Sunday, September 19, 2004

An interesting item in today's Post on the improved quality of life for most American Indians. While the generalizations about how people live may well apply to Virginia Indians, the causes for change must be different as Virginia Indians are not recognized by the federal government and don't receive all of the same benefits as federally recognized tribes. (Six Virginia tribes are seeking federal recognition.)

In other news, after a fun antiquing shopping trip with S (not that we found dining room chairs for her), I went over for dinner, and was charmed that Baby W is learning to say my name.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Commonwealth of Virginia didn't recognize American Indian as a race. My friend was studying her geneology a couple of years ago and is part Cherokee. She knew she had descendants from Virginia and was able to access their birth records. According to the birth certificate (dating back to the 1920s) of one full-Cherokee descendant, he was categorized as 'Black.' Which in those days labelled groups as second or third class citizens. ASP

Lisa said...

Yeah, Angela, that's about right. I started to write about that in the main entry, but was too lazy to get up and check my sources. (I still haven't adouble checked - no one quote me, here.) A bureaucrat named Plecker was responsible for the rule that said all babies born in Va. would have either "white" or "colored" on their birth certificates, eliminating Indian as an identity.