Members of the Cherokee Nation were delighted last month when the Mattel toy company released a special edition Barbie honoring the tribe’s first female principal chief, women’s advocate Wilma Mankiller.
“She truly exemplifies leadership, culture and equality and we applaud Mattel for commemorating her in the ‘Barbie Inspiring Women Series,’” Cherokee principal chief Chuck Hoskin said in a statement.
Not long after the doll was shipped, Cherokee buyers began complaining that Mattel had not done its homework.
Some said the doll’s skin tone was too dark, implying an effort to make the doll look more “Indian.”
Screenshot of a Facebook post, criticizing Mattel's Wilma Mankiller Barbie as inaccurate.
The Cherokee have always been well-known for their traditional basketry styles, but the doll's basket is patterned after traditional English baskets.
She wears a tear dress (pronounced tare), the official dress of Cherokee Nation women, but she is not wearing any jewelry.
“Chief Mankiller was well known for her tribal necklaces,” Cherokee researcher David Cornsilk told VOA via Facebook. “And in addition to being the first female chief of a major U.S. tribe and first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, she was the first woman to wear our traditional gorget necklace, a powerful symbol of leadership.”
The gorget is a crescent-shaped metal plate that the British military gifted to 18th Century tribal chiefs as a reward for loyalty and a symbol of authority. They are still worn by Cherokee chiefs today.
Missing, too, Cornsilk and others say, are the traditional pucker-toe moccasins, always worn with official dress.
Perhaps the most glaring error is on the doll’s package, which features the Great Seal of the Cherokee Nation.
Graphic shows the official Great Seal of the Cherokee Nation (left), the inaccurate version appearing on Wikipedia (center), and a detail from a Wilma Mankiller Barbie package.
“The word ‘Cherokee’ should be ᏣᎳᎩ but is written as ᏣᏔᎩ,” Cornsilk said.
Which, translated, reads: “The Chicken Nation.”
A Google search shows the mistake may have come from an image posted on Wikipedia that was created in 2013 by a now-retired contributor. It, too, reads, “Chicken.”
A note beneath the faulty seal challenges its “factual accuracy.”
Mattel spokesperson Devin Tucker told the Associated Press that the company is aware of the problem and is “discussing options.”
Mankiller’s daughter corrects the record
Mankiller’s only surviving child, Felicia Olaya, was disappointed that she was left out of the Barbie design process, just as she says she was with a 25-cent coin the U.S. Mint released in 2022.
“Just like when the quarter came out, neither my sister, who was living at that time, nor I knew anything about it,” she told VOA. “We found out about it secondhand or on social media.”
“And then this happens. And there've been a few other small events that have happened over the years that we didn't know about until they were done,” she added.
Mattel says it worked with Mankiller's husband, Charlie Soap, and his production partner Kristina Kiehl. Neither Soap nor Kiehl responded to messages left by the AP.
Olaya is less critical of the doll itself than some others in the Cherokee Nation.
“It's a doll. It’s not supposed to be an exact portrait of my mom,” she said.
She would change the doll's eye color, something not easily detectable in photos.
“Her eyes weren’t brown. They were hazel,” she said. “And yes, my mom was a jewelry person. She wore clay or cornseed bead necklaces a lot, so, I would have added those.”
She does credit Mattel with getting it right on the shoes.
“Some people say she should have been wearing pucker moccasins. Well, my mom never wore them,” Olaya said, explaining that Mankiller suffered from chronic foot pain after a near-fatal car accident in 1979.
“She either wore flip flops or the kind of shoes the doll is wearing, like diabetics’ shoes.”