Being a “spokesperson” can have a different meaning for cyclists than the usual, “So and so is the spokesperson for such and such.”
As artist America Meredith explains on her Cherokee Spokespeople website, spokespeople can be bicyclists who have jammed laminated cards — spokecards — in their wheel spokes. The cards are especially popular among bike messengers who collect the cards at events.
Meredith has enlisted bike messengers and other cyclists to take part in her international art exhibit on spokecards, entitled Cherokee Spokespeople. Meredith has created spokecards that carry Cherokee words or phrases, illustrated with an appropriate image.
The artist, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, says there are fewer than 10,000 native speakers of the Cherokee language, and it is in danger of disappearing. Tribal leadership believes that this generation will be the last who can save the language.
Her rolling exhibit is an attempt to keep the language alive by introducing it to new people and in an urban setting.
Cyclists interested in taking part in the project can send a stamped, self-addressed envelope (larger by 4-by-5 inches) to:
Cherokee Spokespeople
1230 Market St. #609
San Francisco CA 94102.
Meredith will send two random cards that can be inserted among the spokes. Take a photo, video, or digital image of the mounted cards on location in your city and send it to Meredith for a handdrawn spokecard with a word of your choice. For words that don't exist in Cherokee, Meredith consults a native speaker who will create a word using traditional methods of description.
So far, her cards appear in about 70 cities around the world.
You can read more about the Cherokee nation at Wikipedia.
For an interesting bicycle tour view of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, see Pat Clements blog, “Trailing Dreams of America.” He includes many entries about bicycling along the route in his cross-country ride. For instance, there is his visit to the Cherokee Heritage Museum in Oklahoma, or Day 31 in Missouri, after cycling through April showers to find a motel:
“A February, 1839 newspaper note clipping from Theodore Pease Russell: 'There were about 2,000 Indians in this division. All the others had gone by way of Farmington, but the roads were so bad that this last division had to come this way along the Fredericktown Road and such a road at that time.'
“February through the mud on foot, one blanket per person, or me, clad in fleece and technogear, on a bike, on a rainy spring day? Get a life Pat, shut up and ride.”
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