From Vogue authored by Eve MacSweeney:
“It might sound like a revenge drama from the #MeToo movement; in fact the film Mankiller, airing this month on PBS, is anything but. A documentary directed by Valerie Red-Horse Mohl and produced by The Walking Dead’s Gale Anne Hurd, it tells the story of Wilma Mankiller, formerly the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, who died in 2010. (Her name comes from a societal role in the Cherokee tribe, as warrior; occasionally she used the term jokingly to her advantage.) Mankiller broke all the rules as we knew—and, to some extent, still know—them. A visionary politician and activist with a gentle but determined manner, she offers a model of female leadership more inspirational than ever. As her friend Gloria Steinem puts it in the movie, “In a just country, she would have been elected president.”
Crafted from archival footage and live interviews with Mankiller’s political colleagues, friends, and family, it’s a supremely moving story, and one that provides a telling snapshot of American social history during the last half century. Descended from Cherokees forced to migrate during the humanitarian disaster that was the Trail of Tears, Mankiller, who was born in rural Oklahoma in 1945, and her 10 siblings grew up, as she told one interviewer, “economically poor . . . but rich in many other ways.” Her family had no electricity or running water, but they had a community with shared values and experiences.”
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