NA21: Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

By Carol Patton Cornsilk (Cherokee), NA21 Executive Producer/Project Director

Traditional pottery techniques
LeAnne Howe (L) and Pam Belgarde (R) learn about traditional pottery techniques from Shirley Oswalt at Cherokee, North Carolina

The boom of a loudspeaker rumbles through the sundrenched treetops of the Great Smoky Mountains in Cherokee, North Carolina. An elderly Southern drawl shouts, “There goes Jesse Lossiah…he’s got the ball and he’s off with it. No one can catch him! And he’s around the goal post and back down toward center field. It’s Bears, 5 and Wolves, 0.”

Boys, aged 6-12, scramble around a golf ball-sized piece of deerhide stuffed with hair, trying to pick it up with long-handled sticks in a kind of wooden loop strung with deer sinew to form a net for the ball to rest in. The young Cherokee boys are engaged arm-to-arm, shirtless body-to-bare foot in the ancient Southeastern game of skill and masculine prowess known as stickball. Or merely “Indian ball” to the Wolftown teams.

Meanwhile, a half-mile away, Indian and white children spin wildly on amusement rides, join in 3-legged races, try their luck at the Trout Pond and vie for prizes in the blowgun and archery competitions. The line stretches 20 deep at Miss Emily Smith’s food stand for Indian dinners of fried chicken, potatoes, cabbage and Cherokee heirlooms bean bread and chestnut bread. It’s kid’s day at the 90th Annual Cherokee Fall Fair, the second of the 21st century.

Scenes like this and many others will be woven together like a fine doubleweave basket to create a dramatic portrayal of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in a 90-minute primetime special for PBS. One of two programs in the Native Americans in the 21st Century series, production began in early October and will continue through mid-November. The crew including Pam Belgarde (Ojibwe), Producer; LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), Writer; Jim Fortier (Metis-Ojibwe), Director/DP; Larry Pourier (Lakota), Associate Producer; Mike Filosa, Sound Recordist; and J.L Wolfe (Cherokee), Grip/PA have been welcomed with open arms by elders, tribal council and the community.

In consultation with Senior Producers Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa) and Phil Lucas (Choctaw), the team has begun interviewing community members from Cherokee whose stories will weave issues of health, sovereignty, identity and economic development into the film. Writer LeAnne Howe (Choctaw) is the virtual basketmaker whose first person journal of discovery will connect the stories through her own experiences as a first-time visitor to the reservation.

Belgarde, Howe and their team plan to create an intimate portrait of the Eastern Band which reflects the common experiences across Indian Country.

More on the crew:

Pamila Belgarde (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa)
Producer
Belgarde began her career in public broadcasting as the first Producer/Director of Native America Calling, the flagship daily public affairs program on American Indian Radio on Satellite (AIROS). She worked as a producer for Four Directions Health Communications, Prairie Public Television and Red-Horse Productions before starting her own independent production company, Well Native Productions in 2001. Her credits include production work on Turner's The Native Americans under producer Sam Hurst. She is currently completing Rez-Robics, a health and fitness video that incorporates Indian humor featuring Elaine Miles and Drew LaCapa.

Leanne Howe (Choctaw)
Journalist/Writer
Howe is an author, playwright, and scholar, and teacher. She has published legal essays, and written film scripts for public television documentaries. Howe's first novel Shell Shaker (Aunt Lute Books) won an American Book Award for 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation in May 2002. She has been a recipient of many prestigious writing fellowships, and her fiction has appeared in several anthologies and literary journals. In January 2003, she is the Louis D. Rubin Writer-in-Residence for the MFA graduate program at Hollins University, Roanoke, VA. In May 2003, she will be the fiction mentor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN along with Alex Pate, Wang Ping, and Cornelius Eady, and Jan Zita Grover. Howe has taught at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, and Grinnell College in Grinnell, IA, Sinte Gleska University on Rosebud Sioux Reservation in SD, and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. In September 2002, she will be teaching at the University of Cincinnati in Women's Studies.

James M. Fortier (Metis-Ojibway)
Director/DP
Fortier is an award-winning Director/DP who has worked in the Bay area since 1990. His recent work Alcatraz Is Not An Island premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, won Best Documentary Feature at the American Indian Film Festival and premieres on PBS this Fall. Fortier has also received awards for his cinematography on Today Is A Good Day: Remembering Chief Dan George (CBC), We Hold The Rock (National Park Service) and Looks Into the Night (Red-Horse Productions). Fortier's experience encompasses work for broadcast, cable, corporate, documentary and commercial clients including NBC. CBS, ABC, TBS, CBC, Discovery and National Geographic. He is also an accomplished Writer/Producer whose work Waasa-Inaabidaa: We Look In All Directions will be distributed by American Public Television this Fall.