The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation

We are the Occoneechee, Saponi, Totaro Indian Tribe of the Saponi Reservation.  We have lived in current day Virginia for thousands of years. We are of the same language group, and thus the same people, as the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota of North and South Dakota. The map below shows our migration over time and not necessarily the territory at any given time.

The maps below shows our territory around 1492. We had largely separated from our western cousins as shown on the map below. Some oral history says there was a vision of the coming "white man" and the destruction they would bring and more people migrated west.  We referred to ourselves as Yesah--The People. 

We were comprised of hundreds of communities, towns and extended families groups though out the majority of the current day states of Virginia and North Carolina as well as parts of South Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio. These communities had names such as: Occoneechee, Tutelo (Totero, Totaro), Saponi Hoonthymiha, Manahoacs, Monacan, Metiponski, Mawseeuntkey, Stukena,  (Stukanoe), Nahyssans, Monasukapanough, Moneton, Shackaconia, Manaskahod, Massinurga, Stegata, Tauscania, Rassawek, Massinacak, Mowhemcho, Cape Fear, Catawba, Cheraw (Saura), Eno, Keyauwee, Shakori, Sissipahaw, Waccamaw, Wateree, Waxhaw, Woccon, Saxapaha, Sutaree, Sugah, Pedee, Quiawae, Chacee in the region shown below. 

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Saura Woman is a reconstruction of Cheraw ancestor based upon her remains found on the Dan River on the border of NC and Virginia.  She is on display at the NC Museum of Natural History in Raleigh NC.  Below is tribal member Ihza Carter with Saura Woman.

In 1712 a 36 square mile reservation was created in what is now Brunswick County, Virginia. Prior to this our territory had covered the majority of the states of Virginia and North Carolina.  After 200 years of genocide, since the 1492 European invasion, we sought refuge from the British government.  Our people have lived on the reservation land since its creation in 1712. Below are some of our people from the Saponi Reservation Greentown Community. 

After the reservation closed in 1718 we move a few miles east and created a community called Greentown.  As shown on the map above the isolate Native community of Greentown resides on the Saponi Reservation land a few miles from 1712 Saponitown and Fort Christanna.  The reservation spans approximately 25% of what is now Brunswick County.

 

 

 

 

In 1713 we Occoneechee, Saponi, Tutelo, (Totaro), Stukanoe, Mawseeuntkey natives signed the treaty of 1714 with Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood.  This treaty sets forth 36 square miles of what is now Brunswick County as our Saponi Native Reservation. 

Before the Saponi Reservation

Our Northern Yesah ancestors had resided in most of what is now the state of Virginia and North Carolina for thousands of years.  By 1646 to 1676, after 250 years of genocide, much of our population was living near present day Clarksville Virginia, on three Islands sandwiched between the Dan and Roanoke Rivers.  Our Tutelo (Totaro) ancestors lived on the upper island which was four miles long and a half a mile wide. Their cousins, our Occoneechee, ancestors lived on the island adjacent to this, which ran four miles all of the way to current day Clarksville.  The tip of this island ended under the current 58 business bridge leading into Clarksville.  These two islands were separated by a narrow body of water 10 to 30 feet wide--thus they could be also classified as one eight mile long island.  Our Saponi ancestors lived on a third island several hundred feet further down the river.  This island is directly in front of current day Occoneechee State Park.  All three islands are now covered under Buggs Island Lake, due to the rivers being dammed in 1952 with John Kerr Dam..

In 1676 the rebel and traitor Nathanial Bacon, enraged by the King of England's direction to take no more Native land, rebelled against the king and the governor of Virginia. They betrayed our Occoneechee ancestors, after being welcomed onto Occoneechee Island.  Bacon and his band of murderers surprise attacked our Occoneechee ancestors and massacred babies, children, women, elders and families and decimated the tribe, burning Occoneechee Town on Occoneechee Island. After the massacre our surviving Occoneechee ancestors moved about, in our homeland, trying to find ways to survive in a hostile new world as shown here.

This traitorous and murderous rebellion is referred to, in history, as "Bacon's Rebellion" and it was the beginning of the American Revolution in 1676--100 years before the 1776 Declaration of Independence. 

