Post by blackcrowheart on Feb 11, 2006 12:41:44 GMT -5
Kingsport Times News - Kingsport,TN,USA
Appalachian Confederated Tribes seeking to preserve their ancestors'
way of life
Sunday, January 29, 2006
By JESSICA FISCHER
Times-News
In 1838, while other American Indians were being rounded up and
herded westward along "The Trail of Tears," Lee Vest's Monacan
forefathers were hiding out in the rugged terrain along the border
of Floyd and Montgomery counties in Virginia, a place so isolated
that "no decent white person would want to live there."
But their struggle to survive didn't end with Andrew Jackson's
Indian Removal Act, which forced the Cherokee nation and other
tribes east of the Mississippi River to give up their lands, their
homes and many of their possessions and migrate to present-day
Oklahoma.
Oppressed by laws that prohibited them from graduating high school,
voting and even owning land, Vest's family and other Native
Americans often found it easier to hide their heritage than to
embrace it.
"If you were part Indian you could own land, but if you were Indian
you could not, so a lot of the full bloods were saying, `I'm not a
full-blooded Indian, I'm a quarter,'" Vest said.
Others traded their own traditions for those of the Europeans in an
attempt to assimilate into white society, but even that proved
difficult at times.
Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act made it illegal for whites and
nonwhites, Indians included, to marry. After pushing for passage of
the law, Dr. Walter Plecker, registrar of the state's Bureau of
Vital Statistics, launched an aggressive campaign to prevent
the "mongrelization" of the white "master race" by what he
called "pseudo-Indians."
"Like rats when you are not watching, they have been `sneaking' in
their birth certificates through their own midwives, giving either
Indian or white racial classification," wrote Plecker, who believed
that there were no "pure" Indians left in Virginia. Their goal, he
argued, was "escaping Negro status" in order to attend white schools
and marry whites.
Plecker ordered that Indians be classified as "colored" on birth and
marriage certificates, and threatened doctors and midwives with jail
for noncompliance. The result, Vest said, was "paper genocide."
"The Indian people were kind of exterminated on paper," he
said. "Instead of using guns to practice genocide, they practiced
genocide by the stroke of a pen."
Now, Vest and other members of the Appalachian Confederated Tribes
are working hard to preserve their ancestors' way of life and regain
their rightful place in society.
"We're so connected with our past," said Vest, chief of the Tri-
Cities-based tribe. "Our past is our future. That's the way we look
at it."
The group, which boasts nearly 200 members of Cherokee, Creek,
Choctaw, Lenape, Pamunkey and Monacan descent, has been around since
the 1830s, when those Indian families hiding out in the hilltops
slowly began finding one another.
Today, they gather the second Sunday of each month at Oak Glen
Community Center in Fall Branch to conduct tribal business, hold
prayer circles and cleansing ceremonies, and learn beadwork, feather
decorating, drumming and other traditional crafts.
"Everything that our people did, we do," Vest said.
That includes spending days out in the wild, hunting and gathering
the medicinal plants Native Americans have used for centuries to
treat everything from broken bones to rheumatism.
"Most of our tribal people that are familiar with the woods, they
probably know 300 or 400 plants," Vest said. "But to be a medicine
person, you're required to know upwards of 500 plants - trees,
shrubs, bushes, roots."
Want to ward off mosquitoes? Eat the spike of a rat-tail plantain
three days before you plan to be outside, and they'll steer clear of
you, he said. Mullein can get rid of a deep, purple bruise in a
matter of minutes.
Much of that knowledge came from watching the black bear, the only
animal in the woods that actively seeks out herbs, Vest said. "With
their long claws they would dig these herbs up, so traditionally,
when we dig up anything with a root, we imitate a bear with our
digging tools," he said. "We've got bone tools with a wooden handle
that's shaped like a crook that we dig these roots up with."
