MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians

[educatedindian]

First off the Mowa's are not frauds and second one of the reasons we can't get recognized is because they will not take some of the people that don't belong on our role off. They keep letting people that are just married in on the role and aren't any blood at all. I also have 5 years or more worth the research that proves we are related to the MS Choctaws and Poarch Band of Greedy (Not all just most of them) Creeks plus a DNA on top of it. I am currently in the process of up grading my dna test also.

Hello,
It's not clear who the "they" you refer to who are. The Mowa leaders? Or the "evil" govt?
There are also some threads in here on those DNA tests you may want to read. They're not always accurate, esp on the mother's side. For the most they can only prove Native ancestry, not specific tribes.
And any evidence you have, pls post.

[BlackWolf]

tuschkahouma said

I was one of three witnesses to Sunray versus Martin at an OU tribal symposium five years ago.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4040761202639355269#

You must be talking about this incident?  What was accomplished there at the Symposium besides Indian leaders being rudely interrupted by outsiders?  Since you were a witness there, why don’t you give us some insight?

At this Symposium, Cedric Sunray confronts Phillip Martin and directly accuses him of various charges.  They were going to call security on Sunray.  Sunray’s upset that the MOWAS don’t have Federal Recognition.  Phillip Martin was adamantly opposed to the MOWAs Federal Recognition.   He also brings up money and Jack Abramoff a few times.  He also implies that money is being denied to his alleged Choctaw Community.

[tuschkahouma]

Battles over issues of blood quantum, federal recognition, cultural & language retention, historical alliances and of course gaming, have caused lines of division not unlike those faced by communities across Indian Country. The architect of many of these divisions, Mississippi Choctaw Chief Phillip Martin watched his meteoric rise and pronouncement as an economic powerhouse crumble in recent days due to his close association with non-Indian lobbyists, politicians and anthropologists who reeked havoc on neighboring Choctaw communities by overturning federal recognition petitions and postponing land in to trust applications.

So last Friday, on the day he conceded victory to his challenger Beasley Denson, we watched the opening rounds of the annual stickball tournament across the street from the tribal complex and office where he led his tribe for 7 terms. While standing there, numerous community members approached me with outstretched hands and words of greetings and thanks in our Choctaw language. Many people in the Mississippi Choctaw & MOWA Choctaw communities, as well as numerous Indian people from various tribes across the nation, had spent a great deal of time over the past few years, advocating for the rights of the Mississippi Choctaw people and exposing the fraud committed against the MOWA Choctaw community 120 miles to the southeast who were thought to be possible competition in the gaming industry. For years, the same tactics were played against the now federally recognized Jena Band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana. Twelve years after their federal recognition, they are just now being able to take land into trust for the purposes of economically and socially growing their community.

While Jack Abramoff, J. Steven Griles and a host of others associated with Chief Phillip Martin’s administration are now serving jail terms or awaiting trial, Mr. Martin has been able to use the tribe’s federal immunities to ward off investigations into his role in the matter. Of course, little of this matters now as power has been rested from his hands."

Get the Story:
Cedric Sunray: Will The Choctaw Nation Please Stand Up (The Native American Times 7/26)

GEE Blackwolf I guess this doesn't prove anything either does it?

[BlackWolf]

Let's see, Cedric goes to Pearl River and speaks and goes to numerous indigenous communities all over this country and stands behind the legitimate and ignored as some indigenous people choose to go nahollo and ask for papers from a time of paper genocide. nice.

Just because a speaker who claims to be Indian is invited on a Reservation or Tribal community to speak by someone doesn’t mean anything one way or the other.   Just because someone gets a degree in Native American studies or Tribal languages that in itself is no evidence that this person is Indian.  If an American gets a degree in German studies and culture, that does not make someone German.  They would just be an American with a degree.  

