Thanks Val Van Meter and Winchester Star newspaper for helping others Catch The Spirit of The Gathering.

The Gathering
Welcomes Vendors and Exhibitors

• Born June 17, 1865
• Experienced life in both the white and Native American worlds
• Attended the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies and later the Hampton Institute in Virginia
• First person to receive federal aid for professional education
• 1889 Graduate Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania top of her class
• Some winters she would see over 100 patients a month traveling across the reservation and the county by horseback or buggy in sub-zero weather
• Paid only $500 a year, she earned ten-times less than a U.S. Army or Navy doctor
• Married in 1894 and raised two children
• Before her death in 1915, she took a very radical stand supporting a Native American religious movement that sought to legally introduce the peyote into Native American spiritual traditions

Greg Timmons biography.com 

Clarke County, Virginia – The Gathering council of elders announced today that American Indian Dennis Zotigh will join Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), as Co-Masters of Ceremonies for The Gathering this fall.
    Prior to joining the staff of National Museum of the American Indian, Zotigh played an important role in developing the American Indian Gallery of the new Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in the capacity of American Indian Researcher and Historian.
     Dennis W. Zotigh is a Kiowa, San Juan Pueblo and Santee Dakota Indian and is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan, and a descendent of Sitting Bear and No Retreat, both principal war chiefs of the Kiowa.

     Zotigh began singing and dancing at Native celebrations at a very young age. He grew up learning traditional values and has extended his capabilities as a cultural promoter by learning songs, dances and their significance from Indigenous nations across North America. With his wealth of knowledge, he has lectured at universities, museums, educational conferences and symposiums both domestically and internationally on topics concerning American Indian culture.
    Zotigh has been Master of Ceremonies for three consecutive years at the "Miss Indian World Competition," at the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico in addition to serving various roles in numerous other Native American pageants, art events and powwows.
     In 1991, he was commissioned to write a text encompassing American Indian dance titled, Moving History: The Evolution of the Powwow. It is permanently housed and distributed by Oklahoma

City's Red Earth Center. This important piece of history has led to projects with: National Geographic Magazine, ABC and NBC Television, National Public Radio, The National Museum of the American Indian, The British Museum and numerous publications.
     The Gathering is an educational celebration of “agri-culture” scheduled for Friday, Oct. 30 thru Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Clarke County Fairgrounds in Berryville, Va.

    Thanks Freddie Ciampi and the Social Graces Ballroom team for hosting local Native American Indian dancer Lenny Harmon to perform one of the oldest forms of dancing during the Grand Opening Social Graces Ballroom ribbon cutting Saturday (June 27).
    These traditional Native American dances not only honor both the legacy of “dance” and Clarke County’s "agricultural heritage," they offer a sampling of The Harvest Gathering.
    Lenny is one of the imple-MENTORS (volunteers) for The Gathering, an educational celebration of agri-"Culture" planned for the Clarke County Fairgrounds Oct. 30 – Nov. 1,
    Thanks to supporters like Social Graces Ballroom Studio for helping bring dance culture back into our community and nation as a way of life.
    The new Social Graces Ballroom Studio is located at 639 E. Main St. Berryville, home to seven instructors and more than 150 dance students.
   People interested in signing up for classes can visit www.BerryvilleBallRoom.com or 540-409-7136. For more about The Gathering please visit www.HarvestGathering.org.

   Special Thanks:

• Freddi Ciampi - Thanks for bringing dance into our community and contributing of yourself!!
  
• Danielle Beaulieu - You made it happen!
• Sue Peoples - Elder for The Gathering for  remarks and videotaping the dance (above)
  
• Alice Irvin - The Gathering imple-IMENTOR for creating this possibility
• Lenny Harmon - imple-MENTOR and volunteer extraordinaire (more about Lenny)
• Jennifer Welliver - The Observer you rock!!

By WARREN FISKE
The Virginian-Pilot

Lacy Branham Hearl closes her eyes and travels eight decades back to what began as a sweet childhood.

There was family everywhere: her parents, five siblings, nine sets of adoring aunts and uncles and more cousins than she could count. They all lived in a Monacan Indian settlement near Amherst, their threadbare homes circling apple orchards at the foot of Tobacco Row Mountain.As Hearl grew, however, she sensed the adults were engulfed in deepening despair. When she was 12, an uncle gathered his family and left Virginia, never to see her again. Other relatives scattered in rapid succession, some muttering the name "Plecker."

Soon, only Hearl's immediate family remained. Then the orchards began to close because there were not enough workers and the townspeople turned their backs and all that was left was prejudice and plight and Plecker.

Hearl shakes her head sadly.

"I thought Plecker was a devil," she says. "Still do."

Walter Ashby Plecker was the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics, which records births, marriages and deaths. He accepted the job in 1912. For the next 34 years, he led the effort to purify the white race in Virginia by forcing Indians and other nonwhites to classify themselves as blacks. It amounted to bureaucratic genocide.

He worked with a vengeance.

