Cherokee Nation

From Cyberlaw

“Digitizing Cherokee Culture and Civil Rights History:

What Will it Mean When ‘Voiceless’ Cultures (Finally!) have the Opportunity to Tell their Own Stories on the Internet?”

A Talk by Dr. Timothy B. Powell
Senior Research Scientist
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Harvard Humanities Center, Room 133
Wednesday, May 3,2006 4:30

tim powell at the harvard humanities center. walking in i note the opulence of the center. i’m a touch late. tim’s talk has begun. welcome to the Digital Library of Georgia is on the screen. tim works with the cherokee. the tribe has casino money. its leaders want to lead the tribe to research and record and tell the stories of its culture. tim wants to help them do it.

with steve breyer at harvard law school in 1968 i taught the plight of the cherokee nation, ending in the trail of tears, as an example of the impotence of treaty and law in the face of overwhelming power and greed.

tim puts up and image of the first cherokee phoenix, printed in 1828, with the cherokee constitution written in cherokee on the newspaper’s front page. the cherokee were fully literate with their own language and alphabet. i see what he is projecting is on the web, galileo, an initiative of the university systems of georgia.

a people with money out to reclaim their history. they could tell it every way. i would love to help.

tim, would you consider joining in the submission of a plan to the Cherokee Nation to amplify the process of identity integration the leadership has begun. the plan would embody a cyberstrategy of training in the development of digital media skills and use of those skills to preserve and create a vibrant cherokee identity and history in cyberspace.

eon

tim responds

Tim Powell Says: May 6th, 2006 at 9:29 am e

I would be honored to work with you on a cyberstrategy for helping the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) to train Cherokee students in digital technology so that they can write their own history. When I was at the reservation last month, I had a long talk with Lynn Harlan, the public relations officer for the EBCI, who expressed interest in working together on a project very similar to the one you describe. I am confident, therefore, that we will be able to partner with the tribe and to do some very important and exciting work that will fit with your vision “of training [students] in the development of digital media skills and use of those skills to preserve and create a vibrant cherokee identity and history in cyberspace.”

Let me give you some background, so that you can begin thinking about the project. The EBCI are in the process of building a 300 million dollar K-12 school that will have digital classrooms. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian recently received a grant from the NEH/NSF to digitize a wealth of historical documents in the Cherokee alphabet (syllabary). The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), where I worked for eleven years, has digitized more than two thousand historical documents related to Southeastern Native American culture and the Cherokee Phoenix. I also spoke to Toby Graham, the Director of the DLG, who said he would be interested in applying for a grant to create an infrastructure that would allow all of this material to be searched and integrated into one site.

What I think the tribe would like to do is to partner with us to develop a strategy for training the students to use digital technology and to make this sprawling mass of material more readily available for use in the classroom. Lynn, who is on the museum board, also said that the museum has extensive holdings that she thought they might be willing to digitize. My dream would be to get the students involved in all phases of the project– to teach them to tag documents in XML, to digitally photograph artifacts and display them using QTVR, and then to write narratives weaving all of these digital resources into a story about how the EBCI escaped the Trail of Tears, endured a century of hardship, and is now a thriving community taking control of its own history and identity.

Thank you so much for your generous offer,

Tim

Timothy B. Powell
Senior Research Scientist
University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology

nesson back

a cyberstrategy for helping the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI) to train Cherokee students in digital technology so that they can write their own history. this is a way of thinking as well as a set of skills. the idea is to balance the story and the telling of the story, thus to become self aware of one's own power as a storyteller and yet handle that power with humility peace and respect. tell it like it is. i would like to participate in a proposal to design and implement with them a cyber strategy for the development of the whole nation. identity in cyberspace.

Justice Breyer - Cherokee Victory

Copyright 2000 The Tulsa World
Tulsa World (Oklahoma)
June 6, 2000
Cherokee victory detailed

by JIM MYERS

WASHINGTON -- Cherokees in the end lost their battle to remain in Georgia, but U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer said Monday that the tribe's legal victory set the national stage for a more powerful constitutional system that goes beyond laws and court rulings.

Breyer linked the tribe's landmark court victory in 1832 and reactions it drew from the White House and at the state level to a decision 125 years later to send in federal troops to protect black children entering an all-white school.

Perhaps that experience can help us understand our own responsibility to preserve and to pass on the traditions, habits and expectations of behavior that underlie our modern system, creating the freedom we enjoy, not just on paper, but in reality, the justice said.

If so, a dangerous episode in the court's history, and a tragic story in the history of the Cherokee tribe, at last may help others whose basic liberties are threatened.

Breyer revealed his conclusions during a 50-minute speech to members of the Supreme Court Historical Society.

Delivered in the court's chamber, where cases are heard and opinions announced, the speech marked the 25th annual lecture of the society.

Breyer's lecture covered Cherokee history, beginning with the tribe's support of the British during the Revolutionary War and including its subsequent treaties with the United States in which the federal government promised to protect Cherokee land and guarantee its boundaries and the legal and military moves against the tribe by the state of Georgia.

Two major lawsuits grew out of Georgia's efforts against the Cherokees, which intensified after gold was discovered on tribal land.

Georgia ignored both cases and did not even show up to defend its actions before the court.

Growing out of the arrest of a group of missionaries working with the Cherokees, the second case resulted in a unanimous ruling that not only nullified the Georgia law used to imprison the missionaries but also recognized the Cherokee nation as a separate community that exists outside the reach of state law.

Although a huge victory for the Cherokees, that decision, Breyer pointed out, also put the court in a dangerous position.

Georgia simply refused even to acknowledge the ruling, and then-President Andrew Jackson, who already had made it clear that he sided with the Georgians, also seemed to be sending the message that he also would not be bound by a court ruling.

A national debate ensued, and Chief Justice John Marshall questioned whether the Constitution would survive.

Although they had won the case and helped set a different tone for national policy, the Cherokees still lost their land in Georgia and were forced west into what later would become Oklahoma.

In a word, Breyer said, the Cherokees won their legal battle and lost the war.

He painted the Cherokees and the Supreme Court as allies, fighting on the same side of the issues.

Philip H. Viles Jr., chief justice of the Oklahoma-based Cherokee nation's supreme court, attended Breyer's lecture and said he had never heard the tribe described as an ally of the court.

He did a very fine job, Viles said. We are very pleased that he chose this topic for his term paper.