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With Trip to England, Va. Tribes Seek a Place in U.S. History
Members of Virginia's eight tribes at the event include, from left, Jacob Fortune-Deuber, 15, and Judy Fortune of the Rappahannock tribe; Wayne Adkins, assistant chief of the Chickahominy tribe; and Morgan Faulkner and Ben Adams of the Upper Mattaponis.
(By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)
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Adkins has been criticized for agreeing to participate in the trip to England.
"I get asked all the time, mostly by other Indians, 'How can you participate in something that heralded the demise of 90 percent of your people by the end of the century?' " Adkins said yesterday.
Many Native American leaders, in Virginia and elsewhere, also encouraged Virginia Indians to boycott all Jamestown 400th anniversary activities to protest their lack of recognition.
As a result of their protest, officials changed the name of the anniversary events from "celebration" to "commemoration."
Adkins, who is on the federal commission planning the anniversary, vehemently disagreed. And yesterday's ceremony -- an elaborate news conference really -- was the reason. For the first time since the victors began writing the history books, TV cameras, radio microphones and photographers swarmed around Virginia's Native Americans, capturing their stories and letting all the world know they're still here.
"This is a chance to tell the world who we are," Adkins said.
It is time, Adkins said, to take the story back from the historians and Hollywood directors who have portrayed his people alternatively as ignorant savages or idyllic dwellers in a simple Garden of Eden. It is time to tell the truth of Chief Wahunsunacock, whom the English called Powhatan, and his daughter Matoaka, who was nicknamed Pocahontas, or "frolicsome child," and say a prayer over her grave at Gravesend, where she died in England at age 22.
It is time to acknowledge that without the Chickahominy and other Virginia tribes, the early settlers at Jamestown would surely have died of starvation.
"We consider Jamestown the cradle of American democracy," said Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who, along with Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), attended the ceremony yesterday. "And that cradle was tended to by Virginia Indians."
Allen and Moran are sponsoring federal recognition bills in Congress to, they said, right an old wrong.
"It is time not to rewrite history but to set it straight," Adkins said.
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