Book Review

Indigenous Women Guidance is Prevalent throughout Book

Every Day is a Good Day:
Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women
Memorial Edition
By Wilma Mankiller
Fulcrum Publishing | 214 pp | $18.95
ISBN 978-1-55591-691-6

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Indigenous Women Guidance

American Indians know our grandmothers, mothers and aunts provide guidance in our lives full of indigenous wisdom. They have done so down through the generations. Within Indian communities, women have played key roles by providing guidance to administration and programming.

This guidance does not come simply by being female or simply being indigenous. The ability to gain a great understanding of life comes from the experience of living life itself. It seems the more difficult the life, the more wisdom gained.

The guidance does not come through textbooks offered by the indigenous women. The guidance comes through "day in - day out" living. In other words, they "walk the talk."

Wilma Mankiller-Cherokee

This indigenous women guidance is evident throughout "Every Day is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women," a book first originally published in 2004. It was assembled and partially written by Wilma Mankiller, the late Cherokee warrior who became the first woman to lead the Cherokee Nation. She died on April 6, 2010.

The "Every Day is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women - Memorial Edition" has been released by Fulcrum Publishing with a foreward by Louise Erdrich and an introduction by Gloria Steinem, who treat Mankiller's memory in an appropriate reverence due her.

Erdrich writes about Wilma Mankiller: "She had gracefully negotiated the tough, men-only world of Indian politics. She had raised children on her own, faced trauma and accidents, and lived with cancer. Her life was achingly and personally familiar to us all. Her accomplishments, however, stood alone."

"Every Day is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women" is a wonderfully assembled book filled with writings of some nineteen indigenous women from various tribal nations from different parts of the country. These nineteen provide their guidance in a variety of topics, such as ceremony, governance, womanhood and love. Most of the women replaced the word love with the word honor.

All of the entries have share a common thread of insight and wisdom in what it is to be an indigenous woman. Most write about what they learned from growing up as Indians. They learned to deal with and enjoy who they became as Indian women.

"When I have tried to push my traditional values behind me, I have been less successful. I do well when I am just myself, a Comanche woman," writes LaDonna Harris, Comanche.

Mankiller writes about the resiliency of Indian people, how they survived, in spite, of every difficult thing that happened to Indian people. She writes: "No one knows better than I, that every day is indeed a good day."

posted July 16, 2011 6:00 am edt