Coyote spent several years in prison with Oso Blanco. He visited the Trail of Tears memorial after his release and mailed photographs to Oso Blanco to commemorate the trip.
For people who don’t know, the Trail of Tears is the journey that most Cherokee people endured as they were forcibly removed from their homelands in the southeast in 1838. In the Cherokee language, it is called nu na da ul tsun yi (the place where they cried) or nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i (the trail where they cried). The roughly 1000-mile journey was taken on foot in very cold weather and approximately 4,000 Cherokee people didn’t survive the harsh conditions.
The injustice of this forced relocation is why Oso’s land project is reclaiming original Cherokee lands in the southeast.
