♪♪ Ashley: I do not use the term "reclaiming identity."

Not that it's bad.

I -- I totally support and understand where that phrase is coming from.

When reclaiming is used by an Indigenous person, awesome, great.

But when reclaiming is, kind of, a term used by the outside non-Indigenous world, it rubs me the wrong way.

And the reason for that is because... you can't reclaim something that you never lost.

We've never lost who we -- who we are.

That's never went away.

Just because some white racist, white supremacist says you can't put Indian on a piece of paper, that doesn't mean that my Indianness disappears, right?

That never went away.

♪♪ Anne: My tribe had these... And I don't know what to call them.

I call them proverbs, but they were traditional proverbs for our tribe.

These sayings that were kind of instilled in you from the time you can remember.

Little tapes going on in your head all the time.

And so my dad and my granddad used to say, "If you don't know where you come from, you can't possibly know where you're going."

Kara: Our ancestors were fighting paper genocide.

They were having to hide their identities, so they weren't having the language necessarily beaten out of them, but they had to minimize who they were.

Joanne: I know my mother said when she was growing up, they had Indian names, but you only used it in your home.

You were invisible.

You kept your head down.

TJ: There was a part of my grandfather's life where he's explained to us he was told by his mother, "Never forget who you are or where you come from, but act as white as possible."

Lynette: You go by whatever people decide you are.

You're not living your genuine self.

And that's a difficult place to be mentally.

You've become very careful about what you say and who you say it to.

Anne: Tribes were up in arms about it, and they had to come together and fight this thing that would annihilate them and their heritage.

And so they knew it was like the precipice.

If they didn't do something then it would change them forever.

Stephen: You know, I hear this slogan, "Take America back."

Native people aren't going to take it back.

We're going to take it forward.

And I questioned the intelligence of anyone who wants to take it back.

Backwards is not in my lexicon.

We've got to move forward with determination and tell our story.

Sam: I was sort of told by my grandfather, and I was sort of told by my mom, you know, they always would say that, you know, there are certain children that you can tell that, that's their job.

They're going to be cultural keepers.

You know, they're going to be responsible for passing on the history.

I was just drawn to it.

I was that child that always, you know, had to know why.

And I suppose they saw that.

So they shared a lot of information with me, not just my mother, my uncles, aunts, grandparents, but a lot of other elders and folks on the reservation.

We were all pretty much one big family.

Lynette: As you get deeper and deeper into the history, that's when you realize there is more to our story than just we lived here.

There's a phrase used by all Virginia tribes that we're still here because we never left.

And that is so true.

So that's what we prove when we know our own story.

We know our own history and we can share that information with others.

That brings us beyond this era of not having identity.

It brings us into another freedom, a freedom of, of feeling that we can say who we are.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Steam hissing ] TJ: So we're putting the scoop into the Shinny stick.

So it's been steamed for about 40 minutes.

And then we wrap it around this block here.

And that gives us our crooked stick.

What we were truly looking for was to find a way to connect all of our tribes here in Virginia around a sport.

And when we went back and looked, we thought that maybe we leaned more towards stickball or lacrosse.

But when we looked through the historical records, we realized we never picked the ball up at all.

And we were -- we were driving the ball between trees on frozen lakes, frozen river beds and in fields.

So with more research and talking to a lot of Tribal elders, we've tried to revitalize the Shinny program, and we wanted to bring back what was truly ours so that our people had something of their own.

[ Leaves crunching ] So today we've got my son, Kele, and he's going to help us spot some wood.

He's got his own little technique he likes to use because we don't want to take young trees.

We want to give them the chance to grow and -- and mature.

And we don't take the older trees because we also want them to fruit as well and make new hickory for future generations.

Man: How do you determine if it's a good tree or not?

Kele: If my hands don't touch.

TJ: There's a certain size, a good -- a good hug from a little kid just lets us know, you know, how big we want it to be exactly.

Kele: My hands are touching.

TJ: Yeah, it might be a little small, huh?

Kele: Yeah, that's not grown enough yet.

TJ: I was raised here in the Native community.

Ever since I was young, I've been in the dance circle.

I've learned to drum.

I've traveled the pow wow circuit from, you know, here to Colorado and back.

I've always been raised as an Upper Mattaponi birthright Tribal Citizen.

There are lots of folks out there that do find out a little bit later in life, or maybe knew that they were Native but were never raised with the connection to their heritage.

Shinny also allows for that.

