Native acknowledgment should be a Va. emphasis
In keeping with Native American Heritage Month, Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University on Nov. 10 partnered to hold a Native American Land Acknowledgment Symposium in the Chartway Arena at ODU to educate students, faculty, administrators, and the larger community about the educational concerns Virginia’s tribes face today. More than 100 people attended.
Land acknowledgements are statements made by institutions and organizations, typically at the start of an event, acknowledging the original tribe, or tribes, that occupied that space prior to colonization. Although some may regard this as a needless dredging up of old history, the acknowledgment is ideally a forward-looking gesture, recognizing that Native tribes are still here, they still feel a strong connection to their traditional homelands, and they have a definite stake in how future generations of tribal members will be understood and continue to sustain themselves on lands formerly in their possession.
With that in mind, the symposium focused on work being done by the Virginia Tribal Education Consortium (VTEC). On hand were two ODU graduates, Kara Canaday and Hailey Holmes, of the Chickahominy Tribe, who are executive officers of VTEC. They spoke of how their experiences at ODU helped shape their lives and their vision for VTEC, which is to seed our school curriculums with accurate knowledge about who Virginia’s tribal peoples are, how they lived historically, and how they continue to maintain their culture today.
The concerns of Native people get very little media exposure in the United States (except when someone wants to build a casino somewhere) and often seem irrelevant to the general public. Both Canaday and Holmes recalled being compared to Pocahontas in their school days, being asked if they were “full-blooded Indians,” and having doubts cast upon their identity, because Native people are so commonly understood to be a thing of the past. Chief Keith Anderson of the Nansemond Indian Nation, who was also on hand, recalled the prejudice he faced as a youth, being brought up in the turmoil of newly desegregating school systems in Virginia where “Indians were not welcome.” He discussed how his parents’ generation, segregated from both white and black schools, were given a “one-way ticket to Oklahoma” to receive their schooling.
Norfolk sits on the traditional homelands of the Nansemond Indian Nation which can trace its descent to the very first meetings between English and Natives in this region. Despite the violent history and romanticized fables that adhere to settler stories, archival documents from the time suggest that the Jamestown colonists were initially welcomed up and down the Chesapeake. We know from the accounts of John Smith that this was a heavily populated village area with vast fields of corn, thriving trade networks, and its own intricate political structure. Smith, in a 1608 report to investors, described “people of all places kindly entreating us, dancing and feasting us with ... bread, fish” and other “country provisions.” If this characterization seems unfamiliar, it’s because there has been little investment, historically speaking, in teaching this narrative.
Today, introducing accurate Indigenous history into Virginia schools can seem an uphill battle and draw the ire of some who feel threatened by such narratives. But in speaking with tribal members on Nov. 10 and listening to their stories, their message was uplifting. They want to be heard and they want to be seen. From an economic and cultural standpoint, opportunities don’t open up if the larger community fails to acknowledge one’s existence. Bringing into focus that Norfolk is built on Nansemond land, and that the Nansemond, the Chickahominy, and other tribes of Virginia are still here and still invested in their future as a people, helps us recognize the role we might play in being the kind of gracious neighbors the Nansemond were to Smith and his fellow colonizers when they first arrived here in 1607.