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Thank you for putting together a site dedicated to some of the most overlooked Native peoples in the US. It’s so hard proving bloodline in the Eastern States because we’ve suffered from the longest contact with European descent, the darn Yankees burning our courthouses, and of course the great Richmond fire. Here in VA it’s always been a contentious situation because in the old days (not to long ago) the dominant culture believed that you were white or black. There was the guy in Richmond I believe Vital Statistics that changed birth certificates to black or white. He even kept a list of common native surnames on his desk to make sure he didn’t miss one of our relations!
The hardest part I think is going to PowWow. Some of our people want to see Tribal cards and what not to let you dance the circle. I understand that as Native popularity waxes and wains our people want to keep the sacredness of the circle intact and don’t want wannabe’s in the ring.
If you like PowWowing in VA and related states here’s a great site
http://www.tipofthefeather.com
John blackfeather has kept this going for a long while. Back in the day it was circulated via copy of a copy of a copy HAH!
See You At A PowWow,
keontl
Dear Keontl,
Many of us on the list are biracial or triracial and we understand your frustration in trying to verify the Native ancestry.
The Vital Statistics guy you mention was Walter (?) Plecker.There’re
other messages and links on this site giving more details.
With regard to the “circle”,I haven’t been to pow-pows yet;I would have
wanted to go this year but have some medical stuff to take care of.
A few years ago in FL,I met a man who was a gator wrestler and traditional healer.He was NDN,but not Seminole or Miccosukee as one might
think.
The healer told me that even though both of us had NDN ancestry,there
were ceremonies we couldn’t attend because of our “race”;he looked “white”
and I look “black”.I’m just repeating what he said;maybe he’s b.s.ing me or
maybe he’s not.
In the 70’s,I heard a lecture by Russell Means of AIM.Someone asked
him who is a “real NDN”.(I’m not making this up!)Means said that if one has
the ancestry and is willing to learn something of the culture,one is NDN.
I had some semantics problems a while back in talking about my Mattaponi and Saponi heritage.Haliwagirl/Buffalowm told me that those cards are just cards and being “heart-Indian” beats “part-Indian” any day!
I wasn’t raised in the Native culture but I’m willing to shut up,look,listen,and
learn!
When studying any culture,whether it’s yours or someone else’s,there
are periodic “it” moments that take one by the throat and really affect one
deeply.
I’ve been a student of AA and NA history for years.
I went in the late 90’s to see a display of slave ship artifacts in FL.After
seeing the captain’s furniture and other articles of the crew,I walked into the
reproduction of “the hold”.Yeah,you got it!There were wax figurines that were cast from Chicago high school students.I’d read about slavery but now
it was up front and center.I could only stay there a few seconds!My imagination was working overtime.A real it moment!
Not all it moments are painful but I’m sure that some will come as I learn more about NA culture.I can’t force them but they will come.
Hang in there,Keontl:)
Roca
The debate concerning Indian identity is very heated at present (as we witnessed even here a short while ago). There’s a large contingent who seem lock-step in their own (community/tribal specific) definition, then there are others who have a broader view. There’s one very quiet Lakota I know who reminded me of a Dickens tale, I think about David Copperfield, whose Aunt had a confidant who rarely spoke, and then very simply. She would rave about how profound his council was. When homeless, bedraggled David showed up on her doorstep she went on at length about how confusing the issue was on what she was to do about him, then she asked her friend about it, who said, “Wash him.” She felt it was a genius reply.
Anyway, my Lakota acquaintance had a simple definition, “Anybody who says they’re Indian, is Indian.” Which I surmised to be taking it to an issue of allegiance, and an implication that one would have to belly up to quite a lot to make the claim.
Your trip to that museum in FL reminds me of one of my favorite books. It’s called “A Woman Named Solitude” by Andre Schwartz-Bart. He is/was a Jewish Holocaust survivor who’d taken one of those cattle car journeys to a death camp.
The Solitude book is incredible, the densest prose I’ve ever read, the most brilliant use of dialect I’ve ever seen. He captured the character of Diolan culture by literally translating its cliches. The poetry captured in a language’s cliches is stunning to new ears! And when Bayangumay makes her Middle Passage it’s conveyed in pure emotion. What’s communicated there is quantum levels beyond anything anyone I’ve seen ever accomplish, including Haley’s description, which is like a dry, newspaper account by comparison.
Anyway, Andre’s account of the cattle car experience was similarly dry. His autobiographical book, “Last of the Just,” was relatively detached. It speaks to the general problem of any artist trying to communicate what he is himself too close to. But when Andre, an emigre to Haiti married to Haitian woman, found the Solitude story, it was just the distance he needed to go full blast. I found a hardback copy used through Amazon a few years back. It’s no longer in print and was never really appreciated for what it is. It’s so precious, no one who survived that journey lived to write a book about it, but, wait a minute, somebody who did in fact have that experience, did communicate about it fully, to the Nth degree, and there it is.
The debate concerning Indian identity is very heated at present (as we witnessed even here a short while ago). There’s a large contingent who seem lock-step in their own (community/tribal specific) definition, then there are others who have a broader view. There’s one very quiet Lakota I know who reminded me of a Dickens tale, I think about David Copperfield, whose Aunt had a confidant who rarely spoke, and then very simply. She would rave about how profound his council was. When homeless, bedraggled David showed up on her doorstep she went on at length about how confusing the issue was on what she was to do about him, then she asked her friend about it, who said, “Wash him.” She felt it was a genius reply.
Anyway, my Lakota acquaintance had a simple definition, “Anybody who says they’re Indian, is Indian.” Which I surmised to be taking it to an issue of allegiance, and an implication that one would have to belly up to quite a lot to make the claim.
Me:
I found that last statement of yours very profound and very touching, Linda, and I want to thank your Lakota Friend.
I was trying to explain all of this , Indian issue, to my husband, who is British. He can’t understand why Indian people are not recognized as being Indian by our fed, or state government automatically. I tried explaining to him the history of the BIA….but finally I had to say, its like not being Black, if you can’t find the bill of sale for your ancestor and the ship they were brought over in. It made him blink a few times, but I think that drew the line for him….he still said it was “crazy”, “absurd”. I find it interesting to hear the viewpoint of someone who is not American, and not invested in the myths of America.
Lynne
Lynne says: I had to say, its like not being Black, if you can’t find the bill of sale for your ancestor and the ship they were brought over in.
Me: Lynne, that is an excellent example of the absurdity of it all. Last Thanksgiving, we shared the meal at Becky’s sister’s with about a dozen foreign Duke students. We had a laptop with powwow and cemetery pictures set up. The foreign students were fascinated by the powwow pics and asked many questions about eastern ndn history. As we explained the mixing that occurred early on in VA/NC history, one of the Chinese grad students had an “it” moment. She says, “OOOhhhhh! THAT’S why many Americans don’t look like Europeans.” If she could see it, why can’t we?
Dreaminghawk wrote: Lynne says: I had to say, its like not being Black, if you can’t find the bill of sale for your ancestor and the ship they were brought over in.
Me: Lynne, that is an excellent example of the absurdity of it all. Last Thanksgiving, we shared the meal at Becky’s sister’s with about a dozen foreign Duke students. We had a laptop with powwow and cemetery pictures set up. The foreign students were fascinated by the powwow pics and asked many questions about eastern ndn history. As we explained the mixing that occurred early on in VA/NC history, one of the Chinese grad students had an “it” moment. She says, “OOOhhhhh! THAT’S why many Americans don’t look like Europeans.” If she could see it, why can’t we?
Me:
Greetings Dreaminghawk,
“We” the Indian people of the east coast…”we” get it very well. We live it. But I know what you mean…that “we” is the larger community of the government, and *perhaps* other Indian nations, and the rest of the American people. We, the east coast Indian, must educate and be persistant in our endeavors to simply BE what we ARE.
We have a number of myths to work our way through…its like being neck deep in sorgum, and trying to move forward….the myth that Indians have specific blood quontom. The myth that all east coast Indians, with a few exceptions, are exterminated. The myth that if there is admixture, then the Indian has ceased to exist! What other group of people have to live with this impossible bar?
** I ask this question with a degree of general outrage…what other people have to live up to this unrealistic standard?**
Dealing with the government is one thing…they don’t want us to exist…they will come up with tests like unto filling the Grand Canyon with fried chicken…to prove that you are an Indian. That I can “see”, because their interests have ALWAYS been sided with the falsehood that we don’t exist.
It truely pains me to have to wade thru the sorgum to “prove” it to ordinary people who have bought so thoroughly into the Myth that we don’t exist.
