Wilma Mankiller


I watched the video Wilma Mankiller: Challenges Facing 21st Century Indigenous People.  Wilma is one of a handful of Native American recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She lives in the Cherokee Nation. The common factor in Indigenous people is the way they live inseparable from the natural world. This fuels a duty to conserve the natural world that is sacred to Indigenous people which provides them with food, medicine and spiritual sustenance. Some Indigenous people have prophecies that suggest the world will end if human beings forget how to protect the natural world. As seen in Climate Change and long-term survival of the earth. Stories and ceremonies regularly remind Indigenous people their responsibility to the land. It is an Indigenous person’s responsibility.  Non Indigenous have become distant from the land because they don’t have stories or ceremonies to remind them of their connections to the land. Also, those Indigenous people who have achieved the most are not those who gain great wealth but those who live within a set of reciprocal relationships. Its about their traditional values of working together for the common good and not for personal gain. Wilma Mankiller also states that another thing that binds Indigenous people are not only their values but their oppression (ASU Libraries).
The web resources we have read and seen this semester were very important to me, mostly because it made it relevant today. When I first started this class if I was to think about Native Americans, my only real knowledge was what I was taught as a child. The story of Christopher Columbus and Thanksgiving. Learning what the Native American’s really went through and are still going through was eye opening. A very important part of the Native American’s traditions and culture is living as one with the land, and they are fighting as Wilma Mankiller spoke about, preserving the land so that it will be around for future generations.
ASU Libraries. Wilma Mankiller: Challenges Facing 21st Century Indigenous People. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K_rVUmV7Y8&feature=youtu.be

photo retrieved from: https://www.google.com/search?q=wilma+mankiller&rlz=1C1AVNE_enUS684US684&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4xIrf6YnkAhVpkuAKHSjpDJYQ_AUIESgB&biw=717&bih=661

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