Cherokee Leader Wants Andrew Jackson Taken off the $20 Bill

The head of the Cherokee Nation believes Andrew Jackson’s portrait should be stripped from the $20 bill and replaced by the late tribal leader Wilma Mankiller — justice, he says, for the former president’s transgressions against Native Americans.

Driving the news: “We have a history and there are dark chapters, and we shouldn’t forget them, but we have a bright future,” Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said during an interview for “Axios on HBO.” “Part of that bright future is to reach back into our history, secure our rights, take them forward.”

{snip}

Why it matters: There’s long been talk about finding a prominent woman besides suffragette Susan B. Anthony to feature on U.S. currency, and the Obama administration supported replacing Jackson with the portrait of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

• A design concept was due by 2020, but in 2019, then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the project would be delayed until 2026.
• “I think Wilma Mankiller would be a great replacement,” Hoskin told Axios.
• Mankiller died in 2010 after serving as the Cherokee’s first female principal chief.

{snip}