the piscataway indian nation

THE PISCATAWAY INDIAN NATION
A Tenacious People with A Fragile Culture
Christine Buckingham
WHY?
THE PAST
History
PISCATAWAY
• Artifacts place Native American Piscataway ancestors in the
Southern Maryland region since 9,000 BC. Oral history places
them generations prior to first contact with Europeans in 1600.
• Related to Delaware Lenape, Iroquois
• Algonquin speakers
• Native tongue still spoken: Rico Newman gave invocation at the
Pow wow in native tongue. Roughly, “Creator, come be among us.
Thank you for your gifts: the earth, the winds, the clouds, the
water. Thank you for our Grandfather, the sun. For all this
accept our thanks. On behalf of the Piscataway, ask for peace,
happiness, long life. “
THE PISCATAWAY INDIAN NATION
PISCATAWAY – PLACE WHERE THE WATERS MEET
The People are identified by the land where they live. When the
Piscataway were forced out of Maryland, they renamed their new
locations in Virginia and New York, Piscataway .
THE PAST
Loss
Pluralism: a social organization in which diversity of racial or religious or
ethnic cultural groups are tolerated (Princeton, 2009).
This world is not a place of equality. In the pluralist society of the United
States, there are now and there always have been marginalized people groups.
None have suffered the same degree of discrimination, persecution, or
oppression as the Native American. The goal of the new American government
was not toleration or acculturation or assimilation, but annihilation.
LOSS OF PISCATAWAY HOMELAND
“Most minorities have a homeland,
somewhere a place that’s theirs. The
Indian has a homeland that is
possessed by another dominant
culture. This has psychologically, very
strange ramifications.”
Fritz Scholder, Native American Artist.
LOSS OF TRIBAL IDENTITY
No Indian identity. White, black, colored, mulatto. Census takers
would not use term, Indian. Most were identified as “mulatto”
even if they lived on an Indian reservation. Self-identity as
“Wesort”
Primarily oral not written history.
Common themes in previous generations: “Don’t tell.”
Fears of being forced into reservations and losing what land, rights
they had. Much intermarriage with black slaves and black freed
slaves. Some Indians held property and some held black slaves.
Common names in S MD: Proctor, Butler, Newman
LOSS OF PROMISES
THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS
Forbade the speaking of Indian Languages
Prohibited the conduct of traditional religious
activities
Outlawed traditional government
Created Indian boarding schools for Indian children
INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL
“When I go home, I’m going to talk Indian.”
THE CARLISLE INDIAN BOARDING
SCHOOL
SOCIAL
STRUCTURE
Collectivist
Clans, Tribes, Families
CLAN (Piscataway are of the Beaver Clan)
• Matriarchal; women honored as equals, did and can serve
as a chief (tayac)
• Inter-ethnic marriage is permitted but within the Indian
People groups, are to marry within same clan
• Adoptees and those who are assimilated relinquish clan
and adopt the new clan identity
TRIBE – like extended family groups (e.g., Piscataway
Indians, Cedarville Tribe. ) Tribes autonomous. Tayac is
hereditary title of chief of chiefs. Annual council to decide
all tribal governance matters
FAMILY
• Not nuclear in structure
• Father’s or Mother’s brothers have more influence and
authority than father
• Honor veterans as akeechetah, “warriors”, defenders of the
people, our land, our way of life.
SPIRITUALITY
Syncritic Naturalist
and Catholic
The First Christian Conversion to Catholicism of Piscataway
Indians by Jesuit priest, Father Andrew White in 1640
Most of the Piscataway Indian Nation are Catholic but practice a
syncretic form of religion that incorporates tribal traditions. In
1980s, Catholic church gave them dispensation to incorporate
tribal traditions into Catholic ceremony (e.g., Peace Pipe; burning
curative herbs; burial in ossuary)
Important traditional dates follow the liturgical Catholic calendar
(e.g., Awakening of Mother Earth Easter), Feast of the Dead.
Spiritual components common to all Native American cultures
•God concept as Creator/Spirit/ Brother
•Winds – for the four directions of the earth
“We don’t need a chapel or a church. When we dance, when our
feet caress mother earth, we are worshipping.”
