Parker’s Pages: Cherokee Earth Dwellers
This week, I wanted to focus on honoring the Native American peoples who originally lived on and took care of the land I occupy. After spending my Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day weekend visiting the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, I knew I wanted to review a book that furthered my goal to honor and educate myself about Indigenous peoples.
Snooping through my local bookstore, I found Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teaching of the Natural World, written by Christopher B. Teuton & the late Hastings Shade and Loretta Shade, alongside Larry Shade, with illustrations by MaryBeth Timothy.
Christopher B. Teuton (Cherokee Nation) is the current Professor and Chair of the American Indian Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle. His work promotes bringing Indigenous research methods, literature, and storytelling into academic spaces. Teuton’s previous publications include Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club (2012) and Deep Waters: The Textual Continuum in American Indian Literature (2010). Cherokee Earth Dwellers is the culmination of Teuton’s research and collaboration with other members of the Cherokee Nation.
Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teaching of the Natural World opened to “Sky World” chapter
The Evergreen Echo
This collection features many styles of storytelling, bringing together snippets of conversations, writings from the late Hastings Shade, and retellings of stories shared across generations. This book also acts as part of an effort to revitalize and preserve the Cherokee language, with translations of many Cherokee words and phrases throughout.
Many stories in this collection are striking, and there is so much care put into their telling. Divided into four chapters, the book begins by showing the reader how to immerse themselves in the Cherokee natural world. Following the teachings of Hastings Shade, the reader is invited to find their center, and to listen to the world around them. A poem from Hastings’ writings reads:
“Indian”
I live in two worlds
But my spirit is one
My forefathers taught me
That true I may be
To see with my heart
‘Cause my eyes may deceive
I live in two worlds
But my spirit is relieved”
(p24)
Similarly, Teuton invites us to open our heart to the natural world, to feel the teachings through our spirit. The next section of the book tells us about the Cherokee Middle World, the Earth, and shares the creation stories of the elements as well as animals and plants. The third section, my personal favorite, is about the Sky World. As a birder, I enjoyed reading the stories about the birds and seeing the many gorgeous illustrations of my avian loves from MaryBeth Timothy.
The last section speaks about the Under World, which discusses underground and underwater creatures, like insects and fish, but also the transformational energy of the world below ground. United together, these sections give us a rounded view of the world and the many teachings present within it.
Most interestingly, there is a lot of storytelling about storytelling, especially in Teuton’s introduction, about what is true and how we share our truths. Teuton explains that there are two different words in Cherokee for “storyteller.” One, kanohesgi, means to give an account of, or rather, to tell someone about an event from one’s own perspective. The other, gayegogi, means to tell a story that one did not witness firsthand, rooted in the Cherokee word for “liar.”
Cherokee myths and creation stories are considered gayegogi stories, but not because they are necessarily untrue, rather that they offer a perspective that one cannot have witnessed firsthand, leaving it up to the listener and their trust in the storyteller to decide what is true and what is not. Thinking about this as I read, I was shaken by a particularly striking quote from Hastings Shade. From a section titled Indian Law: Kindness – Honesty – Sharing, Shade says:
“Sharing—Indians believe in sharing whatever they have—material and spiritual things. Indians didn’t believe in owning lang, because they believe they were put here by the Great Spirit to take care of the land that was known to them as Mother Earth—this is why they were willing to share the land with the foreigners with they first arrived. Share by teaching—Share by giving—Share by being honest.” (p50)
