Fighting for her people, her health

Thursday, February 17th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

About five years ago, not long after Wilma Mankiller finished her last term as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, a newspaper reporter called her friends and acquaintances, seeking quotes for her obituary.

The news shocked those who were contacted, one of whom had spoken to her just hours before the reporter called.

The news would have come as a surprise to Ms. Mankiller, too, had she known of it. Yes, she was ill, but that was nothing new.

As far as she was concerned, her newly diagnosed lymphoma was just one more way station in a journey that had included stops in rural Oklahoma and the ghettos of San Francisco, student protests at Alcatraz, visits to the White House, and countless days spent in hospitals. "I've come to accept that I cannot control what happens inside my body," says Ms. Mankiller, a keynote speaker at next week's Women's Symposium at Southern Methodist University. "But I can control what goes on inside my head, and that's what I focus on."

It's that attitude, say those who know her, that has enabled Ms. Mankiller to successfully fight for the rights of women and American Indians, establish community development programs, lead the Cherokee Nation, write an autobiography and be a wife, mother and grandmother - all while battling a succession of daunting medical problems.

"People have been counting her out for years, but she just keeps chugging along," says Ross Swimmer, a friend and mentor who got one of those alarming phone calls from that reporter.

Most people who were paying attention during the 1980s and '90s know about Wilma Mankiller. She was the first woman elected as deputy chief and, later, as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Mr. Swimmer, then running for principal chief, made history in 1983 when he asked her to run as his deputy. No woman had contended for that job, and many thought none ever should. Mr. Swimmer liked what he had seen of Ms. Mankiller's willingness to work in the community and her dedication to improving lives.

"The fact that she was a woman, or that it was significant, never even occurred to me," he says. "I thought the negative reaction to it was outrageous."

They won the election, and when Mr. Swimmer vacated the post of principal chief two years later to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ms. Mankiller succeeded him. She won two subsequent elections, serving for 10 years in that post before retiring from politics.

Last year, President Clinton awarded her this nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, saying she is "a revered leader who built a brighter and healthier future for her nation."

She has worked vigorously within the Cherokee Nation, stressing education and health care. And she even made time to write her autobiography, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, published in 1993.

There is another Wilma Mankiller - one known to few.

She's the woman who admits she "can't even imagine what it would be like to be a healthy person."

Ms. Mankiller survived a head-on car crash in 1979. Less than a year later, while still dealing with the physical and mental trauma of the accident, she was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis. In 1990, hereditary polycystic kidney disease - "my old nemesis" - necessitated a transplant. Her brother, Don, donated a kidney, but it was damaged by her 1996 treatment for lymphoma. Ms. Mankiller had a second kidney transplant in 1998. Last year, she was treated for breast cancer.

"Her health problems have been so significant that they could have weighed down any person so much that they couldn't function," says Mr. Swimmer. "But she's very matter-of-fact about it."

"There were many days when Wilma was sick, very sick, and she'd go to work and people would never know," says Charlie Soap, her husband of 13 years.

"They would come to her with their problems, and she would look them in the eye and pay attention and try to help them, and they'd never know she was very, very ill," he says.

Sitting in the living room of her rambling, pecan-colored ranch house in Mankiller Flats (land near her birthplace of Tahlequah, Okla., that was granted to her grandfather by the federal government in 1907), Ms. Mankiller contemplates her future while surrounded by mementos of her past.

Her home is a riot of books, colorful artwork and photographs, many of them pictures of her with other famous folk, other pictures of family members, including her two daughters and three stepsons. Her Medal of Freedom hangs in the hallway, a few steps from her cluttered home office. Watercolors from Ireland commemorate a trip she took with her mother.

A frequent speaker on American Indian and feminist issues, she is writing a book about the experiences of Indian women, and is working on a film script about her life.

No question is answered immediately. Each is given thoughtful consideration before she focuses her eyes on the questioner and speaks in a steady, modulated voice.

"I'm not finished yet," she says. "I have a lot left to do."