When Rob Gasbarro and Cory McCall met in 2008, their friendship formed around hiking and biking the mountains surrounding Franklin, their weekdays filled by burgeoning careers in civil structural engineering and real estate, respectively. 

Then came the recession. Things got bad and then worse. By 2010, the careers that they’d planned to retire in, provide for families with, seemed headed for an early end. 

For the second time in less than a month, an ordinance that would abolish the Qualla Housing Authority and place all Cherokee’s housing services under the Department of Housing and Community Development has been tabled. 

A recent court ruling in Texas has Native American tribes across the country — including the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians — concerned about threats to their status as sovereign nations. 

The Cherokee Tribal Council is considering disbanding the Qualla Housing Authority, an organization that was formed in 1993 to create and maintain housing for low-income tribal members. 

Growing up in Germany as the daughter of a repair shop owner, Ute Grant knew three things about how her life should go: she never wanted to go to America, she never wanted to get married and she never wanted to be self-employed. But life has a way of showing up the firmest of convictions. 

The Cherokees believed that they must keep the world in balance, in a state of equilibrium …. that if they did not maintain equilibrium, then droughts, storms, disease, or other disasters might occur …. They tried not to exploit nature. When a hunter killed a deer, for example, he performed a special ritual in which he apologized to the spirit of the deer and explained that his family needed food.

From towering mountains to shimmering seas, North Carolina has a little bit of everything — and for the trail that ties it all together, a major milestone has just been marked. 

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, trail volunteers, government officials and natural resources workers from across the state gathered at Oconaluftee Visitor Center in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Cherokee to celebrate completion of a 300-mile section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, starting at Clingmans Dome and ending at Stone Mountain State Park in Allegheny and Wilkes counties. 

As the 2019 fiscal year begins for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the tribe is operating under a recently passed budget that trims $40.4 million off the $604.7 million budget passed last year.

Tribal Council extended its deadline to complete a slew of amendments to its election ordinance with a unanimous vote during its Sept. 6 meeting. 

If anyone ever had an excuse to leave her hometown and never return, it would be Myrtle Driver Johnson. 

Born May 21, 1944, to a mother who didn’t want her, Johnson had a hard upbringing in the Big Cove community of the Qualla Boundary. While her younger siblings — one brother and four sisters — lived with her mother and their father, Johnson, who never knew which of two men her father was, was sent to live with her grandparents.