Help Us Restore Cherokee History in Georgia

GTEC FOUNDATION is organizing this fundraiser.

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Help Us Bring Cherokee History Home!

In the quiet hills of Dahlonega, Georgia, there’s a place where the earth still remembers.

It remembers the footsteps of our Cherokee ancestors. It remembers the stories, the language, the tears, the resilience and now, it calls to us to remember too.

We are the descendants of those who stayed behind. Those who endured the heartbreak of separation, who held on to culture in silence, and whose strength has carried us here, generations later. Today, we have the chance to honor them, not in memory alone, but in presence.

We are creating the Cherokee Heritage Center: a home where our history will be seen, heard, and felt. A place where our story can live again, not just in textbooks, but in every heart that visits.

On this sacred 2.8-acre land stands an old general store, still intact from the time of the Cherokee Removal. With your help, we will lovingly restore it. Next to it, an old house will become our first exhibit wing, eventually forming the hallways of a full-scale museum.

Inside, we’ll showcase:

Cherokee pottery, tools, and documents
A theater room for films and oral histories
Exhibits on New Echota, the Cherokee capital, and the writing of our Constitution
The untold story of the Georgia Cherokee, those who were never removed, but who quietly resisted, survived, and rebuilt
Music, tradition, and storytelling: bringing voices of the past to life through drumming, songs, and spoken word passed down through generations

Outside, we dream of a living village, where visitors can walk through replicas of Cherokee homes, see crops we once grew, and experience the lifeways of our people. We’ll also share the gold mining history that forever changed this land and the miners—Indigenous and immigrant—who toiled here.

And for the children, our future, we will open our doors to schools across the region, welcoming them into a space where Cherokee history is not just taught, but felt.

We are right off Georgia Highway 400, easy to find, but impossible to forget.