Compassionate visions, courageous leadership: Meet the women of tribal council 2025
Left to right: Lavita Hill, Shannon Swimmer, Venita Wolfe and Shennelle Feather were recently elected to tribal council.
Donated photo
Lavita Hill has dreamed of joining tribal council since high school.
Painttown’s Shannon Swimmer feels less like she’s taking on responsibility with her new role — and more that she’s “stepping into it.”
Shennelle Feather of Yellowhilll took the leap because she saw the right opportunity.
“I’ve learned throughout my life that if I don’t walk through the doors that are open, then I get burned,” she said.
Venita Wolfe would routinely voice her frustrations with the elected body to her father.
“And one day he got — I would say — probably got tired of it. And he just turned to me and says, ‘Well, why don’t you run?’” she recounted.
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That sealed Wolfe’s place on the ballot alongside Hill for Big Cove.
After breaking up an all-male caucus, the four women are now well into the beginning of their terms as Eastern Band of Cherokee tribal councilmembers.
Hill is a finance and accounting veteran; for the past 25 years, she said she “administered the [tribal] trust fund and oversaw the investment accounts.”
Swimmer, an attorney, served as a tribal court judge for years before she was named director of Western Carolina University’s Cherokee Center.
Feather, with a background in biology and deep knowledge of indigenous culture, most recently held the role of community manager at the Museum of the Cherokee People.
Wolfe holds a master’s degree in public health and legal studies, and she’s worked in both research and tribal human resources.
Each brings a unique skillset to the group, a love for the community and a profound dedication to serve.
Giving back
Tribal council did not always, and does not typically, consist entirely of men. Among council’s eight most recent two-year cycles, the earliest four — spanning 2009 to 2017 — included at least three female members. Then, the election in late 2017 saw the success of only two women, a trend that continued until 2023, when that number dropped to zero.
“For our tribe, historically speaking, women have always been in leadership, and it is my belief that women should be in leadership now and forever — always,” Hill said.
Naturally, throughout these past two years, all were upset with — and felt called to act on — the absence of female representation. Hill said women are natural leaders because they “consider everything first” — and they’re often the default parent when it comes to domestic labor.
“Women already manage their homes. They already are the caretakers. They take care of business. They plan. They take care of each other. They take care of family and friends,” she said.
But merely seeing more women in leadership, for Swimmer, is not the endgame. “It’s not just about having a woman, just like any woman, but a voice that’s going to really represent the people … and speak up for women and families,” she said.
And with family as an integral aspect of the lives of Hill, Swimmer, Wolfe and Feather, this group fits the bill.
Hill acknowledged that she was disappointed in the absence of women in EBCI governance — for the sake of both her daughter and granddaughter, Her ascent to council was partially motivated by wanting her family to know, as she put it, ‘You can do anything you want, and [being an elected representative], this is part of it.’”
Swimmer, also a grandmother, was supported throughout the election by her large and interconnected family.
“My granddaughter, she’s got her several great grandparents, because my mom and dad are both still alive, and then we’ve got aunts and uncles who are like parents, so it’s just a collective,” she said.
When the work gets hard, Wolfe has three mantras inspired by loved ones.
“My dad says, ‘Quit complaining. Do something’ … then my mom, ‘Keep moving forward’ …. And then, of course, my son, he give me this positive sloth that I carry with me. It’s so cute,” she said joyfully. “It says, ‘It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.’”
Feather described her family’s love as strong enough to eclipse the poverty she experienced in childhood.
“We were really so rich.”
In college, she said, a few girls on her sports team were talking about those who received free school lunches growing up. Feather remembered she never had to pay. For the first time in her life, though she'd had a regular sponsor through Save the Children, she began questioning if she'd grown up in a low-income household.
“I never felt that that there was a void [caused by poverty], because we were so full with our family’s love and culture,” Feather said of her childhood, adding that this connectedness urged her to run for office, because “with that perspective, it’s like, why wouldn’t we give back?”
History, family
There’s an interconnectedness, history and lifeblood among the women that resembles the bonds among relatives — and the path of the rivercane.
“You will never see one river cane growing by itself, because it can’t exist. It won’t thrive … That is how we exist in community… And it’s really just a blessing to be able to serve with, to have these river cane women around me, holding me up too,” Feather said, in an ode to the interconnectedness of the tribe — and the four women on council.
“The women that I get to work with, they’re the most supportive people that there are, and they’re so smart and caring. And I just — I’m grateful,” Hill said.
As for the history, Feather said it’s “collective memory” — it forms when river cane is cut.
