Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comAnd That In A Land Where We Were Always Free
~ Runęhkwáʔčhęʔ Duane Brayboy
With the gun pointed at her face in point blank range,
she could only think of the safety of the children
behind her; “What if one of the bullets pass through
the soft tissue of my neck and hits the children
behind me?” She could only think of how to move in
ways that would protect the children. In this
surrealistic moment that tragically contrasted the
ceremonial prayers she had just offered, Brandi Locklear-Alvarez stood on the same ground as many other Native Americans have – the realization that the colonizers will never forgive us for what they’ve done to us.
The hot and sticky weather on the shores of North Carolina in late June is a special sort of heat; people either love it or hate it, but all southern Natives can agree that it isn’t ideal weather for full ceremonial clothing. The sun’s heat reflected off of the sandy shore area only intensified the heat, but this was a not a scheduled ceremony, like Strawberry Ceremony, Green Corn or Midwinter; this was a special ceremony for which dedicated Natives would brave the heat.
After becoming aware in mid-May that developers had unearthed Native artifacts and bones, the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina opened a dialogue that would determine who would participate in a prayer delegation to that burial site to pray for our ancestors’ continued peace at their final resting place. The settlers call this town Cedar Point, but it is situated in a historical Tuscarora region that included our villages of Čaʔtú·kęʔ (recorded by settlers as Chattooka), Rarúta, Kahtéhnu·ʔ, Neyuherú·kęʔ, Caʔkawi·nęhę̀·tih (present day Chocowinity, NC) and “the bridge of sand” that we Tuscarora call Haʔtéharaʔθ (Hatteras).
The date was set for June 23 and participants were preparing for a day of prayer and unity among not only Tuscaroras, but Occaneechi relatives and other allies, mostly consisting of women/mothers, children/babies and elders. The ceremony was opened with a traditional prayer in the Tuscarora language; the Haʔ Kanęherathę́hčreh reminds us to be grateful for all the sacred things within creation that are so often taken for granted. This prayer was catered to focus on the ancestors and their continued peace, although the visible bones reaching up from the hot sand among dog excrement, there was doubt that the ancestors could be at peace. This plot of land was not a localized burial site, but rather the distal end of an extended burial site of no less than 11 burial clusters that houses had been built upon. Some locals from the nearby neighborhood, both current and former residents, have come forth and claimed that prior to NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), which took effect in November of 1990, developers knew they were building homes on top of an ancient Indian burial site. Not about to be deterred by laws that preserve human dignity like NAGPRA, the developers supported the HB 385, which would circumvent NAGPRA and allow them to bulldoze this ancient burial site. While an engineer for the developers referred to this site as “A Native American landfill,” the Chief Archaeologist with the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Chris Southerly, determined "This is a major discovery. It's one of the most significant sites, if not the most significant, I've encountered in my 30-plus years as an archaeologist."
After prayers and ceremony, about half of the participants had left and those remaining were two Tuscarora women, the four Tuscarora children who were with them, an Occaneechi woman and her elderly uncle. As they sat on the shore together speaking of the old days and cooling down with bottled water, a non-Native couple in a kayak approached them and began cursing at them, telling them that they were not welcome there. Although Brandi informed them that they had the right to be there, they neither wanted to counteract the prayers for peace for the ancestors by engaging in an argument and they were about to leave anyhow. When walking towards their vehicles, the white couple came ashore and with a menacing pace, followed the Natives from behind as a Ford truck pulled up and blocked them in so they could not leave. The driver aggressively approached the Native women and children and began yelling at them. Another non-Native who identified himself as an Onslow County (adjacent county) Sheriff’s deputy grabbed one Tuscarora woman by the neck, body slammed her on the ground and choked her until her teenage niece and son jumped on the man’s back to get him off of her. Her son’s hand was injured in the scuffle and when she got up, she and the children ran for their truck, but the aggressor caught the girl and punched her in the side of her head so hard that her nose bled. Meanwhile, Brandi ran for her vehicle so that she could record this horrific unfolding on her phone. When she turned around, a white man was standing with a gun at her face, point blank. By this time, residents of the nearby neighborhood had descended upon the site and can be heard on video calling the Natives “trash.” When an officer arrived, Brandi called out to warn the officer that the man with the “A” on his shirt had a gun. The officer, visibly slow to react and unbothered that a white man was hiding a gun behind his back, allowed the gunman enough time to put his gun on the dash of his truck and ultimately leave the scene. This was all captured on video. Jane, her son and niece, all injured by the Sheriff’s deputy, fled the scene for their lives and to seek medical care. While the white gunman was allowed to leave without consequence, an arrest warrant was issued for Jane for leaving the scene of a crime, despite the fact that she was fleeing for their lives and medical attention. Only after the video footage was reviewed and amid political pressure from good minded allies to the Tuscarora like NC House Representative Ed Goodwin was her arrest warrant rescinded. Representative Goodwin issued a public statement attesting to the facts captured on video and condemning this violent attack against Native women and children, armed only with prayer and sweetgrass.
After the attack, Brandi reflected and said that she had never seen evil in another human’s eyes as she did in that of the gunman. “In that moment, I felt as if I were a fly for him to swat; that if he chose to pull the trigger and kill me, my life ending would have meant nothing to him.” Jane feared that like her own sister, her life would be reduced to a statistic among Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Our women, as the life givers and sustainers of life, are respected in their roles within our culture and revered as sacred as our Mother Earth, which also gives and sustains life.
All this simply for praying for our ancestors. The photos from the prayer event prior to the attack show that the group of Natives and allies were happy; mothers holding babies, smiles all around, people hugging. The author’s and Brandi’s ancestral Tuscarora uncle, George Lowry of Robeson County, whose three sons were murdered by the Confederate Home Guard in 1864, said at their funerals “We were a free people long before the white man came to our land. When the English came to this land, we treated them kindly. Now we get no justice and that in a land where we were always free.”
*As of this publishing, the FBI is actively investigating this as a hate crime, as well as violations of NAGPRA and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People) violations are also cited. A follow up reporting will be published in the next issue.
Runęhkwáʔčhęʔ Duane Brayboy is a citizen of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina and a member of the Bear Clan.