Tribal members are taught, however, that before taking any plant,
they must first cleanse their mind of impure thoughts; approach the
specimen with open hands to show that they mean no harm; pray to the
creator to thank him for imparting the knowledge of the plant's
uses; and pray to the spirit of the plant to ask for forgiveness for
taking part or in some cases all of it.
Members are also instructed to harvest the fourth plant they find,
passing up the first three to ensure the survival of the species.
"If you want, say, one leaf, you gently hold the plant and snap a
leaf off without disturbing the rest of the plant, then you leave
something, a sacrifice - a pinch of tobacco, cornmeal, beads,
anything," Vest said. "We respect plants. We respect all life."
Since 1972, tribal members have performed programs, free of charge,
at more than 125 schools. They also organize a living history
village in Jonesborough each Fourth of July, sponsor an annual plant
hunting and gathering camp and have been in talks with David Oaks,
Norman Sobel and other movers and shakers behind the proposed King's
Port on the Holston River project about constructing an interpretive
village on the point of Long Island, one of the local Indians' most
sacred pieces of ground - all in an attempt to teach others about
their traditions and, they hope, shatter some of the stereotypes
Native Americans have been labeled with through the years.
Indians don't swap blood in blood-brother ceremonies, as Jeff
Chandler did in the 1950 Western film "Broken Arrow," and they don't
worship more than one god, either, Vest said.
In fact, although they pray to the creator, or grandfather as they
call him sometimes, the membership of the Appalachian Confederated
Tribes as a whole believes Jesus to be the son of God, and one of
the group's two holy men is an ordained minister.
By dispelling some of those myths, Vest hopes the tribe will attract
more members - and he believes there are many folks in East
Tennessee and Southwest Virginia with the traces of Indian blood
needed to join.
"We welcome people that are of Indian heritage," he said. "We say
you may have one drop of Indian blood in you, but if your heart is
100 percent Indian, that means you're receptive to our stories and
learning our ways."
Folks interested in joining the tribe, however, should be prepared
to share their oral family history or offer some other proof of
their Indian heritage.
The tribe itself is also in the midst of an application process, one
they hope will result in state recognition.
"The Indian people are the only race of people I know in the United
States who have to prove who they are," Vest said. "Do you have a
card that says your race or religion on it? We have to have one that
says we're Indian?"
Three tribes in Tennessee, including the Appalachian Confederated
Tribes, are seeking state recognition from the Tennessee Commission
of Indian Affairs, an arduous process that requires tribes meet the
recognition criteria set forth by the Advisory Council of Tennessee
Indian Affairs, which Vest served on for a couple of years.
"We want our recognition because it's required by law any more for
us to sell our craft," Vest said. "For us to legally sell the
products that we make - the beadwork or anything else we do - we
have to be at least state recognized. That's a federal law. If you
as an individual make something and sell it as being Indian made and
you're not at least state recognized, you can be fined $10,000 plus
a jail sentence. If you are a corporation, you can be fined $1
million.
"I used to make my living as a silversmith until we changed the law.
And I was a party to that law because we had so many knock offs that
weren't Indian-made and sold for a fourth of what our work would
sell for so it kind of put us out of business. This would benefit
our artisans, who would then be able to go back and make a
traditional living."
Vest said state recognition would also allow the tribe to apply for
grant money, which they could use to purchase a piece of land the
tribe could call its own and, perhaps, build a traditional
interpretive village on. That, he said, would benefit both the tribe
and the community.
"Just think of the tourist dollars that may come into the Tri-Cities
area if we had a traditional working village here. I don't mean just
a haphazard, makeshift-type thing. I'd like to showcase the way we
actually lived.
"But I think the most important thing is we deserve the recognition.
We deserve to be recognized as who we are."
For more information about the Appalachian Confederated Tribes, call
Vest at 323-0327 or e-mail him at lvest022@yahoo.com.
Visitors are also welcome to attend any of the tribe's monthly
meetings. The next one will begin around 9:30 a.m., Feb. 12 and will
wrap up around 5 p.m. To get there from Kingsport, take Highway 93
towards Fall Branch. Turn right onto Horton Highway and right again
onto Oak Glen Circle.
