Public Indians, private Cherokees tourism and tradition on tribal ground

Beard-Moose, Christina Taylor. (Author).

Summary: A major economic industry among American Indian tribes is the public promotion and display of aspects of their cultural heritage in a wide range of tourist venues. Few do it better than the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, whose homeland is the Qualla Boundary of North Carolina. Through extensive research into the work of other scholars dating back to the late 1800s, and interviews with a wide range of contemporary Cherokees, Beard-Moose presents the two faces of the Cherokee people. One is the public face that populates the powwows, dramatic presentations, museums, and myriad roadside craft locations. The other is the private face whose homecoming, Indian fairs, traditions, belief system, community strength, and cultural heritage are threatened by the very activities that put food on their tables. Constructing an ethnohistory of tourism and comparing the experiences of the Cherokee with the Florida Seminoles and Southwestern tribes, this work brings into sharp focus the fine line between promoting and selling Indian culture.

Record details

ISBN: 9780817381158 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0817381155 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9780817316341 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0817316345 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780817355135 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 0817355138 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: electronic resource
remote
1 online resource (viii, 185 p.) : ill., maps
Publisher: Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, c2009.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [155]-179) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Researching the obvious : tourism and the Eastern Cherokee -- The trail of tourism -- Academic perspectives on tourism and the case of Cherokee, North Carolina -- Eastern Cherokee ingenuity -- Disneyfication on the boundary -- Mass tourism's effects on indigenous communities -- Epilogue : an Eastern Cherokee renaissance.
Restrictions on Access Note:	Restrictions unspecified
Reproduction Note:	Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011.
System Details Note:	Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212
Action Note:	digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Source of Description Note:	Description based on print version record.