Bacon's Rebellion was 100% about the freedom to exterminate Natives and steal Native land.  The finale to this 100 year revolt against England was triggered by the Kings decree of 1763. This decree forbid the invaders from stealing any more Indian land.  A few years after this decree the invaders, committed treason and went into full treason and rebellion against their own king in order to attain the freedom to steal more Native land. The temptation of free and almost unlimited wealth was so great that it caused the invaders to become traitors so that they could mass murder, kill, exterminate and steal without restraint, all for greed. 

It is important to note that the American Revolution started on Occoneechee Island in current day Clarksville Virginia. The massacre at Occoneechee Island was another major step towards the greatest theft and holocaust in human history-- manifest destiny. 

The Reservation 1712 to 1718:

As the Native populations declined rapidly after 1492 as shown here, many bands, families and groups were moving around in our traditional homelands as documented here.  Between 1712 and 1714 approximately 600 of our Yesah ancestors moved onto to the Saponi reservation at a location of the Meherrin River that we called Junkatapurse.  We created a village there called Saponitown.  A small fort was fort built up the hill within a musket shot of Saponitown--Fort Christanna.   

The Saponi Reservation is located in Southern Virginia in current day Brunswick County, adjacent to current day Mecklenburg County and Greensville County.

The reservation served several purposes including housing a boarding school for Native children, Christianizing and colonizing our Native ancestors, protection for our ancestors since our numbers had fallen very low.  Meherrin Native children were held hostage by the White people to discourage attacks by the Meherrin Indians. 

But the primary objectives of the White people were: 1) to clear the way for westward expansion for White people and 2) a money making venture for Governor Alexander Spotswood.  With all of the Yesah people on the reservation the rest of Virginia was open up to be stolen.  Spotswood had plans to monopolize the fur trade between Natives and White people and enrich himself.  The Virginia company was the vehicle for his financial venture.   

Many history books point to the noble motives of Spotswood but as normal he and his co-conspirators had a very selfish motives. As has been the norm since 1492 the agenda was to steal Native land, plunder Native resources and to get rich. And Spotswood was using a people on the verge of extinction, as a tool to get rich, by using our weakened ancestors as a buffer against other tribes.  Despicable behavior disguised as generous behavior.

The financial venture failed after a few years and the reservation status ended in 1718. Land that was promised to our Yesah people was taken and sold to White people. And in 1720 Brunswick County was created.  Was it an accident that Brunswick county was created as soon as the reservation status ended?  Absolutely not!!!  There were White people advocating for the closure of the reservation so that they could steal these thousands of acres of land.  

"The reservation was parceled out in large tracts to wealthy White elites. The parcels were 6,000 acres to Henry Harrison, 12,000 acres to John & Joseph Allen, 1,200 acres to Thomas Cock, and 2,000 acres each to Thomas Ravencroft and Benjamin Edwards."   

The Reservation from the Yesah People's Eyes

We must put ourselves in the place of the Saponi people in 1718.  We had experienced a holocaust where over 99% of our population had been exterminated.  We had a population in the millions when the aliens arrived and were reduced to 600 people by this time as shown here.  Our civilization infrastructure had been destroyed in the previous 200 years.  Our ancestors were beaten down and demoralized and the last mass group of Northern Yesah Natives was breaking up and separating from one another forever.  John Fontaine documented the following on his 1716 trip from Williamsburg to Saponitown, on the Saponi reservation where Fort Christanna resides, "these people live as lazily and as miserably as any people in the world."

With our civilization collapsed we had moved all over our homeland trying different ways to survive.  We must keep in mind that we had lived in peace, harmony and abundance for thousands of years.  Now we had been reduced to homeless people, in our own homeland, at the mercy of aliens with selfish motives, continually on the move for survival.  No matter what we did we could not escape the horrors that the aliens had brought to our land.  

Each family or small group sought ways to eek out a living, and survive, in a foreign new world of dangerous and manipulative aliens.  They did not understand the ways and thinking of these aliens--who sought to own and control everything--the land, the water, the animals, the trees and even other human beings. When one reads Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), one finds that Europe was a civilization based upon selfishness-where take all you can any time you can was the norm. Smith's book is the bible of European Civilization Smith says civilization, "works best when each individual looks out for his or her own self interest." Selfishness was their worldview.  This was alien to our natural Yesah ancestors.  It was the opposite of our Yesah worldview where peace, giving, collaboration and caring for others and Mother Earth and all things was the norm.  

