Contemporary challenges and responses - Native peoples of the Chesapeake region and the enduring effects of colonialism - We have a story to tell: Native peoples of the Chesapeake region

Photograph of the Potomac River, from Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

Potomac River, from Mt. Vernon, Virginia. (Photo by Edwin Schupman, National Museum of the American Indian. More about the photograph)

Protecting land and resources is an important concern of the tribes, including the preservation of sacred sites. For Native Americans, sacred sites are places where important spiritual or historical events have occurred. They might be ancestral burial grounds or places where ceremonies are held.

There’s a park in southern Maryland that’s known as Piscataway National Park. We have twenty acres that we consider sacred that’s inside the park… Our ancestors are buried there… It’s our Mecca, our Wailing Wall… There’s not a building on it. There’s not any kind of concrete in the ground, there’s no steel in the ground. It’s the same way [as] when God made it.
— Chief Billy Redwing Tayac (Piscataway), 2002.

As land development continues, many historically and culturally important Native places are at risk. For example, since the early 1990s, the Mattaponi Tribe of Virginia has been engaged in a legal battle to halt a reservoir and dam project near their reservation. The Mattaponi are opposed to the project, which would flood more than 400 acres of wetlands, ancestral sites, and Mattaponi lands. Newport News city developers want the reservoir to meet future demands for water. The tribe says that the project would negatively affect the tribe’s treaty-based fishing rights on the Mattaponi River, restrict access to sites and resources, and destroy wildlife habitat and many important tribal historical sites. In 2006, the issue went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to take up the case and sent it back to the lower courts for consideration. The case is currently unresolved and pending further action.

Over the years, we have lost much of our land to greed as other people have taken our resources. Now, with this reservoir, people want to take our river as well.
— Assistant Chief Carl Custalow (Mattaponi), Bay Journal, May 2003.

Native American tribes existed as nations long before the arrival of European colonists. However, in 2006, many of the Nanticoke, Piscataway, and Powhatan communities still seek official government-to-government recognition as tribes from the state and federal governments. Currently, no tribes from the region are recognized by the United States. Six tribes were officially recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, but not until 1983, with two others being added in 1985 and 1989. These eight tribes are the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Upper Mattaponi, Nansemond, Pamunkey, Rappahannock, and Monacan Indian Nation. The Monacan Indian Nation was not originally part of the Powhatan, Piscataway, or Nanticoke Chiefdoms. The Nanticoke tribe is recognized by the state of Delaware. The state of Maryland does not officially recognize any Native tribes. Native American communities desire these forms of legal recognition so that their long-standing status as nations will be acknowledged and further respected. They also want to exercise the rights and privileges granted to recognized tribes.

We were approved by the Maryland legislators and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for state recognition. Everyone said we were qualified. Then the governor’s office decided that we weren’t Indian enough. Just because somebody says I’m not an Indian, doesn’t mean I’m not. Just as long as I walk this Earth I’ll be Indian. I’m sixty-three years old; they can’t take it from us.
— Mervin Savoy, Tribal Chair, (Piscataway Conoy Tribe).

We want the same rights that other Indians in our country have. We want our children to be eligible for the educational programs that other Indian children have access to, and we want our elders to be eligible for the health care they need.
— Chief Barry Bass (Nansemond), Indian Country Today, September 2004.

For the Native peoples of the Chesapeake region the events that began in the sixteenth century have created a legacy of ongoing challenges. For more than 400 years these Native people have had to struggle just to survive and to carve out an existence for themselves in the post-colonial world. Today, the issues of identity, tribal recognition, civil rights, cultural revitalization and preservation, as well as land and resource protection remain at the forefront of that existence. With persistence and strength, the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway will not only survive, but thrive into the twenty-first century and beyond. They will regain the heritage of the place that was theirs long before their encounter began with the strangers from across the sea.

We’re still here and we’re not going away! We still have a long way to go, and I hope the Virginia Indians who follow us will be driven to continue working to improve things.
— Assistant Chief Gene Adkins (Eastern Chickahominy Tribe), published in: We’re Still Here. Richmond, Virginia: Palari Publishing, 2006.