Powhatan tribes battle for recognition

By WARREN FISKE, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 11, 2003
Last updated: 1:15 PM

Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi tribes, visits the grave of his grandfather in a cemetery where other ancestors are buried in King William County Photo by Lisa Billings / The Virginian-Pilot.

KING WILLIAM -- Dawn came on a recent Saturday with a few Upper Mattaponi Indians astir, setting up a yard sale on a gravel parking lot off state Route 30.

Second-hand jeans, $2. Matching lamps, $15. Dog-eared paperbacks for the coins in your pocket. All to defray their costs for lobbying in Washington.

Four centuries ago, the Upper Mattaponi were members of the mighty Nation of Powhatan, the legendary confederation of Eastern Virginia tribes that met the first permanent English settlers in America. The confederation's acts of welcome and war became the lore of history and Hollywood.

Today, most of Powhatan's remaining Virginia tribes are in an exasperating fight to win federal recognition from Congress and the accompanying trove of grants for education, housing and health care. They have encountered political opposition and a maze of regulations that have made it all but impossible to legally claim their existence.

The federal government recognizes 562 tribes from 32 states, but none from Virginia.

At the same time Washington is denying status to Virginia tribes, it is dedicating millions of dollars to celebrate their heritage. Congress is underwriting a significant share of Jamestown 2007, an international celebration of the 400th anniversary of the landing of English settlers in the New World.

The irony is not lost on several Virginia Indian chiefs, whose tribes are being asked to participate.

``It should be an embarrassment if we're celebrating the anniversary of this country, and the people who met the first Englishmen were not granted recognition,'' said Stephen Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy.

``What's so befuddling to me is how you can celebrate our history and not recognize our existence,'' said Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi.

The answers lie in a 326-year-old treaty Virginia tribes signed with King Charles II, the state's legacy of racism and current concerns that federal recognition could open the Old Dominion to Indian-run casinos.

The tribes, with roughly 3,000 members in the commonwealth, have won support from Virginia's two U.S. senators and Gov. Mark R. Warner. Despite their efforts, bills that would grant Virginia tribes federal recognition remain buried in congressional subcommittees.

So six of Virginia's eight tribes decided two years ago to use the weapons of Washington and hired a lobbyist. The bills last year came to $108,000, paid entirely from the proceeds of public powwows, craft shows, seafood bakes and sports tournaments. The take from the Upper Mattaponi's recent yard sale was about $200.

``We don't have any money. Virginia tribes never had anything,'' said Adams, an airplane maintenance instructor who spent 24 years in the Air Force, including a tour of Vietnam. ``But we're not going to give this fight up. We're entitled to the same respect the United States has shown for other tribes.'' Never before have Virginia tribes fought with the U.S. government. Perhaps if they had, their current problem wouldn't exist.

In 1677, the Powhatan nation signed a treaty with England that made it subject to British rule. The Indians pledged to obey the king's laws and to pay taxes in return for hunting and fishing rights on their former lands. The natives also agreed to return all English prisoners, while the settlers promised not to enslave Indians.

The tribes returned to their ever-diminishing lands and lived peacefully. They were converted largely to Christianity by Baptist and Methodist missionaries.

Nothing changed for the tribes a century later when the United States was born. Virginia Indians remained peaceful. There was no need for the new government to seek its own treaty.

But that wasn't the case with many tribes outside Virginia that objected to the new nation's rapid expansion. They fought bloody wars to preserve their lands. Many of the defeated tribes were granted federal recognition upon signing treaties and relocating to government-assigned reservations.

``In my opinion, it is a quirk of history that we never established a relationship with the U.S. government,'' Adams said.

Virginia was not friendly to its tribes. It long denied education and employment opportunities to Indians. Later, the Virginia General Assembly tried bureaucratically to eliminate Indians by passing the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

The law mandated that only two races be recorded on state birth records: white and Negro. It was zealously enforced by Walter A. Plecker, Virginia's first registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics. Plecker, an outspoken proponent of eugenics, systematically changed the race recorded on many birth, death and marriage certificates from ``Indian'' to ``Negro'' until his retirement in 1946. The law stood until 1967, when it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Virginia tried to make amends in the 1980s by establishing a state Bureau of Indian Affairs and conferring state recognition on its eight tribes. In 1997, then-Gov. George Allen instructed state agencies to correct all distorted Indian records that were brought to their attention.

The action came too late to repair the damage.

``Virginia Indians were the victims of statistical genocide,'' said William P. Miles, chief of the Pamunkey.

The purge of racial identity records had a devastating impact on the tribes in the late 1990s, when they began seeking federal recognition. The tribes took the routine route by applying to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The agency requires meticulous documentation of family trees to prove the applicants descend from ``historical Indian tribes.''

In the Old Dominion, the altered records make that virtually impossible.

So Virginia's tribes deployed a new strategy. While two -- the Pamunkey and Mattaponi -- decided to continue seeking federal recognition through the traditional route, six tribes concluded that their best hope was to bypass the Bureau of Indians Affairs and apply directly to Congress.

