Dr. William Anderson, Professor of History

Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama and joined Western's faculty in 1969. He has been teaching Cherokee History since the 1980s and is the author or editor of four books including Guide to Cherokee Documents in Foreign Archives (1983, with James Lewis) and Cherokee Removal: Before and After (1991). Cherokee Removal received the Gustavus Myers Award for the Study of Human Rights.

Dr. Anderson has written book chapters, reviews and forewords as well as numerous articles for journals and encyclopedias. He serves as Editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and has acted as consultant to groups including Sesame Street, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.

(828) 227-3838
Email anderson@email.wcu.edu

Roseanna S. Belt, Director of the Western Carolina University-Cherokee Center

Born in Cherokee, N.C., and an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), Belt has been director of the Cherokee Center since June, 2001. She received her bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she worked for 10 years as a University counselor, and earned her master’s degree in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Upon returning to Cherokee, she received certification in school counseling from Western.

Belt’s current position with Western allows her to continue her work with Cherokee students. Her goal is to prepare more Cherokees for college and to encourage them to attend. Belt also serves as a clinical faculty in the School of Education and Allied Professions. The course she co-teaches is “Education In A Diverse Society.” She serves on several university committees related to diversity and minority issues, as well as working closely with the Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in building the Cherokee Studies program at Western.

(828) 497-7920
Email rbelt@email.wcu.edu

Tom Belt, Elder-in Residence, Cherokee Language Instructor

Tom Belt is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and a fluent Cherokee speaker. He attended the Universities of Oklahoma and Colorado and taught the Cherokee language at the Cherokee elementary school for seven years in Cherokee, NC. Mr Belt has also served as a consultant to various indigenous language programs in public schools and on the post-secondary level. He has been a resident of North Carolina for the last thirteen years and currently works as a counselor's aide in a local treatment center for native youths with chemical dependencies. In addition to his work with students and faculty as Cherokee Elder-in-Residence, Tom is currently teaching a course on Cherokee linguistics ( CHER 351) that is being offered for the first time this semester. Tom Belt is working closely with the Office of Student Affairs in his capacity as Elder-in-Residence.

(828)227-2303
Email tbelt@email.wcu.edu

Jane L. Brown, Visiting Instructor of Anthropology

Jane L. Brown received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of South Carolina, and a master’s degree in American History with emphasis on Cherokee history from Western Carolina University. Her areas of academic interest include: Cherokee history and culture; biological and medical sciences; human anatomy; forensic anthropology; Appalachian history and culture; archaeology; southeastern Indians; and culture and food.

Currently, Brown is editing part of the John Howard Payne manuscripts on Cherokee culture and history in the late 1830s. She also has participated in excavations of the former Cherokee mound and village site on Western’s campus. She teaches origins of civilization, archaeology and bioanthropology, archaeological field methods, and archaeological problems and analyses.

(828) 227-3696
Email jbrown@email.wcu.edu

Robert Conley, Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in Cherokee Studies

Robert J. Conley was born December 29, 1940, in Cushing, Oklahoma. He finished high school in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then attended college there at Midwestern University, graduating in 1966 with a degree in drama and in 1968 with an M.A. in English. He has been Assistant Programs Manager for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Director of Indian Studies at Bacone College and at Morningside College, Coordinator of Indian Culture at Eastern Montana College, and Instructor of English at Southwest Missouri State University and at Northern Illinois University. His poems and stories have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies over the years, including some in Germany, France, Belgium, New Zealand, and Yugoslavia. Some have been published in Cherokee, German, French and Macedonian translations. Conley's most unusual publication may be the poem Some Lines in Commemoration of This Site: Little Maquoketa River Mounds, May 15, 1981, commissioned by the Iowa State Department of Transportation and published on a permanent display marker at the mound site near Dubuque. His first novel, Back to Malachi, was published by Doubleday in 1986. Since then he has had eighty books published, including a collection of short stories, a novelization of the screenplay, Geronimo: An American Legend, a history of the Cherokee Nation and a collection of essays. Robert J. Conley is current vice-president of Western Writers of America and is the recipient of a number of awards, including three Spur Awards and induction into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame. He and his wife Evelyn are enrolled members of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma.

(828) 227-2306                                                                                                                                                                              Email:  rconley@email.wcu.edu

Dr. Philip E. Coyle, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Philip E. (Ted) Coyle earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of Arizona , where he completed a dissertation concerning the ceremonial life of the Náyari (or Cora) people, whose homeland is the Sierra del Nayar of Mexico 's Sierra Madre Occidental mountains. It was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2001 as Náyari History, Politics and Violence: From Flowers to Ash. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Museum of Natural History, where he studied the deer-dance traditions of the Central Uto-Aztecan peoples of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. He is currently pursuing cooperative research with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway concerning heritage recognition and preservation.

Email: pcoyle@email.wcu.edu
Website: http://www.wcu.edu/3402

David Cozzo, Project Director for RTCAR

David Cozzo received his BS in Biology from Eastern Kentucky University , MA in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University, and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Georgia in Athens . His main areas of focus during his doctoral research were Medical Ethnobotany , Nutritional Ethnobotany , and Human Ecology of the Southern Appalachian Mountains . These interests culminated in his doctoral dissertation, Ethnobotanical Classification System and Medical Ethnobotany of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (2004). He is currently the Project Director for the Revitalization of Traditional Cherokee Artisan Resources.

