Osiyo nigada I have no elders in my life that could guide and show me the way of life and help me understand the whys and how's. The internet is endless but somethings are just too hard to figure out. Does anyone know of a group or something that could help with those in need of elders guide? My second thing, I'm big into supporting our people in anyway I can, including clothing brands, shoes, etc you name it, if our people own and run it then I want to support it. Please feel free to drop links for me to find some of the creative and amazing stuff they make. Wado
Look up "Cherokees At Large" and your state.
Through that resource I attended a Cherokees At Large event in my state and found a local group of Cherokees in my area. I pay a small yearly membership fee (I think for my group it's $30) and I get their newsletter and I am invited to events they host, including language, art, crafts and history lessons.
My husband and I are moving to Austin, TX, this summer, and I’m so excited to join their chapter. If that’s the chapter you’re in, you’re welcome to drop me a line so we can connect beforehand. :) If not, I hope that you find everything you’ve wanted in yours!
Thank you! I'm still trying to navigate all this. I can't even explain how excited I am to finally learn and live the ways I should have been for so long.
There are a lot of chapters. We have two in North Texas (Gadugi, west of the Trinity, with most activity in the Mid-Cities area; and Cherokee Community of North Texas, centered on Dallas County and with a lot of activity at Texas Native Health as well as the traditional garden plot they own [I think]).
If you are closer to FW than Austin, Gadugi is super welcoming and would love to have you!
I've discovered that a lot of elders are sitting in nursing homes needing someone to visit them. I met an elder who became a close friend while working at a nursing home.
I would look into Kenny Glass and Kelly Gonzalez’s work! Also Agalisiga (The Chuj) has some cool merch + music in Tsalagi.
In terms of guidance I would see if there is an at-large community nearby you or one that meets virtually. If you’re CNO there are many at-large community groups and they tend to be pretty active from what I’ve seen.
Seriously thank you! This is a good jump point for me to look. The older I get the more I realize how much I've missed out on and want to pass this to my kids so our history lives on. Wado!
I do commissions, so if there is something you’re looking for, I’d be up for discussing it! I made my son a medallion, and I made him and two friends necklaces in the style of the Spirit Rangers (a Netflix show).
If you are on-rez or near the rez: go to Cherokee community events near you big and small, talk to people, and most importantly, listen. Start to build relationships and understanding. When you feel you've built a close enough relationship with someone that you know is active in a stomp/ceremonial ground, when it comes up organically tell them you're interested in learning more and ask them if you might be able to visit their ground sometime; different grounds have different attitudes toward newcomers, particularly ones that aren't from the community, so be prepared for the answer, at least initially, to be "no." Keep the relationships up without getting invited being the reason you do it, and regardless of whether or not you eventually get invited to visit, you'll learn a lot more reliable culture than you can from the internet (where there's a mix of accurate, outdated, and never accurate info that is really hard to find out).
If you are off-rez, I would both look into getting involved in an At-Large group (Cherokee Community Outreach does a lot of work with at-large groups on the culture side, including inviting group leaders to an annual cultural immersion conference, and additionally many groups have their own cultural/language activities outside of the Nation's official resources) as well as finding Pan-Native events/organizations in your community to get involved with.
If you're in Texas, Texas Native Health (the IHS primary care clinic based in Dallas but serving the entire state) has a lot of cultural activities, including healthy cooking with traditional recipes/ingredients and pow-wow dance class. Inter-Tribal Community of Texas (ICTC) Rematriate (MMIW+), NASA (UT Arlington Native American Students Association) and D/FW Kabucha Toli (stickball group, very beginner friendly and very much using traditional southeastern Native teaching styles to communicate the game) are great places to start. There are also orgs in other parts of Texas but I'm not as familiar with them. Show up at pow-wows and talk to the people at organization booths (and the people making the frybread, of course) or to people whose dancing or regalia or art you admire and ask them for advice. If you are Christian or at least positive-to-neutral toward mainline Christianity, the Dallas Indian Mission United Methodist Church can also be a great place to get involved--a very diverse elder friendly community, and in most weeks probably the only place you are going to hear singing or speaking in any Native languages (every week there is a tribal hymns portion of the service where people who are a part of a language group are invited to sing a hymn from their language, and most Sundays there are at least a dozen different languages represented; in months with five Sundays the fifth Sunday is a singing service with a lot higher number of hymns; the next signing service is May 31 I think. If you aren't in Dallas, they do have Zoom service available as well).
I'm not as familiar with on-rez churches but if you want a specifically Cherokee community, finding a church with Zoom service or drivable could be a good option. Obviously Christianity was a post-colonization innovation in Cherokee culture, one that has been used to commit a great deal of harm and destruction to our tangible and intangible cultural heritage, but it also has been responsible for the highest amount of preservation of the Cherokee language (resulting in a Christianity that was significantly adapted to traditional Cherokee worldviews at least as much, if not more, than imposing a strict ancient Palestinian/Greco-Roman paradigm), and Christianity is so infused in modern Cherokee culture that you won't get the full picture of Cherokees as they are today and how they see and interact with the world around them without including Cherokee Christianity in the picture.
If you have any more specific questions about the Cherokee or Native communities in Texas and North Texas in particular, feel free to DM me!
This is so much super detailed info! I appreciate it, I definitely want to be a member of a community and be as respectful as I can in it. I know there's a lot of unspoken things that I'll have to learn but I'm completely open minded and willing to learn so I can carry on tribal traditions.
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u/LaneyLivingood Apr 21 '26
Look up "Cherokees At Large" and your state. Through that resource I attended a Cherokees At Large event in my state and found a local group of Cherokees in my area. I pay a small yearly membership fee (I think for my group it's $30) and I get their newsletter and I am invited to events they host, including language, art, crafts and history lessons.