Plecker was a white supremacist and a zealous advocate of eugenics - a now discredited movement to preserve the integrity of white blood by preventing interracial breeding. "Unless this can be done," he once wrote, "we have little to hope for, but may expect in the future decline or complete destruction of our civilization."

Plecker's icy efficiency as racial gatekeeper drew international attention, including that of Nazi Germany. In 1943, he boasted: "Hitler's genealogical study of the Jews is not more complete."

Plecker retired in 1946 at the age of 85 and died the following year. The damage lives on.

From the grave, Plecker is frustrating the efforts of Virginia tribes to win federal recognition and a trove of accompanying grants for housing, health care and education. One of the requirements is that the tribes prove their continuous existence since 1900. Plecker, by purging Indians as a race, has made that nearly impossible. Six Virginia tribes are seeking the permission of Congress to bypass the requirement.

"It never seems to end with this guy," said Kenneth Adams, chief of the Upper Mattaponi. "You wonder how anyone could be so consumed with hate."

It's likely that Plecker didn't see himself as the least bit hateful. Had he not been so personally aloof, he might have explained that he believed he was practicing good science and religion. Perhaps he would have acknowledged that he was influenced by his own heritage.

Walter Plecker was one of the last sons of the Old South. He was born in Augusta County on April 2, 1861. Ten days later, the cannons at Fort Sumter sounded the start of the Civil War. His father, a prosperous merchant and slave owner, left home to fight for the Confederate Army with many of his kin.

Some 60 years later, Plecker would recall his early days in a letter to a magazine editor expressing his abhorrence of interracial breeding. He remembered "being largely under the control" of a "faithful" slave named Delia. When the war ended, she stayed on as a servant. The Pleckers were so fond of her that they let her get married in their house. When Plecker's mother died in 1915, it was Delia "who closed her eyes," he wrote.

Then Plecker got to his point. "As much as we held in esteem individual negroes this esteem was not of a character that would tolerate marriage with them, though as we know now to our sorrow much illegitimate mixture has occurred." Plecker added, "If you desire to do the correct thing for the negro race ... inspire (them) with the thought that the birth of mulatto children is a standing disgrace."

Plecker graduated from Hoover Military Academy in Staunton in 1880. He became a doctor, graduating from the University of Maryland's medical school in 1885. He moved around western Virginia and the coal fields of Alabama before settling in Hampton in 1892.

Plecker took special interest in delivering babies. He became concerned about the high mortality rate among poor mothers and began keeping records and searching for ways to improve birthing.

Public health was first being recognized as a government concern at the turn of the last century, and Plecker was a pioneer. In 1902, he became health officer for Elizabeth City County (today, Hampton). He recorded details of more than 98 percent of the births and deaths in the county - an amazing feat during a time when most people were born and died at home. When lawmakers established the state Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1912 , they asked Plecker to run it.

Plecker's first 12 years on the job were groundbreaking and marked by goodwill. He educated midwives of all races on modern birthing techniques and cut the 5 percent death rate for black mothers almost in half. He developed an incubator - a combination of a laundry basket, dirt, a thermometer and a kerosene lamp - that anyone could make in an instant. Concerned by a high incidence of syphilitic blindness in black and Indian babies, he distributed silver nitrate to be put in the eyes of newborns.

Plecker was all work. He did not seek friendship. Although married most of his life, he did not have children. He listed his hobbies as "books and birds."

"He was a man you could sometimes respect and admire, but never love," said Russell E. Booker Jr., who grew up in Plecker's neighborhood, delivered his newspaper and worked in the Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1960 to 1994, spending the last 12 years as director. "He was a very rigid man," Booker added. "I don't know of anyone who ever saw him smile."

Plecker was tall, bone-thin, had wavy, white hair that was neatly combed and a trim mustache. He took a bus to work and lunched every day on just an apple.

He was a miserly taskmaster. Plecker scraped glue pots, mixed the gunk with water and sent it back to employees for use. Booker said that, according to office legend, "You didn't get a new pencil until you turned in your old one, and it better not be longer than an inch and a quarter."

Plecker never looked before crossing streets. "He just expected the cars to stop for him," said Booker, who still lives in Richmond. "One time a woman grabbed him just as he was about to be hit, and he laid her out like she'd just touched God."

Plecker was a devout Presbyterian. He helped establish churches around the state and supported fundamentalist missionaries. Plecker belonged to a conservative Southern branch of the church that believed the Bible was infallible and condone d segregation. Members of Plecker's branch maintained that God flooded the earth and destroyed Sodom to express his anger at racial interbreeding.

"Let us turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood as racial equality," Plecker wrote in a 1925 essay.

Plecker described himself as a man of science. And at the turn of the 20th century, eugenics was internationally heralded as the thinking man's science.

The term "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by English scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, a year after Darwin's death. Galton defined it as the science of "race improvement." It was viewed as a practical application of Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection.

The early aim of Galton and his followers was to promote selective marriages to eliminate hereditary disorders. It wasn't long, however, before they focused on perpetuating a superior class of humans.

