ALAN GOFFINSKI: Pop a wheelie, Ana!

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I'm doing it, can you hear?  I'm popping a wheelie. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ:  There's a path in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that's closed to cars every Wednesday of the warmer months. And today, the last Wednesday in May, my producer Alan and I are riding some bikes into the park.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This  is idyllic.  Like, when I imagine a country escape, it is this moment. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Even when things get a little bit more wild than I'm used to.

 

PARK RANGER: There's a bear right down near this white truck too. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Really?

PARK RANGER: Yeah, American black bear, real one. You’re going to ride right by him.  Quickly.

ALAN GOFFINSKI: Alright!

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You ready to roll?

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: We make it down to a gravel path that cuts between two open pastures where horses are grazing. And waiting for us is some real danger.  

 

YO-YO MA: So, Lisa. 

LISA: Yes, sir. 

YO-YO MA: Are we gonna do it? 

LISA: Let's do it. 

YO-YO MA: So this is perfect. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: YO-YO MA is leaning against a park ranger’s bike with his cello, backdropped by buttercups, blue skies, and green mountains

 

YO-YO MA: So I came here last year and it was so beautiful that we thought we'd come back again. And I thought it would be nice to  listen to the birds, listen to some music,  and see what happens. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Only the park rangers knew that Yo-Yo was going to be here on this day at this time because Yo-Yo wanted to play for the folks who always come here, who were going to be here anyway. And that’s what he did.

TAPE: We were eating lunch and stuff like that and then we – is that Yo-Yo Ma?  

 

TAPE: We were going to go on a hike, the girls were, and then we said, that’s Yo-Yo Ma! 

 

TAPE: I think there's so many layers of history of people and land and place, and this adds another layer and another chapter to that story, makes it more rich. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The Great Smoky Mountains are great, they’re breathtaking, rolling over hundreds of thousands of acres from North Carolina into Tennessee. This area is one of the most biologically diverse places in the United States – and the human histories here are just as complex .

 

YO-YO MA: Each history is part of the truth. And it's not like your truth is better than mine. It's like we have to live with each other's truths and if we put them side by side together, we will find truth and we can do that in music because that's what we do in music. We could put everybody on the same stage to say, “Tell your truth.” 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I'm Ana González and this is Our Common Nature, a musical journey with YO-YO MA through this complicated country to help us all find that connection to nature that so many of us are missing. We climb mountains, play music, drive dirt roads, recite poetry, traverse rivers and oceans and our own brains –  all to figure out how to better live on our planet. Together. And in this episode, we'll hear stories from two different parts of the Smoky mountains, stories of individuals reconnecting themselves to the land and their families after generations of separation.

 

LAVITA HILL: I come from a really big family, 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: How big are we talking?

 

LAVITA HILL: Um, golly, my great grandma probably had at least a hundred great grandchildren.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Whoa.

 

LAVITA HILL: Like, tons.

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Lavita Hill. She grew up in the small town of Cherokee, North Carolina. And like the name suggests, Cherokee is home to the Cherokee people. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians owns this town within the Great Smoky Mountains. Lavita is Cherokee and works in tribal government. But she doesn’t always feel all that Cherokee. 

 

LAVITA HILL: I almost feel like because I'm Native American, I should just be able to speak the language. It should just be so easy. But I also believe when I go fishing, I should, like the fish should just jump out to me because they feel my connection with the land or something. But that's never the case. I'm a terrible fisherman. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I really want that to be true. It's like, Lavita goes out, ot's like, everyone wants Lavita on their boat because the fish just jump in. 

 

LAVITA HILL: Just jump in. Yeah. But no, so that's not the case. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lavita was raised by her grandmother as part of this huge Cherokee family.

 

LAVITA HILL: So my grandmother's siblings visited a lot. And whenever they visited our home, that's the only time I heard my grandma speak the language. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: She’s talking about Tsalagi, the Cherokee language. Lavita never learned it. 

 

LAVITA HILL: My sisters and I would say, "Grandma, why don't you teach us how to speak?" And that's whenever we learned that it was to protect us rather than to just keep something from us. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Because Lavita's grandmother went to an Indian boarding school. Where she learned to keep her language hidden. 