I want to live quietly as what I am. An Indian. An Indian who has many pathways of genetics, but there is one pathway that I choose to honor my ancestors…who fought so hard in everyday ways to insure my survival. I want to quietly promote their values and ideas by living them, and teaching my children…the same way our Indian ancestors did. These things I do…..yet I also want the right to openly be what I really am, an Indian who honors my ancestors in everyway. It doesn’t bother me to be mixed….anyone who knows the history of the Indian on the east coast KNOWS about the mixing….it does bother me to be told that I am extinct, and not Indian enough to honor my ancestors.
I don’t want anything from the federal government. I don’t want their handouts and I don’t want their interference. But I do want to see Indians acknowledged as what they are, Indians, and still here.
We are unique people, Dreaminghawk! We have survived many things. I am not a victim, and I don’t want anyone’s pity. I am proud of what I am, and how I got here. I want to see us survive the century and into another. We have a lot of wisdom, that all people would be well to have a part of their lives….especially now! So much of the American ideals were taken from Indians….so much of the Indian way of thought influenced what is good about American ideals…..this is something that can’t be forgotten by the American people. Yet they don’t know about this unless they read a few dusty old books…the which they don’t even know exist. I am not the person who has said that many American ideals were taken from the east coast Indian….historians have said that.
Thank you, Dreaminghawk, for giving me the opportunity to say that.
fond regards,
Lynne
Last Thanksgiving, we shared the meal at Becky’s sister’s with about a dozen foreign Duke students. We had a laptop with powwow and cemetery pictures set up. The foreign students were fascinated by the powwow pics and asked many questions about eastern ndn history. As we explained the mixing that occurred early on in VA/NC history, one of the Chinese grad students had an “it” moment. She says, “OOOhhhhh! THAT’S why many Americans don’t look like Europeans.” If she could see it, why can’t we?
Yes! I have a friend, Thomas McElwain, who heads the Mingo e-list and is one of the few Mingo speakers extant. He lives in Finland and knows Europe and the Middle East intimately. He’s very aware of how different ‘white’ Americans look from Europeans. Africans also can see how differently African-Americans look, and can see how much of that has to do with the Indian equation.
The book, Indian Givers, by Jack Weatherford, was basically inspired by an inspection of the impact of Contact on Western Culture, indeed World Culture. And it wasn’t just about exploiting raw materials. It was about benefitting from a technology, a culture, a philosophy. The conquerors whitewashed the origins of much of modern-day culture, but they still are what they are. And we still are who we are.
Linda, lynne, and All,
I have a theory that I’ve developed over the years. My opinion is that from centuries of interbreeding in Europe, the single most important thing about “coming to the New World” was the refreshing “injection” of the NA genetics into the stagnated European gene pool. I think this was a GREAT thing and may have been the most important factor that led to the strength of this country.
Jim
tarcarion wrote: Linda, lynne, and All,
I have a theory that I’ve developed over the years. My opinion is that from centuries of interbreeding in Europe, the single most important thing about “coming to the New World” was the refreshing “injection” of the NA genetics into the stagnated European gene pool. I think this was a GREAT thing and may have been the most important factor that led to the strength of this country.
Jim
Heh…inbreeding aside….some of us just don’t want to go there! 🙂
I know that you are right about the infusion of NA ideas, if not genetics, into European ways. Europeans had lived under a fuedal system for so long, and a theocratic syustem for so long, they had NEVER SEEN a society that didn’t fight over ideas about god, or that had such a system of meritocracy and relative equality.
Think about this….it was a real shock to them. They had to describe the children of cheifs as princesses and princes. They had no other way to think about them! And, the ideas of co-leaders were unknown to them. The stratification that they imposed on Indian society only mirrored what they, the europeans knew and could concieve of. They also overlaid ideas of the supernatural and god upon Indians. The *fact* that most Indians considered “religion” to be a private matter, instead of some kind of glue of the State, was too much for them. It became both a barrier and a test of the soul, when questioning Indians about religion.
When educated men of the eurpean enlightenment met Indians and the society created by Indians, they took a lot of ideas from Indians as a kind of Living Model for what they would envision as a utopia of new ideas. The society that that these “founding fathers” created were actually more on the Indian model….it was in fact a complete break with european ways of society and ways of thinking! Nothing could be more plain.