It allows people to connect in ways that they might not necessarily have been able to do before.

And we just build those bridges for the community to not only expand, but to grow.

These are instruments of a sport, but in the right hands, with the right skills, it becomes more.

They've turned what used to be a standing tree into joy, into laughter, and into a little bit of pain sometimes.

Like, all those things that Shinny gives you -- the wins, the losses -- it becomes more than just a piece of hickory.

This thing becomes a tool for revitalization in itself.

[ Saw rasping ] Kele: Put your stick on the ball, and then you remove it and then scoop it fast.

♪♪ Lynette: My fondest memory is probably fishing with my grandfather.

Okay?

On his little boat.

And we would go fishing.

We're sitting there.

Quiet.

I'm listening.

And he's telling me all these things he did as a child, or he's telling him about his grandparents, or he's given me all these stories that if we weren't in a space that was quiet and confined, I would never know things.

That oral history is tremendous.

Sam: Oh, gosh.

Got a few of those.

You know, I spent a lot of time traveling with my mother.

She went to schools, museums, educational places, doing programs, you know, teaching people about our culture.

So my earliest memories of -- of learning this, you know, I was 3 or 4 years of age going with her and watching and learning and demonstrating with her.

So that was -- that was early on I started doing a lot of this stuff.

Anne: So my earliest childhood memory was on the farm because that's where I was born.

Everybody there had a job.

And so my job was to feed the chickens and water them and gather the eggs and wash them and put them in crates.

Because we were a working farm, we sold products from the farm.

And so that was, like, my first grown-up job that I had.

It made me feel important.

Kara: I was born in October.

Our pow wows happen every September, and the following year I already had a regalia.

I was being carried around in the arena by my family members.

I was exposed to that culture from that very early age.

Ben: I've been asked several times whether or not I still live in a teepee, starting in elementary school.

From that question, we ended up partnering with the school and doing Native American education programs every once in a while, just at my local school.

[ Soft flute melody plays ] There's the tribe stuff and there's the everyone else stuff.

Chief Bass: When my mother filled out those forms that you fill out in school with all of your history, like a census-type thing, it was put down white.

You got down here white, but we're not white.

"Look, I filled them out.

I don't like filling them out.

Whatever I put there, you just deal with it."

When I got on the school bus, I got out a pencil and lined through the white and put red.

[ Chuckles ] Ashley: I didn't grow up on the reservation.

I grew up right outside of Richmond, and the reservation has always felt like a safe space without having to explain, "Oh, Pamunkey Indians.

I've never heard of that, Pamunkey Indian reservation.

I didn't know there was a reservation in Virginia."

We are at the Pamunkey Indian Schoolhouse.

As early as elementary school, I'm here telling teachers, students in the classroom that I'm Pamunkey.

Like, "We're still here," and having teachers say, "You're lying."

Having students tell you to your face that you're lying, that there's no Indians in Virginia.

So you can imagine from a very young age, I have this one side of my family where I can come here and be Pamunkey and not have to answer for it by other people's standards.

But then I go outside of that space in my everyday life, and then you're told that you're lying or that you're not believed about who you are.

Anne: We kept our culture.

We didn't lose it.

We didn't not be who we were.

We were always who we were, whether it was popular or not.

[ Laughs ] Dave: We're at the 37th Nansemond Indian Nation Pow Wow, held on our ancestral grounds that we have now renamed Mattanock.

And this is quite a crowd for today.

We have less than an hour away from grand entry.

Our grounds opened at 10:00 this morning.

And we had an awful lot of people in and it's filling up as we speak.

Emcee: And what makes it a great day is the Creator brought us all here to the Nansemond Nation Pow Wow.

[ People ululating ] [ Drumming and singing ] ♪♪ Dave: I just love the sound of pow wow as much as I do the beautiful colors and the people enjoying themselves.

♪♪ It's an opportunity to renew, reunite with old friends and relationships, and meet new ones, and just enhance those going forward.

And the people that don't know each other is to introduce them to one another.

And then your relationship spreads out even further.

♪♪ Kara: When I started inviting people to pow wows, they didn't know they could come.

Emcee: Come on in.

Come on in.

Kara: A lot of people, non-government employee, back when I was working in my restaurant days when I was working with teachers, actually, when I was a teacher, I invited my class and a few of them did come, and the parents came up to me and thanked me.

They said, "We had no idea this was right here."

[ Drumming and singing continues ] We want people to experience as much Indigenous Culture as they can.

