Wow! That Oughta Be In a Museum!

Packages of Memories

Joe has many memories of Cherokee life in Oklahoma. As a child he hid in the family's woodpile and listened to adults tell stories throughout the night.

He later turned these stories into wood carvings, each one a different tale from the Cherokee Nation. Like most collectors, Joe sees his collection as packages of memories. Each object is a cue that brings up stories of a distant past.

Today, Joe's award-winning carvings are in museum collections. Many also are owned by private collectors. Joe keeps a precious group of carvings for use in school programs and in the Cherokee language classes he teaches at the Indian Center Museum in Wichita.

"I always carved from life. Everything was in my head of what I learned when I was hiding in that little niche in that woodpile, and the stories they told. Everything that was told I carved. . . . I am trying to perpetuate the memory . . . and this is the only way I know how."

Pictured above, Joe Morris at the Indian Center Museum in Wichita.

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