My 12 year old son is a history buff, but a Cherokee/Choctaw one. After riding along (in a car) on a thousand mile journey following the Cherokee Nation Remember the Removal riders from New Echota, Georgia to Tahlequah, Oklahoma back in 2016, he became obsessed with Andrew Jackson and his wicked ways. Every time he sees a Cherokee person doing something that makes him proud, he’ll say: “don’t you think Andrew Jackson would be so maaaaad if he could see us now?”

It’s much more complicated than that buddy, but yeah, maybe so.

He says the same thing every time we see a Cherokee Nation car tag on a vehicle driving outside the Cherokee Nation. He waves and thinks he might know the driver (fat chance since there are 350,000+ of us) and then returns to his fixation about how his mere modern-day existence might irritate ol’ Andy Jackson.

Tennesse was Jackson’s state but it was also the epicenter of part of my family’s history and existence, at least the ancestors that lived/thrived in the Tennesee River Valley prior to Cherokee removal. I would later become indebted to Tennessee on a personal level, for the wealth of new friends and useful knowledge/skillsets I picked up during my EMBA studies at the University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business.

On a subsequent visit back to the UT-Knoxville campus on the invitation of the Native students group, Tennessee gave me Nat Welch (Eastern Band Cherokee). She was then a PhD candidate in Kinesiology and Sports Studies. I think the world of her and have enjoyed cheering her along as she takes her next big steps toward living her dreams. Many of us have bemoaned the November (Indian month) speaking circuit, where all the Indigenous academics are invited (sometimes last minute and rarely with an honorarium) to a campus near you to give a lecture on Indigenous things. This happens all over the United States and to be sure, it’s better than the days when we were completely invisible.

As much as we sometimes groan or joke about it, most of us go and go and go for the connections we will make with the next generation and for the responsibility we bear to tell our stories. We’ll eventually get to a point where Native scholars and other Native professionals are sought out more to be the CEO or the university president and the fully promoted and tenured faculty member. When these things happen, we are part of the everyday fabric of a campus life, all 12 months each year. We are making progress on that front and it’s been a sea change in the last few decades. So, keep accepting those invitations when you can, just make sure it’s not too much at the expense of your own health and wellness. That doesn’t serve any of us well. We need you for the long haul.

Back to Nat. Fast forward a few years, Nat is now Dr. Welch, a professor of Sports Management in the School of Business at Linfield University about an hour south of Portland, Oregon. One of the rising stars in Indian country in the ranks of the new tenure track Native faculty out there. She is the mastermind behind Creative Native, the vehicle through which she engages her passion to promote and serve the Native American community via creative stories. Today she hosted me on Creative Native’s podcast, Episode 21 as we talked about it all – including the “why” behind the launch of IndigenousWell.

Nat is an amazing athlete and scholar and has promised to share a story of her own here soon. Check back for that. You won’t be disappointed, even if it might tick off one of the ghosts of Hermitage past.

Go Vols!