Paint the Sky with Suns Introduction by Dennis Chamberland
Sometimes even the youngest are faced with dreadful
tragedy very early in their lives.
Stripped from family and culture, they are often lost in the terrible,
raging storms of life over which they have no control. Many are inevitably consumed
by the tempest and never recover from the trauma.
But others – perhaps by chance, through unique circumstance,
or by sheer genetic prowess – ride wave after wave of the storm into which they
have been tossed and successfully carve out meaningful lives. They are even wholly transformed into unique beings
of an entirely new culture. This tale – the genesis of my own story – is just
such a narrative.
In the 21st century I can carefully map my DNA
trail and match them up to the oral history and even photos and records from my
past. And in so doing, I am committed to transforming that astonishing story –
blending raw data with the oral narratives handed down to me into this book, Paint
the Sky With Suns. Here the reader
will discover a lasting, recorded testament to the incredible resilience of an
American family whose conjoined roots came not only from different trees – but from
distant continents. It is a story born from great, even historic, tragedy and
government led genocide of one branch of my people and their culture. And yet, from
another branch of my family, they were met with equal parts loss and hardship on
the barren and unforgiving plains of Indian Territory.
This
is a project that is created to preserve their
legacy, based on their true stories, but
lovingly woven together in a narrative form. What
better way to tell such a significant and sweeping tale than though the
pen of
a novelist? I do this for them – for every
living voice and life deserves to be remembered with dignity and with
honor. And I also write this for my
children, who also deserve to know the own roots with clarity, accuracy
but
with none of the sterility represented by the mere diagram a family
tree. For every branch and line of every tree represents
a whole life whose story is worth remembering and cherishing. But some
stories
are so big and so pivotal that they merit a full and empty pallet on
which to
paint its epic scope. And who better equipped to do that than me, the
great
grandson of William Wattenbarger, the little Cherokee boy who ran away
from the
brutality of the Trail of Tears becoming lost in the Tennessee
wilderness? And
that is where this story actually begins…
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