Our ancestors saw ourselves as connected to and part of all things and saw all things as alive. This was the foundation of a love and collaboration worldview,  This allowed us to live with the other animals without fear. The Europeans saw themselves as separated from all things and all things as dead.  This was the foundation for a fear, fragmentation and having dominion over and a taking worldview where all things must be conquered, controlled, manipulated and engineered.

Coming from our ancestors perspective what they saw from the Europeans was literally insanity, hell and evil. These aliens sought to take rather than give.  They rarely kept their word. There were always selfish motives behind everything they did. Their diet was poor and they did not know how to eat to properly nourish their bodies and spirit.  They were unhealthy and obese and thus were given names such as Wasicu which in Siouan language translates into "keepers of the fat.". They had short life spans.  They were sick, had poor hygrine, were diseased.  They did not know how to live in the world.  They had no ceremonies to connect them to the Oneness of this universe.  They had no drum which is the core of all Natural people worldwide

Our ancestors were experiencing something 100% new that they nor any of their ancestors, for the last 10,000 years and longer had ever experienced. It was beyond their wildest dreams or nightmares. White artist Fredrick Remington said, "no white man could penetrate the mystery of the Indian mind, nor explain the reasons for its acts"  Our worldview was so vastly different from the Europeans that we literally could not understand their thinking and they could not understand ours.

Imagine seeing all that you have ever known disappearing before your eyes.  Imagine 99% of you sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, grand parents. great grand parents, friends being killed and everyone that you have ever known being gone and gone in a horrible way.  Imagine your peaceful and giving social systems being gone and other tribes that you had lived in peace with now reduced to fighting and stealing from one another for survival.  White people dwell on the fact that after 1492 there were hostilities among the tribes. They leave out the fact that this was created by collapsing our civilization and forcing us through slavery, torture and manipulation into their worldview. They embellish this post-1492 violence as Natives having a "war culture" and it helps them justify the holocaust that they inflicted while stealing our land.

The 1718 breakup at the Saponi Reservation could be seen as the end of an era that had lasted tens of thousands years where a very mature spiritual civilization had evolved. Though our civilization had collapsed and was dying since 1492, pre-1714 we had lived largely in the Native worldview and way.  We still largely knew our Native history going back thousands of years and had our Native names and had our Native language.  After 1718 we were forced to begin shifting to the European way of life and worldview.  We began adopting European names, converting to Christianity, learning English, seeking allyships and sponsorships by some white person who could provide a level of protection for our families in a hostile new world.. Much of our history began to be lost.  Over time our elders became resistance to even talking about the old days and old ways.  Many became ashamed of the old ways and some began to advocate for the white ways.

The Reservation After 1718

On December 10, 1730 "the Virginia House of Burgesses abrogated the Treaty of Peace with the Saponi Nation of Indians and dissolved the Fort Christanna Reservation. This was done in response to a petition for the “former” Saponi lands by land-hungry colonists. The greedy petitioners were awarded the former reservation lands."

"The reservation was parceled out in large tracts to wealthy English elites. The parcels were 6,000 acres to Henry Harrison, 12,000 acres to John & Joseph Allen, 1,200 acres to Thomas Cock, and 2,000 acres each to Thomas Ravencroft and Benjamin Edwards."   

With the closure of the fort our ancestors moved a few miles to the east and settled in an area that would come be known as Greentown. The name came from Fred Green who purchased land that was part of the reservation. He married Native Mary Polly Jackson.  Other Native families in the community were James, Green, Jackson, Travis, Johnson, Chavis, Pearson, Powell, Harrison.  The 1920 census documented Greentown people as Mulatto which is the normal classification for Natives at that time.

Though the official records maintained by White people were intentionally falsified to show no or few Natives in Virginia. This was done by those like Virginia state registrar genocidist Walter Pleckler.  However, there are ways to determine Native communities in the upper South.  In almost all cases after being massacred, abused, mass murdered, cheated and nearly driven to extinction our people formed unique habits for survival. 