♪♪ Dave: What I feel is very important about pow wow is to celebrate and honor the ones who have gone before us, because there was a time in this state we would have been breaking the law to even say that you were an Indian.

[ Drumming and singing continues ] This is so important to be able to do this, but the emotion that I feel just honoring the elders, that either, A, never could have done this or the first ones, the pioneers to -- to putting on pow wows.

[ Drumming and singing continues ] It's hugely humbling to be able to just carry on the tradition that so many started before us when they were just barely out of being criminals, if they had done so.

♪♪ [ People ululating ] Stephen: I have in front of me a pamphlet entitled "Virginia's Vanished Race," which was penned by Walter A. Plecker, M.D.

Walter, who at that time was the head of the Department of Vital Records or Vital Statistics.

"All intelligent persons of the South, at least, are assumed to agree that admixture of the races of men as of breeds of stock means a lowered race of mongrels.

The author therefore does not consume space defending that point so well done by others."

♪♪ This speaks to the ignorance that was prevalent then among those who considered themselves superior.

Ashley: So 1924 for Virginia Indians was a significant year because of two particular legislative acts that were passed that year at the state and at the federal level.

One included the Indian Citizenship Act that was passed in 1924, and the other included the Racial Integrity Act.

Stephen: Racial Integrity Act relegated Indians and, in fact, all Black and brown people to an inferior class based upon the wisdom of Walter Plecker and the state legislature, the executive branch, and the judicial branch.

If you go beyond that, the institutions of higher learning supported what Walter Plecker put forth, so that Racial Integrity Act was very significant in the lives of all of Virginia's Indigenous peoples.

Ashley: He was able to legally create two categories -- colored and white.

And if you weren't white, you were a part of the colored category.

And in his perception, there was no Indians in Virginia.

So if you're claiming to be Indigenous, no, you're colored.

That's where you belong.

And you no longer have the legal right to place Indian on your birth certificates, your marriage certificates, your death certificates.

Clerks would literally go in and change people's records from Indian to colored.

And that was the environment, right, that our -- our ancestors and our relatives were facing in 1924.

♪♪ What 1924 pushed in terms of creating these two categories and denying Indian people the legal ability to identify as such erased us from the documentary record for decades.

It's referred to as the paper genocide.

Stephen: There was just a fear among the represented officials among the legislatures, not only in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but throughout the South, that these guys are going to end up promulgating laws and statutes that will detract from what they deem the prominence and intellectual superiority of the white race.

So they were really hell-bent on -- on doing what they could to derail the efforts that we had and accomplishments we were making as individual tribes.

Ashley: 1924 was the culmination of hundreds of years of policy that was enacted by the Colony of Virginia, and then later the State of Virginia, to basically separate peoples, to control their behavior, to control intermarriage practices, to control their movement across the landscape.

So 1924 did not come out of whole cloth when it came to the Racial Integrity Act.

This was something that was led up to.

Indigenous people were seeing the writing on the wall -- rise of Jim Crow, the eugenics movement, scientific racism, where it was clear that the further denigration and recognition of who they were was being swept away.

Stephen: We should be able to look at institutions of higher learning, you know, to be people who are very erudite, very, very informed, and who understand.

But no, they -- they just kind of tucked their tails and ran, supporting what Walter Plecker had put out in the Racial Integrity Act.

And it's significant to note he was heralded by Adolf Hitler as just being a champion of doing what's right.

And Adolf Hitler actually said other states and countries should follow the example that was set in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I think it's a very dubious distinction.

I would not want as a leader of the Commonwealth to have that in the record.

But -- But that's what it is.

Ashley: This act, right, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, the paper genocide that followed, is a direct correlation to this idea that Indians no longer exist in Virginia.

And if you are an Indian in Virginia saying that you're an Indian, "Well, you're not a real one."

That's the same argument Walter Plecker used 100 years ago, and it's still used against our people today.

♪♪ [ Indistinct chatter ] Sam: Alright.

You guys ready to get to work?

Woman: Yeah.

[ McGowan laughs ] Well, nice seeing everybody this morning.

So I figure we're going to talk a little bit about, a little bit about some of the seasonal roles of the men, women, and children.

I'll tell you a little story.

So my father, his people are all from West Point area.

He came up to the school when he was in eighth grade on a field trip.

And a lot of the local schools, they would come up to the reservations and bring the children up.

Folks on the reservation would perform dances and also show them some of our traditional basket weaving, pottery making skills.

And that's when my dad first saw and met my mother, and he said it was love at first sight.

But my mother, she -- she was a little against it because she wanted, she wanted to marry an Indian man.

She wanted a quiver full of, you know, children.

She wanted to help bring back our -- our population, you know?

But of course, she ended up marrying my father.

But their first date, when she finally said yes, they went to the drive -- it used to be a drive-in movie theater in West Point.

So my dad -- and I can only imagine how my mom felt -- my dad had to put my mother in the trunk of his car to get her into the movie theater so they could sit together because she wasn't -- she had to go -- if not, she had to go to the colored section.

So that's the way things were, you know, that, you know, our people were not always accepted or greeted with open arms.

As a matter of fact, the first time they got married, they went to North Carolina because they couldn't get married in King William County because the judge told them that, you know, they weren't allowed to marry, you know, whites and Natives.

So they went to North Carolina down to Elizabeth City because my dad had the idea that, you know, "Well, you know, you could -- you're dark.

You know, a lot of Italian folks are dark.

If anybody asks, you just say you're Italian."

So they got married down in North Carolina.

But then my dad's mother found out and she had it all annulled because she didn't want my -- my father marrying my mother.

And then, you know, a year later, you know, they -- they ended up going to Washington, D.C., and they got married.

So and, of course, you know, certain family members on that side weren't too pleasant to my mother and my -- my eldest brother, Rick, you know, when he was born, you know, some very unkind things were said.

But you know, my dad, he -- he stood beside my mom, you know, and I know again, that had to be hard for him because, you know, that's his family being that way towards someone that he loves.

So I -- I really respect my father for that, you know, especially in that time, you know, back in the '50s, '60s again, you know, people were not very pleasant all the time to our people.

There's a lot of stories I could tell you, but you probably don't have time for that.

[ Laughs ] So... ♪♪ ♪♪ Lynette: So here you are.

You're in the Interpretive Center for the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia.

The impact of the 1924 Racial Integrity Act affected all indigenous people in Virginia.

We actually start with the archaeological sites.

This was changing their identity.

So the focus was trying to not lose your identity, but live with being called something else.

It wasn't our identity.

It was someone else defining that identity.

That's a sample of what the census records looked like that say IND.

So being able to move forward, to have resilience, to move forward was living quietly and protecting what we have and who we are.

Sam: I think for a lot of folks that, unfortunately, their families had to leave the Tribal communities because of the negative impact that -- that some folks created for them.

You know, a lot of folks moved up north.

So we have a lot of folks up in like Philadelphia, New Jersey as well, you know, that -- that moved up from -- from a lot of our communities just to escape the racism.

Joanne: I think the hardest thing I ever had was when I had people that I got to know, and then I would find out that they were behind my back, calling me the little dirty Indian girl.

You know, it's like, "Really?!"

So you learn to guard.

You learn to just figure they're going to be people who don't like you simply because of your skin color.

Anne: We had gone to Indian school.

We didn't have to fight.

And when we went to the white school, we had to fight again for our identity, socially feeling rejected and ostracized and targeted by the teachers and the students from that.

They had segregation and we were all bused from the white school down to the Black high school.

I ended up in about a fight every day while I was there.

One at school and one on the bus.

It was a good thing I had an older brother that used to fight with me all the time because he taught me how to do that.

And I'd come out on top most of the time.

[ Laughs ] You know, people trying to make you feel like you're -- you're not as good as or that you don't belong... creates a fire in you.

Stephen: We were taught not to be pushy to white people, not to push ourselves on white people.

And later in life, I have a dear friend and he said, "We just thought you were stuck-up."

I said, "No, we were -- we were taught to stay in your lane."

I knew there were barriers out there that sometime in my life, I'll be part of a dynamic that was out there trying to remove those barriers and give -- give access.

Make sure that access to my kids and my grandkids would be there.

TJ: To hear my grandfather speak of a time where he couldn't walk down the street because of the color of his skin, or was told that he had to be a different race because he wasn't white, is -- is something that I -- I struggle with internally because I don't have a grasp for that.

I don't truly understand the pressure that was put on him and my great-grandparents and the tribal members at the time.

That's something that's hard on your heart when you think about it.

Ashley: One of the stories in particular that I remember is about my great grandfather, Tecumseh Deerfoot Cook, who was chief of the tribe from the 1940s to the 1980s.

And when non-Indigenous people would be on the rez, it would be like not an issue to socialize with my great grandfather.

That's what a lot of people did.

If you came on the rez, you visited with the chief.

But those same individuals, if they were to see him outside of the reservation boundaries, like on the street of West Point or Richmond, they would act like they did not know him, and they would cross the street to get away from him.

Another elder had shared a story that when he crosses the train tracks, right, there's a train track that you have to cross to get in and out of the reservation.

That when he crossed the train tracks out of the reservation, that's when he stopped being perceived as a human being.

And so these are the stories that you grow up with and that shape you.

♪♪ ♪♪ Stephen: When I look at who we are, our faith really ties us together.

We -- We -- We are Christians.

And you may say, how could that happen?

Lots of our folks say the invaders came with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other.

But we ignored the messenger and heard the message.

And we believe in the risen Lord.

And this church is kind of a testimony to that.

The church became our social gathering place.

We would meet on some frequency and get together and wouldn't have to worry about the outside culture because this was our space.

It was a safe space that we could be who we are.

And that was further amplified by -- by a school that was segregated.

Because when we left here on Sundays, we'd go to school the next day with our own people.

This is my first grade classroom.

First and second grade, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th.

And that's where it stopped.

The 10th grade.

Now, many of our kids had to leave here entering the eighth grade.

They went to Oklahoma to go to high school and some went north, some went south.

Some went as far as California to go to school because Virginia was not very kind to its Indigenous people.

This was a sense of community out of expediency.

It was a safe place, and it kind of gave us the courage to go out and walk into those headwinds and say, "Look, folks, your opinion of who you think I am doesn't matter to me.

It doesn't alter who I am.

Let me use this moment to educate you."

Let me learn you something, to put it in the vernacular, but let me teach you.

I consider them teachable moments, and I think it is really worked to -- to our benefit.

♪♪ Anne: This is where four generations of Chiefs were born and lived.

And so we call it the Chief's house.

This was a very important place for us to be able to preserve for future generations, so they would know and understand the history of this place and how this generation had fought for them.

We would have council meetings when I was a young kid, and I would sit under the kitchen table and listen to the stories about Walter Plecker and what he had done to them.

When I got older and started working in all of this for federal recognition, I started telling that story.

And this guy from the Associated Press came down and interviewed me and I told him the story and he didn't believe me.

And I said, "Well, you don't have to take my word for it.

Go do the research."

And he came back about a month later and he said, "I can't find anything about what you're talking about."

And I said, "Well, then you're not a journalist."

[ Laughs ] John Powell was a professor at UVA.

And his office was like the eugenics office.

And so it was there under lock and key with a key keeper, and my historian found it and shared it with the press, and it became public knowledge for the first time.

When I opened that Richmond Times-Dispatch, and I saw that full-page article on what Walter Plecker had done to the Tribes, I cried because for years and years and years, that was like in my -- in my craw churning, that all this injustice had been done to us, and I couldn't do anything about it.

My grandparents couldn't do anything about it.

My dad couldn't do anything about it.

And I was trying to make that open and known to people so we could do something about it.

It really created like this momentum for us, for our bill that would go into Congress.

Like, congressional people were looking at this like, "Oh my God.

I can't believe this happened in the United States," right?

And we have to do something about it.

It took them, you know, 20 years, but they did do something about it.

Stephen: I got a call from Congressman Rob Wittman.

He said, "Chief, the president just signed the bill.

You are now officially recognized as a sovereign entity within the United States of America.

You're now sovereign nation recognized by Congress."

In the back of my mind, I said, "Well, this is you acknowledging the sovereignty that we already had."

And I think it's unconscionable that we'd have to go and just plead our case.

But that's the reality in which we live.

It wasn't a matter of reclaiming our heritage.

It was a matter of continuing to claim we are who we say we are.

But to get the affirmation from 535 members of the -- of the Congress of the United States was just a great occasion.

And we will -- We will celebrate that day as long as I live, I am sure.

Anne: We're preserving this place so that when I'm gone, my kids and my grandkids will be able to come here and know that this is where we went to school, and this is where our doctor was.

And -- And this is where all of the political fight took place during the '20s that -- for our identity so that we could grow up and be the sovereign nation that we are.

[ Wind blustering ] Man: Alright, as we gather today, we give thanks to the creator for the impending spring, the Mother Earth that supports us and turns green all around.

Let's give special thanks to our Ancestors today who walked this ground.

And let's follow in their paths and their footsteps and the good red road and all of our play and all of our actions at home and here on the field, and give thanks for this community, aho.

In three and two and one, go high!

TJ: When we first started, it was really -- Hey, let's get together and do this.

And then it grew like fire.

[ Indistinct chatter ] More and more people are heard.

More and more people came out, more spectators.

People from the community that weren't even Native were starting to show up and just to watch.

And then an unintended consequence was truly the relationship building, the community building, the intertribal community building that happened beyond what we even thought the sport would do.

Good block.

Good block.

Get out of there.

Woman: Yeah!

They scored.

TJ: Go on down on offense.

Kele: I'm gonna go all the way over here.

Elijah: TJ is trying to revive and bring the younger generation into this.

Because if we don't pass these things on, nothing we ever learned is worth a thing.

TJ: Watch behind, defense!

[ Cheering ] Bailey: I just think that it's important for -- for our tribes, particularly the Eastern Tribes, have had a lot of unique challenges that, especially in terms of losing culture and tradition.

So I think things like this are really important, helps bring our communities together, helps -- helps us become more resilient as communities, and also help us identify more with who we are and where we come from.

Man: Stay on him, stay on him.

Step up Rufus.

Don't get in his face.

TJ: Identity for us is extremely important because this is who we are.

This is what makes us us.

Like, like anybody else, people have come here from another country, or maybe a few generations have lived here.

But for us, we're -- we're the original inhabitants of this land.

[ Indistinct chatter ] So now to say we are here, we are still a people.

We are still thriving.

Like, that's a star in your soul a little bit.

That just makes you -- it makes you feel good.

It makes you feel part of something special.

Woman: You got it.

Keep going, keep going.

Oh, heck yeah!

Girl: We won!

Woman: Yeah.

[ Woman laughs ] [ Indistinct chatter ] Kele: To my instruction.

TJ: Yeah.

Kele: I told you to run, but you didn't.

[ Laughter ] So that's why they scored.

[ Indistinct chatter ] [ Soft flute music plays ] ♪♪ Ben: The energy that you give is the energy that you get.

If you're going there with the understanding that it's a special place, and you're going there with the intent to interact with that place, I think that's when you really get that, that sense of connection.

[ Flute playing continues ] The flute is part of that interaction.

You are putting yourself out there through the flute.

You are making music.

[ Flute playing continues ] The flute is your input to the environment, the echo, what you feel.

That's, that's the feedback.

♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] Growing up, you know, music was really important, especially how it connected to culture.

And then on top of that, I've always just loved making things.

I think I started doing flute sometime in middle school.

We just had a flute that somebody else had made around the house, and I just kind of looked up and said, I want to learn how to make that.

[ Gentle flute music plays ] A lot of what I'm really getting into a lot more now and valuing more now is passing on that knowledge.

If I can teach someone how to make that flute, that's, that's something special.

[ Flute playing continues ] Just based on cultural factors over the last several hundred years, there's always that strong push to assimilate.

But to revitalize is to breathe life into.

You're breathing life into who you are, into your history, who you've always been, breathing life back into some of the practices, the stories, the artwork, the crafting.

Everything that makes indigenous cultures unique is inside of us and we just need to bring that back out.

♪♪ Dave: We have grown baby oysters and given them their start over in Cedar Creek off the Nansemond River.

We're bringing them around and going to be replanting them out here on the oyster beds.

Nikki: So what we're going to do now is we're going to open up the cages, transfer everything into baskets for counting.

You just dump it in like this.

And that one's done.

So one, two.

Both: Three, four, five.

Woman: Six.

Woman: Seven.

Both: Eight, nine.

Dave: Our young people mean so much to me as I see they're the future of this.

It's important that they are out here learning this thing.

And we've got some young people here today.

Woman #2: 300 so far.

Woman #3: Two.

Woman #2: 300 and 2.

Nikki: We keep a total every year because over time it helps us share the impact that our community is having.

Woman #2: We're gonna bring all the oysters down and then break up into three teams.

Woman #2: Thank you.

Dave: Yep.

Woman #2: Well, it's a nice day for this.

Dave: Yeah, we go to sea.

We're going to go down and come about and then come into the wind.

You can cast off each side if you like.

You just don't want to dump them all at once.

Yep.

Alright, here we go, girls.

Charles: Oysters are one of the best filtration devices in the world.

And actually, one oyster a day can filter up to 50 liters of water.

