Category: Indians

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Were They Melungeon?

Early in my Roberson research, I investigated the possibility my ancestors were Melungeons.

Strictly speaking, the term Melungeon applies to a group of families who lived in and around Newmans Ridge in Hawkins County, Tennessee. My Robersons, in contrast, lived at Wallens Ridge in neighboring Lee County, Virginia.

“Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon (meh-LUN’-jun) was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry.” (Loller 2021)

“Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study’s authors” (Loller, 2021).

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Land Back: Settler FAQ

A lot of people are saying #LandBack. The idea seems to be settlers should give back the land their ancestors stole. I hear about it more from Canadians than Americans, but the idea is circulating in both countries.

I’m listening, politely I hope, but I’m not really sure about what I’m hearing. How far do they want to go? How much do they want to take? What happens to the people who live on the land now? How can we settlers all go back to Europe? We wouldn’t all fit now. How could we decide which European country has to take us when many of us are mixed? How can they say all White people are settlers when many of us have been here for 12 or 13 generations? How can they judge who is a settler and who is indigenous when some of us are mixed, in varying degrees? And come to that, how do we know #landback wouldn’t be just replacement of one elite with another? (And on, and on.)

These are all concerns I’ve heard from friends at just the slightest mention of #LandBack. It all sounds very alarmist, doesn’t it? Or in some cases, dismissive. It would be easy to go off halfcocked.

I’m thinking we need to do more listening first. There’s a core element of justice here. The land really was stolen. Let’s not lose sight of that. And you don’t have to be a historian to know that evolving ideas of justice always sound radical against a comfortable status quo. Our Revolutionary War ancestors heard voices condemning slavery and maybe sympathized a bit, but not enough to begin dismantling the institution of slavery.

I haven’t yet found the careful, thorough, and nuanced breakdown I’m looking for. I’m guessing that’s because the idea of #landback is still evolving among Indian communities. If we could really hear, I think we’d hear a variety of voices and opinions.

One of my early encounters with the idea of #LandBack was Nick Estes, “The Battle for the Black Hills,” High Country News, Jan. 1, 2021. (Took me awhile to go back and find the article for this post. I follow him on Twitter, so I was pretty sure I remembered correctly he was the author but it took me longer to figure out it had to have been in High County News.)

I already knew about the legal battle for the Black Hills, but I didn’t know about the NDN Collective and the LandBack Campaign. Seems like the perfect resource. I looked at their website. One of the four demands listed in their Manifesto is “All public lands back into Indigenous hands.”

Specific and predictable, albeit controversial, but then it goes further. Estes quotes Krystal Two Bulls, Head of the LandBack Campaign, as saying “Public land is the first manageable bite, then we’re coming for everything else.” Seriously? I’m back to thinking #LandBack is a moving target.

I’ve continued to listen. Recently I came across an issue of Briarpatch Magazine devoted to #LandBack–September/October 2020. (Yes, it was published before Nick Estes’ article, but I didn’t find it until a few days ago.)

In particular, there’s an interesting summary article: “What is Land Back? A Settler FAQ” (David Gray-Donald, Sept. 10, 2020). It’s easy, short, and provocative. It raises more questions than it answers. I like that. I’m going to start recommending it to my friends as a place to start. (And here’s a hint for you: there’s plenty more in that issue of Briarpatch–if you’re minded to explore a bit.)

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Native Lands

I’ve been enjoying the increasing popularity of territorial acknowledgments.

Here’s an artcle from CNN:

And here’s the app it recommends. A bit confusing in the way it presents information, but workable:

As expected, it says I live on Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute lands, as in the Denver City Council’s territorial acknowledgment. It also adds Dakota (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ), and because of my father, that pleases me.

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Denver’s Territorial Acknowledgment

I wrote about Canadian territorial acknowledgments a few weeks ago. I wondered about doing them in the U.S. Turns out Denver City Council already does one. Embarrassingly, it also turns out I was at the meeting (via Zoom) when they adopted it (October 26, 2020). I made a mental note to come back later and get the text, then forgot all about it.

So, here it is.

The Denver City Council honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples. We also recognize the 48 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado.

We honor Elders past, present, and future, and those who have stewarded this land throughout generations. We also recognize that government, academic and cultural institutions were founded upon and continue to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples.

May this acknowledgement demonstrate a commitment to working to dismantle ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities and recognize the current and future contributions of Indigenous communities in Denver.

Good job, Denver.

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Territorial Acknowledgment

I’ve been thinking about the territorial acknowledgments they do in Canada. They open events and assemblies, particularly in urban and institutional spaces, with an acknowledgment that the land in that area is the the traditional homeland of the ___ people, and that it was ceded under the ___ treaty (or not ceded). We could use something like that in the United States.

This is in my mind partly because on YouTube I watch Ed Trevors, an Anglican priest who begins each episode with the acknowledgement that his parish is in the unceded lands of the Miꞌkmaq people. Sometimes I feel a twinge of pride that he is doing that; other times a tinge of guilt that I am not.

I’ve known for years the Canadians do these territorial acknowledgements. I’ve often wondered when they will make it to the U.S. Probably not in my lifetime. Americans seem to me to be much more easily triggered on the subject of settler colonialism.

If I were to create an acknowledgment for Denver, Colorado where I live, it would be something like: “I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are in Fort Laramie Treaty territory and that this is the traditional land of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people.”

Social Constructions of Geography

Geography is a social construction. People make the rules, and the rules are often arbitrary. Yet, “social construction” seems to be a difficult concept for many people. I like to have a bit of fun when I hear someone complaining about illegal immigrants, I say, “God didn’t create the border.” It pushes them off-kilter. I’ve never heard a good rejoinder on the the spot, although some folx come back later to argue; typically with a Manifest Destiny or Lebensraum kind of argument, although they rarely recognize it as such.

Every American genealogist knows that place names and political borders have changed over time. A routine part of doing genealogy is figuring out the political geography of the town where your ancestor lived, when they lived there.

But the area also other ways to “bend” geography. Years ago, when I belonged to the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), I lived in “Hawks Hollow“, the medieval fantasy area we usually call the northern suburbs of Denver.

And way before that, when I was in college at Boulder, it was the early days of Chicano liberation. We often heard Colorado re-envisioned as part of la República del Norte or even as Aztlán, the homeland of the Mexica and other tribes that went south ages ago. This one still has a strong pull on my heart. It’s only been a month now that the city of Denver renamed Columbus Park to La Raza Park. I’m not Chicano myself, but I had friends and relatives who would often say their ancestors didn’t come to the U.S. Instead, the border crossed them (in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo).

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