Sonny Ledford is an artist, performer, and keeper of cultural knowledge and wisdom in his community, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, based in western North Carolina. When the US Congress voted to forcibly remove Native Americans from the Southeast and resettle them west of the Mississippi, in the 1830s, several hundred Cherokees living around the Smoky Mountains managed to evade the roundup. They later organized into the Eastern Band, a federally recognized tribe.