Appalachian Confederated Tribes seeking to preserve their ancestors'
way of life
Sunday, January 29, 2006
By JESSICA FISCHER
Times-News
In 1838, while other American Indians were being rounded up and
herded westward along "The Trail of Tears," Lee Vest's Monacan
forefathers were hiding out in the rugged terrain along the border
of Floyd and Montgomery counties in Virginia, a place so isolated
that "no decent white person would want to live there."
But their struggle to survive didn't end with Andrew Jackson's
Indian Removal Act, which forced the Cherokee nation and other
tribes east of the Mississippi River to give up their lands, their
homes and many of their possessions and migrate to present-day
Oklahoma.
Oppressed by laws that prohibited them from graduating high school,
voting and even owning land, Vest's family and other Native
Americans often found it easier to hide their heritage than to
embrace it.
"If you were part Indian you could own land, but if you were Indian
you could not, so a lot of the full bloods were saying, `I'm not a
full-blooded Indian, I'm a quarter,'" Vest said.
Others traded their own traditions for those of the Europeans in an
attempt to assimilate into white society, but even that proved
difficult at times.
Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act made it illegal for whites and
nonwhites, Indians included, to marry. After pushing for passage of
the law, Dr. Walter Plecker, registrar of the state's Bureau of
Vital Statistics, launched an aggressive campaign to prevent
the "mongrelization" of the white "master race" by what he
called "pseudo-Indians."
"Like rats when you are not watching, they have been `sneaking' in
their birth certificates through their own midwives, giving either
Indian or white racial classification," wrote Plecker, who believed
that there were no "pure" Indians left in Virginia. Their goal, he
argued, was "escaping Negro status" in order to attend white schools
and marry whites.
Plecker ordered that Indians be classified as "colored" on birth and
marriage certificates, and threatened doctors and midwives with jail
for noncompliance. The result, Vest said, was "paper genocide."
"The Indian people were kind of exterminated on paper," he
said. "Instead of using guns to practice genocide, they practiced
genocide by the stroke of a pen."
Now, Vest and other members of the Appalachian Confederated Tribes
are working hard to preserve their ancestors' way of life and regain
their rightful place in society.
"We're so connected with our past," said Vest, chief of the Tri-
Cities-based tribe. "Our past is our future. That's the way we look
at it."
The group, which boasts nearly 200 members of Cherokee, Creek,
Choctaw, Lenape, Pamunkey and Monacan descent, has been around since
the 1830s, when those Indian families hiding out in the hilltops
slowly began finding one another.
Today, they gather the second Sunday of each month at Oak Glen
Community Center in Fall Branch to conduct tribal business, hold
prayer circles and cleansing ceremonies, and learn beadwork, feather
decorating, drumming and other traditional crafts.
"Everything that our people did, we do," Vest said.
That includes spending days out in the wild, hunting and gathering
the medicinal plants Native Americans have used for centuries to
treat everything from broken bones to rheumatism.
"Most of our tribal people that are familiar with the woods, they
probably know 300 or 400 plants," Vest said. "But to be a medicine
person, you're required to know upwards of 500 plants - trees,
shrubs, bushes, roots."
Want to ward off mosquitoes? Eat the spike of a rat-tail plantain
three days before you plan to be outside, and they'll steer clear of
you, he said. Mullein can get rid of a deep, purple bruise in a
matter of minutes.
Much of that knowledge came from watching the black bear, the only
animal in the woods that actively seeks out herbs, Vest said. "With
their long claws they would dig these herbs up, so traditionally,
when we dig up anything with a root, we imitate a bear with our
digging tools," he said. "We've got bone tools with a wooden handle
that's shaped like a crook that we dig these roots up with."
Tribal members are taught, however, that before taking any plant,
they must first cleanse their mind of impure thoughts; approach the
specimen with open hands to show that they mean no harm; pray to the
creator to thank him for imparting the knowledge of the plant's
uses; and pray to the spirit of the plant to ask for forgiveness for
taking part or in some cases all of it.