Death, Burial, Afterlife
Ancestors are central to life. They are the
intercessors with the spirit world. The
Piscataway are tied to their land and their
burial place is sacred. When it is disturbed,
the link to the spirit world is broken.
As a collective society, dead did not want to
be buried alone. Dead were left on biers
until only skeletons were left. Once a year,
the skeletons would be collected and bones
placed in an ossuary.
RECOVERING
IDENTITY
RECOVERING INDIAN
IDENTITY
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the rise
of the American Indian Movement in the
late 1960’s sparked an enduring
organizational revival among tribes.
“These cultures, like those of the Piscataway, are fragile. How do
they recover cultural identity? Their cultural identity is volitional. It
is what their individual families have retained. Primarily is
identified through repetition of ceremony”
DEFINING TRIBAL IDENTITY
1974 the Piscataway chartered their tribe. The whole
Proctor family adopted the name, Tayac, With Chief
Turkey Tayac resuming title. In the 1980’s the state of
Virginia passed legislation that officially recognized
related Virginia tribes.
But neither the Bureau of Indian Affairs or Maryland
has yet to act on the over hundred thousand of pages
of formal petition of the Piscataway. No BIA approval
granted since 1985.
Gabrielle Tayac, Ph.D. (Piscataway)
PORT TOBACCO ARCHEOLOGICAL
DIG
RECOVERING IDENTITY
CRAFTS ARE AN IDENTIFYING
FEATURE OF NATIVE AMERICANS
Unrecognized tribes are not permitted to use the
term, “Native American Craft” ($5000 fine)
DEVELOPMENT
OF CULTURAL
IDENTITY
NEED FOR OFFICIAL MINORITY
STATUS
PISCATAWAY INDIANS,
CEDARVILLE BAND
PISCATAWAY INDIAN NATION
TRIBAL EVENTS
Awakening of Mother Earth Ceremony
April 16 - 19, 2009 at Moyaone Burial Grounds
Vigil: Thursday: tobacco burning; Friday and Saturday: sweat
ceremony;
Sunday April 191:00 – 4:30 pm, Moyaone Burial Grounds
Social: Sunday, April 19, 5 – 8 pm @ HFES (please bring a dish to pass)
Pow-Wow
June 6-7 2009 at Cultural Center
Green Corn Festival
September 10 - 13, 2009
AWAKENING MOTHER EARTH
POW WOW
GRAND ENTRY OF THE FLAGS
THE FUTURE
IDENTIFICATION… EDUCATION
…ACTIVISM
SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM OF THE NATIVE
AMERICANS, WASHINGTON DC
IMMERSION
• “We need immersion experiences (sustained exposure
to) environments quite different from our own.
Without some regular dissonance or disequilibrium,
we tend to become too comfortable with the status quo
and are little inclined to engage in altruistic
activity…It is not that we should stretch ourselves
because it is ‘good for us’, but cultural stretching helps
us to see beyond the limitations of our biases and
stereotypes. And without such regular exposure, we
are not likely to develop a sufficiently complex
Christian worldview to withstand the challenges of
pluralism (Garber, 1996; Mouw, 2002)” (Yarhouse,
Butman, &McRay, 2005, p. 175).
THANK YOU
Natalie Proctor of the Cedarville Piscataway Indian Nation who pointed
me toward Rico Newman
Dr. Gabrielle Tayac, Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of Native Americans, who escorted me around the newly opened
archeological dig in Port Tobacco, MD and allowed me to interview her and
take pictures of her, of the dig, and her presentation.
Patricia Jolie, member of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes and
Cultural Information Assistant at the SI-NMAI’s Community &
Constituent Services/Resource Center;
and most of all, to Rico Newman of the Cedarville Band of PIN who gave
generously of his time in email correspondence, phone calls, and finally,
who escorted me to the Annual Pow Wow and allowed me to video
interview him at length.
REFERENCES
• Yarhouse, M, Butman, R., McRay, B. (2005). Modern Psychopathologies:
A comprehensive Christian appraisal. Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press.
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn retrieved 5-25-09
©2010. Christine E. Buckingham. All Rights reserved. www.CEBuckingham.com