Professor discusses ‘Cherokee Children in Post-Removal Indian Territory’

25.5.16

Professor discusses ‘Cherokee Children in Post-Removal Indian Territory’: [cherokeephoenix.org] “An individual’s account of a traumatic experience, the contextual details, those easily dismissed as inconsequential, is precisely the information that points to how survivors of trauma reconstruct their lives,” she said. “The little things are actually the big things.”

Stremlau used various sources to “understand the experiences of Cherokee children” during the removal era. She used their words as recorded in the Cherokee Phoenix and Cherokee Advocate, political correspondence and oral histories collected from the period. She also used records compiled by church missionaries “who worked closely with Cherokee children and families.”

She said to discuss how Cherokee children survived post-removal one must also look at how they were raised in the old CN before removal.

“Cherokees believed children to be precious, valuable and sentient beings from birth. In a Cherokee society children were full persons with rights and responsibilities as kin. Of course as a matrilineal people, children are particularly precious to their clan kin,” she said.