You speak of Cedric Sunray as if everyone is supposed to know who he is.  Cedric Sunray, allegedly Cherokee/Choctaw/Houma/Ojibwa, moved to Oklahoma some years back.  At some point, he got a job teaching the Cherokee language at Tahlequah High School.  Tahlequah is located in Northeast Oklahoma and is the capital of the Cherokee Nation.  He claimed to be Cherokee at the time.  People started to ask questions about who he was and his claims to being Cherokee.    Probably reasonable questions that would be asked of any stranger that shows up in any Tribal Community.

In addition to his attacks on the Respected Choctaw Chief Phillip Martin, he also has had conflicts with elected officials of the Cherokee Nation including Cherokee Nation District 7 Representative and Deputy Speaker Cara Cowen Watts amongst others.  It was also reported in the Cherokee Phoenix that the Pawnee Nation filed criminal charges against him.  It appears he spends much of his time in conflict with Indian people.

Here are some quotes from the article by District 7 Cherokee Nation Tribal Council Representative Cara Cowen Watts as reported in the Cherokee Phoenix in July of 2009.  This is in response to one of his many racially charged attacks on Cherokee citizens.

Before you give too much credit to Mr. Sunray’s letter, know this.  His original surname is Ray. But that did not sound “Indian” enough so he added “Sun” and became “Sunray.” He is not an American Indian in the same sense as Cherokee citizens, where we can be prosecuted in tribal court.

 

Recently, the Pawnee Nation filed criminal charges on him. Representing himself, he filed a brief for dismissal stating he is not an American Indian subject to tribal jurisdictions and tribal laws. I am unsure why he is insists on claiming to be Indian. I guess he makes these claims when it is convenient for him in his pursuit of a personal identity.

He claims heritage to various so-called tribal communities. At one point, he claimed to be Cherokee and speak Cherokee. Later, Choctaw was the claim and so on. Unfortunately for Indian Country, he continues to find jobs with unsuspecting tribes. While playing Cherokee, he came to Tahlequah and taught our children how to sing “Ten Little Indians.” Somehow, I do not find that culturally appropriate or Cherokee.

Since you’ve brought up Cedric Sunray more than once here, please tell us who he is?  What Tribal Nation does Cedric Sunray represent?  Where is his Cherokee family from?    His he from the Eastern Band, Cherokee Nation or United Keetoowah Band?  If not, is he a descendent?  If so, what Cherokee family and community does Cedric Sunray descend from?  

[Rattlebone]

Tuschkahouma,


 I have some questions I would ask and a few points I would like to make. I would also like to state that I am entering this discussion from a stand point of neither being for or against recognition of the Mowa Choctaw. I will put my actual questions to you here in italics.

 First of all I think you made a good argument about the "race" of some people being switched on paper by the powers that be so that who they really are might not be traceable now. However even if that is true, it could be possible that this could be the case for countless other people.

So my question here is when do you think a line should be drawn on this matter to say that one group or even individuals should be recognized or not by the federal government based on records that can not prove their claims?

I myself don't necessarily think BIA or US government is necessarily trying to do wrong to those who claim to be Mowa Choctaw, but rather is just basing their decision on the records that are available or that information which can be researched.

 In answering my above question and point of view I am sure you are going to present the argument that the Mowa Choctaw are an actual native community with a long standing existence, even if they can not prove their ties to Choctaw ancestry.

So to that I would like to ask, if what you and the rest of the Mowa's say is true, then why do you really need federal recognition?

Why not just live within your community as a member of that community and be happy and proud to be who you are?

Being Indian is not something that  requires recognition of a colonial power, and so if you are really who you say you are; why do you feel this need to be federally recognized?