 

LAVITA HILL: She would have loved for us to learn, but I also feel strongly that what she did for us, for me and my sisters after our mom died, was to protect us and keep us safe, at all costs. And for us, the cost was the language. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You maybe know about Indian boarding schools. They’ve been in the news a lot recently. Native kids from all over the United States and Canada were taken from their homes and placed into schools that would require them to wear non-native clothes and speak, read, and write in English only. Mary Crowe, a Cherokee elder, remembers them.

 

MARY CROWE:  Well, we had a boarding school here in Cherokee.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mary and Lavita’s family go way back 

 

MARY CROWE: I've known LaVita since she was born. Call her Muffin. All her and her sisters remind me of their mother. Beautiful. Strong. Lovely.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Mary didn’t go to a boarding school, but her dad did. 

 

MARY CROWE: My father was sent to the boarding school in Chilocco in Oklahoma. Got taken away from home when he was ten years old. He ran away. He got sent back. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I'm sorry. I'm sorry it's bringing up so much stuff. 

 

MARY CROWE: No no don’t apologize. This is healing. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Okay, good. 

 

MARY CROWE: This is healing. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Okay. 

 

MARY CROWE: Because it's allowing you to see.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. 

 

MARY CROWE: That's what we call generational trauma. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The kids who went to boarding schools were punished if they showed any expression of their culture. A 2022 report found hundreds of graves of kids at these schools.

 

MARY CROWE: Our people never agreed to anything, we were forced to assimilate and acculturate. If not we would have got annihilated. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Today, there are about 14,000 members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, and only 200 tsalagi language speakers. 

 

LAVITA HILL: Which is sad. I'm missing a huge part of me and my culture because of boarding school and because of what it did to our people.  

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This hurt is part of the landscape of the Great Smoky Mountains. And it’s a familiar hurt to so many indigenous people around the country and the world. It’s that attempt at erasure, the grief of cultural loss. So, any movement towards rebuilding native culture is worth celebrating. Even if it’s just a post on Facebook. 

 

MARY CROWE: I shared something on my social media where it was done in the Yellowstone National Park. They changed Doane Mountain to First Peoples Mountain. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: In 2022, indigenous groups from across the country were able to change the name of a mountain in Yellowstone National Park to recognize the indigenous people who called the land home before it was a park. And the news lit up native social media. 

 

LAVITA HILL: And then it was really like, well, why don't we do something? Why don't I do something? 

 

MARY CROWE: And I said Clingman's Dome. And Lavita jumped on it and she went, yes, yes, yes. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Clingman's Dome is the tallest peak in the Smoky Mountains. You can see it from Cherokee. It’s been made into a tourist spot. You can drive up, walk around, take some really nice photos. But this mountaintop is more than a lookout spot. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Why did you think to say Clingman's Dome?

 

MARY CROWE: Because my dad. 

 

Mary's dad was one of the first workers who created its trails. 

 

MARY CROWE: My dad worked with park service as a trailblazer. They'd have to hike these trails. But me and my brothers, we would go with them all the time. And he would always tell me about these trails that are people took. You know those were our roadways. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So we have this English name, Clingman's Dome, and by the way, Clingman was a confederate brigadier general who really liked mountains. 

But you can see Clingman’s Dome from Cherokee lands. Mary and Lavita might not speak tsalagi fluently, but they knew enough to know that the language reflects the land. And that every word of it emerged out of the Cherokee people’s experiences. 

 

LAVITA HILL: This mountain has to have had a Cherokee name, let's go find it out.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: They asked some language speakers and cross referenced that with books. And they found a word.

MARY CROWE: Kuwohi.

 

LAVITA HILL: Kuwohi. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And what does Kuwohi mean? 

 

LAVITA HILL: Kuwohi is the mulberry place. 

 

MARY CROWE: Singular. “Kuwa.” K -U -W -A is a mulberry. “Ku-wo-hi. Ku-wo-hi” is mulberry place. Ha! 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Lavita and Mary do some more research and they find maps that go back before Clingman was even born.

