This has  been passed along by Sallie Andrew...thanks! 

THE LEGEND OF ROLAND THE CHEROKEE

Every year in the month of December, Vsgiyi, we Cherokee - Ani Yvwiya should remember this legend of a willful Cherokee man who gave his life to bring home the point of the desecration of the ancient Cherokee White or Peace Town of Chota (or Echota, Ijodi, Itsota), along with many other surrounding Cherokee Towns (Tenase, Tuskeegee, etc), the birthplace of Sequoyah, and all of the sacred places and remains of our ancestors in
and around them in the Tellico River Valley, as they were covered by the flood of the Tellico Dam.

Tellico Dam was a clear case of government overrunning the people and justice, for they ramrodded cases challenging the dam through the courts,and finally even passed a special law (the Duncan Amendment, attached to another law to force or "sneak" it by) to exempt the Tellico Dam from all federal and state laws, including the religious freedom, historical preservation and environmental laws, which could have stopped its construction, and which was signed on September 25, 1979 by President Jimmy Carter - a Georgian of all things.  This amendment was not even read on the floor of Congress before it was voted upon, by a prearranged "deal" with certain other Congressmen to subdue it, so the bill was passed - amendment and all.

This was not the first, for a similar thing was done in the 1960s to the Iroquois People for a dam in New York/Pennsylvania, during which President John F. Kennedy likewise ignored the pleas of their People.  We only heard of the Iroquois plight because we still lived in Pennsylvania at the time, and my Mom made a big deal out of that to make the point with us, since we're also a little bit Seneca as well.  And, of course, there was that Iroquois man who stood up during a nationally televised press conference and asked Kennedy about his position on the issue, and Kennedy just feigned ignorance and ignored him.

The Tellico Dam incident, too, was largely ignored by the public and press until very late in the process, the eleventh-hour as it were. Even then it wasn't covered nationally, only in the middle part of the country in and
around Tennessee - our Tanasi.  I know, for I was living in California at the time attending college, and nothing but the scuffaws of reporters about "the fight to save the snail darter" - a small endangered fish, reached us out here.  And the reports of the Cherokee plight didn't even reach those in nearby Indiana, for my family had moved there and were unaware of the real issues.

To make matters worse, this federal and state government boon-doggle took not just the 16,000 acres for the reservoir, but an additional 22,000 acres surrounding the lake, which was turned over to wealthy, powerful and
"politically friended" developers who got richer by developing fancy homes and resorts around the lake.  This displaced 340 families, some of whom were of Cherokee blood, from their homes, farms and businesses, who were the losers to the TVA's profit on their land which was "sold" to developers.  Now I'm in that business too, but shirk at the idea of anything so untoward, knowing that "civilization" can be accomplished while still
respecting the Ancestors and the rest of Unetlenvhi Creation - or God's Creation.

Afterwards, the TVA finally admitted that the Tellico Dam wasn't' necessary for flood control nor power generation ... in the overall scheme of things, which points some well intentioned governmental leaders did try to bring forth during the process - but were drowned out.  And I've heard that now the lake is so polluted that it isn't
fit for the recreational uses or drinking water.  Perhaps it is the revenge of our Ancestors? After all, its occurrence was foretold by them, as related in the Marylou Awiakta book, "Selu," quoted below:

"Another elder, Goliath George, age seventy-eight, who speaks only Cherokee, told in an affidavit about an elder he'd listened to as a boy - a medicine man, a spiritual leader.  He "would talk to my people from atop a hickory stump, notched so he could climb on top and look out over the valley.  He talked about what would happen in four or maybe five generations.  He said the valley would be covered with water - our forefathers would be on the bottom of the valley looking up through a wall of glass.  Tears rolled down his cheeks when he said that one day the people would once again be put to the test of holding on to that which is sacred or giving up forever another part of their lives." (as quoted therein, from The New York Times, November
11, 1979)

This process had been going on since the TVA's proposal for Tellico Dam in 1940, to the formal announcement in 1961, and the beginning of construction in 1967 ... and opposed all along by the Cherokee and many local non-Indian people alike.  It largely never saw the light of day in the national press until 1979, as the above quote notes, when they were in the process of forcibly evicting the last hold-outs as the dam gates were closed and the
flooding began.

However, many other plans and alternatives for preservation were proposed over time, including not building the dam at all, but the TVA just plowed forward.  They even "bought" favorable testimony and support from various
elected officials and even some "Indians" who would sell their ancestors. But the Cherokee plight was ignored by the national press until the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (Qualla Boundary in North Carolina) and the
Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma jointly filed a lawsuit in federal court, after exhausting all other legislative and administrative avenues for relief.

Finally, in December 1979, the following events occurred, as were related by Marylou Awiakta in her book "Selu," as well as in an earlier version of the story which she wrote for the May/June 1981 edition of the Tennessee Conservationist.

As quoted from:  "SELU - Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom by Marylou Awiakta,  copyright 1993,  Fulcrum Publishing,  printed 1994,  as follows:

"THE LAST DAY OF ROLAND THE CHEROKEE

"In the still of a December night, Roland walked resolutely toward the deserted archeological dig at Chota.  Ignoring the "No Trespassing" sign, he grabbed the barbed wire fence, felt the sharp memory of the day in court:
The eye of the judge had been cool.  Disdain flowed in the folds of his robe, Roland looked at him and knew -
                "The arrow is set to the bow.
                  The aim is drawn ...

"The judge sped the verdict to the mark.  "The gates of Tellico Dam will close.  The waters will rise."  His attitude was clear:  This so-called sacred ground is nothing to us.  The Cherokee are nothing to us.

