As crowds gather and fireworks explode to mark what to some is a purely celebratory moment, America 250 arrives for others as a complicated, dissonant occasion.
In Western North Carolina, Eastern Band of Cherokee leaders— many of whom exist within the latter group — juxtapose the holiday’s origins with tribal history, disrupt incomplete national narratives and discuss the complex experience of being Indigenous in America.
Nation-state and Indigenous historical incongruence perhaps begins with the mere idea of a “semiquincentennial,” as quantifying time runs counter to Cherokee memory and lifestyle.
“We still struggle with historians … wanting to put a time period on Cherokee history, and for us there is no time period. It’s time immemorial,” said Shana Bushyhead Condill, executive director of the Museum of the Cherokee People.
That’s because Indigenous folks had lived and tended to the land thousands of years prior to both 1776 and white settler contact nearly three centuries earlier.
Cherokee societies, therefore, were already advanced amid a fledgling America.
“There were thriving economies, there were trade economies that existed between tribal nations,” said Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks, adding, “if I looked at the Cherokees, and how our society was in 1776; we were very advanced in a lot of ways.”
Cherokees around that time resided in simple yet sturdy mud and thatch houses. Tribal leadership was semi-organized, with a more robust structure of governance at the local level. Town leadership included a peace chief — also the chief priest — a war chief and a council, and women often held powerful diplomatic and political positions.
In comparison to the Cherokee’s time immemorial, the timeline of the United States “is just a blip,” noted Condill.
As a result, she said, “American identity is fragile, and so who we are as Americans has always been a question through that 250 years — ‘How does the world see us?’”
The MoTCP exhibit, “Unrelenting: Cherokee People and the American Revolution,” however, seems to pose an alternate inquiry: How do Cherokees set the record straight with the world?
A response to the overarching narrative of America 250 — featuring mainly contemporary, though some archival, works by artists generally hailing from Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Cherokee Nation — “Unrelenting” is the tribe’s most public-facing reckoning with the past two-and-a-half centuries.
Condill said the idea of a museum showcase was sparked at an Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums conference in 2022, when participants were encouraged to engage with America 250 out of a desire for more Indigenous representation.
“Something just wasn’t feeling aligned there,” she said, explaining that she along with other attendees formed an alternate “Native 250” group.
“People were using the word ‘celebrate’ all the time,” she said, “and for us, it was really important to have an intervention in that, and say, ‘From a Cherokee perspective, it’s going to look different than the American memory narrative that we learn about in school.’”
In fact, during the American Revolution, the Cherokee had sided with the loyalists as a means of survival. King George III’s Proclamation of 1763 had prevented white settlement in Appalachia, though colonists consistently invaded Cherokee lands, disregarding the policy. Tribal leaders theorized that in return for their support, Britain would better enforce the 1763 law.
“There were lots of promises being made by the British that were protecting this place, which is, of course, our most important— it’s all through everything we do and who we are as Cherokee people,” said Condill.
Since its founding, the United States has seized Indigenous peoples’ land and autonomy. For example, the year that marked the signing of the Declaration of Independence was rife with Cherokee destruction.
“Elders and women and children were harmed in very bad ways — [when thinking of 1776] you think about the decline of Cherokee land based on settlers and greed and gold,” said Hicks, noting that Thomas Jefferson referred to Indigenous folks as “merciless Indian Savages” in the Declaration of Independence.
In September 1776, in response to Cherokee attacks against settlers living on what was, by treaty, Indigenous land — as well as to prevent a British ally from becoming a threat militarily — North Carolina Brig. Gen. Griffin Rutherford led patriot troops through the Cherokee town of Noquiyisi, burning it to the ground. To complete the mission, now known as Rutherford Trace, the rebel militia pursued the same “scorched earth” policy in another 35 Cherokee villages. By 1783, the Cherokee had lost mor than 50% of their original territory, some of which had been ceded to state and federal governments well before the American Revolution.
“That preservation of sovereignty is something that will forever be the first thing that we’re fighting for, forever,” Condill said.
Unfortunately, historical accounts of Cherokee perspectives and cultural knowledge during the Revolutionary Era are slim to none, especially by way of secondary sources. Even primary documents were written in Anglicized Cherokee — and used several different names when referring to a single person, said Condill.
“To restore some of that meaning into the words is really important,” she said.
That means finding out the document’s true translation and the Cherokee name of the individual to whom it refers.
“Unrelenting” features a letter from Kituwah to Benjamin Franklin, the content of which was likely recorded through a translator. Kituwah — the namesake of the EBCI Mother Town — had written about the “importance of being a woman and giving life,” Condill said.
But beyond that, “It’s hard to know how to pronounce her name, or what she said,” she told The Smoky Mountain News.
The next century
The 1800s also came with a host of settler policies — namely, the Trail of Tears — aimed at Cherokee displacement, removal and territory cessation.
According to Condill, the Trail of Tears wasn’t a side effect of American independence but rather a direct result of it.
She spoke of “the necessity of Indian removal to the goals of an expanding nation,” noting that “stolen land and stolen labor” were the basis of the original colonies as well as westward expansion, a product of Manifest Destiny.
Manifest Destiny refers to the Founding Fathers-era white settler belief in a God-given right to Indigenous homelands, which were seen as wasted due to lack of cultivation. Trail of Tears architect Andrew Jackson, through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, realized a plan first articulated by Thomas Jefferson. While the EBCI reside on original Cherokee homelands, unlike many other Indigenous tribes, the Qualla Boundary is nowhere near the size the tribe’s ancestral territory. Hence, Condill said the idea of a semi-quincentennial should also apply to a well-known historical movement.