And hopefully the Chesapeake Bay will one day be clear, like it was in 1600.

Chief Bass: We're proving that we are carrying on what our ancestors would want us to do to protect the land and do whatever we could to help preserve things for the future.

Nikki: Thank you so much.

[ Water lapping ] Ashley: We are at the Chickahominy Indian Tribal Center, and we're here to talk about Powhatan's birthplace and the efforts to try to fight to save.

We're just going to be talking to the community, kind of updating them, introducing them to the issue, and letting them know how they can help and get involved.

So I'm Ashley Spivey.

I'm a citizen of the Pamunkey Indian tribe.

My background is in anthropology and archaeology, which is why I've been pressed to bring awareness to the development of Powhatan's birthplace and doing what we can to either save it or mitigate it.

♪♪ The footprint that our ancestors left behind, to us, it's like a primary document, especially if it can be uncovered and interpreted through Indigenous voices and perspectives.

It's literally what they left behind.

It's one of the only intimate records of our ancestors that we can directly engage with.

But for so long we have been kept separate from being at the table and studying the archaeological record of our ancestors.

So that's one of my big fights, right, is making sure that we as Indigenous people are at the table when our heritage is concerned.

♪♪ Ashley: Wahunsenacawh is one of our most significant political and religious leaders.

He was responsible for the expansion of this massive, what we call chiefdom society.

We look to him as the founding father.

It's called the Powhatan Chiefdom.

That's the name that he took from the village where he was born, Powhatan.

And he represents the significance of what the chiefdom became in the region.

He embodies it.

♪♪ We would not have a United States if it wasn't for Wahunsenacawh.

Yes, there was conflict between the English colonists and our ancestors.

But during the time that that colony almost perished due to starvation, he is the one that made the decision that helped bring it back.

We would not have a United States without him, and that history deserves to be saved.

Powhatan Village, right off of what is now known as the James River, just east of the fall line of the city of Richmond.

At this moment, we're in the process of trying to get the word out to the public, who we truly believe and have faith in, would not want to see this internationally significant sacred space completely destroyed for condos and housing units.

Woman: This land is not just a place.

This is a relative of ours.

This relative of ours has stories to tell, and those stories are getting ready to be taken away from us, just like so much of our culture and our history.

Ashley: Powhatan was taken out of our ownership and power in 1608 by the English.

Other than Jamestown, it became one of the first English settlements in what is now known as Virginia.

It became a plantation in the 18th century, and that plantation is known as Tree Hill.

That plantation house is still there, as well as several extant outbuildings affiliated with the plantations operation.

And are those going to be knocked down for this development and destroyed?

No, they're going to be restored while the archaeology underneath the ground gets completely blown away without any kind of work to save it.

This is going to be a multi-decade process to enact this to the full scale.

These might not even be developed.

And if they're going to be developed, it's going to be maybe at a minimum 10 years down the line.

This is the core area that they're going to focus on first.

That's why it's the most detailed.

But that's also where the core village site is located.

The way that this development started moving forward, right, almost 20 years ago under a different developer.

The idea was to, "commemorate" the Native American Village site with a six and a half acre carve out where the Tribes could kind of dictate and designate what happens within the six and a half acres for commemoration.

That's not enough.

We are on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation, and I am headed to the place where Powhatan has been laid to rest.

Locally, we call this area Powhatan's Grave.

We want knowledge and recognition of his birthplace.

It's a little bit different here, given that this is where he's been laid to rest.

We want it to remain serene and -- and quiet because we want to protect, right, that space.

And in the place where he was born, I feel like gives itself to a different type of experience and visitation.

We want people to be in the space where one of the most prominent Indigenous villages sat in the entire region.

If you look at John Smith's map that he created, you'll see all of the places that he marks as king's houses right, where chiefs lived.

The largest one on the entire map is at Powhatan.

We believe that that place is meant to be experienced, to share our history, to share our culture, and to share our ancestors from our perspectives and from our voices.

I can't imagine our people doing anything that is more keeping of the culture than trying to save one of the most sacred and significant places related to our ancestors and to our history.

Because the culture is embodied there.

We talk about the spirit of the land.

The land isn't a thing.

Land is a who.

There's spirit there.

And that spirit needs protecting.

Kara: Something in the Indigenous communities that we are always taught is that we're not carrying out an action for today, for tomorrow.

We are carrying out this action for the next seven generations.