The communities that Yesah people formed into are called isolate communities.  Isolate Native communities of the upper south had very unique and specific characteristics.  And Greentown exhibited all of the Characteristics of an Isolate community:

• These communities were skeptical of the outside world and isolated themselves from the rest of the world.
• They had roads into the community patrolled and guarded at the entrances.
• They did not let outsiders into their community.
• They separated themselves from their non-native neighbors.
• The married from within the community in order to prevent from going extinct including marrying their own cousins.
• Many maintained ways that were natural and close to Mother Earth. But seen as backwards to the outside world.
• Many had white sponsors, such as Fred Green, who provided sponsorship and thus protection for a larger Native community.

Slavery and Free People of Color in Greentown

Native slavery had been happening since the aliens arrived in 1492.  In fact Natives made up a majority of the slave population for at least 200 years.  The entire worldview of the aliens was and is how to I get as much as possible for myself with as little work or investment as possible.  It is called "return on investment".  What better ROI than free labor and free land.  If you can subdue someone or group (steal people's lives) and force them to work for you for free and if you can take their land free and get them subjugated on their own homeland this is a double win. This kind of ROI takes stealth, manipulation, sneakiness and conning.  Another word for ROI is laziness or theft. 

Only a lazy people seek to get something for nothing and twist things around to make the victim seem lazy.  These concepts were completely foreign to pre-1492 Yesah Native people.  It would be seen as unthinkable, dishonorable and mentally and spiritually ill to steal from another or to get something for nothing.  It simply was not part of our worldview.

Greentown had both free Natives and Native slaves.  Both of groups needed some sought of protection from some white sponsor in a hostile white supremacists world.  Matilda Barner was a Native slave on the Phipps plantation on Iron Bridge Road on the Saponi Reservation land a few miles from the 1712 Saponitown.  She was impregnated by Winfield Phipps at a young age and had daughter Sarah Barner who was also raised on the  W Phipps plantation shown here on the map at the USA Library of Congress, north of the Meherrin River and East of Saponitown and Fort Christanna. 

Sarah had a daughter with a white man from Lawrenceville Tom Heartwell. Beulah Heartwell Rice Travis was her name.  

Though laws in Virginia in the 1600's had banned Native slavery it was common for Saponi Natives to end up in slavery. It was also one of the safest ways to survive and get protection.  Though many natives were kidnapped and sold into slavery.  Our ancestors were faced with people who continually manipulated politics and laws for their highest personal ROI.  Native slaves are well documented in the history of Virginia.  Spotswood himself had at least one documented Native slave Catina. She was referred to as a Sioux Indian Princess.  Catina was listed in Spotswood's will as slave property given to his wife. Beulah Heartwell Rice Travis born on the Phipps planation, on the Saponi reservation land, was also referred to the Natives in Greentown as Sioux Indian.  The Lakota and Dakota are western Siouan natives and the Yesah (Occoneechee, Saponi, Tutelo) are Eastern Siouan natives.

Mary Polly Jackson a Saponi Native woman was a Free Person of Color who also lived on the Saponi Reservation land.  She was born free in 1819.  At age 16 she became the spouse of Fred Green age 36, a white man and they had nine children.  Greentown was named after Fred Green.  

Both of these groups experienced special treatment in the class system created by white people.  My great grandmother Beulah Travis, during segregated times, would take her grand daughter Eleanor Travis to the local drug store in Lawrenceville and eat at the whites only segregated lunch counter.

Late 1800's

During the late 1800s we began to integrate more and more into White society.  By the 1900s many Greentown Saponi Natives were attending Saint Pauls College in Lawrenceville a few miles away, still on the reservation land.  Mary Polly Jackson’s and Fred Green's grandson Fred Chiles Green pictured below was one such Native.  Many Natives from Greentown attended Saint Pauls College

In fact a case can be made that the college was a Native college in addition to being an African American college.  Tribal member Eleanor Travis pictured below from Greentown, who attended Saint Paul's college stated that in 1954 one of her teachers said to her, when a young lady of African origin became homecoming queen, “have you ever heard of a Black queen”. The queens before that had likely all been Native queens.  Yes that reflects the racism of the USA and Virginia and the racist class system established by White people, but the point is up until that  time Natives had played an important role at the college.

