The Tribe Today — Chief Cheryl Sievers-Cail
Every other exhibit in this museum looks back. This one does not. Chief Hatcher built a tribe meant to outlast him, and on June 29, 2026 it did exactly that: the chieftaincy passed, cleanly and by the tribe’s own law, to Chief Cheryl Sievers-Cail — and the Waccamaw Indian People carry on.
A planned succession, not a rupture
Buster Hatcher’s last act as Chief was to make sure the handoff was orderly. He had already stepped back over his final year to let his Vice Chief lead, so that when he resigned, nothing lurched. Under Article VII of the 2016 Constitution, the office passes automatically from Chief to Vice Chief — and so it did. He kept only the lifetime title, and his blessing:
“Please give your loyalty to Chief Cail, I believe she will lead ably and honestly.” — Chief Hatcher’s resignation letter, June 29, 2026
Chief Cheryl Sievers-Cail
She did not come to this suddenly. For years she served as Vice Chief at Chief Hatcher’s side, and long before that she had made the same journey home that so many Waccamaw describe — from not knowing, to knowing, to belonging. In her own words, from the Waccamaw Voices oral histories:
“Knowing that you’re Indian, knowing that you have been told this all your life, but not having any information … when I learned more, it was like finding a home.” — Vice Chief Cheryl Cail, Coastal Carolina University oral history, 2021
It is nearly the same sentence Chief Hatcher used about the day a Cherokee woman treated a small, out-of-place boy as one of her own — “I have a place to be now.” Two chiefs, one thesis: the tribe is a home for people who were told they had none.
The government carries on
The Waccamaw are not one leader; they are an institution built to endure. Under the 2016 Constitution the tribe governs itself through three branches, an elected Tribal Council, a Council of Elders, and the officers of tribal government — the same machinery Chief Hatcher spent thirty years building, now in new hands. The day-to-day work of the tribe — the roll, the meetings, the ceremonies — did not pause for the change of command.
Still here
The Pauwau still gathers each year at the Tribal Grounds in Dog Bluff. Waccamaw Day is still kept. And the fight Chief Hatcher never finished — federal recognition, and with it the right to bring the tribe’s ancestors home — is now the work of the administration that follows him. The phrase the community uses for all of it is the plainest true thing the museum can end on:
#WeAreStillHere.