We acknowledge, with respect, that Nacoochee Presbyterian was founded in 1870 on the ancestral land of the ANIKITWAGI, the Cherokee Nation, on land that was the town of Chota. The Cherokee nation covered some 108,000 square miles in what is now the Southeastern United States consisting of 60 towns, two of which were here in the Sautee and Nacoochee Valleys.
Traditional stories instructed how to live and interact to care for ALL RELATIONS. The stories neither begin or end with the arrival of Europeans, the Treaty of 1819, the Land Lottery of 1820 or the forced removal of the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.
This act of recognition is not enough to overcome the settler-colonial history still attempting to eradicate indigenous people’s history and consciousness of this place, replacing it with stereotypes and cultural appropriation. There is still work to be done.
We acknowledge the Cherokee are still here: the Eastern Band in North Carolina, and the Western Band in Oklahoma. Let us commit to educating ourselves to be better neighbors to the Anikitwagi , and be good stewards of their traditional lands.
