Tribal Council for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has postponed any action that would ban bear zoos from the reservation for good.

A few tribal members called on Tribal Council last week to revoke the business licenses for any private establishments that display caged animals for profit on the reservation and force those establishments to release the animals.

A woman was sent to jail for nine years this week for her role in the death of toddler who likely succumbed to hypothermia on the floor of a single-wide trailer one bitterly cold night in Swain County two years ago.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the National Park Service are offering up to a $500,000 incentive for early completion of landslide repairs to U.S. 441 through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — indicating both entities’ concerns about the road closure’s effects on Cherokee’s economy.

Federal regulators temporarily suspended operations at Cherokee bear zoo and fined its owners $5,000 for repeated animal welfare violations.

A $93 million family adventure park in Cherokee would likely turn a profit during its first year of operation, according to early projections from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ finance department.

Susan Gathers was kicked back in the student union one afternoon, her thumbs poised over her smart phone, simultaneously bantering with friends while texting — sometimes even texting the same person she was talking to.

This impressive skill to seamlessly dialogue in multiple mediums at once is nothing new for “Generation Next-ers” like Gathers. But unlike the typical truncated words and vowel-less abbreviations that permeate normal text-speak, her screen was filled with Cherokee syllables as she pushed send.

Ghosts, spirits, swamp gas, gnomes and car headlights — there’s no shortage of hyphotheses behind the mysterious phenomenon along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The real question is, though, have you seen the light?

“If at first you don’t succeed, simply make your case again” is the lesson the executives at the tribally owned Sequoyah National Golf Course learned earlier this month.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has been propping up the golf course financially to the tune of about $1.1 million annually since it first opened in 2009. But tribal council signaled last year they wanted to scale back and eventually end the subsidies.

Despite being warned not to return to Cherokee without tribal permission, animal rights activists gathered once again last Saturday in front of Chief Saunooke Bear Park waving signs and even donning a bear costume to protest the allegedly inhumane condition of the bear pits.

When pediatricians at Cherokee Indian Hospital retreat to their desk between patients to log data, research puzzling symptoms or review lab results, they’re constantly looking over their shoulders.