Just six months after Cherokee voters said yes in a referendum election , a liquor store is open on the Qualla Boundary — making the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians the first tribe in the country to have one.

A Cherokee man was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison after being found guilty of second-degree murder by a federal jury. Shane McKinley Swimmer, 22, will also have to serve eight years of supervised probation following his release from 365 months in prison. 

As the labor shortage at Harrah’s Cherokee Casinos continues to worsen, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is considering dormitory-style employee housing that would allow it to bring in foreign workers on temporary H2B visas to support its cash cow.

A Cherokee man is being held without bond after allegedly shooting two people outside McDonald’s in Cherokee on Friday, Feb. 25. 

Carmaleta Littlejohn Monteith has taken countless flights to innumerable destinations during her 86 years on Earth, so she no longer recalls exactly what year it was when she found herself on a flight to Los Angeles making what would later prove to be memorable small talk with the man who settled into the seat beside her.

What started as a groundswell of outrage over a massive sediment dump  from Ela Dam in Swain County has become a united effort to get the nearly 100-year-old structure removed — supported by the company that owns it and led by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Several years ago, when my children and grandchildren were gathering for a week at the beach in a house I’d rented, a good friend gave me a pre-vacation tip that put me in the winner’s circle with the grandkids. “Make them an ice cream breakfast,” she suggested.

In an unusual sequence of events Feb. 3, the Cherokee Tribal Council passed a resolution outlining a set of referendum questions seeking to bring term limits and staggered terms to the body — only to bring it up for reconsideration minutes later and vote unanimously to table it.

Cherokee resident Forrest Cole Stamper, 28, will spend four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in federal court to abusive sexual contact of a minor.

I was recently gifted with the loan of a book from my friend Lee Knight titled “Wilma Mankiller,” (TWODOT Books, 2021) written by journalist and biographer D.J. Herda. As a traveling lecturer for the Road Scholar Program, Lee had finished reading it and thought I might find it interesting.