By Fox23.com News Staff
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — The Cherokee Nation will be providing education on various aspects of Cherokee history and culture during their spring “Lunch and Learn” lecture series at the NSU Jazz Lab.
“This is a monthly series of lectures where we have Cherokee artists, historians and authors,” explained Catherine Foreman Gray, the Project Manager and a tribal historian for the Cherokee Nation. “They will all come in, talk about various aspects of Cherokee and Oklahoma and Native history. We’ll range from Civil War in Indian territory, Oklahoma statehood, as well as our current day artists and some of the projects here at the Cherokee Nation that we have going on.”
Gray explained how the lecturers and topics for the series were chosen.
“We do try to find some of these different topics that people maybe haven’t heard about or don’t know much history about. We try to highlight some of our Cherokee authors if they’ve got a release coming, so in April we have Dr. Julie Reed coming and she’s going to be talking about her new book about Cherokee women, land and language. That’ll be an exciting one as well. I just try to find presenters and different topics and relate it to our history. This the the 250th anniversary of the United States and so for our July one, we’re going to focus on Cherokees in the Revolutionary War. We kind of try to tie them in with different parts of history and what’s going on in the community as well.”
Gray said the lecture series is free and open to anyone interested in learning more about Cherokee history and culture.
“Tahlequah is the capital of the Cherokee Nation. This is where we’re headquartered and there’s a lot of rich history here in Tahlequah. You can’t throw a stone or walk very many feet before you find something that’s related to Cherokee history and our culture. We have some great museums in downtown Tahlequah. We’ve got a lot of programming that goes on. This is just one of those that happens here on a monthly basis with our cultural tourism department.”
The next two upcoming lectures in the Lunch and Learn series will be:
- March 25: 1829 Georgia Gold Rush and Land Lottery with Cherokee Nation citizen and historical consultant LeeAnn Dreadfulwater.
- April 15: Land, Language And Women: A Cherokee and American Educational History with Cherokee Nation historian and author Dr. Julie Reed.
Each lecture will be held from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the NSU Jazz Lab in Tahlequah, located at 315 North Muskogee Avenue.
For anyone who isn’t able to make it to Tahlequah for the lectures, the Cherokee Nation will be posting each lecture to their YouTube page within a week or two of the lecture being given.
To access the Cherokee Nation YouTube channel, click here.
To learn more about the Lunch and Learn series, click here.
