-All Things Considered, NPR, March 25, 2007:

Virginia's Monacan Indian Nation Seeks Recognition

Monacan Indians were in Virginia when the first white settlers arrived,
and thousands of years before that.

But as the year 2007 brings the 400th anniversary celebration of the
Jamestown settlement, the Monacans are not recognized as an Indian tribe
by the federal government.

They're one of six tribes seeking to reclaim their Indian identities
through congressional action that would offset decades of deliberate
discrimination.

The Monacan Indian Nation lies in the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, in Virginia's rural Amherst County. They were recognized by
Capt. John Smith on the Jamestown settlement map, says Monacan
genealogist Diane Johns Shields.

But none of the 700 or so people who form the modern-day Monacan nation
have grown up steeped in Indian tradition.

That's because for much of the last century, the state of Virginia
stripped the tribe of its identity, Shields says.

In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act to prevent
miscegenation. It did away with the "Indian" classification on official
records. Indians could now be designated only as "white" or "colored."

The law was zealously enforced by a physician named Walter Plecker, a
white supremacist who ran Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics from
1912 to 1946.

Plecker systematically changed the racial designations of the Monacan
ancestors, says Shields, erasing their Indian identity and classifying
them as "negro" or "mulatto."

In Amherst County, Plecker singled out certain last names associated
with the Monacan people * Branhams, Johns, Adocks, Clarks, Woods and
Sorrels.

Those names he sent to local registrars, which prevented them from
legally marrying a white person * or from burial in community
cemeteries. Nor could they attend public schools.

Plecker's faulty documents have made it hard for the Virginia tribe to
prove its continuous existence since 1900, which is one of the key
requirements for federal recognition.

"That's paper genocide, that's what that did to our people," Shields
says. "What he set himself up to do was to erase a whole set of people,
our people."

Lacy Branham, 78, didn't even know she was a Monacan until Kenneth
Branham * her son and the tribe's current chief * began exploring
his roots.

Kenneth Branham says he asked his grandmother why the Indian culture
wasn't passed on. She explained that in earlier days, it was safer to
keep it a secret.

"She told me with tears in her eyes if the wrong person heard her
talking or teaching us those ways, she might not have a place to live
the next day," says Kenneth Branham.

He helped change that, after getting his grandmother's blessing. "I'm
very proud of what you're doing," she said, through more tears.

"Once she told me that, I knew I was doing the right thing," Kenneth
Branham says. "There was no turning back. You know, I couldn't stop
after that if I wanted to."

A bill now in Congress would give the Monacans and five other Virginia
tribes federal recognition. But the legislation faces an uphill battle
because of concerns it could open the door to Indian casinos in the
state.

Chief Branham isn't interested in gambling, he says, but would like the
resources that tribal status would bring, along with the ability to
reclaim ancestral remains, now housed in museums.