Living Stories of the Cherokee by Barbara R. Duncan

Author:Barbara R. Duncan [Duncan, Barbara R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2014-12-15T04:30:00+00:00

»Edna Chekelelee

When I remember Edna, I smell woodsmoke and fry bread, I feel her big, warm hug, I see her eyes twinkling as she joked with her husband, Boyd, and I hope that she is happy in a heaven that includes both "Christians and buffaloes," as a friend of hers suggested. Edna passed away in 1995 at the age of sixty-five. She grew up speaking Cherokee in a very traditional family in the Snowbird community part of the Qualla Boundary lands located in Graham County, North Carolina. She was Wolf Clan, and she claimed Junaluska as her great-grandfather's brother. Edna worked with other people in the Snowbird community to clean up the area around Junaluska's grave in Robbinsville, to put up a fence and keep the area neat.

But Edna's real work was with children and young people. Although she didn't physically give birth to any babies, she adopted seven children and raised them—and then raised many more, taking in babies and teenagers alike. Even when they were all grown, Edna still worried about them, prayed for them, and helped them in any way she could.

Throughout her life she taught young people about their Cherokee heritage: she taught them what it meant to be Cherokee, and she taught them to be proud of it. She taught Cherokee language, which she spoke in the western dialect because of having grown up in Snowbird. She taught arts and crafts; she taught traditional Cherokee dances and led a young people's dance group for years; she sang with her mother and with several gospel groups; and every year, beginning in 1976, she hosted a three-day singing at her house and grounds, with music by white and Cherokee gospel groups from the mountains of North Carolina and from Oklahoma. A devout Christian, Edna also believed strongly in traditional Cherokee medicine and was comfortable with combining these beliefs. She used to sing "Oh, How I Love Jesus" and "Amazing Grace" in the sweat lodge.

Edna learned to tell stories, weave baskets, and use plants for medicine growing up with her extended family in the Snowbird Community. She loved to sit on the front porch in the evenings with the elders, listening to them tell stories. "At that time it didn't sink in, but the more I think about it the more it comes back to me." She doesn't remember how she started telling stories herself, but she has told stories to her children, extended family, and friends, as well as performing in public.

She finished high school, married her husband, Boyd, and was teaching about Cherokee culture in whatever ways she could for many years before it became as accepted as it is today. She always loved to travel. When I met Edna in 1983, she was traveling to folk festivals, school programs, and powwows throughout the region. She taught part-time in the arts and crafts program of the Graham County Schools so that she could teach the many Cherokee children in that school system about Cherokee culture.

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