After more than a decade working together as members of Tribal Council, Alan “B” Ensley and Jim Owle are vying for the position of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ next vice chief. 

Principal Chief Richard Sneed and challenger Teresa McCoy will face off at the ballot box this September as Cherokee voters decide who should be their chief for the next four years, but last week they met onstage at the Joyce Dugan Performing Arts Center for a debate hosted by The Cherokee One Feather. 

In a ceremony held at the Cherokee Indian Hospital today, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was awarded the Redefining American Healthcare award from the Healthcare Leadership Council.

In his first public statement on a bill he cosponsored in March, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., wrote an op-ed published in The Charlotte Observer June 19 decrying the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ opposition to legislation that would pave the way for a Catawba Indian Nation casino in Kings Mountain. 

The nine Job Corps CCC centers slated for closure this September, including the Oconaluftee center in Cherokee, will remain open after Congress put pressure on the Trump Administration to reverse the decision. 

An effort to get a proposed constitution on the Cherokee ballot as a referendum question this September will not come to fruition following Tribal Council’s June 13 vote to withdraw the legislation.

Preliminary results are in from Cherokee’s June 6 Primary Election.

Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort, an economic powerhouse that employs 5 percent of the workforce in the seven western counties and provides hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the tribe’s government and citizens, first opened its doors in 1997. 

When Patrick Lambert won the 2015 race for principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, he saw the victory as a direct mandate from voters. 

Early voting is now over in Cherokee, with polls to open for the Primary Election on Thursday, June 6, in what has already been an eventful election season.