So that's something that I like to keep in mind when I'm even doing my day-to-day work.

How will this impact the next seven generations positively or negatively?

Forget pros and cons.

I'm doing a full on SWOT analysis.

I want to know what is going to happen seven generations from now, from this action that I'm taking today.

To me, learning even one tool, one trade, one craft, one little sentence in our language that is being a culture keeper, because you can pass that on to the next seven generations.

As long as we continue to pass that on, our culture will forever be here.

♪♪ Chief Bass: It just kind of came as like a hunger, a yearning to wanting to be part of something that's in my DNA.

Not what I was in my activities and as a person, but in my DNA.

I personally wasn't ashamed of my DNA.

From that, I think I've learned not to be ashamed of the kind of person I am.

If we self-examine ourselves looking into that mirror in history or behind us, and then we look at the windshield of where we're going, I'm okay.

I'm good with not so much where I've been, but where I'm going in the future, I'm okay.

Stephen: I think one of the great joys that I have in life is seeing our young people become engaged, trying to carry on the tradition that was left to me that I tried to carry on, to see them aspire to do something with their lives, whether it's to continue in higher education or to seek a vocational job, you know, one of the trades, those things make me look back and say, "The things you have sacrificed... it's worthwhile.

Kids, even today say, "Why is this here?"

And we'll -- we'll tell them, "This is where the original Samaria Baptist Church brick building stopped."

We wanted to make sure people didn't -- didn't forget where they came from.

Anne: Everything that I dream of for other tribes is that their history is recovered because so much of our history has been lost.

And I think that our history is a part of that proverb that I was taught that you have to know where you came from.

Having that history restored for those tribes will create, I believe, a confidence in them in not only who they are, but who their people are and who they've always been, which is true restoration.

Ashley: The Pamunkey people have always made pottery, right?

This is one of our enduring traditions.

We've never not made pottery.

It's the younger generations that are wanting to fully unpack what happened.

If we don't fully unpack and understand our past, we're going to totally repeat those mistakes.

You're standing in the pottery school.

They were making everything by hand with local clay.

And I think that's because the American public isn't fully educated on what our nation did as a collective 100 plus years ago.

It's about understanding this past, how it impacted us and how we can utilize that to make things better for the future.

This is probably my favorite building on the reservation.

Sam: I have a responsibility to pass forward the information that was taught to me.

This one, as long as you use it properly, can be handed down to, you know, next generation.

It's not just all past, you know, how our people lived 400 years ago.

You know, the stories that we have that -- that was from our parents or grandparents generation are equally as important because, you know, that's it's almost even more important because you can really hone in on certain issues because you heard them from a primary source, you heard them from the people that were affected.

So when you're able to -- to get that across to folks and then they, it finally clicks and you see it go off, you know, it could be with learning about, you know, traditional skills or it could be learning about the, the 1924 Racial Integrity Act.

Can you see those little pieces where I've pressed the flakes and that gives you that finishing shape and that... as a cultural keeper, you know you've done your job, you know, because then they're going to be interested, which means they're going to pass that information along to their children and hopefully to their grandchildren.

I enjoyed spending the morning with you guys... We've come a long ways.

I'll just put it to you that way.

Because when I was younger, you know, I would have never imagined, you know, this is something that you dreamt of, being at this -- where we are today, you know, and, you know, our elders are the ones that -- that paved the road for us to get here.

So I know they're happy.

♪♪ ♪♪ TJ: I hope that in the future, far beyond my days, he has some memories of his childhood that, you know, he -- he truly cherishes, you know, the time that we've had out here.

I would hope that he leads the next generation of Shinny players and, you know, helps to pass on how we've made sticks and maybe even make them a little better than I did.

We try to -- to maintain good work habits out here and -- and spend as much time out here as possible.

I mean, even while I'm making sticks, there's oftentimes he picks up a Shinny stick or a lacrosse stick and is in here throwing the ball around, and I'm trying to dodge them and not break anything.

[ Laughs ] Kele: Not wet anymore.

TJ: When we think back to when Kele was young, my memories will be of us sharing times in the backyard, laughing and giggling around Shinny.

And that does -- that does make me proud.

It makes me know that the game is more than a game to him, and hopefully see the seed that we planted now, you know, go much more beyond just blossoming, but, you know, become a full-fledged tree.

Kele: Ah!

[ TJ laughs ] TJ: Ready?

Kele: Yeah.

[ Upbeat fluke music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