Many Native American families in the Southeast concealed their identities to avoid persecution following the forced removal of Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. Members of the Cherokee community in North Alabama today say those decisions, made out of necessity, continue to affect descendants as they work to reconnect with their heritage and preserve cultural traditions.
The Cherokee were among the Five Civilized Tribes, alongside the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole. Many adopted Anglo-American ways of life in an effort to coexist with European settlers. However, tribal leaders say the forced removal era led many Native Americans to stop publicly practicing their culture, speaking their language or identifying as Indigenous.
“It sort of destroys the culture because you know you don’t grow up in it and you have to trace it, you have to trace your genealogy, you have to trace your ancestry – I can’t trace my Cherokee ancestry back no further than my grandmother,” said Foy Southard, Deer Clan chief for the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama…