Paula Nelson

Image of Paula Nelson
Paula Nelson is an artist, dancer, poet, performer, singer, and living history educator. An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Nelson is an advocate and preservationist of the Cherokee language and culture. She creates songs and poems in Cherokee as part of language retention projects for schools and families; she created Project Songbird, a collaborative effort to compose Cherokee songs.

Nelson is an endorsed educational performer through PBS, and her educational interactive program can now be accessed by educators throughout the world. Her albums include CHANT: Cherokee Hopes and New Traditions (2007), and her work is included in the anthology Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (2011) and in Indigenous Message: On Water, Indigenous Form on Water & Peace (2014). She lives in the Big Cove Community near Cherokee, North Carolina.