Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, October 17, 2024 "We Are All Doing It Together"

A Liberal Dose

October 17, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“We are all doing it together”

The purpose of this column is to be political -in fact, not only to be political, but to be politically partisan. I was asked to write it to represent the liberal, Democratic perspective, as a counterbalance to the conservative writers then appearing on this page (and others since).

But everything isn’t political, even in this pretty evenly divided country, even in the final weeks of an election campaign. Some things rise above politics.

In the last few weeks, the Southeast has been wracked by two destructive hurricanes -and not just on the coasts, as we are used to. The effects have extended far up into the mountains. Not quite as far as us here in White County, but only a couple of hours east of us. Hurricane Helene devastated East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, and parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida (who was then battered a few days later by Hurricane Milton).

I have a lot of connections to Cherokee, NC. My primary field of historical expertise is Cherokee history and culture… but it also extends to the personal. I have friends there. My Cherokee connections actually extend to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and individual Cherokees living around the country. When I was first approached, in 2017, to participate in an interdisciplinary team at Tennessee Tech to apply for an NSF grant that involved cultural training for STEM grad students, with the goal of helping them learn to communicate with communities, learn from them, and work together with them, a Cherokee term came immediately to my mind: Gadugi. Gadugi is a sacred concept to the Cherokee people. It comes from a root word meaning “we all do it together.” In the old days, every Cherokee village had a community corn field which the whole town worked in, and which fed every family according to their needs. In more modern history, when Wilma Mankiller was secretary of state of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma (just before she became the first female Cherokee principal chief in 1985), they got a government grant to modernize their plumbing systems -but did not receive funds to hire contractors to do it. Every able-bodied person in the Cherokee Nation took turns digging ditches until everyone was taken care of. I told my colleagues this story, and they wanted to form a partnership with the Cherokees in both NC and OK for our project, which we received permission from the tribal governments to call Gadugi. Since then we have connected several grad students working in food, energy, or water with the Cherokee people.

One group we have interacted with often on the Cherokee reservation in NC is the Living Waters Lutheran Church, whose pastor and parishioners are Cherokee and which operates a food pantry that serves the poor and needy on the reservation. Students have made many trips there over the last year or so to volunteer in the food distribution. After the hurricane I reached out to see how they were. Cherokee itself was not as badly hit as other areas- but the warehouse that supplied the pantry was in Asheville, and was destroyed, leaving them with no idea where they were going to get the food and other items to help their people. Because they were not as badly hit, most of the help was going elsewhere.

I immediately put out the call on social media and by word of mouth that we needed donations -of food, water, diapers, cleaning supplies, hygiene products, or cash to buy them -to get to Cherokee the following Wednesday, because their need was immediate. The response was overwhelming. The TTU history department agreed to be a drop-off point for campus, and the Putnam County Democratic HQ (which is open all day during election season) agreed to do the same. But it was not a political initiative or mission, they were just the drop-off point. Many conservatives I know donated.

I want to thank the 70 or so people who donated, my wife Robin (who worked for years at the East Illinois Food Bank) for helping me organize it, and my colleague Dr. Sabrina Buer, grad student Creek Anderson, and undergrad student Jonas Carter for putting in a 13-hour day loading, driving, and unloading.

As we were getting ready to head out from my house on Wednesday morning -with a van, a student’s car, and a truck -there was still some room left on the truck, and still some money left. We stopped at Sparta Wal-mart to buy more in order to fill the truck. As we were loading $1700 worth of items at the checkout, random customers who’d heard what we were doing came to our line and pressed more money into our hands. The first person to do so was my good friend John Gottlied, who used to write the other column on this page and argue with me regularly about politics. One of the first people to contribute money electronically was the new adviser to the Tennessee Tech College Republicans (I advise the College Democrats).

Pastor Russel at the pantry was overwhelmed by our generosity and kindness, and said that it was proof that natural disasters are the time for humanity, not for politics, and he was right. It may be months before their warehouse is back up, so they continue to have need. When we got there late Wednesday afternoon they had already served sixty needy families, and had enough to get through the next day, but had nothing for after that. We will be going back on the second week of November, so if you’d like to help please contact me -Putnam County Dems and TTU History office will still be accepting donations, and if there is any business or office in Sparta that is open daily that would be willing to be a drop-off point, please let me know.

I also want to direct people’s attention to ways you can help people in East Tennessee that were impacted. My friend Samantha Satterfield, of Sunseeker Outfitters here in White County, is collecting goods for another trip to East Tennessee. Samantha, a travel nurse, tells me communities out there need water and food, but also need medical supplies. She was recently in Newport and plans to get to other communities out that way. Text her at her business number, (931)319-1906 , or email her at happyhippiesam@gmail.com . You can email me at tdsmith@tntech.edu.

Lisa Russell (Pastor Jack’s wife, who runs the pantry) asked me to tell you this: “You have no idea how many families these supplies will help. You are awesome! Please thank EVERYONE who helped with all of this, we appreciate all of you!”

There is no Cherokee word for goodbye. They say dodadagohvi- “we will see each other again.”

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party, and the board of the Tennessee chapter of the American Indian Movement-Indian Territory. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE