Jamestown involvement hangs on recognitions

[blackcrowheart]

Jamestown involvement hangs on recognitions
Posted: December 06, 2005
by: The Associated Press

AP Photo/Richmond Times-Dispatch, Eva Russo -- Kenneth Branham, chief of the Monacan Nation; Stephen Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy Tribe; and Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, spoke during a news conference Nov. 23 at the Capitol Bell Tower in Richmond, Va. Leaders of Virginia's American Indian tribes said that the nature and level of the tribes' participation in the 400th anniversary of Jamestown depends on whether they get federal recognition before the events in 2007.
By Larry O'Dell -- Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Leaders of Virginia's American Indian tribes said Nov. 23 that the nature and level of the tribes' participation in the 400th anniversary of Jamestown depends on whether they get federal recognition before the events in 2007.

Six of the eight Virginia tribes have been seeking federal recognition from Congress since 2000, but the legislation has gone nowhere. Tribal leaders said they deserve federal recognition if they are expected to represent all American Indians at the Jamestown festivities.

''We'll be there, but if we're not federally recognized we won't be very happy participants,'' said Kenneth Branham, chief of Virginia's Monacan Nation. ''It will be a disgrace for this country and this state.''

Branham said at a news conference that a protest is among the tribe's possible options at Jamestown if recognition is denied. The tribes also could scale back their involvement in the ceremonies.

''I'm so afraid that after 2007, if we're not federally recognized, they'll say, 'Thank you for participating. We'll see you in 50 years,''' Branham said.

Joining the Monacan Nation in seeking congressional action are the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock and Nansemond tribes. About 3,000 to 4,000 Virginians trace their ancestry to Virginia's indigenous peoples.

Federal recognition would make certain federal grants and scholarships available and give the tribes legal standing to retrieve their ancestors' remains from museums. Some lawmakers fear it also would lead to casino gambling, although tribal leaders say they have no interest in that.

U.S. Sens. George Allen and John Warner have sponsored federal recognition legislation for the tribes. Gov. Mark Warner reiterated his support for recognition Nov. 23 at the annual ''tribute ceremony,'' where he received two deer killed by hunters from the Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes as payment in lieu of taxes.

Asked if Virginia's tribes should participate in the Jamestown commemoration if they still don't have federal recognition, Warner said: ''I hope they would, but I also understand their frustration.''

Planners of the events marking the anniversary of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in this country also support the tribes' efforts.

[Okwes]

Va. Indians still hunt federal recognition
Tribal members want the benefits that federal grants would bring.

By John Cramer (mailto: [e-mail] )
The Roanoke Times
www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-47211
www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-47211

