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Rappahannock Chief Anne Richardson with Penelope Cobham during a recent visit to London to celebrate Jamestown's founding. |
By MICHAEL ZITZ
Concern that the state could be embarrassed when world attention focuses on Jamestown next year may help win federal recognition for American Indian tribes in Virginia that existed long before Pocahontas saved John Smith.
The celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony is expected to be a boon to tourism. But if American Indian tribes were to stage protests, positive impact might be diminished.
This may be motivating Congress to move on a bill to recognize the tribes while dealing with concerns that granting such status could lead to casino gambling, according to Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
"Clearly, the 400th anniversary is adding a little bit of extra urgency to the congressional timetable," Holsworth said.
"I think there are many elected officials who'd prefer not to have a story about nonrecognition at the top of the news cycle" during the Jamestown celebration, he said.
Federal recognition would allow the tribes access to educational assistance grants, housing assistance and health-care services already available to most American Indians, according to Gary Garrison, a spokesman for the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.
Garrison said the biggest hurdle to recognition usually is proving the roots of the tribes run deep, and that's not a problem in Virginia.
"These are first-contact tribes," he said--among the first to encounter the Europeans who came to America.
Members of six Virginia tribes--Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock, Monacan and Nansemond--attended a recent hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on a bill to recognize them. The measure could get further attention in Congress this week.
The bill was introduced by Virginia Sens. John Warner and George Allen. Allen noted that the Virginia tribes signed treaties with kings of England as early as the 1600s.
"Virginia's tribes have a long history--perhaps the longest relationship with any state government in the country," Warner said.
Allen said the passing of the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which classified many Indians as black, forced the tribes to renounce their heritage to pass as white and avoid segregation. That law banned racial intermarriage before being struck down by the Supreme Court in a 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a case involving a Caroline County couple.
Since the Jamestown anniversary seems to be a factor now, there's some irony in the fact that the 1924 act included a "Pocahontas exception." Because some old Virginia families claimed to be descended from Pocahontas, the legislature ruled one could be classified as white with as much as one-sixteenth Indian blood.
Robert Green, chief of the Patawomeck tribe in Stafford County, said some Virginia Indians still conceal their heritage in reaction to that.
"These tribes have suffered humiliation and indignities that have gone largely unnoticed by most Americans," Allen said, including "government policies that sought to eliminate their culture and heritage."
Holsworth said Warner and Allen have been pushing for recognition of the tribes for some time. "I think they have a little more momentum because of the upcoming anniversary," he said.
Holsworth said recognition of Virginia tribes has been held up for years "by the reaction to what's happened in other states" that have seen casinos open on tribal reservations. Patawomeck chief Green explained that federal recognition makes tribal lands sovereign "nations," where laws of the surrounding state do not apply.
Warner and Allen both have said the Senate bill will be worded to overcome concerns about casinos opening in Virginia.
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th District, has been considered by some to be an obstacle for the Virginia tribes because of his fierce opposition to casinos. But Wolf spokesman Dan Scandling said the congressman has never been against recognizing the tribes.
"What he's opposed to is the potential for gambling," Scandling said.
"If the Indians don't want gambling, then write 'no gambling' in the bill," he said. "It's as simple as that."
If the tribes win recognition, Green said it may still be difficult for some Indians--including the 570 Patawomecks--to prove their lineage in order to receive any federal benefits. He noted that fighting during the Civil War destroyed records at Stafford Courthouse and that the state deliberately destroyed Indian records in a process sometimes referred to "paper genocide."
Warner said: "The administrative process is especially difficult for the Virginia tribes because of actions by Virginia's State Bureau of Vital Statistics many decades ago, which essentially eliminated the documents they needed to finish the administrative process. It is an action that the Commonwealth of Virginia has since apologized for, and rightly so."
Despite that, Green said Virginia Indians are optimistic that federal recognition will come in time for next year's Jamestown celebration.
That status is deserved, he said, because if the Patawomecks hadn't supplied the Jamestown colony with food at the urging of Pocahontas, the English settlement probably would have failed. And that, he added, might have altered the course of American history.
"We could all be speaking Spanish today," he said.
To reach MICHAEL ZITZ:
Email: mikez@freelancestar.com
