- Writer | October 16, 1942 -
Every year, I travel extensively in the autumn and the spring. I set most of the winter and summer aside for my family and my own tribal relatives. But during that traveling time, I often find myself visiting other native communities around the continent - perhaps a dozen or more each year.
Joseph Bruchac
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The Trail of Tears should teach all of us the importance of respect for others who are different from ourselves and compassion for those who have difficulties.
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I did not walk every step of the Trail of Tears at one time. Instead, over the last 20 years, I have walked various segments of it in Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
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To begin with, I want to tell a good story, a story that people will listen to and that they'll think this is true, even if it is a story that might be defined as - as myth or legend or even fanciful.
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At a time when Europeans already had a long history of violent contact with Native people, Lewis and Clark made most of their journey in peace.
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The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.
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One of the things I've been taught by Native American elders is the importance of patience, of waiting to do things when the time is right.
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Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.
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The special skills necessary for being a storyteller are really very simple. I actually talked about them in a book of mine called 'Tell Me a Tale.' Those basic skills are to listen, to observe, to remember, and to share.
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It is amazing to me that so little is still known about the Trail of Tears or the lives of the Cherokees themselves.
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My own special knowledge is about the Abenaki people and, to some degree, my Iroquois neighbors. But whenever I write anything about another tribal nation, I always get a lot of help. Not just from books, but from people who belong to that tribal nation.
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I grew up in the small town of Greenfield Center, New York, which is in the foothills of the Adirondacks not far from the city of Saratoga Springs. It is a place I love, close to the forests and the mountains.
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