Just over a month after voting unanimously to study the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana on the Qualla Boundary, the Cherokee Tribal Council held a vote whose outcome was nearly a mirror image of the first. Last week, council voted 11-1 to uphold Principal Chief Patrick Lambert’s veto of the study, with Councilmember Travis Smith, of Birdtown, the sole nay vote.

A year’s worth of time and a shakeup in leadership haven’t been enough to take the pay raises Cherokee Tribal Council voted itself last year out of the public eye. With a lawsuit already filed in the tribe’s court system, the impending legal battle took center stage during Annual Council last month.

The day after Cherokee’s new chief and vice chief took their oaths of office, a lawsuit naming nearly all the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ elected leaders from the previous term found its way to the courthouse.

Joe Martin had never worked for a newspaper or owned a handgun when he took the reins of the tribally owned Cherokee One Feather in 1995. 

But when the first changed, so did the second. Then a 26-year-old whose only job experience since graduation from college was as a cage cashier at the casino, Martin found himself fast-tracked to a steep, steep learning curve.

With elections a week away and threat of a lawsuit still hanging, the Cherokee Tribal Council is considering a proposed budget that includes a pay raise of nearly 5 percent for its members.

Nearly 30 people have put their names in the hat for election to Cherokee’s 12-member Tribal Council this fall, and depending who you ask, a lot is at stake.

The Tribal Council kicked us out again. Holly Kays, a reporter for The Smoky Mountain News, was told on July 9 to leave a meeting of the Cherokee Tribal Council. No meaningful reason was given as to why members of the council did not want our reporter present. 

This is the second time in the last seven months the Tribal Council, under the leadership of Chairwoman Terri Henry, has decided to exclude the media from their meetings. Such actions would be against the law in all 100 counties in North Carolina.

There’s talk in Cherokee of making the chief of police’s job an elected position following a resolution introduced by Travis Smith, a Birdtown resident who’s also a candidate for Tribal Council.

When the Cherokee Tribal Council voted to give itself a hefty pay raise last fall — $10,000 extra a year plus tens of thousands in backpay for the years when it supposedly should have already been receiving those extra dollars — the decision aroused the ire of a staunch contingent of tribal members who deemed it illegal.

Though Cherokee Tribal Council meetings are broadcast live online and through tribal television — as well as recorded on DVDs — council retains the right to exclude non-Cherokee people from its chamber. 

During its Dec. 11 meeting, it did just that, requesting that police officers escort a reporter from The Smoky Mountain News — me — off the premises.