(828) 554-6856
Email: Cozzod@email.wcu.edu
Website: http://paws.wcu.edu/cozzod/

Dr. Andrew Denson, Assistant Professor of History

Dr. Denson came to WCU from Butler University, Indianapolis in 2004. His Ph.D. (2000) is from Indiana University. He has a book coming out in December 2004 titled Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900 (University of Nebraska Press). His current research focusses on Native Americans and historical memory.

(828) 227-3867
Email: Denson@email.wcu.edu

Dr. Eastman received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include Native American societies of the Southeastern United States, particularly community organization, gender relations, pottery analysis, and culture contact studies.

Dr. Eastman teaches on the origins of civilization, world prehistory, Indians of North America, method and theory in archaeology and bioanthropology, archaeological field and analytical methods, and hopes to soon add courses on Southeastern US archaeology and gender studies. She is working with Roseanna Belt, director of Western’s Cherokee Center, on a Cherokee Language Preservation Grant from the Cherokee Cultural Preservation Foundation and is an active member of the Cherokee Language Revitalization Committee. In the summer of 2003 she was elected president of the North Carolina Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association.

(828) 227-3841
Email jeastman@email.wcu.edu

Dr. Hartwell Francis, Cherokee Language Program Director

Dr. Francis joined the Cherokee Studies Program shortly after graduating from the theoretical linguistics program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before attending the University of Colorado, Dr. Francis received an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the Applied Linguistics Department of Portland State University in Oregon and then taught English in Mexico and Japan. At the University of Colorado, he focused on the syntax-semantics interface in Native American languages. Dr. Francis worked with the Northern Arapaho of Wind River in central Wyoming on the verb structure of Arapaho. His dissertation is Transitivity in Arapaho: A Construction Grammar Approach.

Since joining the faculty of Cherokee Studies as the Director of the Cherokee Language Program, Dr. Francis has worked with Cherokee Language Program Coordinator Thomas Belt on the Western Carolina University Cherokee language curriculum. Together they have instituted the Cherokee Scholars program, a program that brings members of the Eastern Band to campus to speak about their experiences as Cherokee language teachers. Dr. Francis teaches courses on language death, language revitalization, linguistic anthropology, and he plans to teach advanced Cherokee grammar in the spring of 2008.

(828) 227-2303
Email hfrancis@email.wcu.edu

Dr. Lisa J. Lefler, Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology; Research Associate at Wake Forest University, Department of Anthropology.

Dr. Lefler received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1996. A medical and applied anthropologist with a focus in behavioral health, she is working full-time for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian (EBCI) as a behavioral science researcher concerning diabetes prevention and youth. She is also currently involved in analysis of over 300 interviews conducted among the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, and Chickasaw Nations of Oklahoma regarding American Indian fatherhood.

Other interests and works of Dr. Lefler include Indian youth and drug/alcohol abuse, health-related issues concerning stress, historic grief and trauma, and Cherokee women and stickball. Courses taught include Cherokee History, Southern Appalachian Culture, Native Peoples of North America, Applied Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Ethnographic Research Methods, Women, Culture, Health & Healing, and Issues in Indian Health.

(828) 497-7457
Email llefler@nc-cherokee.com, llefler@email.wcu.edu

Carrie McLachlan

Carrie McLachlan is a Ph.D. candidate in Native American history at the University of California, Riverside. She is presently writing her dissertation on Cherokee Relations in the Colonial Era. She has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, an M.A. in Religious studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a second M.A. in American history from Western (where she wrote her thesis on Cherokee Cosmology).

McLachlan’s major field of study is Native American History, with a minor field in Colonial History, and a teaching field in Early Modern World History. She authored an article "Gihli, The Dog in Cherokee Thought" which will be published in the 2003 issue of the Journal of Cherokee Studies. She has taught courses in Religious Studies (Religions of the East and Religions of the West), Philosophy (Introduction to Philosophy), and American History (American Institutions) at Western for several years beginning in 1990. She is currently teaching Native American Religions.

Email mclachlan@email.wcu.edu

Dr. Anne Rogers, Professor of Anthropology

Dr. Rogers, a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Georgia, joined the faculty at Western in 1980. Her areas of interest are southeastern archaeology—she has worked on numerous Cherokee archaeological sites in the area—and Native America studies. She teaches courses on contemporary Cherokee culture and on North American Indians and related topics. Her most recent publication is "Chestnuts and Native Americans" in the Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation, Vol. XVI (No. 1) Fall 2002.

Since coming to western North Carolina, Dr. Rogers has studied the Cherokee language and come to appreciate the persistence of the Cherokee in retaining not only their language but other elements of their culture. Her appreciation of the natural environment in which Cherokee culture has developed is continually expanding; her respect for their accomplishments also has grown greatly.

(828) 227-3276
Email arogers@email.wcu.edu

Mr. George Frizzell, Head of Special Collections, Hunter Library

Mr. Frizzell has an MA in history from Western and a MLS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is a recognized expert in the fields of Cherokee and Appalachian history.

(828) 227-7474
Email gfrizzell@email.wcu.edu