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Cherokee elder Calhoun wins WCU Mountain Heritage Award
Cherokee elder Walker Calhoun received Western Carolina University’s 2004 Mountain Heritage Award Saturday (Sept. 25) in honor of his lifelong commitment to passing on Cherokee songs and sacred ceremonies to future generations.
WCU Chancellor John Bardo presented the honor during a noon ceremony, part of activities at the university’s 30th annual Mountain Heritage Day.
Cherokee traditionalist Walker Calhoun, left, accepts the 2004 Mountain Heritage Award from Western Carolina University Chancellor John Bardo. The award presentation was part of activities at Western’s 30th annual Mountain Heritage Day.
Born in Big Cove community on the Qualla Boundary in 1918, Calhoun attended the boarding school in Cherokee and served in the military in Europe during World War II.
He grew up speaking the Cherokee language and learned about Cherokee music and dance from his uncle, Will West Long, a medicine man with a vast knowledge of Cherokee culture, history and language. Long had been taught by Swimmer, a late 19th-century medicine man.
His uncle’s singing captured the imagination of young Calhoun, who could sing all the traditional songs before he was nine years old.
Following Long’s death in 1947, Calhoun and his relatives began teaching ceremonial dances to the younger generations. Through the years, Calhoun has continued to teach and practice those traditions; in the 1980s, he formed a family group called the Raven Rock Dancers that revitalized the stomp dance tradition of the Eastern Band.
Calhoun received the first Sequoyah Award in recognition of his contributions to the Cherokee at a 1988 meeting of the Cherokee’s Eastern and Western Bands – a gathering commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Trail of Tears. He received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1990, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Folk Heritage Award in 1992.
Calhoun also has contributed to the preservation of the Cherokee language, providing consultation for the Eastern Band’s efforts at language revitalization.
He has served as a consultant for the new $219 million National Museum of the American Indian, which celebrated its grand opening last week on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Calhoun was among a group of 125 Cherokees from Western North Carolina who took part in the museum’s opening festivities, which were attended by more than 20,000 Native Americans from 500 tribes nationwide.
Calhoun is the 29th recipient of the WCU Mountain Heritage Award, an honor given for outstanding contributions to the preservation or interpretation of Southern Appalachian history and culture.
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