That created a new problem.

In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act allowing federally recognized tribes to operate casinos on their lands. Lawmakers said gaming centers would create economic opportunities for long-impoverished tribes and wean them from government subsidies. Since then, about 300 gaming parlors have opened on Indian land in 28 states.

Virginia lawmakers have opposed expanding gambling in Virginia beyond the lottery, horse racing and charitable bingo.

State tribal leaders say they have no intention of opening casinos. They say they are morally opposed to gambling -- so much that they refuse to raise money through bingo, although they have that right.

Even if the tribes wanted to go into the casino business, they still would need permission from Virginia's legislature. The federal act requires all tribes recognized after 1988 to abide by the gambling laws of their states.

That stipulation satisfies Virginia's governor, its two U.S. senators, the Virginia Council of Churches and the General Assembly, the latter of which overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging Congress to recognize the tribes.

``The gambling issue has been sufficiently addressed,'' Allen said during a Senate hearing last year. ``The point is that Virginia does not allow gambling, and I cannot imagine the state changing those laws.''

But Republican Congressman Frank R. Wolf of Northern Virginia, the state's senior House member, wants more assurance. Wolf is demanding that the Indians sign away all future rights to run casinos -- even if the state one day legalizes them.

Wolf, an ardent foe of gambling, is blocking the legislation to federally recognize the tribes until he gets an agreement. He says several federally recognized tribes in other states initially opposed gambling but, lured by riches, later opened casinos.

``I believe the Virginia tribes when they say don't want gambling,'' Wolf said. ``The problem is that people can come along later on and change their minds. So what's wrong with putting a permanent prohibition in writing?''

Indian leaders refuse to accept his terms.

``There's no need for it,'' said Adkins, the Chickahominy chief. ``As long as the state says there won't be gambling, there won't be gambling. But we don't want to preclude the options of future generations if the state changes its mind.''

Adkins said agreeing to Wolf's conditions could set a ``bad precedent'' for tribes elsewhere.

``Once you start giving away rights,'' he said, ``where does it end?''

Barry W. Bass, chief of the Nansemond, said Wolf's demand is insulting.

``He's stereotyping the Indian folk as gamblers when all we are is hard-working folks looking for a little bit of dignity,'' Bass said.

The lone Indian in the U.S. Senate, Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, supports the tribes. Campbell, who heads a subcommittee that oversees Indian affairs, has vowed to scuttle any bill that contains Wolf's stipulation.

The Bush administration has added to the tribes' woes by opposing the recognition bills before Congress. Its complaints: The tribes have been unable to provide documentation required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Going through Congress allows them ``to avoid the scrutiny to which other groups have been subjected.''

The objections caused Allen, author of the Senate bill for recognition, to boil over.

``Do you recognize how devastating the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was to the identity of individuals?'' he demanded of Michael Smith, director of tribal affairs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at a hearing last year. ``Do you recognize how difficult it was to maintain a culture, a heritage, family bloodlines?''

Smith said the government must demand meticulous proof because recognition entitles tribes to federal funds.

``I don't think we want to get in an argument over whether there are historical tribes in Virginia. We know there are,'' Smith told Allen. ``We just want to ensure, though, that the Indian people are the tribes they say they are.''

The gridlock has exasperated Congressman James P. Moran, an Alexandria Democrat who is sponsoring the House bill. ``It's shameful that I can't get this through,'' he said. ``I don't know what more I can do.''

Also opposing the legislation is the Virginia Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Grocery Association, an organization representing 650 corporations running gas stations and convenience stores in the commonwealth. Federally recognized Indians are allowed to sell goods free of state taxes on tribal lands. That, says the group, could give Virginia's tribes a competitive advantage should they become retailers.

``Under this bill, they could go into the gas business and sell it 36 cents per gallon under the cost of other gas stations,'' said Michael J. O'Connor, a lobbyist for the association. ``They could acquire every East Coast Gasoline station in Virginia and declare it tribal land. . . . That's not tribal rights. It's state-supported tax evasion.''

Adams, tending to the recent Saturday yard sale, chuckled initially when told of O'Connor's remarks. But then the Upper Mattaponi chief's words came out icy.

``Where does he get the idea that we're going to go into business?'' Adams said. ``We're broke. We never had anything. If we had money, do you think we'd be sitting in the heat all day holding a yard sale to raise, maybe, a couple hundred dollars?''

Adams crossed Route 30 to show a visitor the tribal land -- a 32-acre parcel, barren save for a U.S. flag, a bathroom and two crude pavilions without walls. The Upper Mattaponi purchased the land in the 1980s and only recently gained the deed.

``It took 15 years to own the land, $439 a month,'' Adams said.

Nearby is the tribal graveyard, humble but neat. Adams walked by the tombstone of an uncle, who he said was never quite right after serving in World War II.

Buried there also are Adams' grandfather and father, who he said never learned to read.

``These are the people I'm trying to affirm,'' Adams said. ``That's why I'll never give up.''

Reach Warren Fiske at warren.fiske@pilotonline.com or (804) 697-1565.