Diamond Brown has perfected the art of bait and switch.

He hooks his unsuspecting subjects with an eye-catching spread of indigenous tools — arrows and adzes, bone awls and baskets, pelts and pestles.

About 30 people sat scattered around the 2,800-seat Mountainside Theater in Cherokee, watching the makings of something that has never graced the stage there before.

After debuting its first new play in more than 60 years last year, the Cherokee Historical Association will take another giant leap by premiering the theater’s first historical musical, “Chief Little Will,” in 2014.

Since Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort added table games with live dealers last year they’ve had to round up hundreds of new card dealers — and they’re still looking for more.

Eleven bears once confined to concrete pits at Chief Saunooke Bear Park in Cherokee have found greener pastures in Texas after the bear park was shut down following repeated federal violations. 

Known as the finest showcase of native traditions, the ninth annual Festival of Native Peoples will take place July 12-13 at Cherokee Indian Fair Grounds. The event features a variety of traditional dance, storytelling and song performances honoring the collected history, culture, tradition and wisdom of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. 

“An array of entertainment as diverse as the tribes that provide it ensures visitors to Cherokee will be impressed,” said Howard Wahnetah, event supervisor for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “The tribes are so different, and when we come together to celebrate our collective native heritage, we gain a better understanding of our own history and customs.”

Growing up on the Isleta Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, 26-year-old Cody Grant could name off the tribes he descended from — Cherokee, two sects of Pueblo — but he didn’t know anything about them, except their names.

“For me, it was because culturally, I was lacking,” said Grant, who split his time between New Mexico and Cherokee as a child. “I didn’t place big stock in cultural values.”  

Cook and television personality Paula Deen has gotten into hot butter in recent weeks over allegations of racism, prompting Caesar’s Entertainment to shut the Paula Deen’s Kitchen at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians could make the inmates housed in its future jail pay — literally.

A mountainside in Macon County once destined for a housing development is now destined to be a community forest area comparable to the arboretum in Asheville.

The Hall Mountain Tract is a 108-acre swath of land overlooking the Cowee mound — a sacred Cherokee site — and the Little Tennessee River. Local conservationists and Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal members have been pushing hard since 2005 to save the site from becoming a large subdivision.

Enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will head to the polls Tuesday, June 6, to vote in the primary election for Tribal Council.