TRC57 Speaker Series

an Indigenous learning series

Christopher Teuton

Topic:Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World

with Christopher Teuton
Webinar Date: March 27, 2024 / 12-1pm PT
Positioning our responsibilities as humans to our more-than-human relatives, our conversation will center on ancestral teachings informed by Ayetli gadogv – “stand in the middle” a Cherokee perspective of the natural world that has been shared amongst the many generations. From clouds to birds, oceans to quarks, an expansive Cherokee worldview of the living Land lays a foundation for humanity’s responsibility within it. Join us for this powerful discussion with Christopher Teuton.
Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World
Christopher Teuton
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Book Club Questions

Some questions to guide discussion of Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World:

Which stories and teachings in Cherokee Earth Dwellers have stayed with you?

Share these stories with one another and reflect on the images and teachings that speak most deeply to you.

A Cherokee idea of wellness, tohi oyelv, or “peaceful body,” involves seeking dynamic balances within one’s self and through respectful relationships with other forms of life. In what ways do respect, peace, relationship, and dynamic balances impact your own sense of wellness? 

What lessons may be drawn from traditional Cherokee ways of understanding and seeking wellness?   

In Cherokee Earth Dwellers, the elder Loretta Shade says it’s important to know the names of the creatures with which we share our world. How have names and naming shaped your own life? What does your own name mean to you, and what names impact your experiences of your family, friends, and the lands and waters where you live?

Which elders and knowledge keepers in your own communities and families would you like to speak with about the natural world and our place in it as human beings? What would you like to ask them? What aspects of the natural world would you like to know more about?

After reading Cherokee Earth Dwellers, are there ways you’d like to change or deepen your relationships with the peoples you interact with?

About Christopher Teuton

Christopher B. Teuton (Cherokee Nation) is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle, where he is a scholar of Indigenous oral and written literary studies, community-based cultural heritage and language revitalization work, and fieldwork exploring the perpetuation of Indigenous arts and epistemologies. Teuton is co-editor and co-author of the award-winning Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), author of Deep Waters: The Textual Continuum in American Indian Literature (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), and author of Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), a collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings about Western Cherokee life, beliefs, history, and the art of storytelling. In 2013 Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club received an American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation. His recently published book, Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World (University of Washington Press, 2023), co-authored with the late Cherokee Nation leader Hastings Shade, articulates a Cherokee view of nature grounded in Cherokee names for that world as well as the stories and reflections of the elders who know it. Teuton is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.