Cherokee National Holiday, Annual Native American festival in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
The Cherokee National Holiday is an annual festival held in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, timed around Labor Day weekend each year. It takes place across several locations throughout the city and brings together performances, art exhibits, craft displays, and educational workshops.
The festival was founded in 1953 to mark the signing of the Cherokee Constitution in 1839, a document drawn up after the forced removal of the Cherokee people from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States. Over the decades, the gathering grew from a modest local event into one of the largest annual meetings of the Cherokee Nation.
The festival features traditional Cherokee stickball games, one of the oldest team sports in North America, played on an open field where visitors can watch from the sidelines. Dance performances in traditional dress are also part of what visitors can see and hear during the event.
Most activities during the festival are free to attend, and the various sites around Tahlequah are generally easy to reach on foot or by car. Picking up a printed program at one of the information points helps to plan the day, since events run across different locations at the same time.
During the festival, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation delivers a formal address at the Cherokee Nation Peace Pavilion, reporting directly to tribal citizens on the state of the nation. It is one of the few public occasions when the tribal government speaks openly before a large audience outside of a formal governmental session.
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