 

[tuschkahouma]

firstly, cedric sunray is an enrolled member of the Wabasseemoong Independant Ojibwe Nation in Ontario, Canada through his mother's people.
He is a status Indian in Canada. He is Mowa Choctaw through his late father. The history that none of you seem to get here is that in Alabama
the Mowa Choctaws were not allowed in public school as Indians through most of the 20th century. They went to school at Bacone College
in Muscogee, OK, as Indians that weren't federally recognized over 60 years ago. In the South prior to the Brown V. Topeka Board of Education
ruling, Indians weren't allowed into white schools in places like Houma, LA, Mt. Vernon, AL, and Robeson, NC. They went to segregated Indian
schools.This is common historical knowledge which has obviously been overlooked by the people who don't research on this website. This
is what the Haskell Endangered Legacy Project is about. In other parts of this website you acknowledge the legitimacy of the Virginia tribes
of the Powhattan Confederacy and the Nanticokes of Delaware whom C.S. Weslager wrote about but you all have been on a denial path with
the Mowas who attended Bacone and Haskell and Cherokee schools in NC and Choctaw schools in MS. All of the Cara Cowen Watts stuff
is total bs. The CNO started requiring Indian cards for the CNO Cherokee language classes. He called them out for this because most of their
members have less BQ than I do and Indian looking people like the Mowas get nothing. They didn't like being called out and they carried on a
vendetta against him that is baseless. He worked with the Pawnee language at Pawnee, He worked with the Sac and Fox language at Stroud,
He worked with the Cherokee language at Tahlequah and he worked with the Chickasaw language at Ada. He is a college trained linguist and
never claimed to be a member of any of these tribes. He  even worked with the Yuchi people and their language near Sapulpa. He like me
had ancestors in Alabama of mixed Cherokee descent. I claim Choctaw and Biloxi through Shepard, Breland and Turner ancestors and Cherokee
through Byrd ancestors but I don't claim to be enrolled in Oklahoma. I'm open about being not enrolled with ancestors on the Dawes MCR list.
Prior to statehood in that area there were settlers of low social status who married mixed blood people before Jim Crow or misgenation
laws. I'm Scotch-Irish and German by my dad and and Scotch Irish German, English, Choctaw, Biloxi, and Cherokee by my mom. My
white ancestors were in VA in the 1600's and NC and SC from the 1690's to 1715. They arrived in MS in 1800 going across AL from the
Carolinas. He railed against Philip Martin due to the lobbying that took place against the Mowa Choctaw people to stop tribal gaming
with Abramov, Scanlon and the GOP in the early 2000's.

On the second part of this recognition question I believe that a physically identifiable nation like the Apalachee tribe in LA should be
federally recognized in spite of no paperwork because they look Indian and they have family history to identify through while people
like the Machis or Lower Creek People who use a torah as a sacred object should not for obvious reasons.
The Mowas have Choctaw ancestors as do I who existed before and after removal. They also have people who were abosrbed into the
community who were cherokee and creek after the creek internal wars between the red sticks and white sticks between 1812 and 1815.
The Chiracahua Na Dene people have ancestors amongst the Mowas. As I've previously stated other federally recognized tribes have many ancestries amongst them and they're not being subjected to your inquiries. The federal recognition for the Mowas should happen because
the Choctaw descendants in the community should've received lands from the Dancing Rabbit Creek treaty article 14 AND DID NOT due to
then Choctaw Agent William Ward. The US should be like Canada and give Indian status to Metis who can prove tribal descent legitimately.
Most nations are either lowering BQ or going lineal descent anyway. You're trying to make this sound like an iskulli issue but these people
have been backwoods poor and exploited as such by nahollo okpulo for many years. They need legal protection as much of their lands
were lost to turpentine barons since the late 1800's. Obviously some of you don't acknowledge the power of the pen in the past at the hands
of racists.

[educatedindian]

...The history that none of you seem to get here is that in Alabama
the Mowa Choctaws were not allowed in public school as Indians through most of the 20th century. They went to school at Bacone College
in Muscogee, OK, as Indians that weren't federally recognized over 60 years ago. In the South prior to the Brown V. Topeka Board of Education
ruling, Indians weren't allowed into white schools in places like Houma, LA, Mt. Vernon, AL, and Robeson, NC. They went to segregated Indian
schools.This is common historical knowledge which has obviously been overlooked by the people who don't research on this website. This
is what the Haskell Endangered Legacy Project is about. In other parts of this website you acknowledge the legitimacy of the Virginia tribes
of the Powhattan Confederacy and the Nanticokes of Delaware whom C.S. Weslager wrote about but you all have been on a denial path with
the Mowas who attended Bacone and Haskell and Cherokee schools in NC and Choctaw schools in MS.
....As I've previously stated other federally recognized tribes have many ancestries amongst them and they're not being subjected to your inquiries.

I think most people following the thread do know these things. The very fact that you point out what is bolded above says that. And if you think we haven't had long discussions about other unrecognized groups you haven't looked around in here much. 

As far as your earlier article from Ray/Sunray, I couldn't find the article at the NAT website. Are their older articles not online? But since the article seems mostly to be his assertions, it doesn't necessarily prove much other than he made them. That's why I wanted to see the whole article, I was hoping he posted proof elsewhere in it.

[BlackWolf]

tuschkahouma said

The history that none of you seem to get here is that in Alabama the Mowa Choctaws were not allowed in public school as Indians through most of the 20th century. They went to school at Bacone College in Muscogee, OK, as Indians that weren't federally recognized over 60 years ago.

Because certain members of the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians attended or had family that attended Indian Boarding Schools, that does not prove that they are Indian. These insinuations are misleading.  Cedric Sunray’s articles on Indian Country Today only tell part of the story.  The Proposed Findings explains the situation in detail as to why this happened.  You can also look at some of the work of Horace Mann Bond who did research on the descendants of white men and African American women in Alabama and the situation in the Alabama School system for whites, blacks, and Mulattos.  Here are some excerpts of what was found by the BAR Researchers.  Starting at about page 24 of the Proposed Findings Document, it discusses the issues that went on in the School system at the time with Whites, Blacks, and Mulattos in that part of Alabama.  

Development of Alabama Miscegenation and School Segration Laws, 1852-1927
http://www.bia.gov/idc/groups/xofa/documents/text/idc-001636.pdf

The school situation in the area has been troubled for decades. In 1930 a court hearing was held in Washington County to determine whether or not two students from the isolate could be legally excluded from the white public schools. The court decided in favor of the school system, on the grounds that the children were "persons of color." In a similar case in Mobile County in the same year, the court reviewed evidence which showed that the persons in question did not "classify themselves as negroes, or socially so identify themselves." Yet genealogy proved to be all-important, and the judge of that trial wrote:

The very conflicting and voluminous oral evidence admitted in this case is not so direct and persuasive to the Court as is the documentary evidence that these children have a drop or 1/64 negro blood through their maternal ancestor, and this regardless of such evidence touching their social relations in life. This case presents a most regrettable situation, but by our law and evidence as I find it, I must decree that they be assigned to other schools than those provided for the white race, .

The upshot of these denials was that members of the group received little or no schooling. They refused to attend black schools, and for several years had none of their own. Eventually, a three school system was begun in both counties. Pupil assignments were made by the school superintendents, who on the basis of court rulings, were given full power

The third school system was never adequately staffed or funded. Competing for tax dollars in an area where expenditures for white schools - not to mention black schools - has never been lavish, the third school system was at a great disadvantage. Hence, as late as 1969, there were schools where two teachers taught all 12 grades. Magnolia School, for example, had 44 students. The teacher I interviewed remembered teaching the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 12th grades all in one room. (No eleventh graders happened to be enrolled in Magnolia School that particular year.) Hill Spring School had the same arrangement, but with 60 students. Charity Chapel, with 90 students, had 3 teachers, and Pleasant View, with 120 students, had 4 teachers. All of these teachers, incidentally, were white. "They would not have accepted a Black teacher," one informant told us. "

Those young people who have gone on to college usually have attended out-of-state schools. (Until recently they would have been denied admission at predominantly white universities in the state.) Approximately 20 students have attended Bacone College (Bacone, Oklahoma), a two-year school for Indians, sponsored by the American Baptist Convention. A few students have subsequently attended Northeastern State College (Tahlequah, Oklahoma). Practically all of these students have returned to the community upon completion of their college work. While in Oklahoma, some of the students have married Indians who have returned with them to Alabama

.

