Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. We are here today, more than 400 years after the first English settlers landed in what became Jamestown, Virginia, to finally establish a government-to-government relationship with the Indian tribes who greeted those settlers. The Virginia tribes that are recognized in this bill have treaties with the King of England that date back to the early 1600s. Their ancestors were there at Jamestown and facilitated the very founding and early development of our Nation. These tribes have been unable to claim their rightful Indian identity in relation to the Federal Government, due in great part to the machinations of one man, Walter Ashby Plecker, the State registrar for the Commonwealth in the early 20th century. Plecker, an avowed White supremacist, ran Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics for over 34 years. From 1912 to 1947, Plecker set out to rid the Commonwealth of any documents that recorded the existence of Indians or Indian tribes living therein. He was instrumental in ensuring passage of the Racial Integrity Act in 1924, making it illegal for individuals to classify themselves or their newborn children as Indian. But he went even further and spent decades removing the category of Indian from birth and marriage records. Although this paper genocide, as it has been termed, attempted to erase the Virginia Indians from history, the tribal members held firm to their culture and to their identity.…”