![]() For the Eastern Band, the fight over the Parkway provoked an intense internal battle over the best route to economic and cultural survival in twentieth-century America. For North Carolina State Highway Commission staff, securing the Cherokee right-of-way brought an unanticipated lesson in the complexities of Indian identity, and an unwanted foray into the confusing arena of federal Indian policy. There, North Carolina and federal officials struggled for five years in the 1930s to convince the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to grant a right-of-way for the Parkway's final fifteen miles across their lands, known as the Qualla Boundary.Īt Cherokee, the Parkway right-of-way question became entangled in a thicket of other issues related to New Deal-era federal Indian policy, managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a sister agency to the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior. The most complicated early controversy over the Parkway arose at Cherokee, North Carolina. Proposed Shenandoah - Great Smoky Mountains National Parkway, June 4, 1934 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |