Crowdancing Book Tour Dates To Come
By Dr. K. Mark Hilliard
Gatlinburg, Tennessee: East Tennessee
The next tour stop for Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag is at the Anna Porter Public Library in Gatlinburg on Dec 1st from 4 to 6:00 p.m. Much of the story takes place in The-Land-of-Blue-Haze—The Smoky Mountains. More details to come.
Cherokee, North Carolina
The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian Reservation
The Reservation book tour stop is planned for December or January. Final details are now being put into place. This is the place that inspired the majority of the book’s stories. More details to follow.
Spring Hill, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee
The Spring Hill book tour stop will be at the Spring Hill Public Library Feb 4th at 2:00. This is the place I currently live and the place from where much of the book was written. More details will come as the event occurs, but this tour stop will include a session on poetry by Jessa Rose Sexton and a session on storytelling by me.
What is the Focus of Each Book Tour Stop and Talk?
Much of the early history of Native Americans—Indians as the Cherokee call themselves—and how tribes lived and worked and played and believed has been lost. The earliest records of the Cherokee were passed down generation by generation through oral stories, traditions, rituals, and drawings or markings kept on leather skins—carved into or painted on cave walls and other stone objects or placed (stored) through stor-ied memory into a piece of cloth, a stone, a feather, or any object composed of matter and kept in a secret place. A place such as the Cherokee Storyteller's Bag within this story.
At each of my tour stops, I pull stories from the Bundle-of-Talk held within my Storyteller’s Bag, and I share each ancient historic tale with all who come to listen or decide to take my book home to read.
Each and every story is based on a memory kept deep within my mind and within the bag, but now released as I tell each tale. The decision on what I read and what information I share at each tour stop is very individualized and based on the location, the history of the location, the audience, and the actual mood of each group. That’s how storytelling should occur.
So join me at one of these stops and listen and see for yourself.