Workshops and exhibition provide educational and cultural opportunties for all ages
Ninety-three different Cherokee artists are represented in a new exhibition at the Museum Center at Five Points in Cleveland, Tenn., now showing through October.
"Generations: Cherokee Language Through Art," features 85 original interpretations of a different character from the Cherokee syllabary.
The exhibit, organized by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Ok., includes art works from members of the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, Nation Immersion Language Students, and various Cherokee families.
To enhance the educational experience of the exhibition, the museum is presenting two cultural programs during Cherokee Family Day on Aug. 20.
"Whenever we do an exhibit we always have educational programming that enhances the subject matter that we have up. It is our way of providing hands on learning opportunities," Lisa Simpson Lutts, the museum executive director, said.
Cherokee educator Tammera Hicks will present two Saturday workshops on traditional Cherokee foods and medicine bags.
In the morning, Hicks will lead a discussion on the history and importance of traditional foods in the Cherokee culture and have samples and recipes of kanuchi nut soup, frybread, and corn soup.
"When we visit other tribes or families, when you enter the home, you are always fed," Hicks said.
Guests would accept whatever was offered to them by their host, Hicks said, noting it would be considered offensive to do otherwise.
"That is just the way it is with us. Whatever we have in our cupboard is what we fix and give to guests. It's kind of rude not to accept it," she said.
Hicks learned to make traditional frybread, which she says is a like a sweet flat biscuit, from a full-blooded Choctaw Indian woman whom she met at a Pow Wow.
"If you Аск questions you will get answers and that is how you learn. I have been very grateful that good people were placed in my path who taught me a lot of really good things that I can teach others in a way that might help them," she said.
Helping others make their own deerskin medicine bags will be the focus of the second workshop offered Saturday afternoon during Cherokee Family Day.
"We call it a medicine bag but it is each individual's medicine. No one else knows what is in that bag. No one else should touch it. It is very private," Hicks said.
Tiny objects chosen by the owner of the bag are placed inside to connect them to the earth and remind them who they are, Hicks said.
"They represent something different for each individual," she said.
Participants will learn about the importance of the medicine bag in Cherokee culture, then sew and decorate their own bags. What goes inside is up to the individual to decide after the workshop when they take their medicine bag home.
Additional learning events will be scheduled this fall in conjunction with the ongoing art exhibition at the museum, Lutts said, including programs involving traditional Cherokee sports and dancing.
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