The same goes for the tribe.
The four women serving on tribal council value cooperation, support and transparency. Donated photo
“Whenever we lose someone, we feel it,” she said. “Whenever we have a new baby in the community. We feel it, we celebrate it, all of us.”
Feather recalled a specific example to The Smoky Mountain News involving Swimmer’s grandfather, who “would have shine and design nights for pottery, and the whole family would come, and they’d all get their river rocks, and they’d bring their pots, and they’d shine them up, and they’d do it all together.”
Finally, there’s the lifeblood itself: a shared sense of being tied to the place that is Cherokee. Wolfe, Feather and Swimmer — unlike Hill — have each spent time away from the tribal boundary, residing anywhere from Fort Bragg to California. But all, of course, returned.
“You really just feel like you’re so tethered to this land, and it really is something that is in your DNA. It’s not just — it goes beyond being homesick,” said Swimmer.
Feather explained that even in death, the Cherokee would be returned to this land, returned to the earth.
“When we were transitioning on to the next life, we were wrapped in river cane mats,” she said. “The basket makers, the weavers — they were the women.”
Reflections on communication, work
Wolfe observed that the team of four is cohesive because "all of us have specialized in a field" — Swimmer's experience practicing law, Hill's career in finance, Feather's cultural knowledge and the public health and legal background Wolfe possesses herself — adding this ensures "that when we as a group come together, we complement each other."
Hill told SMN that the women on council have been meeting since prior to inauguration, with the goal of having “open communication,” providing a means to “bounce [around] ideas,” and a forum to show mutual support. These three pillars, however, aren’t just goals for internal communication. They’re also important when determining how to relate to unelected EBCI citizens.
As a tribal judge, Swimmer chose to subvert the courtroom’s hierarchy of power with a simple, yet transformative tactic.
“I came down from the bench,” she said. “I sat in a circle with the people that I was talking to, because even that visual [of sitting on the bench] — that’s not traditional, and it’s definitely not healing.”
Swimmer explained that her new eye-to-eye position recreated the entire dynamic.
“People would open up. People would talk. People would share,” she said.
This intentional dialogue is something all four women want to encourage among their constituents. That’s also in part because they know how frustrating it feels to be on the other side.
“Our government is a business. It’s business,” Wolfe said, referring to the tribe’s moneymaking ventures such as Kituwah, LLC, and Qualla, LLC. She added that when elected officials aren’t transparent about the status of the business, “that tends to make you — make me angry, because that’s our livelihood. Our livelihood is being put into investments that we don’t know about.”
Regarding transparency of councilmembers, Hill echoed that sentiment. At monthly meetings, she noticed that representatives would “say very vague things … but then they never went into detail.”
“And for me personally, that’s where my own grief with them came in. It was just, ‘I don’t have enough information from you guys to feel satisfied with how you’re doing your job,’” Hill told SMN.
To ensure she isn’t replicating this dynamic, Hill cited her continued development of a monthly newsletter and a webpage with an option to submit feedback in the form of a survey asking the following questions: “what are you happy with tribal services, and then what are you dissatisfied with, and how can we help?”
Goals for the term
The women on tribal council might still be soliciting input from their constituents, but each knows exactly what she wants changed — and how.
One of Wolfe’s major concerns is the safety of her community “in terms of lighting, better roads, sidewalks,” more bike trails, bike lanes and walking paths. She’s also interested in building flashing-light crosswalks, like those in Maggie Valley.
“We’re a tourist town, and we have people trying to walk across the street, and not everyone knows or sees them standing there,” the councilmember explained, while acknowledging that “there’s a lot that has already been done,” including the new Whitewater Landing.
Feather and Swimmer reiterated Wolfe’s desire for increased pedestrian and recreational safety. In addition to more lights and crosswalks, Feather said, “we need more than one entrance and exit to our school.”
“And my grandma advocated for that,” Swimmer responded with a chuckle, explaining that the late woman was at tribal council for this reason every single month.
“If my grandma, Amanda, was still alive, she would be like, ‘You better get that road open now that you’re on council,’” she said.
Feather mentioned another important consideration for the Qualla Boundary: “continuing to still represent Indigenous culture.” It’s an issue not threatened by stagnancy, but rather by loss.
“We have more characteristics of a small city than we do a small town,” Feather said, so it’s important to ensure “our identity [is] being protected.”
Regardless of the topic at hand, each member of the group felt an extra static in the air: change, and enough of it to get things done.
“I feel like now, for some reason or another, our people are wanting to be more engaged,” said Wolfe. “And that’s what’s amazing,”
