The Adventure Begins

Now that I’ve been here for a full day I can go over my first impression of the environment in Cherokee. It is simply breath taking, everything is so beautiful. I look around and I really think this is what God has created. I was simply in awe. Thinking how this land was created for all men, I can’t even imagine what the Natives had to go through when it was taken away from them unjustly. The most interesting thing to me about the culture’s history, is how prideful, and strong the people of the cultural are. Just listening to, reading and observing all they have go through and seeing all that they have been through makes you think about how unjust they were treated. Sometimes when people go through a lot of harsh things it tends to break their spirit, but in this culture this is not the case. We went to the Cherokee Museum today and learned a lot what stood out to me is The Legend of the Burning Belt which is a symbol of their traditions, the belt was consumed by flames and yet it still lives on, the people of the Cherokee were stripped of all there possessions, many lost their lives but they are not broken, they are living on and even today are living on their ancestors lands. I love that this culture puts the elders as the head of everything, this is the way I was raised, show the most respect to your elders, do as they say, and do what you need to help them when they are in need of help. Elders set the tone of the traditions in my family as they do in this culture and that is one way we are similar. I had some beliefs that were different such as how the world was created, but I am open and understanding that everyone has their own beliefs and that is okay, to understand what values and beliefs someone else has can help you better understand them. The story of creation was amazing, it something I’m looking forward to telling my children about. All the animals lived above water and it begin to be too crowded so they sent a water beetle down to find land and he had to swim to the bottoms of the ocean and pull a piece a soil up and from there it grew into a vast land. Mountains and rivers were created the stroke or downward glide of a great buzzard wings. Cherokee Language Immersion Academies help the cultures heritage integrate into the children of the community, by teaching children how to speak and write their Native language so that they are able to go back and teach their parents, siblings and friends, this is done to ensure that the language isn’t lost, and it grows on. Keeping your traditions strong is so important and to do that you must teach the younger generations which are growing rapidly and very diversely. At the rate of change it’s so easy for traditions to be lost, and for a whole culture to fade and just be a memory, or something you read about in a book, having this schools are amazing, it’s a great way to keep their culture alive, a great way to build any culture back up is to educate the people who belong to on all the things it consist of. Other influences would be the Oconaluftee Indian Village and how the children and adults of the community educate visitors on the ways of their culture expanding our knowledge about weapon making, basket weaving, ritual dancing, and even showing us how they lived in the 1600s and the 1800s. When you are in charge of educating someone on any topic most of the time you become an expert on that topic, the community members who work at the Village had so much knowledge to share with us, as well as people who worked in the area at the gift shops, museums, and even the reenactment of the trail of tears in the outside theater which all integrated the heritage in the community by educating others about their own culture.