NATURAL BRIDGE -- The Monacans have endured for centuries, surviving ancient
tribal wars, Capt. John Smith's guns and a 20th century "paper genocide."
But today they face perhaps their toughest battleground -- the halls of
Congress.
While the Monacans and Virginia's other American Indian tribes have been
officially embraced by the state since the 1980s, they continue to be denied
federal recognition.
The tribes, whose sovereignty bill has been stalled in Congress since 2001,
are exasperated, pointing out the irony of America's denying their existence
while celebrating their history at events such as the upcoming 400th
anniversary commemoration of Jamestown.
Tribal members say federal recognition would bring federal grants for college
scholarships, job training, housing, health care and other badly needed
programs. They say they are not interested in opening casinos, which have been
profitable but problematic in other states where tribes have received
sovereignty.
"These are the indigenous people of the state," said Jeff Hantman, an
archaeologist and associate professor of anthropology at the University of
Virginia. "They've been here continuously against all odds, but some people can't
accept that some Indians have survived and are fighting back."
Opponents say federal recognition would invite problems, including Indian-run
casinos, exempting tribes from taxes, preventing police from coming onto
tribal grounds and inviting lawsuits to reclaim Indian land and water rights.
"You're creating a nation," said U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Rocky Mount. "I
don't want sovereignty that elevates them above the state."
If federal recognition remains stalled -- supporters and opponents see little
prospect for movement in the current Congress -- Virginia's tribes are
likely to protest when they share center stage at the Jamestown ceremonies. The
event is being funded by millions of tax dollars and is expected to attract
international attention, starting in Great Britain next year and the United
States in 2007.
"We'll participate, but there will be a racket," said Monacan Chief Kenneth
Branham, who accused sovereignty opponents of racism, greed and hypocrisy.
Tribal leaders plan to push the issue into the world spotlight starting in
July when they are feted in Great Britain during the kickoff of the Jamestown
commemoration.
Ken Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi tribe, said British Jamestown
committee members have treated Virginia's tribal chiefs as heads of state, "which
is much more warmly than some of our own congressmen have treated us."
Jamestown: The last stand
Virginia's tribes consider the Jamestown anniversary their last, best chance
to attract public attention to their sovereignty request.
"If we don't get it now, the public will probably forget about it
altogether," Branham said. "I'm not embittered -- you can't change the past -- but it's
a disgrace."
Federal recognition has divided Virginia lawmakers. Supporters include the
state's two U.S. senators, George Allen and John Warner, both Republicans, as
well as Gov. Mark Warner and Gov.-elect Tim Kaine, both Democrats, and the
U.S. and British Jamestown commemoration committees.
Allen supports federal recognition because it would correct "historical
injustices," while leaving the final decision about Indian casinos to state
authorities and the federal Department of the Interior, Allen spokesman David
Snepp said.
But Goode said he would support recognition only if the tribes signed an
agreement that disallowed casinos, waived tax exemption and allowed outside law
enforcement agencies onto tribal grounds.
Another opponent, U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, said most tribes
nationwide that have received federal recognition have subsequently sought
casinos.
Goodlatte said sovereignty opens the way for "outside investors [to] pour
millions of dollars into a state to influence the tribes, the state legislature
and the governor, dangling the promise of great riches to allow casinos."
Adams, the Upper Mattaponi chief, said claims that Indians would be
influenced by outside investors evokes stereotypes that tribes could be bought off --
whether for trinkets in Colonial times or large cash bribes today.
Virginia's tribes dismiss gambling arguments, pointing out that Virginia
already has a lottery, horse racing and charitable bingo, and that federal
recognition would not exempt them from needing state legislative and gubernatorial
permission to open casinos.
The tribes have vowed not to open casinos but refuse lawmakers' demand that
they permanently give up that option. The tribes say future generations may
want casinos.
Rolling the dice
The federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 requires tribes to negotiate
gaming compacts with states before opening casinos on tribal land. The
United States officially recognizes 562 tribes from 32 states. Indian casinos
operate under a combination of state law, tribal ordinance and tribal-state
compacts. According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, the federal
regulatory agency that oversees tribal gaming, there are 367 tribal casinos
nationwide, which brought in about $19.5 billion in gross revenues in 2004.
Political analyst Larry Sabato said the Jamestown commemoration could give
the tribes more political leverage, but that opponents of federal recognition
probably will not change their minds until the tribes agree to never have
casinos. He said casinos are a much more lucrative -- and potentially
troublesome -- form of gambling than other types of gambling allowed in Virginia.
The National Indian Gaming Association, which represents tribal gaming
businesses, says casinos are economic development tools that promote
self-sufficiency and fight poverty. But Chad Hills, an analyst for Focus on the Family, a
Colorado-based Christian group that opposes all forms of legalized gambling,
said Indian casinos contribute to America's growing gambling addiction, which
causes alcoholism, domestic violence and other problems.
Barney Arthur, director of Concerned Christians of the Valley, a Roanoke
Valley group, said he saw the damage done by Indian casinos when he worked as a
missionary on reservations in other states.
"Native Americans have basically been ripped off by the American government
and my heart goes out to them," he said. "They deserve help, but not if it
comes with the possibility of casinos."
Why sovereignty?
Tribal leaders say sovereignty opponents include federal authorities who do
not want to spend millions more on Indian benefits, state and local officials
who fear federal intrusion, and large recognized tribes that do not want to
share their federal benefits with what some consider "casino tribes" populated
by a few people with little Indian blood who are only interested in gambling
profits.
Two of Virginia's eight state-recognized tribes, the Pamunkey and the
Mattaponi, are seeking sovereignty through the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, in
part because they already have federally recognized reservations, which are
the two oldest reservations in the United States. The bureau requires detailed
records of tribes' ancestry, cultural solidarity and political authority.
Virginia's six other state-recognized tribes -- the Monacans, Chickahominy,
Eastern Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock and Nansemond -- have
petitioned Congress for federal recognition. They say Virginia's old race laws
make it all but impossible to satisfy the bureau's requirements.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Virginia's Racial Integrity Act classified
Indians as "mongrel," "colored" or "Negro" on their birth, marriage and death
certificates. The tribes say this "paper genocide" -- led by Walter Plecker, the
state's first registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics and an avowed white
supremacist -- used statistics rather than guns to try to exterminate them.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Virginia's race laws in 1967,
Virginia tried to make amends in the 1980s and 1990s by creating a state Bureau of
Indian Affairs, recognizing the eight largest tribes and correcting all
Indian records. In 1989, the Monacans became the last tribe the state has
recognized.
On a recent day at the Monacan village at Natural Bridge -- with three
red-tailed hawks soaring overhead -- Branham, 52, said the time had come for
Virginia's first inhabitants to make a stand.
"Millions of dollars are going into this [Jamestown] thing and what do we get
-- nothing," he said. "We aren't going to take trinkets anymore like in
Colonial times. We want the world to know how indigenous people are being treated
today. This is the showdown."

