Digitizing Cherokee Culture: Libraries, Students, and the Reservation

Anyone who has used the internet in the classroom surely knows that the technological revolution has produced as many pitfalls as it has miracles. From the perspective of multiethnic studies, the World Wide Web's dream of "cybertopia" must be carefully considered in relation to the corresponding nightmare of erasing racial identity. As Joe Lockard observes in the essay collection Race in Cyberspace, "'Virtual community' is an appeal for a transcendent communitarianism, one where race and ethnicity have been left behind as remnants of an Old World Order" (172). And while it is certainly true that faceless interactions on the internet can diminish the importance of cultural identity, I want to argue that the proliferation of digital archives, which make vast amounts of historical material available to a much wider audience, creates new opportunities (and problems) for helping students and teachers understand the complexities of race in America. More specifically, this article will explore the pedagogical possibilities associated with the University of Georgia's ongoing project to archive, preserve, and interpret Cherokee culture in digital form. (1) In the hope that other teachers may be able to learn from our triumphs and tribulations, I will retell the convoluted story of how the flagship university in the state responsible for the Trail of Tears (2) came to undertake the mission of digitizing thousands of documents related to Cherokee culture, building a pedagogical website designed to make these archives more accessible for classroom use, and reaching out to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation on reservations in western North Carolina. (3) While many scholars have noted the tendency of chat rooms, bulletin boards, MUDS, and MOOS to efface racial and ethnic identity, analogous problems associated with digital archives have not yet been as fully explored (see Nakamura, Kolko, Holmes, and Bell). The risks are perhaps even more profound given the much broader historical scope of archives. My intent here is to detail the struggle to correct the problematic subtext that was invisibly encoded into two of the largest digital archives related to Cherokee material at the University of Georgia: the Cherokee Phoenix, the complete record of the first Native American newspaper, 1828-1834, and the Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842, a collection of more than two thousand documents related to Indian history in the region. Make no mistake, these archives are a wonderful scholarly resource whose capabilities have not yet been fully appreciated by scholars, students, or teachers. And yet, as I began to work with these electronic resources in the classroom, it gradually became clear to me that, because the materials are limited to the pre-removal period, the archives inadvertently reinforce the Myth of the Vanishing Indian or the idea that the Cherokee "disappeared" from Georgia in 1838. (4) The dangers associated with this tacit erasure of the living Cherokee cannot be ignored, particularly at a university built on land that rightfully belongs to the Cherokee. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the US Supreme Court ruled that "The Indian nations ... retain[ed] their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil, from time immemorial," and hence Georgia's claim to the land was "unconstitutional, void, and of no effect" (Marshall 242, 225). My point is not to exacerbate or to assuage the all-too-deep laceration of white guilt; there is no balm in Gilead to heal such a wound. Rather, I want to analyze how digital archives can be incorporated into the classroom to improve the teaching of America's multiethnic heritage. More specifically, this article will detail how the archives were built, the complications of using them in the classroom, and the struggle to identify and correct the narrative of the Vanishing Indian that lies hidden beneath the glossy surface of search engines and hyperlinks. …