As the science swept across the Atlantic, it picked up more ominous tones. Eugenicists began espousing mandatory sterilization of "wicked" and mentally retarded people to eliminate their bloodlines.

All the major colleges, including the University of Virginia, taught the science. It was embraced by such great minds as Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Margaret Sanger won support for legalizing contraception by arguing it would lower the birth rate of undesirables. Winston Churchill unsuccessfully proposed sterilization laws for Great Britain in 1910. As governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson signed that state's first sterilization law in 1911. The next year, he was elected president.

Virginia's gentry embraced the fad. Eugenics was the perfect way to deal with race and the underclass.

"Virginians thought of themselves as more progressive than their neighbors to the south," said Gregory M. Dorr, a University of Alabama history professor who is writing a book on eugenics. "There was a feeling that we don't need to do lynching or the KKK. We're not savage. We can handle our problems in a rational way. "

The leader of the state movement was John Powell of Richmond, an internationally acclaimed pianist and composer who would work closely with Plecker for more than a quarter of a century. Powell was rich, well-connected and a compelling speaker. Plecker stayed behind the scenes, supplying Powell with copies of all the major correspondence of his office and drafting racial separation bills for the legislature's consideration.

Their work paid off in 1924 when the General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act and a mandatory sterilization law that would be invoked 8,300 times over the next 55 years.

Although 31 states would pass eugenics laws, none was tougher than Virginia's.

The Racial Integrity Act essentially narrowed race classifications on birth and marriage certificates to two choices: "white person" or "colored." The law defined a white as one with no trace of black blood. A white person could have no more than a

1/16th trace of Indian blood - an exception, much to Plecker's regret, legislators made to appease the descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, who were considered among Virginia's first families.

The act forbade interracial marriage and lying about race on registration forms. Violators faced felony convictions and a year in prison.

Plecker strongly supported sterilization laws, arguing that feeble-minded whites were prone to mate with Indians and blacks. He had no role in administering the law, however.

The Racial Integrity Act, on the other hand, was his to enforce, and Plecker went about it obsessively. Gov. E. Lee Trinkle, a year after signing the act, asked Plecker to ease up on the Indians and not "embarrass them any more than possible." Plecker fired back an angry letter .

"I am unable to see how it is working any injustice upon them or humiliation for our office to take a firm stand against their intermarriage with white people, or to the preliminary steps of recognition as Indians with permission to attend white schools and to ride in white coaches," Plecker wrote.

The governor retreated.

Plecker saw everything in black and white. There were no other races. There was no such thing as a Virginia Indian. The tribes, he said, had become a "mongrel" mixture of black and American Indian blood.

He called them "the breach in the dike." They had to be stopped.

Many who came into Plecker's cross hairs were acting with pure intentions. They registered as white or Indian because that's how their parents identified themselves. Plecker seemed to delight in informing them they were "colored," citing genealogical records dating back to the early 1800s that he said his office possessed.

His tone was cold and final.

In one letter, Plecker informed a Pennsylvania woman that the Virginia man about to become her son-in-law had black blood. "You have to set the thing straight now and we hope your daughter can see the seriousness of the whole matter and dismiss this young man without any more ado," he wrote.

In another missive, he rejected a Lynchburg woman's claim that her newborn was white. The father, he told her in a letter, had traces of "negro" blood.

"This is to inform you that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white," he wrote.

"You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.

"It is a horrible thing."

Plecker's no-nonsense approach made him a celebrity within the eugenics movement, which was increasingly losing support among scientists and becoming a platform for white supremacy. He spoke around the country, was widely published and wrote to every governor in the nation to urge passage of racial laws just as tough as Virginia's. He dined at the New York home of Harry H. Laughlin, the nation's leading eugenics advocate and an unabashed Nazi sympathizer.

In 1932, Plecker gave a keynote speech at the Third International Conference on Eugenics in New York. Among those in attendance was Ernst Rudin of Germany who, 11 months later, would help write Hitler's eugenics law.

In 1935, Plecker wrote to Walter Gross, the director of Germany's Bureau of Human Betterment and Eugenics. He outlined Virginia's racial purity laws and asked to be put on a mailing list for bulletins from Gross' department. Plecker complimented the Third Reich for sterilizing 600 children in Algeria who were born to German women and black men. "I hope this work is complete and not one has been missed," he wrote. "I sometimes regret that we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia."

Plecker wrote to Gross on state stationery. He sold copies of eugenics books in his office. He was occasionally rebuked for turning official publications into diatribes against racial interbreeding and mailing them at government expense. And when the Racial Integrity Act failed to meet his needs, Plecker stretched it.

He pressured superintendents to remove children from white schools based on complaints that they had "negro" features. "As to deciding the point of race, you and the sheriff, and any other intelligent citizen of your community, are as capable of judging from the appearance of the child as the most learned scientist," Plecker wrote one superintendent. "There is absolutely no blood or other test to determine the question."

Plecker demanded the removal of bodies from white cemeteries. He tried to evict a set of twins from a Presbyterian orphanage because they were illegitimate and, therefore, the "chances are 10-1 they are of negro blood."

