At some points, engulfed in the rush of the ride, “your head feels like it’s going to pop off your shoulders,” said 2026 Remember the Removal mentor Freida Saylor. 

Saylor participated in RTR in 2025, a three-week, approximately 950-mile bike ride that traces the northern route of the Trail of Tears — one path of forced removal of the Cherokee people to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands — following the 1830 Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson.  

Just after 1 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26, the drizzle became a downpour — a moment of serendipity for those gathered in what’s now the town of Franklin to watch the deed transfer of the Noquiyisi (Nikwasi) mound to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. 

“Any time it rains, it always washes away anything that’s happened. So, it’s like a cleansing so it’s almost a perfect weather, you know? That this rain is here. It’s kind of washed away for a new beginning,” tribal council member Adam Wachacha said to the audience. 

Residents, business owners and community leaders of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Swain County are invited to attend a pair of public open house meetings.

The Swain County open house will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the Community Room of the Swain County Administration Building in Bryson City. The EBCI open house will be held from 3-7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, at the Yellowhill Community Building in Cherokee. 

The U.S. Census Bureau on Feb. 2 announced that it was cutting four of six 2026 nationwide test sites aimed to inform the 2030 decennial count — Colorado Springs, Fort Apache Reservation, western Texas and Western North Carolina. It will now conduct operations in only Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. 

On the morning of Monday, Jan. 12, a group from Cherokee Historical Association visited the Stecoah Valley Center in Robbinsville.

Both CHA and SVC are nonprofits dedicated to the preservation of history and culture. Thus, the CHA representatives’ focus was on how Cherokee history and culture was being presented at SVC. 

In the 1970s, Grand Funk Railroad was one of the bestselling American rock bands on the planet. To that, in 1971, the Flint, Michigan, trio broke the Beatles ticket sales record at New York’s Shea Stadium, a feat coinciding with GFR having six platinum albums and seven gold within the original lineup’s short tenure (1969-1976). Oh, and another thing — the songs still rock, too. 

The Nikwasi Mound in Franklin is one step closer to being transferred back to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a process almost a century in the making. 

At a Franklin Town Council meeting Jan. 5, the board voted unanimously to transfer the deed for the property, which is just south of downtown near the Little Tennessee River, from the Noquisi Initiative, a nonprofit formed for this very purpose about a decade ago, to EBCI. 

“The Eastern Band of the Cherokee is this island … And they sell pot. And I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is some of their actions or activities that are, I think, concerning me that actually speak to the broader issue here about marijuana and what we ultimately do with it,” said Sen. Thom Tillis at an Oct. 7 Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. 

President Donald Trump is not typically seen as a friend to Indian Country. His ICE and border patrol agents have made headlines for targeting Indigenous people in deportation raids and refusing to accept enrollment cards as a valid form of citizenship. He changed Denali National Park — “a word from Alaskan Native Tribes that means ‘the high one’ in the Athabascan language” — back to Mt. McKinley. His cuts to federal programs have harmed tribes receiving Bureau of Indian Affairs funding nationwide. 

In recent years, the phrase “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers” has evolved from its originally earnest and spiritual meaning to an ironic online take on the resiliency needed, given the current state of affairs, to maintain day-to-day existence. It’s a rebuke of the idea that if bad things come into our lives, it’s because we know how to handle them — or that we must suffer immensely, with a brave face, in order to grow.