 

Contemporary Tribal Member and Tribal Activity in Indian County 

For the past several decades members of the Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation and members of the Yesah Descendants association have been actively involved in Indian country at the state, regional, national and international levels.  Members have been involved in:

• Native American education via public demonstrations.
• Protection of our Native homeland against continued pollution, land theft and exploitation.
• Native American liberation and civil civil efforts
• International Indigenous rights efforts

For decades our tribal members have been doing Native demonstrations where we tell our history and debunk myths that have been spread for centuries. We have worked to unify Natives nationally and internationally.  We have routinely participated in Pow Wows through out Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland for decades.  We have been on the forefront of many environmental movements.  We have led an effort to buy back our homelands and return to living the indigenous ways of our ancestors.

Public Education and Pow Wows

Over the past decades tribal members have done many library demonstrations, festivals, parades, museum demonstration where we educate the public about who we are.  For decades members have danaced at pow wows and drummed at pow wow.  Tribal members have been involved in educating the public that we are still here.  

Above and below is tribal member Celest Lucas with a mural that was painted of her and Natives from other tribes.  This mural is in Baltimore MD.

  

 

Occoneechee Host Drum for Va Museum of Natural History Pow Wow

Public Demonstration on the Roanoke River, Boydton VA 2002

Jeremey Carter Honored with Portrait

 

Jeremy and Chastidy Carter at Saponi Reservation dedication event

Saponi Reservation dedication event

 

Barry, Travis and Jeremy Carter drumming with Eastern Bull

Above is Travis Carter at the Waccamaw Indian People of Conway, South Carolina annual Pow Wow November 2003.  This picture of Travis is displayed in the Waccamaw Tribal office in Conway.SC.

Jeremey and Travis Carter drumming with Eastern Bull 

Jeremy Carter featured on the cover of the Mecklenburg Sun
at 2003 Occoneechee State Park pow wow.

Barry, Travis and Jeremy Carter as members of Eastern Bull Singers and traveled over 100,000 miles, in five years, drumming at pow wows all over the east coast

Ihza Carter - Chickahominy Pow Wow 2023

 

Mahpiya Carter. Ihza Carter, Metztli Carter, Danny Osorio, Saponi Carter

Meherrin Pow Wow 2023

• 2008 Longest Walk

In 2008 the Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation participated in the Longest Walk II commemoration walk.  In 1978 Natives nationwide did not have freedom of religion. We could not legally conduct or participate in our ceremonies that we had been doing for thousands of years.  We did not have basic civil rights.  And congress was working towards terminating all treaties between Natives and the USA government.  A group of hundreds of Natives, from tribes from all over the USA, came together and walked from San Francisco to Washington DC to demand action by the United States government.  Because of this laws were changed and passed to grant freedom of religion to Natives, the effort to terminate treaties was defeated, and Native civil rights expanded.

The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation was the Southern Virginia coordinator for the Longest Walk II in 2008 led by Dennis Banks. We invited the Mexica Movement to come stay with and participate in the Longest Walk.  Olin Tezcatlipoca leader of Mexica Movement brought a contingent of Native activists and stayed at Occoneechee Village in Buffalo Junction VA near Occoneechee Island.  Together we played a major role in the Longest Walk II, in bringing to light the plight and oppression of Southern Natives who white people have tried to falsely label as Hispanics and Latino. 

We met the Walk at the NC/VA line and formally welcomed them to Virginia and our Occoneechee homeland.  We hosted the walk at Occoneechee State Park in Occoneechee VA (Clarksville) where the 1676 massacre had occurred where white people sought to exterminate us in order to steal our land.  We prayed, sang and danced and put together strategies.  We met Natives from all over the USA.

The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation was the only Virginia or North Carolina tribe to be involved with the Longest Walk II.

A faction of walkers broke off from the Longest Walk and went up through the Blueridge Mountains. They were the People's Walk. We met these Natives and gave them support.