Plecker maintained that all of his racial designations were based on impeccable records. There was, however, a secret Plecker revealed to only a few trusted allies: A lot of the time he was just guessing.

He acknowledged the sham when a Richmond attorney questioned his authority to change the birth certificate of a woman classified as an Indian before 1924. Plecker quietly admitted he had no such power and rescinded his designation of the woman as "colored."

Plecker fretted that he would lose his hold on Indians if word of his retreat got out. "In reality I have been doing a good deal of bluffing, knowing all the while that it could never be legally sustained," he wrote to his cohort, John Powell. "This is the first time that my hand has been absolutely called."

The setback was temporary, however. The attorney kept quiet. And Plecker began developing his ultimate weapon against the Indians.

In January 1943, he sent a list of common surnames from each of the state's tribes to local officials where the clans lived. He instructed them that anyone with those names must be classified and treated as "negro."

Today, the Indians call it Plecker's hit list. It was the last indignity for many of them, the act that convinced them there was no prospect for happiness in Virginia. It was the reason Lacy Hearl's relatives pulled out for other states. Why she got married in Maryland, which recognized her heritage. Why her son couldn't get into a Boy Scout troop.

Hearl's maiden name - Branham - was on the list. Although Branhams and most other Monacans lived among themselves and attended an Indian school, many of them had light complexions and could move freely . Suddenly, their freedom was gone.

"You had to lie about your name and hope the person at the door didn't know you," she said. Hearl had always loved going to the movies and dances. That stopped. She could no longer get in.

"It was the end of my family," said Hearl, now 74 . "I was lonely. It's sad that a family has to depart from each other just because of a name."

Other tribes tell similar stories. "The worst thing about Plecker is how he screwed up the community," said Kenneth Adams, the chief of the Upper Mattaponi. "People just left."

Indian schools did not go beyond eighth grade. White schools were off-limits. Black schools were not an option for most Indians because attending them would be a concession to Plecker's racial classifications.

"We were the third race in a two-race state," said Stephen Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy tribe. "I remember once traveling with my father and we pulled into a gas station because I had to go to the bathroom and there was one bathroom marked 'white' and one bathroom marked 'colored.' I said, 'Dad, what do I do?' "

After his retirement, Plecker planned to write a book about the decline of the white race. Before he had a chance, he stepped into traffic without looking.

Legend has it that he was hit by a bus. "I know it's kind of cruel to say this, but I hope the last thing he saw was an Indian driving that bus," said Sue Elliott, Hearl's daughter.

The truth is that he was hit by a car driven by Kenneth R. Berrell, whose racial origins have fallen into oblivion. Plecker died in a hospital two hours later. It was 1947.

Plecker's racial records were largely ignored after 1959, when his handpicked successor retired. Virginia schools were fully integrated in 1963 and, four years later, the state's ban on interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional. In 1975, the General Assembly repealed the rest of the Racial Integrity Act.

During the past two decades, Virginia has tried to erase Plecker's legacy. It has established councils on Indian affairs and has conferred official state recognition on eight tribes, a designation that provides no privileges. But Indian leaders say recognition equals respect.

In 1997, then-Gov. George F. Allen simplified procedures for people to correct inaccurate birth records. Hearl had her race changed from black to Indian.

"I know who I am and I'm proud of it," she said.

The going has been tougher in Washington, where Virginia Indians are trying to join 562 tribes around the country that are federally recognized. The Bush administration, while sensitive to Plecker's destruction of records, has been unwilling to ease application rules.

Allen, now a U.S. senator, is again championing the Indians' cause. The Republican has authored legislation that would bypass bureaucratic requirements and allow Congress to federally recognize the tribes. Allen, during a Senate hearing last year, lamented Virginia's racist past.

"Virginia Indians were not extended the rights offered to other U.S. citizens, and the years of discrimination and coercive policies took a tremendous toll," he said.

The bill has been approved by a key Senate committee and may come up for a floor vote later this year.

The legislation faces major opposition in the House of Representatives, however, where Rep. Frank Wolf , R-Fairfax County , has raised concern that federal recognition would open the door to Indian-run casinos in Virginia. The tribes, most of them devout Christians, say they oppose gaming. Allen and Gov. Mark R. Warner say there are many safeguards that would prevent casinos from opening in the Old Dominion.

The Virginia tribes are moving decisively. Six have banded together to ask Congress for help. They have brought Plecker's story to Capitol Hill, hired a lobbyist and meet regularly to plan strategy, which includes deciding whether to participate in the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement in 2007 .

Indian leaders say that's a big change from the days not long ago when all of the tribes went separate ways.

"We have a bond now," Adkins, the Chickahominy chief, said. "It's kind of ironic, but Plecker has made us stronger."

