MILES PARKS, HOST:
This year, Indigenous people in Virginia partnered with NPR member station Radio IQ to make a podcast called Tribal Truths, where they share their stories. Chiefs Anne Richardson, of the Rappahannock Tribe, and Frank Adams, of the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, are both here with me to talk about the project. Welcome to you both.
ANNE RICHARDSON: Thank you.
FRANK ADAMS: Thank you.
PARKS: So Chief Richardson, I want to start with you. You've been involved with this podcast since the first episode. Can you tell me a little bit more about how this project came to be?
RICHARDSON: Well, I think it came to be because Pamela D'Angelo is a reporter for Radio IQ, and she's local to our area, and she started covering a lot of the conservation issues and working with the tribe because we were fighting to conserve the land at Fones Cliffs because it was historic to our tribe. She got to know the other tribes and learned about all of these amazing stories that had never been told that she felt like really needed to get out to the public so people would know that we are still here and that we've always been here and what our story is.
PARKS: Well, November is Native American Heritage Month. Many people in the United States also celebrate Thanksgiving in this same month, and there is a story - we talk about it all the time - that's taught in schools where - this version of the pilgrims just coming to the United States and being met with this warm dinner from the Native American people to help them kind of assimilate and get comfortable here. Reality is much, much more complicated than that.
Chief Adams, how do you go about, I mean, educating somebody who doesn't know anything about, you know, your culture? I guess, where do you start in terms of if there's somebody who does believe everything that they've heard about Thanksgiving and everything like that? Where do you start, or how do you approach somebody like that?
ADAMS: Well, you know, unless they're very belligerent, you know, you take them in and just have a conversation with them. Most people that I encounter are curious about the tribes of Virginia because they didn't realize there were tribes in Virginia anymore. And, you know, most of them will be compassionate once they get an idea of what really happened to the tribes of Virginia, the first contact people that, basically, the settlers and the state of Virginia wanted to eliminate, annihilate or basically get rid of.
PARKS: One of the other running threads through various episodes in this season is the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which is this act that was passed in Virginia that prohibited interracial marriage, but it also meant that Native Americans in the state would be identified as, quote, "colored." Chief Richardson, can you talk about the impact that that law had and continues to have on tribes in Virginia?
RICHARDSON: Well, that was what we call the Erasure Act, to erase the Indian identity that had been documented in Virginia before that law. They had an Indian desk that money could be utilized from the federal government to send kids to boarding schools out West. And this fanatic that we had in Virginia, Dr. Walter Plecker, was trying to do ethnic cleansing here as a part of the whole eugenics movement because the Indians didn't fit into the mathematical equation of black and white. To eradicate us, he just took all Indian identity out of the equation.
PARKS: I mean, digging into one specific episode in this season, it talked about education and the way that education has been weaponized against Indigenous communities. Parents often felt that they had to send their children away, often at really young ages, to get an education, and I want to play a couple of voices from that episode, Mac Custalow and Wesley Adams.
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MAC CUSTALOW: Mom cried her heart out, having to send your children away.
WESLEY ADAMS: We got off the train in Muskogee, Oklahoma, about 2 in the morning, Deserted train station - and the furthest I'd ever been was to Richmond a few times.
PARKS: I mean, this is heartbreaking, to hear these people talk about themselves or their relatives being sent away. Chief Adams, the Upper Mattapoi tribe had a school, if I'm not mistaken, the Sharon Indian School. So talk a little bit about why these children, in some cases, were still sent away.
ADAMS: Well, that is correct. We do have the Sharon Indian School that closed in 1965. You know, but the state of Virginia would not let anybody graduate from high school going to the school, so our highest grade was 11th grade. So they had to go out of the state to finish their education and to even think about higher education. And it was hard. It was hard to send your children away, not knowing if you would ever see them again going to these schools 'cause of the reputation most of these boarding schools had through the years.
PARKS: Yeah, Chief Richardson, you also attended the Sharon Indian school with Chief Adams before going to other public schools. Can you talk a little bit about the differences you noticed between being educated by your own community versus outside of it?
RICHARDSON: Well, yeah, there were total differences. So our school here, the tribe school, was closed down by the State Board of Education for - they said our teacher was not accredited. And so our parents refused to send them to boarding schools outside of the state, and they contacted a Catholic boarding school in Williamsburg, and we were able to get a lot of our tribal children in the school down there, where - you know, my aunts and uncles lived there and worked at Jamestown, and they could be there to keep a eye, close watch on the kids from the tribe that were going to that boarding school.
PARKS: And then after that, I guess, kind of walk me through the experience of then going into - am I correct in just - going to the neighborhood public school. Is that correct?
RICHARDSON: Yes, that was quite a difference. So over there, we were embraced by the other tribal children, and the teachers were very good over there at the tribal school. When we went to the public school, it was just the opposite. So we were treated very poorly in the white school.
PARKS: If it isn't too private, could you share a little bit more about your experience being integrated into these white schools?
RICHARDSON: I remember making friends with a white girl who I really liked, and we were lifetime friends after that, incidentally. But this white teacher in our class came to her and told her not to hang out with that filthy Indian.
PARKS: Oh, my God. How old were you?
RICHARDSON: I was in the fourth grade, and so I said something to the teacher about calling me that name. And she grabbed me by my arm and dragged me across the classroom out the door. You're going to the office to see the principal. And because I was taught to protect myself, I took my arm and slung her against the wall in the hallway. So I was suspended for - I don't know how many days 'cause I don't remember. But I was not punished when I got home for it. I was given something special to eat that afternoon because I had protected myself.
PARKS: I have to imagine that you've thought back on that day a lot in the time since.
RICHARDSON: Absolutely. And, you know, today, when I can see racism rising in this country the way it is, it's an old familiar feeling, and it's scary.
PARKS: That's Frank Adams of the Upper Mattaponi Tribe and Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe. Thank you both for speaking with me today.
RICHARDSON: Thank you.
ADAMS: You're welcome.
PARKS: You can listen to Tribal Truths from Radio IQ on npr.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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