Virginia Tribes Fight For Sovereignty

Nearly 400 years ago, British colonists came ashore near this verdant watershed of Chesapeake Bay, surviving the first brutal winter only with the help of the Native Americans who had lived on the land for centuries.

But as the Commonwealth of Virginia prepares for the commemoration of that 1607 arrival in Jamestown, the descendants of those Indians are embroiled in a fight over a different legacy of that year: acknowledgment of their sovereignty.

Though the first to greet British colonists, the tribes -- the Upper Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond and Rappahannock, with a total population of about 3,500 -- are among the last to gain official recognition from the U.S. government.

Attaining that status would give the tribes control over their own government affairs and access to a gold mine of federal funding, including health, housing and governance grants for Native Americans.

Allocations vary widely across the nation's 562 federally recognized tribes. In 2002, for example, the Navajos -- with a population of 250,000 -- received more than $321 million, while the 1,055-member Morongo tribe of California got $560,000, according to federal budget figures.

The unique situation of the Virginia tribes is, in part, the result of the initial contact with the colonists. The tribes' only treaties with any government entity were with the British settlers, and those agreements were never formally acknowledged by the United States.

But the tribes' position worsened during the early part of the 20th century, when the state government essentially legislated the Indian race out of existence.

Eighty years ago, during the height of the eugenics movement -- a now-discredited science that believed, among other things, in preserving the superiority of the white race by prohibiting racial intermarriage -- the Virginia General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which defined racial categories as"white" and" colored." Indians were listed as colored.

Now that law is affecting the effort of the tribes to gain federal recognition and the government benefits that could follow.

In the absence of a treaty, the usual way of achieving federal recognition is through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Among the documentation required is proof that a tribe has been in continuous existence since 1900 -- but because official paperwork in the early to mid-1900s expunged the tribal members' racial identity, such proof is difficult to come by.

So the tribes have called on Congress for help.

"We want to be on an equal playing field," said Kenneth F. Adams, 57, chief of the Upper Mattaponi."It's not about money. It's not about education. It's not about hospitals, even though those benefits come along with the recognition. It's about the proper dignity that's afforded with this recognition."