ement in the movement initiated by a group of Native Americans who occupied the Alcatraz island in 1969.
             She remarried later on, to Charles Soap, with whom she had worked in several of the projects for solving the Native American problems. In 1983 she ran for Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation and won the elections.
             Mankiller sought first of all, to develop her people's awareness for their national identity and their potential as a community. She highlighted the racist attitude of the United States Government during and after the Cherokee Removal from their Southern native lands on the territory of Georgia, and demonstrated through her activity as a leader, that the Cherokees can find the means and resources for solving their own problems, through developing their self-awareness and from every member's involvement in the community affairs.
             As Mankiller interpreted the history of her people and emphasized the fact that the Cherokees did have a government themselves and also a constitution , and applied this interpretation in her own actions.
             The Cherokee Removal episode that Mankiller recounts in her book, was the result, as she emphasized, of an economical issue in the first place: president Jackson applied the removal policy so that the land formerly belonging to the Native Americans may be used for exploitation and growing of tobacco and or cotton or other profitable cultures. Thus, although John Ross, who was the chief of the tribe at that time, took the problem of removal to court and actually won the trial, president Jackson ignored the decision of the court and during the years 1838-1839 the American troops gradually confiscated the lands and possessions of the Cherokees, and the latter were removed to the Indian territory,
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