 

LAVITA HILL: That was Kuwohi. It was Kuwohi for 10,000 years, and it's documented and you can see it. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The ball began to roll. Mary and Lavita decided to take their work outside of Facebook Messenger and try to officially change the name of Clingman's Dome back to Kuwohi. They started local. They got an interview with a local newspaper who wanted to meet them at the top of Kuwohi. So Mary and Lavita, they got in the car, they drive up to the top of the mountain, and then Lavita had this moment where she felt that old insecurity. Maybe I'm not the right person for this. I don't speak tsalagi. I don't know how to fish. I am not Cherokee enough. 

 

LAVITA HILL: And so I'm up there at Kuwohi about to meet this woman to talk about this for the first time and I'm texting my sisters like “I'm just so scared.” But my little sister she's just like, “No, you cannot be scared because your ancestors are there. They're with you and we're with you and this is what you're supposed to do.” It gave everything a whole new purpose because before I just didn't know better, I didn’t know that this is something that I'm supposed to tap into or that I'm supposed to let guide me. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So it's like you're reclaiming this name for a mountain, but you're also like reclaiming parts of yourself that you didn't know that you even had. 

 

LAVITA HILL: That I didn't even know that I had, exactly. 

 

YO-YO MA:  So when I heard that that name change was gonna take place, I thought, wow, I wanna not only go there, but to sort of see what people think. And that's where the storytelling comes in.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And so you went to the top of Kuwohi and you played there.

 

YO-YO MA: To just passers by. Lavita was gonna tell stories and how the Cherokee people have always thought of that mountain as a spiritual location where people go to open up a porthole into a wider universe. And  then passersby can experience a little bit of that.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Yo-Yo is at the top of Kuwohi at an overlook. Lavita is there too, in traditional dress, with the Great Smoky Mountains all behind her. 

 

LAVITA HILL: For well over 99% of the time human beings have occupied this place. This mountain has been called Kuwohi, the mulberry place..

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ; And there was a great crowd that gathered. And there was some rumor that Yo-Yo was going to play. But they didn’t know they were going to learn this history… but they stayed… and they listened.

 

YO-YO MA: Because what we're all hoping, and this is happening, is that this magical place will have an old name.   

 

LAVITA HILL: And today we're seeking to have her rightful name restored. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Kuwohi is just one word. It's not a resurrection of an entire language. It doesn't undo any past wrongs. But knowing one word unlocks a door to understanding the Smoky Mountains in a way that Clingmans Dome could never do. When Cherokee people look up from the mother town of Kituwah, they'll see Kuwohi again. And they'll know her name. They'll know that along her trails, they can find mulberries and a connection to thousands of years of stories. And in September of 2024, the US Board on Geographic Names approved the name change. Clingmans Dome is now Kuwohi once again.

LAVITA HILL: None of this is for me. This work is for our brothers and sisters and for our ancestors. They were so intelligent, and that they refused to leave. 

 

YO-YO MA: The mountain is always going to be there, right?  But uou know, what is that mountain geologically? What is that mountain to a squirrel living on the mountain?  Or to birds that fly over. So a mountain is all of those things. And I think the more you think about it, then the mountain becomes more and more part of you. And once something becomes part of you, you wanna take care of it.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: There’s another spot we have to go to begin to understand the Smokies. It’s a spot along a river in the woods, where the water grinds like time itself. To where there's a clearing right off of a parking lot, where worn down stones lay over unmarked graves.

 

YO-YO MA: Tiny, like 7 graves in this little, maybe 6x8. Little strips of mounds. And there were no names, no tombstone, nothing, but we knew that it was a grave, and we knew, probably, it was a slave gravesite. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And for the people connected to this place, honoring the life here, hasn’t been easy.

 

ERIC MINGUS: You know, my ancestors are buried there, so it's an important place to me. But it's also very hard to be there.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: That’s coming up next, after the break.

