Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club is a collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings around Western Cherokee world views. With beautiful illustrations by America Meredith, the book unravels the intricacies of Cherokee storytelling or gagoga (“he or she is lying”) through multilayered narratives from Cherokee elders, storytellers, and knowledge keepers. The book “explores how the members of the [Liars’] club conceive the power and purposes of Cherokee storytelling and how stories articulate Cherokee tradition, the ‘teachings’ that, say the storytellers, are fundamental to a construction of Cherokee selfhood and cultural belonging” (2). In collaboration with Hastings Shade, Sammy Still, Sequoyah Guess, and Woody Hansen (all members of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club, a group of Cherokee storytellers), Cherokee scholar Christopher Teuton brings together the first collection of traditional and contemporary Western Cherokee stories published in over forty years. Hastings Shade was former Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation and a revered elder and storyteller who initiated the Turtle Island Liars’ Club. In 1991, Chief Wilma Mankiller of the Cherokee Nation declared Shade a Cherokee National Treasure for his traditional knowledge. Sammy Still is a United Keetoowah Band (UKB) of Cherokee citizen and editor of the Keetowah News. Sequoyah Guess is also a UKB citizen and a novelist, filmmaker, and storyteller. Woody Hansen, a community health and wellness advocate of the Cherokee Nation, is a storyteller, snake handler, and reptile safety educator. Teuton is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and an associate professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Together, they were part of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club, which in many ways should be termed a sgadug, which is a “county, state or community.” Emphasizing belonging and rootedness, the informal club also mocks the bureaucratic paraphernalia of formal clubs in typical Cherokee-style humor. The volume is dedicated to Hastings Shade, who passed away in 2010, and four of the stories are presented in both English and Cherokee.
Keenly respectful of the cultural boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, the stories also foreground the sharing of knowledge as integral to traditional Cherokee culture. Exploring the fourteen-county Cherokee territory of northeastern Oklahoma, as well as places as far off as North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, and California, the book articulates stories as “living things” that change with the narration of each storyteller. As Anishinabe author Gerald Vizenor writes, “You can’t understand the world without telling a story....There isn’t any center to the world but a story” (Coltelli 1990, 156).
With a helpful note on pronunciation of Cherokee words, the book is divided into four chapters along with a detailed introduction entitled “Opening the Door” and an afterword poignantly entitled “Standing in the Middle.” Committed to both traditional Cherokee storytelling and the lived reality of Cherokee storytelling in the twenty-first century, “Opening the Door” traces Cherokee history from the earliest times in the mountains and valleys of southern Appalachia to the sixteenth-century epidemics and warfare, treaties, clan governance, and to the forced relocation or Trail of Tears (1838-39), to Cherokee Nation elections (1971), and to the present-day Cherokee people represented by three national governments recognized by the federal government. All such facets of Cherokee history are in fact emblematic stories of resilience, courage, hope, and sustenance of an entire community.
Each of the four chapters is centered around an ever-changing, fluid aspect of the Cherokee tradition. “Sagwu (One): Alenihv (Beginnings)” narrates origin stories of earth, fire, the Cherokee people, including the Cherokee migration story, and also of the Liars’ Club. “Tali (Two): Adanvsgvi (Movements)” highlights the journeys undertaken by the Cherokee people—physically and metaphorically. In the process, the idea of home is explored as both tangible space of rootedness, and sense of cultural belonging. The storytellers narrate their experiences of growing up Cherokee in the 1950s and 1960s, and Teuton himself speaks of his journey back home. “Joi (Three): Dideyohvsdi (Teachings)” is in the form of complex conversations on “teachings.” Archetypal animal stories in this context are not merely for children but convey crucial understandings of knowledge, social relations, and community responsibility. Finally, “Nvgi (Four): Ulvsgedi (The Wondrous)” divulge the interconnections between spirits and the world for the Cherokee community through stories of ghosts, medicine people, and mysterious phenomena. The stories in all chapters are interspersed with conversations and informal recollections on different aspects of Cherokee life as it has evolved through time. The afterword ends with a promise: “May we remember and share the teachings and stories we’ve learned from our elders and from each other” (250).
Indigenous studies today has been gaining much emphasis worldwide since it promotes and initiates cross-disciplinary research and teaching in a wide range of areas of relevance to Indigenous peoples. It is therefore imperative to have an understanding of Indigenous cultures and histories and ensure that Indigenous knowledge, perspectives, and experiences are respected, valued, accessed, and incorporated into all learning environments in the context of an increasing globalized world. Maori writer Linda Tuhiwai Smith examines how “[Indigenous studies] involves a revitalization and reformulation of culture and tradition, an increased participation in and articulate rejection of Western institutions, a focus on strategic relations and alliances with non-indigenous groups” (1999, 110).
Today, the concerns of Indigenous performers and scholars are directly related to the destructive presumptuousness, distortion, and ignorance to which many of their traditions have been subjected. This attitude has often been predicated on misguided notions of superiority on the basis of race and gender. One of the methods of challenging stereotypes is through the sharing of stories. As Aboriginal author, Thomas King says, “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (2003, 92).
Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club addresses issues of cultural literacy, the positioning of literary criticism, construction of boundaries, migrant and nomad contexts, and the fluidity of reading and storytelling as a border-crossing movement within the perspectives of Cherokee worldview and tradition. Juxtaposing the oral and the written, encounters between documented histories and narrated stories, Teuton and the members of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club tell stories of their peoplehood, which in turn forge relationships through humility and understanding.
Works Cited:
Coltelli, Laura. 1990. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
King, Thomas. 2003. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin, London, and New York: University of Otago Press.
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[Review length: 1069 words • Review posted on October 6, 2015]