Post 4 - Jace Weaver

On our first day we visited the Cherokee Nation Heritage Center. This was a great introduction to the course for me because we got to see what the Georgia students were accomplishing and they questioned us about our agenda. At first some of us were hesitant the answer them because we didn’t know how to approach describing our very eclectic and multi-focused and multi-tasked schedule. Eventually we described our agenda and began to find our voice and purpose, like they had discovered a week prior to our arrival. The Heritage Center established for me why I came to Tahlequah because it opened up a space that was accepting to ask questions and discover answers in my own way and pace.

The time touring the reconstructed community at the Heritage Center site was nice because it gave a lot of time for me to think and get to know everyone that I would be spending the next three weeks with. Not only did I get to become acquainted with everyone, it was also in a foreign environment for everyone – not just me. It wasn’t like anyone had a heads up or a prior comfort established in the place that we would be calling home. Most interesting for me was how I imagined myself joining a community with new people in a new place, just like the Cherokee had to do all too often during Allotment, Removal, Trail of Tears, and Land Cessation due to treaty after treaty. Another example of similarity is how the Cherokee reestablished their horticultural grounds and like us we established our relations with one another so that we could get to Wal-Mart or Reasor’s for our food. It’s awkward even today, like it most definitely was for the Cherokees to reacclimatize and work together to survive.

Another aspect of my day at the Heritage Center that thrilled me was meeting Jace Weaver. Last semester I read, in Tol Foster’s Native American Novel’s class, an excerpt from his book “That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community.” I could finally put a hand shake and a face with the author of this highly pertinent work to this time in my life as I was submerged into Native American Literature and Studies face to face.

Weaver states “that simple essentialized identifications based on race are not adequate” (6). This is how I feel after becoming a part of Tahlequah, as Julia Coates says to feel free to become a part of the “we.” Meeting Jace Weaver in an foreign environment with other unknown individuals to me became almost comforting because we were all in it together and we have come together within a community (like the heritage center’s reconstruction) to think and build, grow and find food (like going to Wal-Mart) just like anyone would do. All this is not done because we are of the same race and none of us discriminated because of race (or because they were from the state of Georgia). I feel I became a part of the “we” the moment I stepped off that NSU mini-bus and set eyes on Jace Weaver and the Heritage Center. I was one step closer in the grand scheme of it all of getting rid of the “they” and the “us.”