Dihiya Unali--River Cane Our Friend--Cherokee Nation River Cane Initiative

Contemporary western Cherokee continue to demonstrate the practice of traditional ecological knowledge through a unique network of gathering and organizing spatial, temporal, and social frameworks of environmental knowledge systems specific to local flora and fauna found in northeastern Oklahoma.  Recently, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma initiated a river cane conservation program by conducting on-going research with Cherokee Elders and Traditionalists, and the University of Arkansas’ department of anthropology toward recording spatial distributions of canebrakes located on tribal land holdings through GIS mapping, gathering and organizing temporal indicators of environmental determiners, and re-evaluating and valuing the social perceptions and allocations of traditional Cherokee natural resource management as applied to river cane.