Franklin, North Carolina’s city council voted unanimously Monday to return the Noquisiyi Mound to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, according to the Associated Press.
The mound, located in Franklin, is described as the largest unexcavated mound in the Southeast. The site is also described as part of a Cherokee mother town hundreds of years before the founding of the United States, and as a place of deep spiritual significance to the Cherokee people.
Michell Hicks, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, said the decision reflects the importance of ensuring cultural and traditional areas are “in the hands of the tribe they belong to,” and called the move one that the tribe was thankful for. Hicks also framed the vote as part of what the tribe is seeking in control over territory tied to its history and practices.
Elaine Eisenbraun, executive director of the Noquisiyi Initiative nonprofit, said that after the city council vote the next step will be for the tribal council to agree to take control. Eisenbraun said that agreement would initiate the legal process of transferring the title.
At Monday’s meeting, Angelina Jumper, a citizen of the Eastern Band and a Noquisiyi Initiative board member, spoke about the broader significance of land return to Cherokees and described the mound’s continuing physical presence as carrying personal weight. Jumper said it is “a big deal” to get ancestral territory back, and she described the gravity of a mound site that remains standing as having a meaning she said she has no words for.
In remarks tied to the “Land Back” movement, Stacey Guffey, Franklin’s mayor, said “Talking about Land Back, it’s part of a living people. It’s not like it’s a historical artifact,” and said honoring that living culture matters to the community’s identity as mountain people.
The return effort follows a longer local history involving the mound. The town of Franklin raised money in the 1940s to purchase the mound from a private owner, the report said. Hicks said the tribe started conversations with the town in 2012 after a town employee sprayed herbicide on the mound, killing the grass.
In 2019, Franklin and the Eastern Band created a nonprofit to oversee the site. Eisenbraun said the mound is currently situated between two roads and several buildings, and the nonprofit has managed the site since 2019.
The report also described the mound as part of a wider series of Cherokee earthen mounds and said the Eastern Band owns the Cowee Mound a few miles away. The tribe is establishing a cultural corridor of important sites stretching from Georgia to the Qualla Boundary, the report said.
Jordan Oocumma, described by the report as the mound’s groundskeeper, said he is the first enrolled member of the tribe to caretake the mound since the forced removal. Oocumma also said the site is a place where people can go “and you ask, and it’ll come to you,” adding that it “feels different from being anywhere else in the world” when he is there.
While the title transfer process moves forward, officials and the tribe said the mound will remain publicly accessible. The report said the Eastern Band plans to open an interpretive center in a building it owns next to the site.