© Article First Published August 18, 2004 By the Virginian-Pilot

Preview Event for The Gathering
Speech Below as Prepared for Delivery by USAF (Ret.) Lt. Col. Rene' Locklear White, executive director for The Gathering and first female veteran key-note speaker for the Lumbee Indian Warriors Association Veterans Military Ball. The event kicked off this week's Lumbee Indian Homecoming where 50,000 Lumbees are welcomed

    "Military conflicts did not spring up out of our land. Wars are passed down to us through generation after generation.
    Now we have Afghanistan. Iraq. There was also Kosovo. Somalia.

    I’ve been stationed or pass through the Pentagon, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Germany, Sarajevo, Croatia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, South Korea, Africa and a few other places. I joined the Air Force just before the Gulf War began.
     My brother James Frankie Locklear served in the Gulf region along with more than 3,000 Native American Indians. Several Native Americans lost their lives in the Gulf War including Specialist Lori Ann Piestewa of the Hopi. Piestewa was the first Native American woman in history to die in combat while serving with the United States military.
     There has been Panama. Libya. Grenada. Beirut. Iran.
     During Vietnam more than 42,000 Native American Indians served in the Armed Forces between 1965 and 1975.
     My uncles Joe, Wilbur and Marvin served during the Korean War with more than 10,000 Native American Indians.
     During WWII more than 44,000 Native American Indians from 1941 to 1945 served, including women and more than 400 Navajo and Lakota “Code Talkers”.
     My grandfather Frank Locklear served as an Army Private along with about 12,000 American Indians in WWI which included American Indian women in the Army Nurse Corps.
     Before our grandfathers and grandmothers, war was here.

WHY DID WE JOIN?
     We each have different reasons why we joined the military. Maybe it was because you were drafted. Maybe because of what you hold dear. This is my family. This is my country. This is my faith. This is threatened. They are the enemy. They will not hurt what I hold dear. They will not hurt what I love.
     The Bible describes many types of warriors. Some of you joined as boys, like King David. Some of you liked to smash things up with a donkey-jaw bone like Samson. Others of you tore down walls and took over cities like Joshua. In Vietnam, many of you used guerrilla warfare like Gideon. Some of us were like Ahab working in international affairs and as Diplomats. Probably most of you were considered handsome and charismatic like Saul. I'm sure all of you ladies took charge like Deborah. And a number of you other ladies know how to use a hammer like Jael.
     We all took an oath as a warrior for a cause; for something greater than themselves.
     Jesus said, “Greater love has NO ONE than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
     Who knew that being a warrior is an act of LOVE?

WHAT WE CARRY
     When we went into the war zone we carried a lot with us.
     Author Tim O'Brien and Vietnam War veteran wrote about "The Things They Carried" during Vietnam. He wrote that:
     First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, a platoon leader who cares about his men, carries photos and letters from the girl he loves back home in New Jersey, who doesn't love him back.
    Bob "Rat" Kiley is a likeable and skilled medic carries comic books, brandy and M&Ms.
    Kiowa is a kind and moral soldier from Oklahoma, a Native American Indian, and devout Baptist. He carries an illustrated New Testament, worn-out moccasins and his grandfather's feathered hunting hatchet.
    Henry Dobbins is a large, strong and dependable, machine gunner carries extra rations and wears his girlfriend's pantyhose tied around his neck.
    In the Lumbee novel, “Moon Dash Warrior,” author and Vietnam veteran Delano Cummings describes, trudging through 120 degree temperatures, low crawling through mountains, jungles and rice paddies, getting hit by sniper fire and mortars and watching friends die.
     All the while, you’re trying to avoid trip flares, claymore mines, booby-trapped grenades and biting insects. It’s hard to carry your C-rats, coffee packets, heat tablets, grenades, M-60 machine gun ammo, pop flairs, canteen, flak jackets and M-14, rifle belt, helmet, 782 gear and more when the spot you’re standing in is hotter than a tobacco barn. It’s also hard to pilot a helicopter when you have no place to land.
    You Lumbee Warriors have carried a lot. You also carried grief, loss, terror, secrets and memories. All of you have carried all you could bear, and then some.
    You Lumbee Indian Warriors have made lasting contributions to our nation’s rich heritage, not the least of which has been in the defense of our freedoms. Our freedom of speech. Our freedom to worship. You carried, so that we could carry on.

HOMECOMING  
    When we come home from battle, we carry a lot home too.
    For those of you who came home from Vietnam, on top of the weight you brought home, perhaps the cruelest aspect of the war was the treatment you received WHEN you came home: A negative and hostile news media; Protesters carrying signs with anti-war slogans; An entertainment industry that did not have your best interest in mind.
    To those who served in Vietnam and returned home not to find parades, bands, speeches and celebrations,
    I AM SORRY!
    PLEASE FORGIVE US.
    WE LOVE YOU.
    America should have been proud of you from the start, for you were and are a remarkable group of men and women.

