Study Abroad in the Cherokee Nation in review

Thinking back on this study abroad, it is difficult to say what I would have thrown out from the itinerary. Everything we did was in some way culturally relevant to the Cherokee Nation. The most important facets of our learning experience involved lessons in language, history, contemporary issues, and everyday life.

Though impossible to learn over a three week span of time, coming away from this trip having learned just a little bit of Cherokee is an accomplishment. A language so difficult it takes years to master, we tasted a mere morsel of what it is like to converse in Cherokee during these few weeks. We learned barely enough to understand what was going on in the three-year-old class at the Immersion school, but we went away with enough resources (notes, language packets, interactive CDs) to continue to practice the language and study a bit further. I wish we had had a greater amount of time for language instruction. We can come back home, however, and convey to others the importance of preserving the Cherokee language and share some of the efforts Cherokee Nation is making toward that preservation.

The Cherokee Nation history course we took with Dr. Coates was the skeleton holding the rest of the study together. Without knowing Cherokee Nation's history, it is near impossible to understand its culture or how it operates as a sovereign entity. For example, we learned about the Supreme Court case, Samuel Worcester v. Georgia, where the question was raised whether the state of Georgia had the jurisdiction to assert its power in the Cherokee Nation. Georgia attempted to gain control over missionaries by requiring by law any American citizen working for Cherokee Nation to get a license from the state that swears that citizen's allegiance to Georgia. Another one of these laws, known as the Georgia Harrassment Laws, included a nullification of Cherokee law and basically forbidding people from essentially being Cherokee. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Samuel Worcester, and by extension the Cherokee Nation, stating that tribal nations "hold a status higher than states" and hold the same authority as the Federal Government. So the ruling gives way to tribal sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation, which is upheld to this day.

What I would like to have had more time on the schedule for would have been a greater focus on contemporary issues facing the Cherokee Nation and other surrounding tribal nations. We touched on a few like the issues with the Freedmen, the United Keetoowah Band, Indian Child Welfare (I wish we had much more time there.), Tar Creek and the Superfund site in Picher, and other political and economic issues. It would have been great to have had time for a service project to do throughout our stay. I feel that an equal amount of time should have been devoted to contemporary issues as well as the Nation's history.

I also would have liked more time to spend with our NSU hosts. We did not really get to hang out with the NSU students except during our blocks of unscheduled time, which were few and far between. I think being able to interact with people on a personal level is important to truly learning what a culture is about. Not only that, it is nice just to be able to relax, make friends and have fun. The time we got to spend with Kinsey, Chris, Dedi, Asa, Eric, Travis, Chelsie, Sedelta, et al, I believe, was just as important as any classroom instruction. I am happy many of them chose to join us on our field trips, which made it slightly easier to accept that we had little free time.

All in all, I am happy to have gone to study abroad in the Cherokee Nation. It was an exhausting, challenging three weeks and a wonderful experience. We may have complained about being overworked/scheduled, but I am glad we were so busy. It was definitely preferable to being confined to a room or library with required reading. I hope those who choose to study abroad in the Cherokee Nation in the coming years have as great or even better experience than we did.