STORIES FROM INDIGENOUS CULTURES 103
The Cherokee people
The Cherokee people are a traditionally Earth-based culture
whose members understand and respect the importance of living
in harmony with the environment (Pritzker 2000). The Cherokee
people were one of the Native American tribes forcibly removed from
their homelands in the eastern United States to land west of the
Mississippi River, in what is now Oklahoma, during the first half
of the nineteenth century. During the Cherokee Removal, known as
“The Trail of Tears,” an estimated 4000 to 8000 Cherokee people
perished (Rozema 2003, p.40). The Trail of Tears has become a
symbol of the broken treaties and oppression typically experienced
by Native Americans in the aftermath of invasion by Europeans
(Anderson 1991).
During the time of the Trail of Tears, an estimated 1000
Cherokee hid in the mountains in western North Carolina in order
to escape removal. The descendants of these Cherokee now reside in
the Qualla Boundary. Despite the legacy of trauma and many years of
cultural genocide, the people of the Qualla Boundary are reclaiming
their heritage. In recent years we have had the opportunity to
have Cherokee speakers in our classes at Appalachian and to visit
with elders and artists in the Qualla Boundary. One of our faculty
colleagues of many years also shares a Cherokee heritage.
Indigenous beliefs and practices and nature-based expressive arts
Many of the ideas and practices of the indigenous people we have
encountered have shaped our understanding of the theories and
practices of nature-based expressive arts. To try to summarize and lay
out in a linear fashion ideas from other cultures and languages that are
characterized by a sophisticated and interwoven circularity cannot do
full service to the indigenous epistemologies we have encountered.
Even so, in our experience there are striking parallels between native