Overdue recognition for the Pamunkey
The Pamunkey Indians, Pocahontas’ tribe, had an obvious, historical and reasonable claim to federal recognition.
But this is Virginia, where no Native American tribe has ever received federal acceptance. And this is 2015, where naked avarice and decades of institutional racism still provide the fuel necessary for opposition.
Overcoming a fierce campaign by MGM, which is opening a casino in Prince George’s County, Md., the Pamunkeys won due recognition from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs last week.
The Pamunkey Reservation, north of New Kent and east of Richmond, may be more than 100 miles from MGM’s new project. But the mere possibility that the Pamunkeys might build a competing casino was all the motivation necessary to engender opposition from the gaming giant.
“MGM had strenuously opposed recognition for the Pamunkey tribe,” The Washington Post reported, “and teamed with Stand Up for California, an organization that has fought tribal casinos, to try to prevent final approval. MGM officials declined to comment Thursday on the decision.”
Federal recognition will enable members of the Pamunkey tribe to access help and money for housing, education and medical care. Because it makes the Pamunkey Reservation sovereign land, it also allows them to do things that would be illegal outside its boundaries. Including gambling, which brings terrible social ills to every community that hosts it.
The possibility of casinos on Indian reservations has provided plenty of justification for a strange coalition of social conservatives and competitors to oppose new recognition of ancient Indian tribes, including several in Virginia.
Despite their long and particularly well-documented history, however, recognition for the Pamunkeys — whose reservation can be traced back to agreements with the British in the 17th century — was more than just a battle against casino moguls.
It was a battle against Virginia’s institutional white supremacy designed to erase the very existence of Native Americans.
Walter Plecker used his dominion over the Bureau of Vital Statistics in the first half of the 20th century to establish a binary racial classification for newborn Virginians: White or colored. Native Americans, Plecker claimed, no longer existed.
Recognition for the Pamunkeys, in addition to being the right thing to do, represents another repudiation of Plecker’s bestial racism, and the Virginia government’s.
More must be done.
“This historic milestone,” Sen. Mark Warner said in a statement, “also reminds us of the work that remains before us to correct the injustices committed against Virginia Indian tribes. Sen. [Tim] Kaine and I will keep urging our colleagues in the Senate to pass our legislation to ensure that the Chickahominy Indian Tribe, the Chickahominy Indian Tribe-Eastern Division, the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, the Rappahannock Tribe, the Monacan Indian Nation, and the Nansemond Indian Tribe also get the federal recognition that they deserve.”
Each of those tribes has an indisputable claim on the American story and this nation’s history. Each has a right to the federal recognition that acknowledges that.
