Principal Chief Michell Hicks

Cherokee Eastern Band

Promoting goodwill for the Cherokee Easternband and building strategic alliances with both political parties in Washington are among the many responsibilities Principal Chief Michele Hicks takes seriously in his role of being the leader of the Easternband in North Carolina.

In the late 1980’s before being elected principal chief, Hicks worked with the Tribe as their public accountant with a financial auditing firm in New York City.  He was later recruited in mid 1990’s by then, Principal Chief Joyce Dugan to be apart of her administration.  

Currently in his second term as Principal Chief, Hicks says building a sound infrastructure begins with forging strong allies.   He says…

“I think it is a matter of in regards to the political structure I spend quite a bit of time in D.C. and it’s a matter of making friends at that level. We’ve the Easternband have created some clout in D.C. My goal is to make sure we further expand that opportunity and I feel that we’ve done a pretty sound job on that.  That we have a lot of friends on both sides of the isle. And I think that’s important for tribes to understand today is that, you can’t play the political game on one side of the isle.  You have to play both sides of the isle and create as many relationships as you possibly can, because there is gonna be a number of issues that we can either agree with side or disagree with either side.  And we’ve always gonna need that assistance, so I think that’s very important in today’s strategy.”

And Chief Hicks says part of promoting this strategy means constantly re-educating the powers that be in Washington.  He says,

“I think that if you look at it, and I say this from an education prospective, for instance.  Our jobs are to travel to D.C. and educate congressionally and with the senatorial folks on Native issues and I think that we have done a good job of that.  You know the difficulty is there is always a turn over in those positions and you have a lot of states that have no Natives and that’s the difficult part. It’s always a continual educational process.  I think that as we continue to grow in our economic opportunities that we put before ourselves we get stronger.”

But Chief Hicks says getting stronger means also taking a hard look at the bigger concerns at home. 

“The biggest issues that we have here at home is continuing to keep up to par in regard to health cost. We’ve seen double digit increases in the past several years and to sustain as much as possible as we can.  Keeping up with this healthcare cost and the lack of the government keeping up to par with their responsibilities, there’s been a struggle.

Housing is a major issue for us. We have in our area here some pretty difficult terrain.  A lot of the more suitable sites for housing have been used up and so we have to become more creative.  Infrastructure cost to get back into the mountains is a lot more today.  That’s also a struggle for us.  We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the proper roads infrastructure and that’s something that we work very hard at, at the federal level to make sure that that’s in place.

I look at it from the sense of you look at the progress of the Easterband of Cherokee in comparison to other tribes you can’t over turn several hundred years of being held back in just a few years and find those true successes that may be the non-Indian eye would expect, things to improve overnight.  It just don’t happen that way.

So we’ve got continuing issues…diabetes is a huge issue for the Easternband of Cherokee.  It is estimated that one-in-five individuals at sometime will obtain this terrible disease.  Our goal is to be able to combat this by measures that are prior to being a very sick situation.” 

Although diabetes continues to be a growing health concern for the Easternband, Chief Hicks says he remains optimistic.

“We’ve been very successful with the care that we’ve been able to give our membership and we feel that we’ve done the necessary lobbying efforts at the D.C. level to make those type programs continue and again, not just for the Easternband, our benefit, but for all Native people, because it’s very important.

Also, very important Chief Hicks says is continuing to raise the standard of the quality of education on the Qualla Boundary. He says…

“Education is something that obviously the Cherokee people have always believed in adapting to the environment.  A lot of our practices have been accepted by the Europeans that came in. And whether we get credit for it or not it’s not a big deal to us.  But, education it’s our future.

We put a number of resources into our education.  We are reaching out to a lot of universities. For instance…we just signed a memorandum with the University of Tennessee where we are receiving up to 20 in-state tuitions in slots at that university. We’ve got a number of UGA; Perdue has come to the table, New Berry College in South Carolina, a smaller college.  A lot of these colleges are coming to the table now, reaching back, but again, it’s our responsibility as a Tribe to make sure that we are properly educated on the need of Native peoples.” 

But Chief Hicks says not all of the Easternband’s efforts to promote education have gone as smoothly.  In a recent land trade for building a new school …the Nation had to buy back land that was originally Cherokee territory.  He says…

“We recently did a land exchange with the park. That was a bear. Back around 1940 there was the Blue Ridge parkway came into play here in adjacent to our boundary and there were two parcels that the Tribe was interested in one was called the Raburns Track which was 400 acres, the other was the Boundary Tree track because Blue Ridge Parkway was potentially going to take over 300 acres for a trade of 1200 acres. And what very quickly happened was when legislation went to congress, the congress reneged.  In other words, we got 80 acres for over 1300 acres.  And so since that time we’ve fought to get our land back.  We actually bought for several hundred thousand dollars another 200 acre tract in exchange for 140 acres of that original 400 acres.  So it’s been a long-term struggle.”

But he says continually buying back land that originally belonged to the Cherokee Nation is one of the common struggles that they, a small nation have live with.  He says… 

“If you look at the first Americans. Some people argue, we’re not Native Americans, we were here first. We are here first. We’re first Americans. And if you look at the communities that were in place, we were operating governments.  I mean we had governmental oversight; we had trade practices with the other Native tribes that were here before the Europeans came over.

We were established and as you look at the history of the North Americans, I mean, that’s who we were.  We didn’t infringe upon. We were infringed upon.” 

And Chief Hicks says this clarification of infringement rights is what the U.S. needs to continue to understand. 

And I said this to Speaker Pelosi the other night; I had the opportunity to eat dinner with her and several other congressional folks.  I simply said this…”We have a number of issues that we want to educate you on tonight, but I think the most important issue that you all need to understand and that you cannot forget is that, we’re the foundation of this country, you can’t forget that.  And we are not going to let you forget that because it is so important to us as a sovereign nation and it’s so important to you because you’re leading this great United States and you can’t forget about how this foundation was created for this U.S. we are a very important part of that.”

And Chief Hicks says because of this historical importance, it’s vital that the Cherokee Nation speaks out when injustices to all Native peoples continue to be overlooked by the federal government. He says… 

“I believe the Cherokee people have a calling and I believe that calling is that we have to protect our identity through making sure that the language continues.  Making sure that the culture and traditions of our people is not forgotten and it continues to be practiced because someday I believe all Nations will come back to us and see the example that we’ve set and we’ve fought so hard for and say that, “You know that’s the way we should have done it…to protect. And maybe now we understand and think that’s a goal of the Cherokee people, and maybe that’s why we’ve had such difficult struggles. But at the end of the day I think our future is much brighter.”

Also Chief Hicks says ensuring that the future is brighter for the next generation means instilling the importance of the Cherokee culture and traditions early in childhood development. He says…

“I believe our youth will have to dig down even harder.  We have to make sure that we continue to place that interest in front of them through our school systems and educate them on, not just the language but being in the culture and traditions, the dances, the songs, our religious practices and as to how we move forth.  When I speak to students I humbly remind them that don’t just look at your Chief as just having the ultimate responsibility. We are a people, but we are the same people.  Even though we have different levels of responsibility the magnitude of those responsibilities are different. We’ve all got the same responsibility and you’ve got to maintain that.  All I can teach you as best I was taught.  We all have the same responsibility, that’s how I look at it.”

And he says that same responsibility means continually educating each generation and the world at large about the true history and legacy of the Cherokee Nation.