Members are also instructed to harvest the fourth plant they find,
passing up the first three to ensure the survival of the species.
"If you want, say, one leaf, you gently hold the plant and snap a
leaf off without disturbing the rest of the plant, then you leave
something, a sacrifice - a pinch of tobacco, cornmeal, beads,
anything," Vest said. "We respect plants. We respect all life."
Since 1972, tribal members have performed programs, free of charge,
at more than 125 schools. They also organize a living history
village in Jonesborough each Fourth of July, sponsor an annual plant
hunting and gathering camp and have been in talks with David Oaks,
Norman Sobel and other movers and shakers behind the proposed King's
Port on the Holston River project about constructing an interpretive
village on the point of Long Island, one of the local Indians' most
sacred pieces of ground - all in an attempt to teach others about
their traditions and, they hope, shatter some of the stereotypes
Native Americans have been labeled with through the years.
Indians don't swap blood in blood-brother ceremonies, as Jeff
Chandler did in the 1950 Western film "Broken Arrow," and they don't
worship more than one god, either, Vest said.
In fact, although they pray to the creator, or grandfather as they
call him sometimes, the membership of the Appalachian Confederated
Tribes as a whole believes Jesus to be the son of God, and one of
the group's two holy men is an ordained minister.
By dispelling some of those myths, Vest hopes the tribe will attract
more members - and he believes there are many folks in East
Tennessee and Southwest Virginia with the traces of Indian blood
needed to join.
"We welcome people that are of Indian heritage," he said. "We say
you may have one drop of Indian blood in you, but if your heart is
100 percent Indian, that means you're receptive to our stories and
learning our ways."
Folks interested in joining the tribe, however, should be prepared
to share their oral family history or offer some other proof of
their Indian heritage.
The tribe itself is also in the midst of an application process, one
they hope will result in state recognition.
"The Indian people are the only race of people I know in the United
States who have to prove who they are," Vest said. "Do you have a
card that says your race or religion on it? We have to have one that
says we're Indian?"
Three tribes in Tennessee, including the Appalachian Confederated
Tribes, are seeking state recognition from the Tennessee Commission
of Indian Affairs, an arduous process that requires tribes meet the
recognition criteria set forth by the Advisory Council of Tennessee
Indian Affairs, which Vest served on for a couple of years.
"We want our recognition because it's required by law any more for
us to sell our craft," Vest said. "For us to legally sell the
products that we make - the beadwork or anything else we do - we
have to be at least state recognized. That's a federal law. If you
as an individual make something and sell it as being Indian made and
you're not at least state recognized, you can be fined $10,000 plus
a jail sentence. If you are a corporation, you can be fined $1
million.
"I used to make my living as a silversmith until we changed the law.
And I was a party to that law because we had so many knock offs that
weren't Indian-made and sold for a fourth of what our work would
sell for so it kind of put us out of business. This would benefit
our artisans, who would then be able to go back and make a
traditional living."
Vest said state recognition would also allow the tribe to apply for
grant money, which they could use to purchase a piece of land the
tribe could call its own and, perhaps, build a traditional
interpretive village on. That, he said, would benefit both the tribe
and the community.
"Just think of the tourist dollars that may come into the Tri-Cities
area if we had a traditional working village here. I don't mean just
a haphazard, makeshift-type thing. I'd like to showcase the way we
actually lived.
"But I think the most important thing is we deserve the recognition.
We deserve to be recognized as who we are."
For more information about the Appalachian Confederated Tribes, call
Vest at 323-0327 or e-mail him at lvest022@yahoo.com.
Visitors are also welcome to attend any of the tribe's monthly
meetings. The next one will begin around 9:30 a.m., Feb. 12 and will
wrap up around 5 p.m. To get there from Kingsport, take Highway 93
towards Fall Branch. Turn right onto Horton Highway and right again
onto Oak Glen Circle.