Sponsored by KNKX. Most of us have heard of the Trail of Tears, the forced evacuation of the Cherokee Nation people from their ancestral homeland in present-day Georgia to reservation land in Oklahoma. But why did it happen? What political, cultural, and societal machinations allowed such an event to unfold? Sovereignty tells that story, and it is a tale worth your time. A complex, thrilling historical drama shining a light on the Cherokee Nation’s deeply intertwined past and present, it is performed by an ensemble of Native and non-Native regional and local actors with direction, set, costume, and lighting design by Native artists.

Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer, fights to restore her Nation’s rights while confronting its past. Switching between the 1830s and the present day, Sovereignty tells an epic tale of the powerful intersections of personal and political truths, bridging our country’s distant past and imminent future.