during the semester. Usually the books purchased for a course are never opened again once it is done, but I think this course will be the exception. Even though I had a realistic perspective on what had happened to the Native tribes in this country I was overwhelmed by the additional egregious acts that were perpetrated by the US government and their citizens.

    Reference:
    National Museum of the American Indian. Just doing "what I could" Wilma Mankiller changed Native America. Retrieved from: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2017/08/11/just-doing-what-i-could-wilma-mankiller-changed-native-america/

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