The Monacan Indian Nation: Asserting Tribal Sovereignty in the Absence of Federal Recognition

Abstract

I n the spring of 1997, the Virginia Assembly passed a law allowing all Virginia Indians to have the racial designation on their birth certificates and other vital documents changed to read Indian, as opposed to Negro, without having to pay requisite administrative fees.1 How many Virginia Indians came to be classified as Negroes in decades past is a complicated story that will be addressed later in this article, but the act of having their identity (or at least the right to selfidentification) restored was a landmark symbol of good faith on the part of the state government. What is most significant, however, is the fact that the impetus for this legislation came largely from Virginia Indians themselves. Previously, officials in the Virginia Office of Vital Statistics had agreed to change the racial designation of Indians re> questing such alterations, but they refused to acknowledge that their office had historically been responsible for deliberate alterations of vital records, effectively denying Virginia Indians the right to identify as anything other than Negro. Thus, any Indians wishing to have their racial designation properly restored on vital records would have a 91 to pay the eight-dollar administrative fee. Such a fee may seem a pittance under other circumstances, but for Virginia Indians it was a belligerent symbol of legal racism and documentary genocide in Virginia.2 Hence, a grassroots movement among Virginia tribes to lobby for legislation removing such bureaucratic screens that obscured past injustices ultimately resulted in an official act that was tantamount to an