“I would argue that we’ve been fighting for civil rights since our founding,” she explained.
For example, Indigenous people did not gain citizenship until relatively recently.
“You go back to Native Americans being citizens of the United States, and that timeline is not 250 years,” said Hicks.
It’s closer to 100, thanks to Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
“For some people, [1924] might seem like a long time ago, but it’s not really that long ago. When I think about my grandma — who was alive until I was in my 40s — that she was born in 1921, and she was actually born a non-citizen of this country,” said Tribal Council member Shannon Swimmer.
Even as Indigenous Americans were considered U.S. citizens, states blocked their right to vote throughout the next two decades. Plus, experts caution that various governments are once again using tactics aimed at Native disenfranchisement.
But while EBCI members today are legally considered U.S. citizens, some still struggle with what it means to be an American — and if they’d like to adopt that label at all.
“I think that sense of belonging and what it is to be American is super complicated for Native people. We are always citizens of our own tribe, primarily, is what I would say. And then there’s some native people who just completely push back against being American at all. And then there are certain native people who are incredibly proud to be American,” explained Condill, adding that “native people serve [in the military] in the highest capacity of any ethnicity” due to the Indigenous value of protection.
Swimmer personalized that perspective.
“I always identify myself as a Cherokee person first, before I even think of being American. I mean, even whenever I travel abroad, it’s like, ‘I’m Native; my tribe is based in the United States,’” she said.
Plus, the national anthem of Cherokee — sung in the Cherokee language — is infinitely more meaningful to Swimmer than that of the United States of America. Other family members feel a strong connection to Cherokee music, too.
“I think about my granddaughter, she’s five, and she loves singing Cherokee songs, and it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to see her want to listen to that in the car,” said Swimmer. “She’s growing up in the culture, and she knows who she is as a young Cherokee woman. She’s only five, but she’s already learning.”
Moving forward
EBCI Tribal Council member Shennelle Feather outlined the past 250 years through a personal lens, describing the complexity of July Fourth through the intersection of traumatic oppression and relative privilege, of historical struggle and contemporary acknowledgement.
“I think the phrase that describes how I feel as an Indigenous person who’s still living on her ancestral homeland and whose family has never been removed from their ancestral homeland — I think that’s an important distinction to have, because that’s not the case for many native people to America … is that we are still here. So, in that sense, after the removal and after colonization and the establishment of this government, I think that phrase rings so true,” she said.
Indeed, even as those in power continued to practice a strategy of Indigenous “civilization” through the mid-twentieth century, Native culture prevailed.
On a national scale, the Native American Relocation Program, implemented in the early 1950s to promote assimilation, encouraged tribal members to leave their reservations for cities like Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago.
However, citizens of various tribes built strong communities within urban centers, which in turn emboldened their resistance to federal mandates. The historic 1969-1971 Occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes — a group demanding the island, then surplus federal land, be returned to its original Indigenous inhabitants — was but one example.
Meanwhile in Western North Carolina, generations of Cherokee children from 1881-1954 were forced to study at boarding schools and punished for any speech uttered in their native tongue.
Today, the EBCI offers interested Cherokee speakers both a freestanding language academy and a comprehensive second language learners’ program.
Other tribal members are reconnecting to their heritage through art.
“It’s amazing to see how young artists are evolving, and they’re really rebuilding some of the old ways, whether it’s pottery, whether it’s carvings of rock, stone, wood, all these things are our way of reinventing to some level the stories and the legends that we’ve been handed down that never leave us,” said Hicks.
The longevity of this wisdom has to do with the method in which it is told.
“[Our history is] still able to be spoken and passed down generationally through oral history, regardless of if you want to attack our history books or change the change the narrative,” Feather noted.
Drawing upon the past for perspective, Condill expressed gratitude for the present moment. “When people are saying something like, ‘It has never been worse,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, well yes, it’s been way worse, actually, in our history,’” she explained.
Still, she clarified that the status quo should not be accepted at face value, nor should its new and pressing challenges.
“I think people recognize that the [250th anniversary] can be a moment of reckoning as well, and a call to action as to who we are and who we want to be as a country, and so that to me is exciting,” Condill told SMN.
Self-reflection requires listening to and learning from frontline communities — and ensuring they have a say in decisions that affect their livelihood.
Condill described herself as “one of those people that have to believe in our founding ideals and that we can be better than we’ve been in the past, and that we [as Cherokee people] have to be at the table to be able to make those changes.”
Transformation often begins at the local level. Swimmer suggested those wanting to honor Indigenous voices start by researching which tribes previously inhabited their city or town. Moreover, one could correct the dominant narrative of American history by challenging community tributes to problematic figures.
In North Carolina, Rutherford County was named for Rutherford’s Trace leader Griffin Rutherford — and Jackson County for Indian Removal Act signee Andrew Jackson.
EBCI tribal council in late 2020 unanimously passed a resolution changing the Jackson County namesake to eight-term EBCI Principal Chief Walter Jackson, sending it to the desks of county commissioners. Despite support from then-Jackson Commissioner Gayle Woody, the board did not pass the proposal, leaving Jackson County’s namesake as the seventh U.S. president.