In nineteen fifty-seven, the family moved to California under the Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Program. Wilma Mankiller lived in and around San Francisco for the next twenty years. She went to college and became an activist for Indian rights. She also studied community development. And she married and gave birth to two daughters.

In nineteen seventy-seven she separated from her husband and returned to Oklahoma to serve the Cherokee Nation. Wilma Mankiller faced many personal and health problems. In nineteen seventy-nine she was seriously injured in a car accident. She had seventeen operations during an eighteen-month recovery. Miz Mankiller also had a muscle disease called myasthenia gravis and fought breast cancer and lymphoma.

Carolyn McClellan is an associate director at the National Museum of the American Indian. She is also a Cherokee who grew up in Oklahoma. Miz McClellan praised Wilma Mankiller’s ability to lead and help others during such personal difficulties.

“I had tremendous respect for her,” Miz McClellan said. She said Wilma Mankiller meant so much to girls who had no power at that time.

Wilma Mankiller was known for her effort to return the balance of power of the sexes to the Cherokee Nation. She wrote about it in her book, “Every Day is a Good Day.” She said that women had played an important part in Cherokee government and tribal life in the past. But she wrote that women’s roles decreased over time as the Cherokee people accepted the values of the larger American culture. She said when she first sought political office in nineteen eighty-three it was as if “the strong role of women in Cherokee life had been forgotten by some of our own people.” She said that when she left office, that had changed.