|
Articles Conference Reviews |
Secrets of Cherokee HistorySession B Featured Speaker - Gary Greene: Secrets of Cherokee History, A Storyteller's View "If we don't tell our stories, they will die" Gary Greene told his audience near the end of his 50-minute presentation on local history, native legend, and regional folklore. Greene's "deep roots" in the area that hosted the 2011 CCCC are clear. He welcomed his audience as a gentle host, speaking a native Cherokee greeting. He warned us to be on our guard—he'd recently taken first place at an area fibbing contest. He was a well-known liar. Greene spoke openly and humbly about recently losing his job with the state as an Interpretive Ranger at a number of local historical sites. "It's as if the State wants the history removed," he said. His story telling was marked by humor and friendliness; the personal anecdotes he interspersed between Cherokee myth and local legend affirmed Greene's relationship to the region, its history, and its stories. He narrated a number of the historical incidents that led to the Trail of Tears in 1838: the writing of the Cherokee constitution, the Louisiana Purchase, conflict between Andrew Jackson and local tribal leaders, the efforts of missionaries in the area to translate the Bible into Cherokee and the Indian Removal Act of 1831. "Learn the facts and form your own opinion," Greene reminded his listeners. Greene ended his session with a song he had written, borrowing a story he had found in a local library. When the soldiers came with bayonets to set a Cherokee family on what became the Trail of Tears, an old native man confronted the soldiers. "You may take the people from our homeland, but you will never wash our names from your waters." The old man had spoken a future-truth, according to Greene: the rivers of Georgia "today still have those native names." "Every story is true," Greene said. It is this note that still resonates with me, a qualitative researcher reliant upon stories and the politics of their telling for my own research trade and craft. I went to Greene looking for something a little different in a full day of sessions on research and theory. What I found was instead a reminder that story is central to our craft. A reminder that—researcher, theorist, administrator, teacher—we are all always at heart story tellers, we are all the interpreters of the history we witness and share. As Greene carried forward the Cherokee spirit, so each of us carries the spirit of our research participants, our students, and our institutions, spinning stories in our many and varied sessions at the 2011 CCCC in Atlanta. |