 

BREAK

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back in the Smoky Mountains, where it takes about 45 minutes and more than 6000 feet of descent to drive from the top of Kuwohi, the tallest peak, to a mill, Mingus Mill. It’s a less popular destination than Kuwohi, so when my producer Alan and I arrive, we have the place to ourselves. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So we're standing next to this old looking part of a mill. I don't even know what it would be called. It's wood and it's kind of like a bridge and it goes into the river and it's attached to this, I guess what is, and was, the mill. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is one of the first times in my working memory that I've been to a mill and I was really excited about it because of the name Mingus mill as in Charles Mingus one of the greatest, most unique prolific jazz bassists and composers and band leaders of all time. I’m a Mingus fangirl, truthfully. Because I grew up playing jazz bass. And Mingus was one of my heroes. His playing was tenacious, and his compositions were communal and raw. And Mingus was beyond cool. He spoke his mind. And he was a proud Black man in a time when it was dangerous to be that. So, I knew all of this about Charles Mingus, but I never knew where he came from. And it never occurred to me that the history of the Mingus family went deeper than just Charles. It should have, but I didn't even know what grist was. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: I think grist is…corn? 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Alan finds the historical placard. Thank God. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You didn't make it without corn. Everyone ate cornmeal. Sometimes two and three times a day. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The placard goes on to say that the Mingus family owned this mill until the 1930s, when it was taken over by the National Park Service. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: It’s the uh, Mingus was the largest grist mill in the smokies. No one’s really here, but the mill’s still going. Still grinding.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The history of this mill holds a lot more weight than a plaque can really tell you. It holds a family history and like you might know, family isn't always comfortable.

 

ERIC MINGUS: I heard about the mill from my father and other Minguses in the family. But it wasn't, it wasn’t necessarily like, "Oh, this is a great place in North Carolina." It's like, "Yeah, it's where your great-grandfather was enslaved," you know? 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This is Eric Mingus. His dad was the late great Charles Mingus, but to Eric, Charles was just his dad and his first music teacher. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: I played cello from a very young age, and I just have always loved that instrument. It's also the instrument, you know, my father taught me on that. He taught me with the eye to bass, you know, so it was sort of funny. He was like, we tune it to the bass or we tune it …

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Oh, really? 

 

ERIC MINGUS: Yeah, he was trying to free me from Western music in a weird way, but give me the technique to play the instruments, you know, and speak my voice, but not be connected to the page. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric has applied that freedom and ear for improvisation to a bunch of different instruments, but most of his professional musical career has been as a singer.

 

ERIC MINGUS: I was on a path towards opera, and I had met with a couple of other African American opera singers and they were like, "Yeah, it's not easy. It's hard to get roles. They keep giving you Othello, but they won't give you other ones." And, you know, I don't have control over how people see me. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: See, Eric’s mom was white and his dad was Black. His family is all different complexions. So Eric has spent his whole life having his race decided by the people who look at him. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: I mean, when I was born and when I was raised, I was a young Black child, you know. But then everybody starts, you know, deciding what you are. And I kind of don't have a say in it, so I have to just stop saying (laughs). But when your family's rooted in slavery and the enslaved, it's, you know, it's very American. (laughs) 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric's complicated relationship to race and history in his family is very American. And it's distinctly Black American. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: The thing about not being able to go back, your history is cut off because someone enslaved you and their incentive was to disconnect you from anything. So, a lot of African-Americans don't know where they're from originally. There is no land that they can connect themselves indigenously to. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So Eric knew his great-grandfather was enslaved at the Mingus Mill, and he was okay leaving it at that. He didn't learn too much more. He didn’t want to visit. For some digging into this history can be really emotionally draining. But Marcus West -- sees things a little bit differently.  

 

MARCUS WEST: Being Black American, I think it's pretty cool to find yourself, you know, and love all of who you are 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Marcus works as a butcher, but in his spare time he loves researching his family's history in western North Carolina.

 

MARCUS WEST: The more research you find out, the more you find yourself. That's the way I see it.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Marcus has lived practically his entire life within 20 miles of Mingus Mill. He kind of figured that his family had some tie to the mill because the Black community of Western North Carolina is small and tight knit, but he didn't know for sure. 

 

MARCUS WEST: Those older folks was here when I was younger and I would sit at the table. I couldn't go out and play with nobody, you know, I always wanted to go play with kids but no, “You sit here!” you know, so I had to listen to all the old folks and stuff and that's kind of what got me really started with history, 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: There were a lot of mysteries in Marcus’s family tree. He grew up hearing about all these great uncles he had: Uncle Frank, Uncle John, Uncle Shan, and Uncle Charles. Charles Mingus, Senior. 

