{"id":37701,"date":"2014-10-12T23:01:21","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T23:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37701"},"modified":"2014-11-09T20:03:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T20:03:12","slug":"kaine-pushes-for-indian-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37701","title":{"rendered":"Kaine pushes for Indian recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaine pushes for Indian recognition<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sulfolk News-Herald<\/a>
\nSuffolk, Virginia
\n2014-10-02<\/p>\n

Tracy Agnew<\/strong><\/a>, News Editor<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine<\/a> (D-Va.) is making another push to recognize six Virginia Indian tribes<\/a>, including the Nansemond<\/a>, through his support of a proposed rule that would bring more flexibility to the process.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s<\/a> Bureau of Indian Affairs<\/a> governs the process by which tribes in America can gain recognition from the federal government, and the benefits that come along with it…<\/p>\n

…Its stringent criteria require, among many other things, documentation of the tribe\u2019s existence and lineage from 1789 to the present, according to comments Kaine made in support of the rule change.<\/p>\n

But at least six Virginia<\/a> tribes \u2014 the Nansemond, Chickahominy<\/a>, Eastern Chickahominy<\/a>, Upper Mattaponi<\/a>, Rappahannock<\/a> and Monacan<\/a> \u2014 have found the administrative process unavailable to them because of the historical destruction of records.<\/p>\n

Five of the six courthouses that held the majority of the tribes\u2019 records were burned during the Civil War<\/a>, Kaine noted in a letter to Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beyond this accidental destruction, a eugenics<\/a> movement and fear of interracial marriages prompted officials at the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics to systematically destroy the vital records of Virginia\u2019s tribes beginning in 1912.<\/p>\n

In 1924, Virginia\u2019s Racial Integrity Act<\/a> codified the existence of only two races: \u201cwhite\u201d or \u201ccolored.\u201d The law remained intact for nearly 50 years, forcing Indians to choose one or the other.<\/p>\n

Officials even went so far as to retroactively change records to list Native Americans as \u201ccolored,\u201d Kaine noted in his letter. This phenomenon is known today as \u201cPleckerism,\u201d after Walter Ashby Plecker<\/a>, the first registrar of the bureau, who was among the main officials who pushed to eliminate the Indian race in Virginia, at least on paper…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaine pushes for Indian recognition Sulfolk News-Herald Suffolk, Virginia 2014-10-02 Tracy Agnew, News Editor U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is making another push to recognize six Virginia Indian tribes, including the Nansemond, through his support of a proposed rule that would bring more flexibility to the process. The U.S. Department of the Interior\u2019s Bureau of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1467,3015,26,20,693],"tags":[18121,18120,18119,18117,18118,6372,1857,2474],"class_list":["post-37701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-law","category-native-americans","category-politics","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-kevin-k-washburn","tag-kevin-washburn","tag-sulfolk-news-herald","tag-tim-kaine","tag-tracy-agnew","tag-walter-a-plecker","tag-walter-ashby-plecker","tag-walter-plecker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}