{"id":237,"date":"2019-04-12T20:13:34","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T20:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whattoseeinwashingtondc.com\/?p=237"},"modified":"2022-02-17T18:55:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T23:55:24","slug":"cherokee-days-at-american-indian-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whattoseeinwashingtondc.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/12\/cherokee-days-at-american-indian-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Cherokee Days at the American Indian Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you meet him, Vyrl Keeter introduces himself as a retired educator but after watching his passion as a Cherokee Nation culture keeper, you’d be right to wonder if he’s ever really left education behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This weekend at the National Museum of the American Indian, you’ll find him sitting just off the atrium, the clack of stone hitting stone and breaking shards of rock leading you to the booth where he’s demonstrating the age old process of arrowhead making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if the next generation doesn’t know how to create the tools and weapons your people have used for thousands of years? As a recognized Cherokee National Treasure, Vyrl Keeter is keeping the flint knapping traditions of the Cherokee Nation alive. As visitors wander by he engages in conversation and is quickly telling stories of the difference between types of stone and arrow head designs. Arrows he’s made and arrowheads he’s found on his property. Past and present exist side by side in the same time conversation…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he works, a rough chunk of stone becomes a roughed out arrowhead in 20 minutes time. To my eye it looked like a random process but Vyrl is clearly reading the stone and it responds to his hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting here today, he’s 1,230 miles from home in Muskogee, Oklahoma. But three floors above him in the museum, the Treaty of New Echota was put on display this morning; the very treaty that laid the groundwork for the Trail of Tears and the forced migration of his ancestors from Georgia to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Details from the Treaty of New Echota (1835) on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on Friday, April 12, 2019 in Washington. After the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830, a small group of Cherokee citizens began to believe that they had no choice but to give up their Nation\u2019s land and move west. Although they had no legal right to represent the Cherokee Nation, they signed the Treaty of New Echota with the U.S. government in December 1835, ceding all Cherokee lands in the east in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi River and compensation. (Paul Morigi\/AP Images for Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But as disturbing as the historic relocation is, a people that lose their culture lose something even greater than their homeland. And Vyrl Keeter is a part of keeping the culture alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So stop by the American Indian Museum this weekend to experience Cherokee Days and meet Vurl and other Cherokee like him, who are proud of their culture and fighting to keep their culture alive. And when you meet him, you to will realize he may think of himself as a retired educator, but he’s never left it behind.<\/p>\n\n\n