 

MARCUS WEST: So, I didn't know that Charles Mingus Jr. was Uncle Charles's son, see, I didn't know about him. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: You didn't know? 

 

MARCUS WEST: I didn't know the whole thing until – 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: How many people could be named Charles Mingus? 

 

MARCUS WEST: I mean, that's just because that's his Charles Jr. And I was like, well, wait a minute. I was like, “Oh, that's Uncle Charles' son.” So I was like, “Well, Dad, did you know you had some jazz royalty in your family, you know? 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: So Marcus found out that he was related to the Charles Mingus Jr. But he didn't know why that connection to Uncle Charles, Charles Sr. didn't last. Why didn't he know about this sooner? And he realized it had to do with the first Black Mingus, Daniel Mingus.

 

ERIC MINGUS: Daniel, my great -grandfather, was enslaved but then freed and stayed on working with the family. 

 

Here’s Eric Mingus again. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: And Daniel was an incredible woodworker, builder. He built the Mingus household that they lived in, and we believe he built the mill. That's what my family was told. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Daniel was enslaved by a white family with the last name Mingus. He took their last name. And after slavery ended, Daniel stayed on to work for the Minguses in the mill. He got married and had a family, but he also had an affair with the granddaughter of the white Mingus family. They had a son together. Charles. This was a scandal for 1870s North Carolina. The white Minguses tried to cover it up. They claimed Charles was one of their own - that meant saying he was not Black. But they didn’t treat him very well. Eric was told that this Charles, his dad’s dad, had a pretty terrible childhood. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: His family basically threw him out and abandoned him. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Charles the first ran away from home as a teenager and never looked back. He settled, eventually, out West. And he lost contact with the rest of his family back in North Carolina. He had a kid -- who would become Charles Mingus. Charles had Eric.  They lived and traveled all around the world. As the Mingus name grew more popular, that mill was still grinding away, in the Great Smoky Mountains.

 

ERIC MINGUS: And people would say, "Oh, did you ever go?" I'm like, "Why would I?" You know, it's not really a place with good memories. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: After the Great Smoky Mountains became a National Park, the mill became a historical tourist spot. But the only story told there was that of the white Mingus family and it popped into Eric’s life again because he started seeing people tagging him and the Mingus Mill on social media. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: I started seeing a lot of these bass players going to the Mingus mill to be like, "Hey, Mingus Mill, thumbs up," and I was like, "Well, you know, Mingus is a slave name." So in an odd way, the Mingus Mill is honoring the enslavers, not the enslaved. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric didn't know about his cousin Marcus. And Marcus didn’t know about Eric. Eric still had no desire to go to the mill, but then there was a tortoise.

 

ERIC MINGUS: Yeah, she's here. Tasha. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric and his wife adopted a tortoise named Tasha a few years ago. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: Yeah, we never thought of ever having a desert tortoise as a pet but…

 

But then they had to drive across the country to get her home

 

ERIC MINGUS: Cus apparently you can't fly with a tortoise and I said to my wife. “Why don't we just stop?” 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: They were in North Carolina…

 

ERIC MINGUS: Well, you know, it's just a two-story building. It's a pretty tall building for what it is. It's on stilts and there's this water feed trough that goes to it. You know, it makes this amazing sound. And it's a building that kind of feels alive just because it has a purpose. But it was still sort of daunting, you know? Like, I don't know how to really explain it, but it's kind of going, well, you know, historically, we weren't wanted here, you know? We were wanted there until we couldn’t. (laughing) We were brought there, you know, so it was a little strange connection to that land there. You know, my ancestors are buried there, so it's an important place to me. But it's also very hard to be there.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric and his wife went from the mill up a short steep path to a clearing in the woods where there were a couple stones. And underneath it, according to the park service, lay bodies of people who were enslaved. This is the Enloe Slave Cemetery. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: For a while, I would just sit there on my own and just sort of be there, you know, not really talk. Just sort of try to have a feeling for the place and listen. 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: The Parks Department started telling people about the slave cemetery. There’s where Marcus West, Eric’s cousin, found out about it. He would go there by himself. 

