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I came across this transcription that’s dated November 2000 by the National Congress of American Indians (Wilma Mankiller was the Moderator).
Very interesting.
http://web.mit.edu/wjohnson/www/kiaanafh/NCAI_pdf_Transcript.pdf
Erica
What an important document. Thank you for sharing it. I think it is important to note that whenever people are brought together, regardless of the circumstances which brought them together, some mixing is inevitable. Ther are so many of “mixed” people. I believe that we should begin to celebrate the similarities in our belief systems, brining honor to both ancestrial pasts.
Deirdre
It’s especially important in understanding the Upper South. Those Indians who remained here after Removal had to accept being classified as “Black” or “Mullatto” and were dealt with legally/politically/socially on the same footing, or lack thereof. There were many tensions involved in either maintaining a distinct identity or capitulating to the pressure to simply blend in as light-skinned “coloreds.”
There was a story I heard about an Indian community outside Snow Hill, NC. It was called “Browntown” and had been an insular Indian community for many generations, likely Tuscaroran, since the site of Ft. Neoheroka was just down the road.
During the sixties, as Black people won greater respect for themselves via the Civil Rights Movement, the justifications for Indian communities holding to themselves began to erode. A beautiful high school girl in Browntown fell in love with a boy who was Black. Her family pitched a fit and forbade her to see him. She shot and killed herself. That was the end of that. No more marriages to Black partners were forbidden. To drive through there now it appears to be a black community. You have to know someone familiar with the town’s history and an old family album to know any different.
I know of other tri-racial isolates like this. Then, of course, there are some larger, and/or more remote isolate communities who held fast to this day. They tend towards anti-black sentiments, especially if they obviously have some African bloodlines themselves. You seem to run into that curious American phenomen where the more African their ancestry the louder they spout their bigotry. I saw that a lot in Northern cities with ethnic white folks, the less status they had as whites the louder their racism. Same old same old
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