1927-1960’s.. The "one-drop rule," or insistence that any amount of African ancestry  no matter how small, classified a descendant forever as Negro under the system of segregation, was not placed into the law of Alabama until after World War I--not until 1927. Green writes: In 1927 the Alabama Legislature changed the term, mulatto, to mean anyone of Negro. blood or person of color who is a descendant of a Negro ancestor regardless of the number of generations removed.  [Acts of Alabama Legislature 1927]. Therefore, it is noticeable that the laws of Alabama pertaining to the races are more strictly construed with  succeeding generations (Green 1941, 21).

And if we look back in the records to when the Mowa’s Ancestors started claiming Indian, it was about the time that laws pertaining to race became more strictly construed in Alabama.

This 1927 change of the statute was followed by several lawsuit in the early 1930' s, directed at the school systems of Washington County and Mobile County, Alabama, pertaining primarily to the right of children from MBC ancestral families to continue attending white schools. In at least one case in Washington County, students who started school under the pre-1927 law were refused the right to graduate under the 1927 law (Washington County News, April 3, 1930)

The genealogical material collected by Aubrey D. Price (Price c. 1935), and submitted by the petitioner, was collected by the investigator primarily as the result of an attempt made by the Mobile County, Alabama, school system to ferret out those children whose families, accepted as white for the Past several generations, were now to be excluded from the white segregated school system on the grounds that they had limited amount of African ancestry (MOWA Pet. 1988, E::lC Mobile County Schools File; Aubrey D. Price File).

[earthw7]

tuschkahouma please before you spread stories back them up with truth not what you hear
from books and people who are guessing history. For far too long we have had groups tells who
we are and as a historian i can tell right away the story they are saying is false. If you repeat
a story long enough and some writes it down people will believe it.
Not ever tribe that claims to be native should be recoginzed because they have lost that
core culture belief,

[tuschkahouma]

I stated previously that the ethnic origins of the Mowa as stated on a Wikipedia site that I've seen was bs. If you took the time to read the Elizabeth Rountree book on the Pamunkey, Mattiponi, Nansemond, Rhappahannock, and Chickahominy tribes there was a common practice by white
southerners of forcing remnant Indians to submerge their ancestry and be colored from a legal standpoint or not be recognized at all.
Eric Plecker went around VA marking these tribe's birth certificates as colored from the 1920's to the 1950's as Director of the Virginia
Office of Racial Purity. It took the Federal Draft Board during WW II standing up to state's right advocate Plecker when Pamunkeys
enlisted to stop the colored listing and the assigning of these troops to Black battalions. The same kind of circumstances existed
for both the Mowa Choctaws and Houmas in Alabama and Louisiana prior to Civil Rights Legislation in the 1950's and 1960's.
You don't get the fact that the Mississippi Choctaws also desired to be segregated from the Whites and Blacks in the South.
The Indians wanted Indian Schools. You ignore the fact that Pembroke State University in NC started off as an entirely
Lumbee Indian College in the early 20th century when the Lumbees weren't allowed to go anywhere else legally. I've given
monies to the Bacone Scholarship for Mowa Choctaws and tribes from Virginia and Delaware also get Indian Scholarships
from Bacone. If Bacone acknowledges these people as Indians from non treaty tribes and has done so for six or seven decades
prior to civil rights legislation I'd say their opinion carries more weight than any stubborn person who spends four pages
ignoring repeated statements of fact and holds up a sham BAR finding that even Kevin Gover admited was fraudulent in it's
omission of Mowa evidence contrary to the negative finding that you discuss as having such unimpeachable evidence
showing the Mowas as frauds. You just made me remember how Jack Campisi lamblasted the BIA in the late 1970's
to the point that they went ahead and acknowledged the Gay Head Mashpee Wampanoags even though they started
off giving this tribe as much grief as the Mowas have gotten. The BIA is never wrong you know. They never get blood quantums wrong
and the Dawes Commission never left parts of large enrolling families off the Dawes Rolls. They also didn't make a clerical
error and leave the Samish Tribe off of the BIA Master Roll of recognized tribes from 1968 to like 2005. Imagine having
your tribes recognition done away by a clerical error and loosing your fishing rights by treaty in Puget Sound from 1968
to 2005 simply because someone forgot to type in the name Samish. Start looking at all of the incorrect points of that BAR finding
on the Mowas and stop using the BIA's mistakes as fact. If you did so you'd realize you've been debating from a point of
using mistakes as fact when you started this thread and I've spent like two weeks trying to convince you that the BIA was wrong and yet you don't care.

