Supporting Tribal Co-Stewardship and Land Return in Southern Appalachia

Abstract

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) are the descendants of Cherokee families who remained in their ancestral homelands by resisting the Indian Removal Act (c.1838), and those who have returned to their ancestral homelands after Removal.1 The Eastern Band is one of three federally recognized Cherokee Tribes, the others being the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band (both in Oklahoma).2 As indicated by the Royce schedule of Cherokee land cessions from original territories (Figure 1), Cherokee people share expansive ancestral homelands that span eight current US states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Presently, the Eastern Band are the only federally recognized Cherokee Tribe who live within the tribe’s original ancestral lands, making them uniquely positioned to manage their lands using traditional ecological knowledge rooted in thousands of years of place-based cultural land-management practices. Today, EBCI has over 16,000 enrolled members and a sovereign Tribal government with elected Principal Chief, Vice Chief, and twelve Tribal Council representatives, and a judiciary branch including Tribal Court.4 Following Removal, the Eastern Band resisted the U.S. government’s ongoing attempts to displace them from their homeland for several decades by claiming North Carolina citizenship and organizing to purchase back their land as it became available. During the 1840s-1850s, the Eastern Band legally reclaimed a significant portion of the Tribe's ancestral land by purchasing the 57,000 acres of land known as the Qualla Boundary (Figure 2).5 The Qualla Boundary is different from a typical reservation in that the Eastern Band had to buy their land back parcel by parcel in order to rebuild their land holdings after Removal.