 

MARCUS WEST: You know, I know it sounds weird, but I'll go up there and just say my peace a little bit. With me, it goes back to the fields. I mean, I've always been a kind of spiritual guy, uh, with that. I think that's something that my mother kind of brought to me years ago when I would go down to the plantations. And I remember she would watch me, and she was like, "You feel it, don't you?" And I didn't know, I was like, “What do you mean?” She said, “You feel your heritage.” And I was just like [snaps] “That's it.”

 

CASSIUS CASH: There's been this myth about slavery wasn't present in Appalachia. 

 

This is Cassius Cash. He’s the 16th superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 

CASSIUS CASH: Because the mountains’ landscapes being unsuitable for large scale plantation farming, if you will, which is how it's usually considered to have enslaved people working. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: But Cassius, who’s also African American, says that's not true.

 

CASSIUS CASH: When we first started this project, we went to local communities to talk about, “Hey, have you ever heard stories about African Americans being in the Smokies?” We did community meetings, and I thought maybe one or two people would show up at these community meetings. The room was packed at each one of these meetings to talk about it. And that's what I want people to remember is that it's important for you to know, because this country is built off the shoulders of all of us. And the moment that we leave one or two of us out of that story is not letting this country be in her full glory.  

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: We go with Cassius to the Enloe Slave Cemetery after the break

 

BREAK

PARK RANGER: All right, so this one is commemorating the Enloe slave cemetery. So on 3? 

CASSIUS CASH: Yep

PARK RANGER: One, two, three 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Our Common Nature is back. And we are with Cassius Cash inside Great Smoky Mountains National park at the Mingus Mill for an unveiling ceremony of two plaques, or waysides, that explain the history of the mill and the Enloe Slave Cemetery across the parking lot.

 

PARK RANGER: So, thank you for that and if you want to get started, we can lead it. Alright. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: We walk up the hill as a small group, probably around 20 people. 

 

PARK RANGER: So before we start our performance, we're gonna let Eric Mingus say a couple of words. Eric.

 

CASSIUS CASH: He’s caught his breath now, right? 

 

ERIC MINGUS: Um, this has been an amazing journey. I, you know, I'd always heard about Mingus Mill in this area [fades down]....

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: As Eric speaks, he begins addressing a few people in the crowd directly.

 

ERIC MINGUS: I discovered a family here, the West family, who clearly didn't get very far. 

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: This performance was the first time Eric met Marcus in real life, and Marcus brought along his dad, Adam.

ADAM WEST: It was amazing, you know, to shake hands and give him a hug. I was kind of dressed up a little bit and everybody was saying, he's sharper than anybody here. 

 

CASSIUS CASH: You make it look easy, man. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: I'm proud to say family. That's what I'm saying.

 

ADAM WEST: And Eric said “That’s family, That’s family” laughs

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Despite the laughter, it's not lost on everyone that this reunion is on top of a burial ground for people in their family who were enslaved, and until recently, forgotten about.  

 

ERIC MINGUS: Family isn't comfortable. Relationships aren't easy. But if we don't talk about these things, and we don't acknowledge these things, what's to stop them from happening again? You know? Sorry, I'm staring directly at my family, which is…this is nice to have. Thank you for being here during one of my most vulnerable moments.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Eric steps back to stand with Yo-Yo, who has his cello set up behind the unmarked mounds. 

 

MUSIC - (ERIC SINGING)

From here

I hear

The water feed headed toward the mill

 

MARCUS WEST: That was a special moment to me because it was the first time truly truly hearing his voice and I could still hear his father. It's a unique sound, you know.

 

MUSIC

When I was on this ground

I felt some joy here

 

YO-YO MA: I get the shivers. I get the goose pimples from hearing it. I mean, it is a deep personal expression. 

 

MUSIC

And through it all

The breeze in the trees

 

YO-YO MA: The first time he kind of lets it all out. I mean, I am frightened. I am, you know, I'm in shock. And you know he's a master at that he intends it that way

MUSIC: And that mill keeps on grinding…like it does my bones. 

The sweat and blood forgotten. Here. Here. Here. 

They’ve forgotten who is buried here

Each of us left here alone

Waiting for some distant family to stroll up here and drop a penny on my soul

 

CASSIUS CASH: I'm gonna tell you what I felt, when I heard him sing that song,

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: Cassius Cash, the guy who runs the park.