 

• Activism to Stop Commercialization of Occoneechee State Park

In 2000 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation went to war to stop the Town of Clarksville, some local real estate developers and local politicians from commercializing Occoneechee State Park.  It must be noted that ALL of the people looking to steal and further exploit Native land were White people.  They had plans to profit from building a golf course in Occoneehee State Park with a hotel, restaurant and other amenities in the park with a housing development adjacent to the park around the golf course.  This was just the first step in a plan by the Sam Snead organization to create privately owned golf courses on state parks throughout Virginia.

The plan was all but approved by the DCR board when two weeks before the vote The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation became active in the effort to stop more exploitation of Native land.  All local, county, regional and federal politicians, who represented Southside VA had come out in favor of the golf course project.  

We gathered one thousand signatures within two weeks which caused the DCR Board to delay their vote.  We were able to prove that 80 to 90% of local citizens  and citizens state wide were opposed to this endeavor. There were dozens of letters to the editor.  We met with Governor Mark Warner's staff, the secretary of Natural Resources and Secretary of Commerce and made our case.  It took two full years of hard activist work to kill this corrupt plan.  In 2004 the final nail was put into the coffin and the project was officially dead only because of the efforts of The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation.  Not only did we save Occoneechee State Park from development we saved the state park system from being privatized. 

Mother Earth is NOT here for our exploitation.  We are only one animal on the planet.  And we are not intended to have dominion over but to be a part of the whole system which is Mother Earth. One objective of The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation is to continually remind everyone of this. 

• 9500 Liberty Street Wall

As Native Americans begin to repopulate the United States of America there is a growing corrupt, violent and inhumane effort to keep the number of Native Americans in the USA low.  White people came to our land and built their countries on Native land where Natives were the majority and today again are the majority  

The people now being demonized as illegal aliens as they cross the USA southern border are actually Native Americans.  These are culturally and genetically some of the most Native people on the continent. 

In 2008 the The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation joined with Mexicans without Borders, Gardenico Fernandes, Chief Billy Tayac of the Piscataway of Maryland to erect a sign in down town Manassas VA that condemned the oppression of Southern Natives.  The sign which stood 40 feet tall long and 16 feet tall garnered national attention over a two year period of time.  Our tribe was instrumental in the wording of the 9500 Liberty Wall sign.  This wording was a collaboration between Gardenico Fernandes and Chief Barry.

Just as has been happening since 1492 we continue to see horrible abuses of Natives right here in the USA.  As late as 2016 through 2020 Donald Trump literally reignited the somewhat dormmate genocide against Natives -- calling Mexicans rapists and criminals to start his run for president.  He created concentration camps for Native children where children and babies were housed in cages.  Where 4,500 minor little girls were raped in these concentration camps and impregnated.  Where thousands of small children were taken away from their native parents' and abused just as has happened for centuries and many were never reunited.  And the shame of it is he and this continued genocide against Natives was and is supported by more than half of the White people in the USA as of this writing in 2023 based upon the White support for Donald Trump.  We must keep in mine that genocide is not just another political issue to be weighed along side other political issues.  Genocide supporters belong in the category of humans along with Adolf Hitler.

• Native liberation

Southern Natives are the sleeping giant on the American continent.  660 million of the one billion people, on the single land mass which is the whole American continent are Native American.  The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation has been working with many people and organizations to end the persecution of Natives at the Southern border.

The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation is the only tribe in Virginia or North Carolina who is publicly and continually advocating for the USA to end the genocide against our Southern Native cousins.

• Stopping the World's Largest Uranium Mine on Yesah Homeland 

In 2004The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation joined the effort to stop a group of white people in Pittsylvia County Virginia from creating the largest uranium mine in the world.  This world have been an unprecedented mine.  There has never been a uranium mine built in a populated state or region such as Southern Virginia. This link is to our Facebook group opposing uranium mining in Virginia.

We worked to get a ban placed on uranium mining in Virginia that still stands today.  Why is this so important.  Uranium is the most toxic substance in the world and explain by the Chairman of The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation in his letter to the Virginia General Assembly.  Once removed from the ground anything contaminated will stay toxic for 500,000 years.  This is the one thing that could force we Saponi people to leave our homelands of thousands of years.  The Roanoke River would definitely been contaminated and we would be seeing thousands of deaths from this exploitation for thousands of years.  Below is one of our memes from our tribes Facebook page.