"The verdict echoed years of words, concrete words that lay heavy in Roland's heart:  "Those Cherokee can't stop our dam for a mound of bones. Besides, it's heathen to dump the dead in a heap.  If they'd done it the
Christian way - one by one - we'd move 'em, just like we've moved our own. And that so-called sacred city, that Chota, it's nothing now but a fenced-in field down by the river.  Those Indians left more'n a hundred years ago.
We're gonna close them dam gates and let 'er flood."

"Roland tightened his grip on the wire, for the words carried an old sound,  "The Cherokee are nothing to us ... nothing to us ... nothing." Long before the Trail of Tears, his ancestors in the valley had heard the sound, and wise elders had said:

           "The arrow is set to the bow.
              The aim is drawn ...

"Blood dripped from Roland's palm, but he took no heed.  Behind him the damned-up river was beginning to overflow its banks.  Holding two of the barbed fence strands down with one foot, Roland pushed the other two upward with a thick coil of white rope held in his unhurt hand and climbed through. He walked across the field, through the dry leaves and high, withered weeds to the site of the council house, whose traces he'd helped archeologists lay clear.  A granite boulder marked the pit of the sacred fire, a fire the Old Ones said still burned deep within the earth.

"Here Roland stopped.  Taking a bundle from his jacket pocket, he carefully unwrapped a long-stemmed pipe and a small pouch of sacred tobacco and began a special long prayer ceremony for the Cherokee people.  The prayers were completed by daybreak.  Then Roland stripped away his boots, his denim jeans and jacket and piled them like a cairn of stones among the weeds.  Bared to the winter cold, as warriors had gone of old, he circled the boulder with rope, then sat cross-legged on the ground.  Drawing the rope around his waist, he tied it in seven knots ... tight ... tighter ... until he felt the brace of granite against his back.

"In silence Roland listened to the sigh of rising waters and watched the light in the eastern sky deepen from rose to powerful crimson.  Fixing his eyes on the crest of the mountain, he aimed his spirit to the mark.

                "You profane the sacred bones.
                 You pour concrete on the living.
                 I, Roland the Cherokee,
                 call this ground sacred.
                 I set myself an arrow to the bow."

"On a distant hill, as he'd promised Roland he would do, an old kinsman sat in the notch of a tall oak stump and kept the watch until the young man's spirit arched into the sky.  Then the old man climbed down from the stump
and took the message to the people:  "Begin again.""



Remember this story, and use it as a reminder that antipathy, indifference and ignorance are just as bad as outright prejudice and cultural genocide.
We all know of the mass graves of the "honored war heroes" of American (non-Indians) are respected and honored as "civilized" and "Christian" forms of burial, and would not have been so desecrated, if it were instead - say, a Civil War Battlefield.  And certainly the archeological sites of non-Indian America, Europe, the Middle
Eastern so-called "cradle of 'civilization'" and the like would not be so desecrated.

The feelings in non-Indian America still run deep that the Indian Nations were and are "uncivilized" and somehow less than Anglo-Europeans and their civilizations.  Granted, there are those whose don't feel that way, and who have stood up against such acts.  This is evident in the Tellico Dam incident, since the Duncan Amendment only passed by four votes in the Senate, and then, only after some serious "persuading" by then
Tennessee Senator Howard Baker to "horse-trade" some "political favors" for the needed votes.

And it still goes on even today within the Old Cherokee Homeland, in Tennessee, where developers are trying to bulldoze an ancient Cherokee Mound near Nashville for a Wal-Mart shopping center, or in North Carolina, where
they want to bulldoze an ancient Cherokee Mound for an industrial park in Franklin.  And it happens from ocean to ocean, and pole to pole, where non-Indian "progress" is impeded by the "trivialities" of "Indian Bones,"
"Indian Sacred Places" or "Indian Archeological Sites," and the like.

Perhaps, in this next millennium, we can bring things back around the circle to a place of balance.  This can be accomplished by educating more people about the things which have happened, and still happen, so that they will
instead step forward to speak out against continued oppressive and discriminatory acts against the original peoples of this land.

After World War II, the Allies required that the German people teach about the "Holocaust" in all of their schools, "... so that such an atrocity will never happen again."  They realized the power of educating a people about the truth and real facts of the matter, in preventing its recurrence and in gaining just reparations.  And yet, Hitler got his ideas from how Americans treated Indians and took over their adjoining lands to expand into the
present Trans-continental and island nation, as he had stated in his book "Mien Kampf" written in the early 1930's.

So we must ask, why hasn't the United States of America imposed the same policy to prevent a future "American Holocaust," the original holocaust has run for over 500 years and cost many more tens-of-millions of Indian lives
than the W.W.II Holocaust of the Jews and Eastern Europeans?  And why haven't admissions of dishonest dealings, guilt and culpability, just reparations to and just treatment of the current Indian and other Native Peoples been forthcoming?  They never will, without a more truthful telling of history, and a more timely and accurate accounting of current events.

No one can truly be free, while others are oppressed.  The American Indian Nations, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and other Native Peoples currently have only the degree of freedom and sovereignty which the U.S.
government chooses to allow - and which they never willingly relinquished. And even those rights and freedoms are regularly allowed to be put aside by political maneuvering, a corrupted judicial system - one where the
oppressors are the judge, jury, prosecution and defense, and the power of money and "connections" when it is convenient.  Non-Indian and non-native peoples should instead take note, that if this can be done to one class or
type of people, then it can easily be expanded to others - including their own.


Please fell free to pass this on to others, in the hope that more can be learned by being aware of the truth and the real facts and issues.
Teach the children, so that they will know better.


Reprinted under the Fair Use
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international
copyright law.
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