STILL LOOKING FOR THE MISSING 
    For those still missing in action, we have not forgotten them. One of the units I was assigned with investigated, excavated and repatriated remains of U.S. personnel missing or killed in action in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Our small teams typically included a team sergeant, linguist, medic, life support technician, forensic photographer, communications and an explosive ordnance disposal or EOD technician. Additional experts sometimes included mountaineering specialists or divers.
    The last person accounted is Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Edwin E. Morgan, 38, of Eagle Spring, N.C., who was buried today (June 27) in Rockwell, N.C. He was assigned to the 6252nd Combat Support Group, as the loadmaster of an AC-47D gunship aircraft, that departed Da Nang Air Base, Vietnam, on an armed reconnaissance mission along the Vietnam-Laos border. The aircraft failed to return and neither Morgan nor the aircraft was seen again. Morgan was listed missing in action and a military review board later amended his status to presumed dead.
    Today there are 1,627 American service members that are still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

MY VIETNAM
    I’ve been to Vietnam, Cambodia and Loas. I flew on-board Russian-made M-17 helicopters landing in Vietnam’s remote and mountainous sites in search of those who did not make it home. What did I carry? I carried a photo of my daughter. A notebook. Pens. Camera. Taped up my pants in case there were leaches. Took this shot, that shot and more shots to immunize against who knows what. I also carried questions like, “what kind of mother am I be in another country, when I can’t stay home to take care of my own family?”
    When my daughter Kara (sitting over there) was a little girl, I had to leave her home a lot. My sister Janice (sitting at the head table) came all the way to Hawaii to help me take care of Kara and my house. My husband wasn’t able to be there. Once, when Janice was helping me and Kara must have been five or six years old, I was trying to be funny and cheerful as I readied for my deployment.
    She said, “mom.” “Hold out your hand.” I held out my hand. She leaned over and kissed the inside of my hand. Then she said, “now close it.” “Now,” she said. “Don’t worry, I will always be with you. I love you.”
   After my Vietnam trips, I made it back. Some of my friends did not. One late Saturday afternoon on April 7th, 2001 we lost seven Americans servicemen and nine Vietnamese military men when their helicopter slammed into a mountain during a fog storm:  Air Force Maj. Charles E. Lewis; Air Force TSgt. Robert Flynn; Air Force MSgt. Stephen L. Moser; Army Sgt. First Class Tommy J. Murphy; Navy Chief Petty Officer Pedro Gonzales; Army Lt. Col. George D. Martin III; and Army Lt. Col. Rennie M. Cory Jr.

LEARNING ABOUT DNA
     It was during my Joint Task Force assignments that I learned about DNA from our forensic anthropologists and how they use DNA to account for those missing in action.
     In simplistic terms, you can think of our DNA as two strands of a pearl necklaces twisted around each other, where each pearl represents a gene that is responsible for part of what you are, such as eye color, hair texture, whether you are male or female.
    Men and women carry DNA through the nucleus of all of our cells. However, in the case of those missing in action from the Vietnam War, we find such small amounts of material evidence (or bodily remains) there isn’t enough of this type DNA to confirm identification; mainly because the soil is so acidic it quickly destroys what was left behind 40 years ago.
    As it turns out, there’s unique Mitochondrial DNA in our cells that is passed down to us ALL by our mothers. It is this mDNA that comes down from our mothers and grandmothers that we are using to ID and account for those missing in action.

MATERNAL INHERITANCE
    All of you men and women carry your mother’s mitochondrial DNA, but only we mothers have mDNA to pass onto our children.
    You fathers cannot pass down your mDNA to your children. You fathers sacrificed your mDNA at the point of conception to help create life. You fathers here, your fathers and your grandfathers gave of themselves, all the way down to their cells, that we may all have life.
    Our DNA code is the source code for our life. Our DNA helps us identify ourselves as Lumbee Indians.

TRAUMA ALL THE WAY TO THE DNA
     The science of epigenetics, proposes that we pass along more than DNA in our genes. It suggests that our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress.
    Scientists studying DNA indicate that our grandmothers and grandfathers carried and passed down trauma in their DNA.  Which means trauma our Native American Indians ancestors experienced then may actually be woven into our DNA now.
    The Academy of Pediatrics reports that trauma experienced by earlier generations can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to “switch on” negative responses to stress and trauma.
    But, we didn’t really need scientist to tell us Indian folk that what happened in our past still affects us.
    Science is trying to catch up with what we know to be true right here (pointing to heart) – what is written on our hearts and minds.
    Lumbee inter-generational trauma is real. Warrior trauma is real.
   Our ancestors experienced persistence of stress associated with discrimination, annihilation and historical trauma. Now, our Native Peoples not only suffer from PTSD, we have high rates of depression, substance abuse, diabetes and suicide.
    While pharmaceutical companies search for drug solutions, our warriors are still going into battle carrying much and carrying even more back home.

NO END IN SIGHT 
    A few more winters. A few more moons. A few more battles. There is NO end in sight after a decade of deployments.
    Increased IEDs. Rich nations fighting back with drones, and a growing Joint Special Operations Command.
    Peace is a dirty word in our government today and the hope of peace has even faded from our children’s video games.
    Who would have every thought that “peace” would be removed from the aspect of war in our time?
    This is a different kind of war. Right now our military leaders are reshaping what it means to be a warrior. If we are not careful, this perpetual war will isolate our Lumbee Warriors away from our own communities.