 

The mine would have definitely polluted our Roanoke River since the waters near the mine flow directly into the Roanoke River as shown below and there would be millions of deaths over the next one half million years. This would have been a disaster for our people.  Water is life and our Mother Earth is sacred and alive.  This is more than just words.  It is something that all true Natives must feel in their hearts. The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation was the only tribe involved in this effort to stop this rape of Mother Earth.  Other Virginia and North Carolina tribes were invited to help in this effort but none joined the effort.

• Activity with the United Nations

In 2010 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation went to the United Nations. We participated in the United Nation forum on Indigenous People.  We worked on expanding Indigenous people's rights world wide.  We met and made allies with many Indigenous people from around the world including India, Ecuador, Canada, Mexico, the Amazon Rainforest and from all across the USA.

• Mountain Top Removal

The aliens have an extraction and taking worldview.  In general they believe Mother Earth is dead and here to have dominion over, for their personal profit and self gain, even if it destroys Mother Earth forever.  Mountains cannot be replaced and yet the aliens are demolishing our sacred mountains in a process called mountain top removal in order to attain the coal inside of the mountains.

The The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation worked with other groups to stop, slow down and reduce the demolition of our sacred mountains.  The following is our mountain top removal tribal page.  Unfortunately we have not done as much as we should have regarding this permanent rape, extermination and destruction of our sacred Yesah mountains.  We do have plans to step up our efforts in order to stop the rape of our mother homeland.

The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation is the only Virginia, North Carolina or West Virginia tribe to come out in opposition to mountain top removal.

 

• Fort Christanna Site Planning Committee

In 2002 Barry Carter Chief of The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation was selected to be on the Fort Christanna site planning committee funded by Brunswick County.  He served for over a year as Vice President of the committee. He eventually resigned from the committee when it became apparent that the committee was not going to tell the full and true history of the Saponi Reservation.  Before resigning he was able to get two members of the Haliwa-Saponi included on the committee -- council members Jeff Anstead and Danny Richardson

• Occoneechee Village

Since 1995 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation has been on a mission to return to living the Indigenous Ways of our ancestors.  In 2009 the tribe purchased nearly 300 acres of land in Lunenburg County Virginia.  It took years to find a piece of land suitable where the old growth Indigenous trees had not been clear cut, and it was away from any toxic private landfill and not near any toxic coal power plant.

The vision was to create a  sustainable community and network of community where the tribe could grow its own food, home school its own children, generate its own electricity, build its own houses and detach from getting their human needs met from a toxic and evil system brought to our land in 1492, that is exterminating the Indigenous World. When one steps back and look at the world that the aliens have created on our land it is clear that they are working against and seeking to exterminate everything that Wakan Tanka created.  And this makes the entire system evil.  And thus is why we The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation must show the world, and especially the aliens on our land, that the Indigenous ways are ways of abundance, balance, love and sustainability are the only way that humans can exist on the planet long term.  

Many Native people have worked with and lived at Occoneechee Village and helped to build the vision.  It is a very difficult road since the white people have intentionally taken many actions to destroy that Indigenous way system of community, sustainability and love and have put many obstacles in place to prevent it from establishing a foot hold.  They have designed a system that only effectively works for single house hold nuclear families where are human needs are met through non-caring bureaucracies.

• Supporting the OBSN in Getting State Recognition

In the late 1990 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation began drumming with Eastern Bull Drum.  Eastern Bull was the primary drum group that supported John Blackfeather Jefferies in his pow wow circuit and in public demonstrations.  In some events it would be John, Beverly Payne, Joey Crutchfield, Barry Carter and his family of six people.  The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation helped to provide a public face, in may cases, for the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.  A few years after this activity the OBSN received its state recognition via a court case.

• Protecting Our Indigenous Forests in our Homeland 

For ten years The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation has been administrator for a page entitled Southside Virginia Deforested. The goal of the page is to educate and bring attention to the ethnic cleansing attack on our Indigenous forests and to help shift the public's attitude regarding our Indigenous forests.  For decades in Southside Virginia the aliens have been clear cutting our Indigenous forests and replacing them with artificially engineered alien loblolly's pine plantations.  This is the exact same thing that they did with to Indigenous ancestors.  We were a land populated by millions of brown Indigenous people and within a couple of centuries we were replaced by White people.  This is the real cancel culture that took place in the land we now call Virginia.  And now as our Native population swells things are just returning to their Natural state.

