By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Officials with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on Monday unveiled plans for a new Associate in Fine Arts degree focusing on Native American art to be offered in collaboration with Southwestern Community College.

A documentary film on Cherokee aired nationwide on public television stations last week. The 90-minute documentary, produced by an all-Native American team, explored cultural, social, education, economic and health issues that are central to life in Native American communities through the lens of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Cowee Mound, a 71-acre site in Macon County and once a major Cherokee village, will be preserved thanks to a joint conservation effort between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee.

By Michael Beadle

Cherokee now has a biodiesel gas pump at its filling station to fuel up Tribal transit and maintenance vehicles as well as buses from the Cherokee Boys Club.

I woke up this morning with the echo of Johnson Catolster’ gentle laughter in my head. I had been dreaming that I was riding through the Great Smoky Mountains Park with Johnson, and as we came down U.S. 441 past the Smokemont Campground exit, he had suddenly stopped his old truck and pointed. “There!” he said, “See that clump of little cedars near the road? Well, he was standing right there, looking left and right like you do before you cross the road, and I stopped right here.”

By Sarah Kucharski • Staff Writer

Tuckasegee residents are hoping that the proximity of an ancient Cherokee village to the site of a proposed rock quarry will help coax state officials not to issue a permit to the quarry’s operators.

By Michael Beadle

Ticket sales and attendance were both up this season for Cherokee’s long-running outdoor drama “Unto These Hills,” which saw major changes to its cast, crew and storyline.

The retooled production also found its share of detractors, who liked the old show better, according to James Bradley, executive director of the Cherokee Historical Association, which oversees the show.

By Michael Beadle

To some, it was a crucial military campaign early in the Revolutionary War, an unprecedented patriot force that crushed a potential British ally and paved the way for American independence and inevitable white settlements in Western North Carolina.

If politics makes strange bedfellows, then surely Rutherford Trace offers some curious pillow talk in the legislative halls of Raleigh and Washington, D.C.

Duke Power discounted accusations last week that a portion of the hydropower operation on the Oconaluftee River extends onto tribal land belonging to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.