Today we travelled back to the Cherokee capital of New Echota (as we are ending our year with some more local study of Native Americans). Teddy brought along another homeschooling friend this time. The boys had a great time together. They really absorbed a lot of the information from the movie and came away with the basics of the Trail of Tears.
When we went out on the grounds, we ran into a group of Cherokees on a road trip. They had travelled all the way from Oklahoma, following the actual trail. They had made several stops along the way to perform forgiveness ceremonies. The entire thing was being filmed for an independent documentary. The hope is that other Native Americans would participate in the process of forgiveness of the sins of our nation's ancestors.
Wow...what a profound event we got to witness. The boys (both of which have Cherokee ancestors) and I were actually invited to participate in the ceremony! I was so crushed that we could not as we had to get back home and they insisted that if we watched, we had to stay for the entire time. But I did get contact info and so hopefully down the road we can watch the documentary. We even got to tag along in their tour and go into some of the buildings that are generally closed to the public.
The boys also got to partake in a geocache adventure at the park which was great because they had to go around the museum property and read signs to get the clues to open the cache. Very cool!