THE NATIVE WAY 
    The Native definition of warrior is being replaced by the English definition of warrior. The English version is, “to make war.”
    I believe innately we Lumbees are a peaceable people.
    Native American Indian tradition tells us, when our young men and women are called to go to war, there was a ceremony we hold to prepare them for what he or she might see, might do and might have to sacrifice. This is a WARRIOR’S CEREMONY. After they came back from war, and before they enter back into our society, we hold another ceremony so our warriors can leave the war-maker behind, along with the atrocities they have seen, experienced and suffered. This is also so that you the tribe and community will not be tainted by war. So as our young men and women enter back in to our Lumbee society not as the warrior, but as a father, a mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, and friend of our community.

THE WOMEN
    Our Native American tradition also tells us, many tribes were Matriarchal societies, with women in the leadership roles. I think you’d agree if more women were in charge today, we’d have less wars and a lot more BBQs.
    Even in the Patriarchal societies where men were in leadership roles, tradition tells us that the women sat just outside the men’s circle. The men could hear the breath of the women which guided them in their decision to go to war. 
    About 40 years ago, it was the grandmothers who stood up for the injustice, perpetrated against the indigenous which spurred the founding of the American Indian Movement. I know this, because Dennis Banks co-founder of AIM told my husband and me this when we were all sitting our front porch last year.

THERE IS HOPE  
    The current war will continue to add further stress on our DNA, because we are a peaceable people at heart.  
    If you grow weary, know this, there is another type of DNA that can carry us through.

• Spiritual DNA.

    Spirituality is in our nature. You can no more separate our Indian red blood from our Lumbee bodies as you can separate the Spirit of God from our being.
    Exodus 15:3 says: “The Lord is a warrior.” And Revelation 19, says He’s coming back as a warrior. It says He’s coming back riding a white horse and wearing a blood-stained white robe, leading a mighty Army with a sword.
    The oath we took, and had faith towards, ended with, “so help me God.” God is Great Spirit. Great Mystery. Mother Earth is dust from which our bodies came and will return. And faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen - right now.
    We are Lumbee Indians. Being Indian is our “way of life.”

BEING LUMBEE 
    Take heart mighty Warriors, though our physical bodies are becoming older and weaker.

• Believe!

   If you can determine what you believe, and have faith towards, that will tell you what you hold dear. It will reveal to you what you have to protect.
   The Spirit inside us is being renewed day by day. Creator God is not done with you yet. 
    Keep fighting on the winning side. You are still making an impact now. All your words and actions send out vibrations STILL.
    Women. You know what? “We can do it.”
    But you know what’s more. “We have done it.”
    Men! Thank you for sacrificing for us all.

"THE WAY" OF LIFE 
     We have the God-given power to create - the ability to create NEW possibilities to heal our own DNA; the DNA of our servicemen and women today; and the DNA of our unborn children tomorrow.
    Let us lean to our Native ways. Let us carry the wisdom passed down to us from our grandfathers and grandmothers to help guide us on our walk.
    You’re more than a warrior. By your way of being, you are Fathers. Mothers. Leaders. Friends. Role models.
    I tell you the truth. You are Native American Indians.
    Celebrate our relationship with Mother Earth and Creator God. Celebrate that we are all related. Celebrate that we are the “Keepers of the Earth.”
    My prayer for you is that we be victorious in loving one another and help bring ALL people back into the sacred hoop.
    And remember, all the way down to your DNA you are fearfully and wonderfully made!

Mitakuye Oyasin. To all my relations."

Congratulations to Virginia’s Pamunkey Indians receiving federal government recognition as Native American tribe.

The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs announced yesterday that the Pamunkey tribe’s decades-long quest for recognition has been approved, making the tribe of Pocahontas the first in Virginia to receive the coveted designation.

Six other Virginia tribes are seeking recognition through an act of Congress:

• Chickahominy
• Eastern Chickahominy
• Upper Mattaponi
• Rappahannock
• Monacan
  
• Nansemond

At present, there are 566 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages. Virginia recognizes 11 Indian tribes in the state:

1. Cheroenhaka Nottoway
2. Chickahominy
3. Eastern Chickahominy
4. Mattaponi
5. Monacan Indian Nation
6. Nansemond
7. Nottoway of Virginia
8. Pamunkey
9. Patawomeck
10. Rappahannock
11. Upper Mattaponi

What is The Gathering? The Gathering is an experiment in humanity. The Gathering is: a traditional Native American Harvest Dance; Virginia Gourd Festival; Military Veteran & Uniformed Services Tribute; Multicultural Thanksgiving; Kidz Harvest Fest; Trader's Village; and Living History Exhibitors – with invitation to all to participate. The Gathering is a Seed of Thanksgiving and new possibilities being planted in the hearts & minds of the people. The people of this and neighboring (regional & international) communities are the Land. The sponsors, participants, partners, teachers, musicians, dancers, volunteers, exhibitors and hopefully you are the Planters of this all-exciting seed of possibilities. The Gathering is October 30 – November 1, 2015 (launching Native American Heritage Month) at the Clarke County Fairgrounds in Northern Virginia along the Blue Ridge Mountain Shenandoah Valley.

