Get to know Charlie
You probably know the story of the late Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to serve as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. You might not recognize the name of her husband, Charlie Soap, yet his role as a Native community organizer is no less significant. Combining memoir, history, and current affairs, Last One Walking charts for the first time the life and work of this influential Cherokee.
In telling this story, author and former journalist Greg Shaw gives voice to his sources. As a longtime colleague and friend of the family, he draws on his many travels and interviews with Soap and on previously unpublished writings, including a Soap family history penned by Mankiller, included here as the book's prologue. Shaw offers a rich profile of Soap's singular career--particularly as a champion of water rights.
In managing public infrastructure projects, housing assistance, and water development in the Cherokee Nation, Soap has exemplified ga-du-gi, the Cherokee word for community members working together for the collective good. Shaw portrays a dynamic partnership between Soap and Mankiller. Together they reignited community development for the Cherokee people by listening to everyone, including the poorest of the poor, and hearing their pleas for reliable water, a basic human need and a sacred element in Cherokee culture.
Charlie Soap's name in Cherokee, Ohni ai (ᎣᏂ ᎠᎢ), translates as "the last one walking." In the Cherokee wolf clan, this is the member who trails the rest of the pack to watch for danger and opportunity. The last one walking forms a bond of trust with the pack's leader.
The Native American fight for land has been well chronicled, but the fight for water has not. Last One Walking helps to fill that void with a narrative that is also deeply moving, revealing on every page the spirit of ga-du-gi.
About Greg
Greg Shaw was born in Oklahoma City and spent much of his childhood in Cotton County, Oklahoma, part of the Comanche Reservation in Walters, Oklahoma. He went on to write for the Cherokee tribal newspaper in Tahlequah during the 1980s. He served in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He is not an enrolled member of any tribe.
Greg has written or co-written books on business, technology, and society, including Hit Refresh with Satya Nadella and Reprogramming the American Dream with Kevin Scott (both Harper Collins); Hire Purpose (Columbia University Press) was written with Deanna Mulligan. He is author of The Future Computed: AI and Manufacturing, The Ability Hacks (Microsoft), and a collection of poetry, Rust in August (Whaler Books).
Greg was publisher and CEO of the independent, nonprofit news site Crosscut and is founder of Clyde Hill Publishing.
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