And So We Walked

And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears is a frank, heartwarming and inspiring story about a contemporary Cherokee woman and her father who embark on an incredible 900-mile journey along the Trail of Tears to truly understand her own identity and the conflicts of her nation. The six-week journey retraces the path her great-great grandparents took in the 1830’s during the forced relocation of 17,000 Cherokee from their homelands. Written by Cherokee artist DeLanna Studi, And So We Walked is a powerful, multi-faceted dramatic memoir that draws on extraordinary interviews, historical research, and Studi’s personal experience to convey the complexities and conflicts with which the Cherokee wrestle. 

Starting as Studi’s dream of following her ancestor’s footsteps and sharing their legacy, And So We Walked was brought to life with the help of Cherokee Preservation Foundation, The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and other cultural partners. In the summer of 2015, Studi embarked on the journey alongside her father and a documentarian. 

“We sat on the ground where they walked,” Studi says of the experience. “And in some cases, we walked on the ground where they died. I thought I would need Dad to lift me up. But just by having my father there, I was a lot stronger than I would have been.”

In 2016, Studi won the Butcher Scholar Award from The Autry Museum of the American West,  which supports innovative projects that promise to deepen our understanding of the history of diverse women in the historical and contemporary American West. A performance artist, writer, and activist, Studi recently starred in Astoria: Part One at Portland Center Stage and Indiana Repertory Theatre’s Finding Home: Indiana at 200. Her Off-Broadway Debut in Informed Consent, at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, which described her performance as “moving gravity.”

Studi has also starred in the short film Blessed  and can be seen in ABC’s General Hospital, Showtime’s Shameless, and SyFy’s Z Nation. She is the current chair of the SAG-AFTRA Native Americans Committee. Her next project, in addition to And So We Walked, will be Portland Center Stage’s Astoria: Part Two.