Your Assistance Is Requested In This Matter!
The following story below will furthur explain!
The Letter I sent & the E-mail address' of the
Representatives I sent it to, are below.
Please Pass This Alert To Every Yahoo, MSN
& AOL Native Group You Belong, As Well As
Powwows.com.
We Need Your Help In This Situation!
VIRGINIA AMERICAN INDIANS SOVEREIGNTY!

By Emma Schwartz, Times Staff Writer

KING WILLIAM COUNTY, Va. Nearly 400 years ago, British colonists
came ashore near this verdant watershed of Chesapeake Bay, surviving the
first brutal winter only with the help of the Native Americans who had lived
on the land for centuries.
But as the Commonwealth of Virginia prepares for the commemoration
of that 1607 arrival in Jamestown, the descendants of those Indians are
embroiled in a fight over a different legacy of that year: acknowledgment of
their sovereignty.
Though the first to greet British colonists, the tribes the
Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond and Rappahannock, with a total population of about 3,500 are among the last to gain official recognition from the U.S. government.
Attaining that status would give the tribes control over their own
government affairs and access to a gold mine of federal funding, including
health, housing and governance grants for Native Americans.
Allocations vary widely across the nation's 562 federally recognized
tribes. In 2002, for example, the Navajos with a population of 250,000
received more than $321 million, while the 1,055-member Morongo tribe of
California got $560,000, according to federal budget figures.
The unique situation of the Virginia tribes is, in part, the result
of the initial contact with the colonists. The tribes' only treaties with
any government entity were with the British settlers, and those
agreements were never formally acknowledged by the United States.
But the tribes' position worsened during the early part of the 20th
century, when the state government essentially legislated the Indian race
out of existence.
Eighty years ago, during the height of the eugenics movement a
now-discredited science that believed, among other things, in
preserving the superiority of the white race by prohibiting racial
intermarriage the Virginia General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which defined racial categories as "white" and "colored." Indians were listed as colored.
Now that law is affecting the effort of the tribes to gain federal
recognition and the government benefits that could follow.
In the absence of a treaty, the usual way of achieving federal
recognition is through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Among the documentation
required is proof that a tribe has been in continuous existence since 1900
but because official paperwork in the early to mid-1900s expunged the tribal
members' racial identity, such proof is difficult to come by.
So the tribes have called on Congress for help.
"We want to be on an equal playing field," said Kenneth F. Adams,
57, chief of the Upper Mattaponi. "It's not about money. It's not about
education. It's not about hospitals, even though those benefits come along
with the
recognition. It's about the proper dignity that's afforded with this
recognition."
Though dozens of states had laws prohibiting racial intermarriage,
none were as harsh as Virginia's, scholars say. Much of this was because of
the firebrand tactics of Walter Ashby Plecker, head of the state's
Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912 until 1946.
Plecker conducted a "brutal, repressive and extra-legal campaign
against Native Americans," said Gregory M. Dorr, a University of Alabama
historian who is writing a book about the Virginia eugenics movement.
Plecker helped draft the law and was one of the most zealous
enforcers of the policy, which covered birth, marriage and death
certificates, school records and any other document filed with the state that designated an individual's race.
He sent letters to school officials, county registrars and doctors,
Dorr said, threatening them with jail if anyone was identified as Indian,
rather than colored. He even went so far as to list common Indian surnames
that should be classified as colored.
It was only through the influence of some of Virginia's most
prominent families descendants of colonist John Rolfe and Pocahontas, a
Powhatan Indian princess that individuals with 1/16th Indian ancestry or