[tuschkahouma]

none of you referenced the Calcedeaver School for the Mowa Choctaws that the tribe provided for itself did you? 
That school has been around for decades as an Indian School and like the BIA you all conveniently omit it
and call people fakes. It's all about omitting history isn't it?

[Superdog]

none of you referenced the Calcedeaver School for the Mowa Choctaws that the tribe provided for itself did you? 
That school has been around for decades as an Indian School and like the BIA you all conveniently omit it
and call people fakes. It's all about omitting history isn't it?

I'm not gonna contribute to the conversation other than to say it's comments like this that really destroy your own argument.  I'm one of the many on this board that doesn't have a dog in this fight and I'm reading all of this info with an open mind.  However, words such as this that tend to try and lump us all together into agreement (like we're the Borg from Star Trek or something) and really detract from the substance of what you have to say.

What ends up happening, Tuschkahouma, is I have to wade through these slight board character assassinations to try and find where the facts are in what you post and that can tend to be difficult as your posts are peppered with them and it's hard to distinguish sometimes between what is offered up as facts and what is emotional diatribe. 

Just keep in mind, that you are really only having a conversation with a couple of board members on this topic...the rest of us are following and I happen to find the info you present interesting when you present it.  You'll have a lot more luck staying off the defensive and standing  up by the facts of your arguments and let them stand just as they are.  I can understand your frustration at probably having to have this conversation over and over with people from recognized tribes, but comments such as "Why would Vine Deloria do this or that" and comments like the one quoted above are really words with no substance and don't help you at all.  If you make your case with dignity and don't stoop to that kind of conversation your words will remain here for all to see, and just maybe, you'll have to explain all of this a little less and less in the future and you'll find there are more people believing the facts you present.

Superdog

[Superdog]

and personally...I'd like to hear about the Calcedeaver School.  It's history, when it started, how it started etc.  That's very interesting to me.  Can  you tell us some more?

Superdog

[BlackWolf]

tuschkahouma, this thread is specifically about the Mowa Band of Choctaw Indians, and more importantly, it is about specific people.  We are talking about specific families such as the Reeds, Weavers, Rivers, Byrds, etc., etc..   While some of the general information you give may have some relevance in certain cases, such as the case of racial classifications, etc., what you have not yet done, is make the case specifically for the MOWAs ancestors, and give us specific examples that pertain to the Mowa’s ancestors.  Because something is true, and may have happened to one group of Indians, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true for the Mowa’s ancestors.  Furthermore, there are many more problems with the Mowa’s petition besides the racial classifications you mention.  Many of the ancestors that the Mowas claimed as their ancestors were proven not to be their ancestors.   There are numerous other problems with their narrative as has been pointed out here.  Their geographical location was disputed as part of the Six Towns, the stories about being descended from Geronimo, etc., etc., etc.  If you want to refute some of these assertions, then please provide specific examples that make your case.   

[BlackWolf]

tuschkhouma said

If Bacone acknowledges these people as Indians from non treaty tribes and has done so for six or seven decades prior to civil rights legislation I'd say their opinion carries more weight than any stubborn person who spends four pages ignoring repeated statements of fact and holds up a sham BAR finding that even Kevin Gover admited was fraudulent in it's omission of Mowa evidence contrary to the negative finding that you discuss as having such unimpeachable evidence showing the Mowas as frauds.

What is this evidence contrary to the negative findings?