NEWS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS)
Date: March 5, 2009
Mary Jo King, 270-706-8530, maryjo.king@kctcs.edu
Cherokee Leader to Speak at ECTC
"A Cherokee Perspective on the Trail of Tears" will be presented by the Honorable Troy Wayne Poteete, Justice of the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation, on Thursday, April 2 at 5:30 p.m. in room 112 of the Administration Building at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. This lecture is free and open to the public.
The forced march to remove approximately 17,000 Cherokee during the winter of 1838 from their homeland in Georgia, through Kentucky to Oklahoma, has come to be known as 'The Trail of Tears.' Some 4000 Cherokee died during that march and their imprisonment in stockades before the march. Conducted by the U.S Army, the Trail of Tears has become emblematic of the broken treaties and policies that removed many Indian nations, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creeks, and Seminoles, so that their land could be taken by white plantations and commercial interests.
The Trail of Tears, its history and its relevancy, is a topic on which Troy Wayne Poteete is eminently qualified to speak. He was appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation in October 2007 and has been Vice-President of the National Trail of Tears Association since 2005. But his involvement with the affairs of the Cherokee Nation started long before he achieved these positions. In 1994 he was a founding member of the National Trail of Tears Association, and has been a board member ever since. From 1991 to 1999 he was the Representative of the Three Rivers District on the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council, and also in 1991 was appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma to the National Park Service Trail of Tears Advisory Council. He was founder and first president, in 1991, of the Cherokee Dixieland Historical Society. In 1992 he became Executive Director of the Cherokee Nation Historical Society, a position he held until 1995. From 2000-2007 he was Executive Director of the Arkansas Riverbed Authority, a position he left to join the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court.
Justice Poteete graduated with a B.A. degree in 1977 from Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, OK and in 2001 received his J.D. degree from the University of Tulsa College of Law.
For more information about this event, contact Pem Buck at 270-706-8510 or e-mail pem.buck@kctcs.edu.
For most Kentuckians, higher education begins at KCTCS. Our statewide system of 16 colleges and 65 campuses provides citizens throughout the Commonwealth with a quality education that is both accessible and affordable.