  Today Brunswick County is the number one producer of timber in the state.  Our mix Indigenous forest have been replaced with alien pine plantations.  Much of our indigenous forests have been converted into worthless mulch.  

Since 2005 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation has actively worked to slow down and stop deforestation in Southern Virginia.  We were able to stop the clear cutting of the 91,000 acres of USA Corp of Engineers property around our Roanoke River homeland in Mecklenburg County Virginia.  We met with the Crop's forestry people and let them know this was unacceptable and there was NO reason to be clear cutting around the lake.  We suspected corruption with at least one low level White Corp employee with kickbacks from timber companies. He was the forestry official in charge of the forestry program.  We reported our concerns to the Coronel in charge of this region.  The forestry official was eventually removed from the possession for theft-for using Corp equipment and fuel for his own private projects.

In 2002 we filed charges against a white timber thief who stole 80 acres of old growth forest on our Native land. Working with Brunswick County Virginia Commonwealths attorney Bill Blaine, we won a criminal conviction in court for timber theft against William Roland Massey. This was the first conviction in the history of the state of Virginia for timber theft.  Massey was convicted of timber theft and went to prison.  He had a decades long history of stealing indigenous forest lands from naïve elderly Black and Native people.  And The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation put an end to more exploration of Native land and people by this alien. White timber thives stealing timber from elderly Black and Native people is a well known fact in the criminal justice community.  We must understand that these encroachments by white people, both legal and illegal, are part of a system of exploitation that has been occurring since 1492

We have oral history of Greentown land being stolen.  In the late1800s a white business owner from Lawrenceville provided a coat to a Greentown family member on credit.  When the coat was not paid for in full the white person went to court and ended up with ownership of 30 acres of Greentown Native land.  This type of thing was very common in Virginia. And the credit scheme was a common con used against Native and African people. Our Native people came out of a peaceful loving civilization of thousands of years where people did not steal from one another from ego and selfishness.  We were by nature innocent and naive.  We didn't suspect evil intentions from other people. While on the other had we are dealing with people who are scheming to get what we have been happening since 1492.  The roots of this behavior is reflected in the 1000 year European Dark Ages. Though through abused, mass murdered and torture of our people there was intentionally created a level of emotional and spiritual illness, most of our people still have the innocent core.  Whereas the one thousand years of hellish Dark Ages in Europe left an ego selfish core as explained here.

In 2008 The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation caught another White timber thief, Finch, stealing a forest of 20 acres of our Native land.  This was in Mecklenburg county.  We were not able to get the sheriffs department to spend more than five minutes considering criminal changes, even though according to one real estate agent said the cutting pattern fit Finches history of timber activity.  Again one of our tribal elders, due to the goodness of our people, was going to allow him to get off with just paying her 40% of what he had stolen.  However, Chief Barry told him to "get off our land and we will see you in court."  The family sued Finch in court and won triple damaged.

Today many of our Native people have lost connection with the sacredness of our forests.  This has occurred due to the holocaust, mass murder and poverty the aliens forced our ancestors though.  But we must return to connecting to our sacred homeland and forests.

• Connection to Indian Country

Members of the The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation have been on the pow wow trail, dancing and drumming, for decades throughout Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland.

•  Yesah Canoe Society

 In 2011, Pure Fe, the Native American signer was living at Occoneechee Village. She asked members of the The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation to help facilitate the a VA/NC Native canoe society. We purchased five additional canoes and came together with some Haliwa-Saponi tribal members and took several canoe trips down the Roanoke River.  Tribal members are still canoeing the rivers of Southside VA as they have been doing since the 1980's.

 

•  Annual Yesah Campout on the Roanoke River

In the early 2000's The Occoneechee-Saponi-Totaro Tribe of the Saponi Reservation hosted an annual Siouan camp out on the Roanoke River in Boydton Mecklenburg County.  Members of various Yesah tribes would attend each year.  OBSN, Monacan, Haliwa-Saponi..