The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
‘We need a place at the table’
A young boy danced in the middle of the arena. The long teal and neon yellow ribbons of his regalia spun, becoming a blur of color and movement. Each step was in time with the heartbeat of drums and singing. Around the circle, other men danced in their own bright white, blue, or brown cloth and feather bustles. Someone let out a loud cheer from the sidelines of the roped-off circle.
For over 30 years, the Honoring Our Veterans Powwow has been held in the rolling hills of Corbin, Kentucky. It was created to gather Kentuckians with Indigenous heritage, members of tribes across the nation, and the public.
At a recent powwow, a newly built shelter covered the dirt floor of the dance arena. Artists’ booths lined the edge of the field, selling leather pouches, Lakota dreamcatchers and intricately beaded earrings with tribe-specific patterns.
Venus Evans and Tressa Brown, representing the Native American Heritage Commission, sat under a nearby awning, handing out sheets of information about Kentucky’s Indigenous history. When a young boy stopped to read it, Evans gently asked if he had any Native American heritage.
He wasn’t sure. He remembered his family talking about Native American relatives, but he didn’t know who they were.
“If you feel compelled, just start searching,” Evans said, and told him about a local library with free access to Ancestry.com.
Evans often encourages people to reconnect with their community. She recommends they do thorough research and approach their process of discovery with humbleness.
And in many ways, reconnection seems to be happening. At least three powwows have been held in Kentucky in the past year, organized by various Kentuckians and institutes like the Native American Heritage Museum (no connection to the heritage commission).
Other events, such as the Native Dawn Flute Gathering, created by Fred Nez-Keams who is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, create space for public learning.
In another effort to bring attention to the Native American community, the nonprofit Kentucky Indigenous Peoples formed in 2008. Evans served as its former president, and Mike Dunn is currently CEO.
Evans said KIP provides resources for Indigenous people in Kentucky, works closely with the heritage commission, and has partnered with cities to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. While KIP members are scattered around the state, which makes it hard to find a regular meeting place, they encourage each other to get involved with their local communities.
“We need a place at the table,” Evans said. “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
Discovering a link to the New River Catawba
Before he died, Darlene FranklinCampbell’s father sat in his living room, smoking a cigarette and telling her about his friend who had recently died.
“Things have changed,” FranklinCampbell remembers him saying. It was a warm February morning in 2011, over a decade since he had told her to hide her ancestry. “Someday, for the sake of the grandkids, I want you to find our paper trail.”
Franklin-Campbell had already been researching. But it wasn’t until four years later, after her father’s death, that she finally found a link. Her ancestors were part of the New River Catawba in North Carolina. Franklin-Campbell thinks her family migrated across the mountains into Kentucky.
Now, Franklin-Campbell is helping others learn about the New River Catawba culture. She is the language coordinator for the tribe, teaching and preserving their native language of Tla Wilano.
The language is considered endangered, and its last native speaker died in the mid-2000s, Franklin-Campbell said.
Every Sunday night over a video call, she practices speaking Tla Wilano with her friend who is fluent in the language.
“We’ve been here since before Daniel Boone,” Franklin-Campbell said of the New River Catawba. “And if we can prove that our language has been here that long, and if we can document this language, to me, that will say, ‘Hey, these people are real people’… We really were a tribe, we really existed, and we’re still here.”
To help people learn, FranklinCampbell uploads voice recordings of Tla Wilano to a private Facebook page. She’s also making a children’s picture book in the language and helping to create a dictionary for the Living Tongues Institute of Endangered Languages.
So far, one of her 13-year-old Tla Wilano language students is almost fluent after three years of studying.
As an art teacher, Franklin-Campbell brings similar lessons to her elementary school classroom. She often teaches words in different Native languages, hoping students will not only learn, but see their cultures being recognized. And it’s working. Franklin-Campbell’s favorite memory is speaking Cherokee in class and seeing one of her students react to it.
“This little boy, his hand shot up and his eyes got big,” Franklin-Campbell said. “He had just moved here from Cherokee, North Carolina. And he said, ‘I’m Cherokee.’ He said, ‘I can speak that language.’ And so, we started talking. He’s excited, and I’m excited. And then all the kids in the room got excited.”
Franklin-Campbell said the New River Catawba are working with Native language linguists to see if Tla Wilano is part of a larger language family.
“We’re just ordinary people, you know,” she said, “like teachers and farmers, people that work at McDonald’s, trying to feed our families, and preserve our language and culture.”