A Constellation of Folk Narratives

Appalachia boasts a rich assortment of myths, folktales, legends, and vernacular sacred narratives, all of which are represented in this anthology. Myths are a culture’s sacred texts; every culture has them, be they oral or written. The sacred texts of Appalachia’s Euro-American settlers have long been inscribed in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Lacking writing until contact with whites, Native Americans conveyed their sacred teachings orally. When the Cherokee devised a written language, they began to inscribe their sacred texts in writing. The first section of this anthology opens with Cherokee texts collected orally from members of the Eastern Band....

Bounding American Indian Businesses

Every Native Nation is a “border nation”— physically, economically, politically, and legally. As such, the volatile topic of these Native Nation boundaries is historically and contemporarily enmeshed with contestation and conflict, not only in the larger political actions of these states but also as it is felt in the daily lives of American Indian peoples. Boundaries of territory and citizenry in particular have always been crucial to the subject of American Indian rights. The delineations of these boundaries, then, have complications and consequences for the exercise of EBCI economic sovereignty as well as for the small- business owners that choose to operate there. These boundary formations are critical to understanding the contextual distinctiveness of federally recognized American Indian entrepreneurs through land rights, formation of citizenship requirements, and issues of representation (especially in relation to citizenship). This chapter looks specifically at the issues of land scarcity, trust land for Native Nations and their citizens, the cultural capital of this land in a tourism context, and the environmental impacts of economic development. Land scarcity may also cause citizens to leave the Qualla Boundary, resulting in some instances in brain drain, networking loss, and economic drain. The importance of citizenship, along with its complications, are illustrated through the efforts of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians artists and their strategies to market their work.

Sovereign Entrepreneurs

By 2009, reverberations of economic crisis spread from the United States around the globe. As corporations across the United States folded, however, small businesses on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) continued to thrive. In this rich ethnographic study, Courtney Lewis reveals the critical roles small businesses such as these play for Indigenous nations. The EBCI has an especially long history of incorporated, citizen-owned businesses located on their lands. When many people think of Indigenous-owned businesses, they stop with prominent casino gaming operations or natural-resource intensive enterprises. But on the Qualla Boundary today, Indigenous entrepreneurship and economic independence extends to art galleries, restaurants, a bookstore, a funeral parlor, and more. Lewis’s fieldwork followed these businesses through the Great Recession and against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding EBCI-owned casino. Lewis's keen observations reveal how Eastern Band small business owners have contributed to an economic sovereignty that empowers and sustains their nation both culturally and politically.

Conclusion

Eastern Band citizens have shown that privately owned American Indian small businesses can have a positive and substantial impact on the development and economic stability of their entire Nation, especially for instances of one industry reliance. But for American Indians on reservations, the distinct challenges to small- business owner-ship must be addressed. Because my research testifies to the extensive positive value of small, private businesses to reservations, it is my hope that other Native Nations will include, as the EBCI has recently begun to, a focus on new policies that support local small businesses as a means of strengthening their economies. To accomplish this, Native Nation leaders can take a proactive stance in creating environments (an “entrepreneurial culture”) that are conducive to small- business ownership, address the pragmatics of training, infrastructure, and financing (especially with issues of debt) for American Indians, and stay attuned to potential local issues, such as representation. In order to do so, it is vital to understand economic sovereignty as an aggregate, living action— both in the ways that the small- business sector supports its practice and in how Native Nations use it in crafting the type of stable and sustainably diverse economy.

Exhibiting Moments: Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures

In 1973, Indiana University’s Mathers Museum of World Cultures purchased a selection of works from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, one of the oldest Native American-owned art and craft cooperatives in the United States. In this paper, I discuss, from my perspective as co-curator, the development of the museum’s 2015 exhibition of that collection, Cherokee Craft, 1973. Through this project, the curatorial team sought to creatively evoke the Qualla cooperative at the dynamic historical moment these works represented, while also contending with significant resource limitations. What resulted was an exhibit organized around the concept of a moment in time. This alternative presentation strategy gave us an opportunity to explore a variety of important topics and ongoing processes specific to the institution in the early 1970s. In this paper, I discuss how this approach allowed us to present a plurality of voices, while also showcasing many of the cooperative’s most renowned makers. I also position Cherokee Craft, 1973 as an exhibit curated by graduate students for a university audience: it was a site of innovation and representational experimentation for its creators, unique to its institutional type and its own particular moment in time.

Little Will Thomas and the Cherokee Legion

William Holland Thomas, whose father dies before he is born, is adopted by a Cherokee chief, Yonaguska. Upon his deathbed, the chief names Thomas-a white man-as the new chief of the eastern band of Cherokee. He becomes a fierce advocate for the Cherokee, insuring that they own the land on which they live. Late in life he marries Sarah Love, the much younger daughter of his best friend. The Cherokee declare war on the United States-which marched so many of their tribe away form their ancestral lands along the Trail of Tears. Thomas raises a regiment of Cherokees and mountaineers and spends himself in the war, eventually failing in health and dangerously insane.