What the seed produces is determined by the level and caliber of commitment to Thanksgiving and humanity that the Planters bring. We are not seeking to recapture the Spirit of the first Thanksgiving. That was then. This is now. Creating space for a new and elevated “spirit in humanity” with level and intensity fueled by deep personal questions: “How can I participate? How much can I contribute of myself and my resources? Who do I know that would want to be part of this all exciting ‘seed of possibilities’ in Thanksgiving and humanity? Response defines the “state of community” within our community and greatly impacts the fruit of the Harvest.

We are trying to be cost sensitive to large families by keeping the entrance fee low; providing honorariums to our Native American dancers, singers and performing artists who travel great distances to support The Gathering; utilizing volunteers to bring The Gathering; and keeping registration fees low for our living history exhibitors and trading post vendors.

Let the Spirit of The Gathering catch you.

Together we can plant seed to transform the ideal of “Thanksgiving” within our communities; while bringing back traditional harvest festivals like The Gathering, helping create a new legacy.

Our goal is an attendance and transformation not to make a money.

News media interested in covering preview events or for more information about The Gathering check out the Harvest Basket online magazine at www.HarvestGathering.org or contact our Executive Director René White [email protected].

Press Kits are available online http://harvestgathering.org.

By Sue Peoples
Co-Chair “The Gathering” Education Committee

     The state of Virginia established the Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1912 ensuring all babies born in Virginia received a birth certificate that included a racial designation. Dr Walter Ashby Plecker (1861 - 1947) was instated as the head of this organization because of his work with midwife education and helping to bring better health practices to the poor.  
     When the Racial Integrity Act was passed in 1924, Plecker’s focus shifted from health and hygiene to racial classification. The doctrine of “Eugenics”; the belief that a pure race contributed to a more stable society, was advocated by Dr. Plecker, which lead to a White Supremacy agenda within Virginia’s statistical record keeping.
     In the Bureau’s perspective, there were only two races, white; which applied to such persons who had no trace of any other then Caucasian blood, and colored; the “catch all” term for anything in-between.
     Due to the limits of the law and it’s “one drop” rule, Native Americans in Virginia, were considered “colored” and not able to claim their Native American identity even though the Racial Integrity Act had one exception because many white Virginians considered themselves descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.

     Not only did Plecker advocate the current records to indicate either white or colored, he also “amended” racial classification to records prior to 1924 indicating “Indian” were changed to “colored” asserting that “there are no descendants of Virginia Indians claiming or reputed to be Indians who are unmixed with Negro blood” and wiping out an entire race with the wave of a pen.

     Sharon Bryant, the first female chief of the Monacan Indian Nation in Amherst County, was a bear of a woman. Indeed, her tribal name was “Bear Woman,” and she cared as deeply for her people and their heritage as a mother bear would for her cubs.
    Not even a month ago, she was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer and given a grim prognosis.
    Tuesday morning, with her family and friends by her side, Chief Bryant passed away at the age of 54. She was elected chief in 2011 and was looking forward to a second term that would have begun this month had not cancer struck her down.
    A lifelong resident of Amherst County, the Monacan tribe was her world, and she would have done anything for it.
    The Monacans have had a long, troubled history in Amherst County and in Virginia. Discriminated against as viciously as African-Americans, the tribe’s members have always been a community unto themselves, mostly residing in the Bear Mountain area of the county near the St. Paul Mission Church.
    Their identity was almost wiped out — literally — by Dr. Walter Plecker, Virginia’s first registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912 to 1946. Plecker was a virulent racist and, among other things, didn’t believe the Monacan — or any other member of a Virginia Indian tribe — existed as a “real” people. Birth records for three and a half decades simply described them as “colored,” yet another indignity heaped upon this ancient people.
    Plecker’s infamous legacy, in a fascinating turn of history, fueled a revival of tribal culture in later years. And it also motivated Bryant in the great quest for federal recognition of Virginia’s first tribes during her term as chief and even before.

Because of Plecker’s altered birth records, the federal government has refused to grant official recognition to the Monacans, a move that would open up a flood of social and economic resources. Only an act of Congress could do that.
    Chief Bryant and other Indian leaders have been working with Virginia’s congressional delegation for years to gain that recognition. In that fight, Sen. Tim Kaine got to know Bryant back when he was governor and counted her as a friend.
    “I am deeply saddened to hear of Chief Bryant’s passing. Bryant was a strong leader for the Monacan people and a pioneer for women,” the senator said. “Her death is a loss to the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, and my heart goes out to the Monacan Nation during this time of mourning.”
    Today, with legislation to recognize Virginia’s tribes in political limbo, we hope Congress will take note of this special woman from Amherst County and do their duty by the Monacans and others. We have the perfect name for the bill: The Chief Sharon Bryant Tribal Recognition Act of 2015.