 

CASSIUS CASH: I felt a sense of freedom at last. I mean, it was like Eric was saying, “I'm free now. I'm centered. I've discovered who I am and how I move through this space.” And he just let it rip that day in that performance. And I just like, oh my God, I was, I was envious of him. You know, that his truth comes to him with clarity now. And it was expressed on that day through that performance.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: And I also hear what you're saying is that's not something that happens a lot, especially for African Americans. 

 

CASSIUS CASH: No, not at all.

 

MUSIC: And that mill keeps on churning

 

YO-YO MA: It was the fact that he had enough trust in the group that this would be respected as a very intimate movement. He could say, "This is who I am, this is how I can feel." And I think that's incredible. That's part of his artistry, 

 

MUSIC: But we're here in the roots, and we're here in the soil. And we pray the sun will come and heal us and undo the grinding. Undo the grinding of our bones.  

 

YO-YO MA: I'm never going to forget this. 

 

ERIC MINGUS: I'm certainly not. 

 

YO-YO MA: And your family, so close, and through your music, and through nature, you've transcended time and place into one moment that we can share together. Nothing else does this.

 

ANA GONZÁLEZ: There's a line in Eric's song that struck me really hard. “We're here in the roots, and we're here in the soil.” The Smoky Mountains contain endless contradicting histories. But those twisted roots hold the soil together. They bind together the ground we get to walk on, the stories we tell, and the songs we sing. By reclaiming that connection to nature, no matter how messy, Eric and Lavita are planting their feet in the history and the future of this country. 

And so, it feels fitting to play one more song from our trip to the Smokies. 

 

MUSIC 

 

A few days after we went to Kuwohi and Enloe on the North Carolina side of the mountains, Yo-Yo played a concert in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

 

MUSIC

 

You’re hearing Rhiannon Giddens and Eric Mingus with a band that’s made up of musicians from all over Appalachia. There are like 10 people on stage. You got some of Yo-Yo’s oldest friends, like Chris Theile and Edgar Meyer. And then you’ve got someone like like Jarrett Wildcatt, a flautist from Cherokee who’s also Mary Crowe’s nephew. Everyone was singing “I Shall Not be Moved”.

 

MUSIC: 

 

There’s never gonna be a single song or a single story that represents a place.  But all of these musicians coming together, and singing this song in front of thousands of people – it felt like we did what Yo-Yo said to do: we put everybody on the same stage to say their truths.

 

MUSIC

 

And listening to the different twang in each verse as it echoed over the crowd, it felt like the truth became bigger, Like the verses in a song or mountains in a range, you take one away, and it becomes a different thing.  Less strong and less true. .

 

MUSIC: ♪ Climbing Jacob’s Ladder ♪ ♪ I shall not be moved ♪ ♪ I shall not be moved ♪ ♪ I shall not be moved ♪ 

 

In the next episode of Our Common Nature we go to north, way north, to see how Alaskans are coming together to speak with one voice and protect everything they hold dear.  

CREDITS: 

Our Common Nature is a production of WNYC and Sound Postings 

 

Hosted by me, González

Produced by Alan Goffinski

With editing from Pearl Marvell 

sound design and episode music from Alan Goffinski

Mixed by Joe Plourde

Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado

Executive Producers are Emily Botein, Ben Mandelkern, and Sophie Shackleton and Jonathan Bays.

 

Our advisors are Mira Burt-Wintonick, Kamaka Dias, Kelley Libbey, and Chris Newell

 

“Grinds My Bones/The Mill” was composed and performed by Eric Mingus. You can find a studio recording of Eric and Yo-Yo playing that piece in our show notes. 

 

Flute and vocal performance in this episode by Jarrett Wildcatt. Additional audio recording provided by Taylor MacKay.

 

And if you want to listen to more music from this series, you can check out the Our Common Nature EP, featuring Yo-Yo playing with Eric Mingus, Jen Kreisberg and an Icelandic choir, now available on all streaming platforms.

 

This podcast was inspired by a project of the same name, conceived by Yo-Yo Ma and Sound Postings, with creative direction by Sophie Shackleton, in collaboration with partners all over the world.

 

Our Common Nature is made possible with support from Emerson Collective and Tambourine Philanthropies.