[crickets chirping] - I'm going to see a friend of mine named Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle.

She's Native Cherokee, real fantastic writer, and this is Cherokee Homeland.

This is where the Cherokee were historically.

- So Dad painted that bear up there.

But there's a lot less of it than when I was growing up and everything now has to be labeled if it's actually Cherokee made or not.

See, like a section up there is all handmade Cherokee.

So that's my grandfather Ossly.

My dad is a little baby right there.

This is my dad and my aunt, and my aunt and my uncle.

And this is where we make the, the grits and corn meal.

[David] Where were those first people who were coming here as tourists, what were they, like how did they wind up here?

- When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park opened up, that really created an influx, but prior to that, there was also these kind of tourists who came to the Appalachian region with the arts and crafts, but really the National Park is the biggest reason.

My mom grew up here.

One of those little motels that we passed, her dad owned and so she grew up in town, and then they moved up the hill here, Schoolhouse Hill and lived up there.

[David] Describe Cherokee when you were growing up.

- The economy's always been tourism-based.

You know, I've worked in my dad's shop growing up and people come through and say things like, "Where's the reservation?

Where can I see the Indians?"

And you're standing on the reservation and you're talking to an Indian, you know, so, you know, it's comical, and I think that's the way we've always approached dealing with tourists and Cherokee is just take it with a grain of salt.

They help pay the bills and they're really funny and you can get some good stories out of 'em.

This is the most sacred place for the Cherokee.

It's the place where everything began.

So this is the center of the world, in case you were curious where that is.

Kadua is a place that we believe we all came from.

This is the most important place for Cherokee.

- If you were to ask somebody from California what Appalachia looks like, it's gonna be a white guy with a beard, overalls, probably barefooted, probably got a moonshine still, but regardless, it's gonna be a white guy.

[Annette] Yeah.

- And so we've refused to recognize the presence of people of color and I think that happens kind of all over the country, but what's really interesting to me about that here is that this is Cherokee country.

It's not so much that we dismiss those stories, it's that we completely ignore them, we overlook it, and I just don't, I don't know why.

- Cherokee culture, Native culture in general is, is... seen as the historical part of the American narrative, right?

We were the first couple of chapters and those characters die off and never returned.

But, luckily they're in our bloodstream somewhere way down there, right, and we can call on that if it behooves us, or, you know, it serves us in some way, but I think that's the biggest misconception is that it's dead, that it's old, that it's, you know, it's not living.

We've largely been in rural places and technology has changed that.

I think, you know, a lot of people are saying, "Why do they care about mascots now?"

Well, shoot, we've always cared about these things, but you couldn't hear our voices and now you hear our voices.

We've taken care of this land a lot longer than anybody else, so hopefully we can continue to do that.

This whole area is full of people who've lived through broken promises.

- Yeah.

[both laughing] [crickets chirping]