Julie Reed is a Cherokee Nation Citizen and doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is receiving her PhD In American History. Her dissertation explores the development of social services in the Cherokee Nation in the period after Removal and the Civil War. In the 1870s, the Cherokee Nation opened an Orphanage, a prison, and a facility for Blind, Deaf, Sick, and Insane Cherokee people. Her work considers how the Trail of Tears and the Civil War impacted Cherokee kinship systems and individual families and why the Cherokee Nation chose institutions to aid its citizens during this period.
She has also worked for Cherokee Nation Cultural Tourism and provided research for the recently restored 1844 courthouse and the National Prison that is currently under restoration.
She attended East Bay High School in Gibsonton, Florida and graduated from the University of South Florida in 1998 with a degree in English Literature. Her parents still live in Riverview, Florida. She has a 4 year old daughter named Lilith who reminds her daily about the most important things in life.