A great activist for both women's and Native American rights has passed away.

That said, even Wilma Mankiller wasn't perfect. And, Salon missed a definite black mark on her record.

Descendants of Cherokee-owned black slaves remain excluded from tribal rolls, despite many of them having Cherokee blood, analogous to descendants of white-owned black slaves, and also despite many a Cherokee having a dash -- or well more than a dash -- of white blood.

Unfortunately, Salon's story says nothing about the struggle of the slave descendants for recognition, nor about Mankiller's role in denying them this status.

The story has its complexities, in that the "white father" government in Washington, after forcing the Cherokee to accept that slavery was over (in 1866! the Cherokee remained holdouts!) also tried to push them into accepting the freedmen as part of the tribe. That said, due to the amount of racial commingling already among the Cherokees, why they resisted this already back then, I don't know, other than to say this is yet more evidence that racism is not confined to Caucasians.