Arizona Swayney Blankenship

This afternoon after we left our work at the Head Start centers, I had the honor of taking my students into the Big Cove community to visit a very special place on the Boundary. Off of Soggy Hill Road, deep into the woods, is a small and unmarked family cemetery. We placed flowers at the gravesides of my great-great-great Grandmother and Grandfather, James and Laura Swayney, and then we placed flowers at the grave of their daughter Arizona Swayney Blankenship.

Arizona and her brother, Lorenzo Dow Swayney (my great-great Grandfather) were taken from the Boundary to be "educated" at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia--a boarding school for American Indians and African Americans. Arizona returned to Qualla Boundary and, with some assistance from Lorenzo, founded a school in Big Cove--one of the first Indian controlled and operated schools in the United States. She added basket weaving to the curriculum and thereby helped to preserve ancient basket weaving techniques that were slowly dying out among her people. As a teacher she inspired Cherokee to embrace education and to seek to find a balance between that education and their culture, heritage and traditions. I hope she can serve as an inspiration for 21st century teachers, too. I was so proud to be able to take my students to this sacred ground and tell them her story.