Oct. 21, 2009

California State University, Monterey Bay will celebrate National American Indian Heritage Awareness Month with a screening of the award-winning documentary “Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy” on Nov. 9.

The community is invited to the free screening, which will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. in the World Theater on Sixth Avenue.

The film documents the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma in 1838. More than 16,000 Cherokees were forced to Oklahoma so whites can grab arable lands and prospect for recently discovered gold in Georgia.

“The policy of President Andrew Jackson led to a brutal, cross country trek in which nearly a quarter of the tribal citizens died from hunger, exposure, disease and sheer exhaustion,” director Chip Richie notes on the film’s website. “And these were primarily peaceful farming families who lived in houses, owned businesses, had their own newspapers and abided by their own constitution.”

Cherokee actor Wes Studi (“The Last of the Mohicans” and “Dances With Wolves”) hosts the film in the Cherokee language (with subtitles). The rest is in English, with American Indian descendants James Earl Jones, James Garner and Crystal Gayle narrating or doing voice-overs.

The movie shows the long period of colonial acculturation, in which Cherokees sought peace with whites. It explains the split between Indians who wanted to stay on ancestral lands and others who hoped to evade white land-grabbers forever by moving.

Steven R. Heape, the film’s executive producer and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, will be on hand to discuss the film and answer questions. Also in attendance will be Patti Jo King, American Indian historian and lecturer at the University of Oklahoma who was an adviser on the film.

The film captured an impressive array of awards, including Best Documentary at the 2006 American Indian Film Festival. Tribal representatives from American Indian Nations of Central California will be in attendance.

Driving directions and a campus map can be downloaded at csumb.edu/map. More information is available by calling 582-3890.

"Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy” will remain the definitive film treatment of the subject for years to come. it is an eloquent retelling of an important chapter in American history and it deserves to be viewed widely." – Journal of American History