Our culture tends to celebrate youth and youthfulness above all other life phases. Growth and vitality are venerated over age and wisdom. This wasn’t always the case.

Blythe Winchester has known since a young age that she wanted to be a doctor. She remembers “doctoring” her dolls as a child in Cherokee’s Wolfetown community, using the empty needleless syringes her father would bring home from his job as a social worker. The little girl would inject the toys with Coca-Cola, staining their plush bodies brown. 

Haywood Regional Medical Center, a Duke LifePoint hospital, is doing its part to meet the growing mental health needs in the region by expanding its behavioral health unit for adults and geriatric patients.

When Bryson Senior Living, an assisted living facility in Swain County, opens in January, a major void in the community will finally be filled.

Principal Chief Richard Sneed has vetoed legislation that Tribal Council passed in July setting up a program to pay power bills for tribal elders.

Cherokee elders will no longer have power, water or sewer bills to worry about following a divided Tribal Council vote July 6 to pass legislation that former Principal Chief Patrick Lambert had put forward during his term.