Donald N. Yates has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators. The most-rated is Old World Roots of the Cherokee.
Ancestors and Enemies
Summary
As the 20th century was ending and the millennium approached, a new ethnic category was invented in the South. The Melungeons were born thrashing and squawling into the American consciousness. They were a tri-racial clan hidden away in the hills and hollers of Lower Appalachia with a genetic predisposition to six fingers and Mediterranean diseases and an unsavory reputation for moonshining, counterfeiting and secret cults. DNA studies showed they were probably descended from Portuguese colonists and had connections with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans and Romani (Gypsies). Were they the country's oldest indigenous people? They soon got on the radar of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office of Recognition, which fought the nascent identity movement tooth and nail. This collection by two researchers involved in the explosive controversy tells the story of the Melungeon Movement in a coherent, chronological fashion for the first time. Fourteen original illlustrations, ranging from Granny Dollar, the last Cherokee Indian in Northeast Alabama, to Luis Gomez, builder of the oldest standing Jewish residence in the United States, add interest to the portrayal of this mysterious and exotic ethnic community.
©2013 Phyllis E. Starnes and Donald N. Yates (P)2014 Phyllis E. Starnes and Donald N. Yates
Yucatan Journal: October 6 - November 1, 2007
Summary
Donald and Teresa Yates spent a month in Yucatan in 2007. This day-by-day account of their travels there is the result. From Ek Balam, the country's "newest ruin", where their guide is the grandson of one of the "knowledge people" who once ruled it, to Mayapan, the last Mayan city to be abandoned, inhabited now only by the howler monkeys that were the patron gods of its poet kings, they give us their impressions and present their favorite images of a culture that is very much alive if you know where to look and the right questions to ask.
©2007 Donald N. Yates (P)2018 Donald N. Yates
Cherokee DNA Studies: Real People Who Proved the Geneticists Wrong
Summary
Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee. Share the journeys of discovery and self-awareness of these passionate volunteers who defied the experts and are helping write a new chapter in the Peopling of the Americas. "The Yateses' DNA findings are revolutionary." (Stephen C. Jett, Atlantic Ocean Crossings) "Monumental." (Richard L. Thornton, Apalache Foundation)
©2014 Donald N. Yates and Teresa A. Yates (P)2018 Donald N Yates
On the Trail of Europa
Summary
Where must I locate thee now, O my homeland, or in what places? So wrote a Roman poet 2,000 years ago, and so feel Donald Yates and his wife, Teresa, after an eye-opening visit to Italy, Croatia, Greece, and Turkey.
©2011 Donald N. Yates (P)2018 Donald N. Yates
The Cherokee Origin Narrative
Summary
In the world of Native Americans, oral communication takes the place of the written word in preserving their most valued “texts”. By a miracle of transmission, here is the earliest and most authenticated version of the story of the Cherokee people, from their origins in a land across the great waters to the coming of the white man. In olden times, it was recited at every Great Moon or Cherokee New Year festival so it could be learned by young people and the tribal lore perpetuated. It was set down in English in an Indian Territory newspaper by Cornsilk (the pen-name of William Eubanks) from the Cherokee language recitation of George Sahkiyah (Soggy) Sanders, a fellow Keetoowah Society priest, in 1896. We do not have anything anterior or more authoritative than Eubanks and Sanders’ Red Man’s Origin, presented here as The Cherokee Origin Narrative. Mystic and plain-spoken at the same time, it tells how the clans became seven in number, reorganized their religion in America, and struggled to maintain their “half-sphere temple of light”. You will hear in Cornsilk’s original words about the true name of the Cherokee people, the deathless Uktena serpent, divining crystals of the Urim and Thummin, “terrible Sa-ho-ni clan”, and other Cherokee storytelling subjects. The brief narrative is edited with an introduction and notes by Donald N. Yates, author of Old World Roots of the Cherokee and other titles in Cherokee history. If you own one audiobook about the Cherokee Indians, it should be this one. Second edition (August 15, 2017), with new title and revised. Replaces Red Man's Origin (2013).
©2017 Donald N. Yates (P)2018 Donald N. Yates
Old World Roots of the Cherokee
Summary
Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U.S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains. Using a combination of DNA analysis, historical research, and classical philology, it uncovers the Jewish and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry of the Cherokee and reveals that they originally spoke Greek before adopting the Iroquoian language of their Haudenosaunee allies while the two nations dwelt together in the Ohio Valley.
©2012 Donald N. Yates (P)2013 Donald N. Yates