Our Common Nature: Mountains and Forgotten Family with Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma's "Our Common Nature" Project

• 💡 Cellist Yo-Yo Ma explores how music and storytelling can reconnect people to the natural world and address America's complex history.
• 🎯 The 7-episode series features Yo-Yo Ma traveling across the country, meeting individuals with deep connections to the earth.
• 📌 This episode focuses on two stories from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, highlighting individuals reclaiming their ties to land and family.

Reclaiming Cherokee Identity: Kuwohi Mountain

• 🌱 Levita Hill and Mary Crowe, members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, spearheaded an effort to restore the original Cherokee name of Clingman's Dome.
• 💔 The loss of the Cherokee language (Salagi) was a direct consequence of Indian boarding schools, which forced assimilation and caused generational trauma.
• ✅ Through research and community effort, they successfully advocated for the mountain's name to be changed to Kuwohi, meaning "Mulberry Place," in September 2024.
• 🎶 Yo-Yo Ma played music at Kuwohi, accompanying Levita who shared the spiritual significance of the mountain to the Cherokee people.

Eric Mingus and the Mingus Mill History

• 🔍 Eric Mingus, son of jazz legend Charles Mingus, initially avoided the Mingus Mill due to its painful connection to his family's history of enslavement.
• 🤝 Eric discovered his cousin, Marcus West, who had researched their shared family history in Western North Carolina, including the Enloe slave cemetery where their ancestors are buried.
• 📜 The Great Smoky Mountains National Park unveiled historical plaques at Mingus Mill and the Enloe slave cemetery, acknowledging the full history, including the enslaved.
• 🎤 Eric performed a powerful song at the cemetery, expressing the sweat and blood forgotten there, and the profound experience of finding family and truth.

Music, Healing, and Shared Truths

• ⚡ The episode emphasizes how music transcends time and place, bringing people together to share their truths and foster understanding.
• 🌳 The complex, often contradicting, histories of the Smoky Mountains are likened to twisted roots that bind the soil, holding stories and songs together.
• 👏 The coming together of diverse musicians, including Rhiannon Giddens and Jarrett Wildcatt, to sing "I Shall Not Be Moved" symbolized the power of collective truth-telling.