Granted, our Indian forebears were not super enlightened people. They warred, they had slaves, the position of women was not equal to that of men…there were some things that we, today, would change……but as a living model for a kind of democracy, it was near to as perfect as the Times would allow. Some writers of those times gave credit where it was due, when it came to the Indians, and many acknowledged that they had learned from the Indians…about how to treat other people, how to govern with consent. Much of the ideas of the Noble Savage come from these encounters. And I don’t think it was all lost on the framers. The europeans stepped into our world from a world based on privilege based on birth. They enocuntered one based on meritocracy and ability. They stepped from a world based on fixed concepts about an individual into one where the idea of a person ( and even that person’s name) could change with the events of a person’s life. They stepped from a world where divorce was unknown into a world where marital alliances could shift with the life patterns and choices of an individual.. They stepped from a world where consequences could be shifted onto other populations into a world where one’s own decisions effected one’s own survival. It was entirely new ground for the psyche for europeans. And they saw all of these new things, not only Working for people, but giving them, in so many ways, a better and more satisfying life. Europeans had over a hundred years to observe these things….and while so much could have turned out better for everyone….they did take many good ideas from Indians. Where else would they have gotten them from? The living model was right before their eyes.
Lynne
Lynne,
Those are excellent points that are so simple and straightforward that I seemed to have overlooked them. Thanks for that insight. So true. I guess that’s why so many of us have always admired and respected the NA way of life. Well stated.
Jim
tarcarion wrote: Lynne,
Those are excellent points that are so simple and straightforward that I seemed to have overlooked them. Thanks for that insight. So true. I guess that’s why so many of us have always admired and respected the NA way of life. Well stated.
Jim
Thank you, Jim. I am honored.
I have read some scholars who have said that the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence were so new, so revolutionary in thought, that it was “strange” and completely new. Yet where else would these ideas have come from? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? They were surrounded by a continent of people who felt these were “god given” rights. And the idea that all people are equal, “under god’? Nothing could be further from the European model, where for centruries the strata of society, especially that of the upper classes, were tied into a divine decree? The top of European society was at the top because “god” fixed it that way. This was a powerful idea that ran their society for *2,000* years! It still does to some extent! WWI was not that long ago!
Many of the “founding fathers” of the US were born in the US and had extensive knowledge and contact with Indians. These people could not help but be influenced by Indian society. There were many literate and “educated ” Indians, who wrote rebuttals to pamphlets circulated in the US….and bear in mind that in 1776, Europeans were still outnumbered 1,000 to one by Indians. Our ideas held real sway at that time.
Just as an aside to you, Jim, it pains me that immigration to the US did not ease off at that time. Think of what could have been achieved in this country if the real thrust of Indian ideas could have become even more bedrock? Our Indian forebears were clever people, scrambling for a new way of life with Europeans, based on trade, and new technology. Most of them were all very willing to incorporate European people, and some ideas, into their way of life. The pity is….Europeans, as a whole, renounced the Indian, and marginalized Indians, and finally removed those they had not killed. The Euro-Americans turned their faces back toward Europe, involving themselves in the politics of Europe, rather than making something entirely NEW. Perhaps they turned their back on something that could have been really new and extroidinary, a society blended with the Indian, and the best of both worlds. But the real shame of it was, it was all about Land, and how much could be taken away. It was always about Land. If we had been allowed to become a new people, a new population, in the US….think about how well it might have turned out. All the “wars” on poverty, and other social programs…they were already covered under the Indian way of life. I don’t want to get political here….but in Indian society no one went hungry. There was always enough for everyone, because no one took more than their share Our Indian ancestors were already aware of the problems inherent in a system based on Aquisition, regardless of the entire communtity. Our ancestors had over 20,000 years to test drive this idea. They found what worked! They could have gone in a lot of different directions in that LONG period of time. And no doubt they tried many systems. But the system that they settled on, was one that gave the most satisfaction to the average, living person. The best system that gave Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness……we Indians have a lot to give the world. We need to have more influence on our own country, the US.
Happy fourth of July, Jim. We have a lot of work to do!
fondly,
Lynne
Lynne,
Well said! I couldn’t agree more. The history of “civilization” seems to be one of greed and power! And land was power, then and now. From my study of history (which I love) I’ve developed a theory, “Man hasn’t advanced or progressed in the last 10,000 years. We have only developed better ways to kill more of our fellow man.” The quote is mine and I’ve said this for many years. The white Europeans have a terrible record of stealing, cheating, murdering, and killing anyone gets in their way of their quest for power. I see “greed” at the heart of this attitude. The belief that it’s okay to enslave anyone that doesn’t see things “their” way. The belief that their religion is the only true religion and that it’s their duty to murder and enslave anyone who disagrees. It’s a strange world we live in today. I think I was born several hundred years too late. That’s my “Happy 4th” message!
Jim
PS; Lynne, thanks again for stating so clearly those points.
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