“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”
— Cherokee Proverb
All of us living in Western North Carolina know of much of the history of the Cherokee Indian tribe. Its origins, its general history, its cultural significance. But I’m betting that not everyone knows the historic timeline of its chiefs and particularly the story of former Principal Chief Patrick Lambert.
In a book loaned to me by my physician, Patrick Lambert’s memoir “The River,” (On the Boundary Press, 2026, 275 pages) delivers one of the most captivating biographies I’ve ever read. His style, his convincing humility, his forthrightness and his provocative intelligence are the avenues that take us through the landscape of his life, which features not only family history but some of the more important and controversial episodes in recent Cherokee business and politics. “The River,” then, is a personal memoir and an historical record of a pivotal moment in Cherokee history that flows like the “Long Man,” or the river, ever onward.
I could probably write this review by simply writing out the short epigram quotes at the beginning of each of the 32 chapters in this book. That might be interesting to some, but might be a bit too abstract for others. So, I will simply use a few of these quotes off and on throughout this review as highlights.
Lambert begins the first chapter, “Born on the Boundary,” and the quote “The struggles of the Boundary are what forged the man.” Here he describes the landscape of the Cherokee Boundary and what he calls “life before pavement,” where he got drinking water from a mountain spring, when his father, known as “Chief Henry,” was, as he describes him, “the world’s most photographed Indian,” who worked the tourist trade on the reservation dressed in full Indian regalia and posing for and with vacationing visitors.
Lambert was the only boy among five sisters whom he describes as “a force of nature … in a household that was loud, chaotic and full of love.” Referring to his youth as his “foundation,” Lambert tells us of his early connection with the land, with nature, where “the forest was always communicating if you knew how to listen.”
From his youth we move on into the chapters that describe his late youth and early adult life working in mines, joining the Army, graduating from law school and meeting his eventual wife, Cyndi. His professional life began with a job working in Sylva for the lawyer Ben Bridgers. I remember Patrick from my time working with Ben Bridgers (who was the tribal attorney for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation at the time) on a legal case of my own which was related to environmental issues. I remember Patrick Lambert as being friendly, smart and very conscientious.
These beginnings led to his work organizing the Tribe’s laws, compiling ordinances and building a modern legal code and working with the Tribal Council. All this led to his contributions when gaming first came to Cherokee. In 1995, Bridgers retired as tribal attorney and the next several chapters focus on Lambert’s work in helping create a functional and expanding casino operation and that has evolved into what it is today.
In chapter 12, he discusses the election of 1995 when the Tribe elected the first woman chief in Joyce Dugan and the implications and the story of her tenure.
In what is practically a daily history of her reign as chief, he sets the stage for a huge change in the politics and the finances of the Tribe and the opening of the Cherokee casino in 1997. From here, Lambert moves quickly into a long and detailed discussion of the political and financial corruption on the reservation. Dealing with the legal and personal aspects of this situation were consequential to say the least, but Lambert stuck by his guns, using quotes in his book from such world leaders as Nelson Mandela, saying “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” If Lambert possessed nothing else, he truly had a strong sense of persistence and courage as he describes in second half of the book the rise of the Harrah’s Casino, his own rise to political power as chief of the Eastern Band, followed by the story of the corruption among members of the Tribal Council and the repercussions that would lead to the legal battle relating to Lambert’s eventual impeachment.
While there are many pages and much detail devoted to Lambert’s story of this uncomfortable moment in Cherokee history, he manages these chapters with amazing grace and clarity and is not afraid to share the positive aspects of his tenure with gaming, building the foundations of economic self-determination, and establishing the first per capita distributions — decisions that permanently reshaped Cherokee life. How one man could have accomplished all that he did in such a short period of time is nothing short of amazing. One could say that Lambert almost single-handedly transformed the nature of the Tribe to becoming what it is today — both financially and politically.
In that sense he has to be considered as something of a hero, if not a modern-day icon and model for Native American communities and nations as well as the U.S. in general. In this phase of the book, he quotes none other than Buddha, who says “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth,” and then Martin Luther King Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If nothing else, Lambert, in “The River” and in life, is a truthteller and a role model for others to follow as we move in the book through his future, leading to legal vindication of the earlier impeachment conviction.
After the chapters on Lambert’s impeachment and vindication, the remainder of the book is a lovely storyline about his personal journey back to focus on his family life on the Qualla Boundary and that of community outside the walls of politics and officialdom. Especially in the book’s Epilogue, we see Lambert as he is “coming home” from all of the turbulence to his roots and his tribal beginnings as a satisfied, happy and loving man.
(Thomas Rain Crowe is the author of more than 30 books, including the award-winning nature memoir “Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods,” and is a longtime resident of Jackson County.)