less were exempted from classification as colored. But that did not apply to most of the state's Native Americans.
"My parents and grandparents never talked about being Indian. Not
until I was a teen. And when I asked, they had one simple reaction: 'We were
trying to protect you,' " said Gene Adkins, 64, a member of the Eastern
Chickahominy and president of the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life,
which is overseeing the drive for federal recognition.
After Plecker retired in 1946, his legacy began to fade; in 1967,
the Supreme Court struck down the Racial Integrity Act. By the 1980s,
Virginia's tribes began winning state recognition, which gave them more of a say in state government affairs.
Slowly, Indians began to officially reclaim their racial identity.
In 1997, the Virginia General Assembly formally apologized for the 1924 law
and offered to pay for Indians to have the race on their birth certificates
corrected.
That offer rejuvenated the tribes' interest in federal recognition,
so they filed papers with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The application is
arduous, requiring hundreds of items detailing a tribe's members, autonomy,
governance, contin- uous existence since 1900, and history.
But because of the Racial Integrity Act, the tribes could not use
official records to prove their continuous existence. They would need to
search for secondary documents, such as church registries or family papers,
which probably would be scattered across many locations and might not still
exist.
So with support from Virginia's Republican senators, George Allen
and John W. Warner, and Democratic Rep. James P. Moran, legislation to grant federal recognition to the six tribes was introduced in the House and the
Senate. The House bill remains in committee. The Senate version was approved
by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in May.
But fears about casino gambling have stalled the legislation.
Although the measure would not change the fact that tribes must obey state
gambling laws and current Virginia law prohibits casino gambling some people
want a prohibition on casinos written into the federal legislation
recognizing the tribes.
Though the tribes say they have no interest in setting up casinos,
they also say any conditions attached to federal recognition would undermine
the point of sovereignty.
So they have hired a lobbyist to help plead their case. They have
garnered support from the Virginia General Assembly, Gov. Mark R. Warner,
the National Congress of American Indians, and even the coordinators of the
Jamestown 2007 commemoration.
And while the tribes help prepare for the anniversary celebration,
many members say they are doing so grudgingly.
"It would be extremely ironic," said Adams, the Upper Mattaponi
chief, "if we participate in this event that was the beginning of the United
States as we know it today and not be properly recognized by the United
States."
To read more, go to: www.latimes.com/archives
-----

Dear Representative,
At this time there is a bill in Committee that should
have been addressed many years ago. The Virginia Tribes should already have their Federal Recognition. The U.S.Senate has already passed the bill
for the Virginia Tribes to receive this Recognition. Only to have it get stalled
in the House. This bill is still sitting in committee waiting for ratification from
our Congress.
Please Help Us with this Bill.
It needs to be passed to give the Virginia Tribes their Rightful Sovereignty. If not for the Virginia Tribes assistance to the first English settlers. There would not be a United States of America. However, the U.S.Government has passed recognition of 562 other Tribes while the 8 Virginia Tribes have been left in the lurch.
As a U.S.Representative, You have the power to get this situation resolved
in a positive way for The Original Americans of Virginia.
Please Help!
Thomas Greywolf Atkins
Chickahominy/Mattaponi/U.S.Citizen
groups.yahoo.com/American_Indian_Injustice

This Letter was sent to the
Address' below; I Urge You
To Send In Your Letter To
Your Local Congressman Along
With These.
I Know There Are A Lot
Of E-Mails.
But Please Help!
You May Use My Letter and
Replace My Name With Yours If You wish.

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National Media:
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