By the PowhatanMuseum.com
THE NO-BRAINER NOMINATION
WELCOME AGAIN TO ATTAN AKAMIK (Our
Fertile Country)
Continue to Walk in Beauty!
Figure 1: Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna
Pueblo) welcoming DC's local indigenous Auld family to the US Capitol
where Kiros' ancestral relative, Wahunsenachaw (Powhatan II) caucused during
his 16th century lifetime.
L: Kiros Auld (Pamunkey/Tauxenent) represented the Indigenous
Washingtonian presence of a Powhatan Paramountcy descendant to his
ancestral Attan Akamik,(Our Fertile Country) and its city of Washington, DC, the Land
Acknowledged “Place of the Caucus.” This was the location next to the Tiber
Creek on Capitol Hill which was liked on caucus visits with
surrounding aboriginal nations by the 16th to 17th century Wahunsenachaw (or Powhatan II), the Pamunkey Algonquian leader on whose Paramountcy's territory
the US
Capital was built. Kiros maternal descent is from the tribe of Wahunsenachaw and his daughter, Pocahontas
whose portrait adorns the Capitol Rotunda. Kiros who was born in and attended schooling through to Howard University's School of Law in the Nation's
Capital, hails from the only two surviving of the three original District of
Columbia and its Metro Area's Algonquian tribes, the Pamunkey and
Tauxenent/Dogue. These local nations and its many living descendants are
historically documented as living within the original Capital City’s
boundary stones which came from ancient ancestral quarries which his 19th century DC Area relatives later mined. The third tribe of Naoctchtank
who had a beaver pelt trading town next to the Anacostia
River in Southeast DC became extinct
after around 1668 when its last remnant was recorded as moving North to Ohio from a temporary stay on the Tauxenent's Roosevelt Island. The gap left by
Southeast DC's extinct, distinctly named Algonquian Naoctchtank tribe
is recently being questionably claimed by three new state recognized Iroquoian
identified Maryland
tribes whose names were never located within the Capital City.
Since the
Presidential elections, much has been written in our leading national media outlets about Senator Kamala Harris. She
has been introduced as a groundbreaking biracial woman of color’s ascendancy to
the role of Vice President of the United States. On the other hand,
our nation institutionalzed amnesia towards Indigenous Americans is about to
change. Not surprisingly, almost nothing is yet popularly known about this country’s
other first, a female descendant of indigenous custodians of Turtle Island (or the North American continent).
Debra Anne Haaland is that Native which our city’s indigenous Powhatan Museum
will here honor. She is a lawyer, Congresswoman from the Laguna Pueblo in New
Mexico with vast life experiences and an inherited ancient legacy concerning the role
which she is about to play as the Secretary of the Interior.
(Her live video
congratulating President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris https://twitter.com/i/status/1351992670219087874)
However, not surprisingly, as is ever true about national exclusion of Indigenous people from our history, there
has been less press coverage about this other American first. The no-brainer elevation to the Presidental Cabinet is of a
Native American descended from custodians of our Mother Earth, America’s
indigenous Amerindians.
Figure 2: Politically and socially astute Secretary nominated Debra Anne Haaland, Esq. (Laguna
Pueblo) with the seal of the US Department of the Interior whose design, for
the first time reflects the aspirations of that Federal agency.
Honoring an Esteemed Native Leader
Optics is important
and for the first time in our history there is no more appropriate form
of American symbolism as the distinctly Native American images above.
This Presidential season has
probably provided American history with the most ground-breaking firsts in inclusively.
It is right up there with the first female Vice President who is the also a
uniquely tri-racial person of Asian Indian and Afro-Euro Jamaican ancestry in
that leadership office. Added to the Presidential Cabinet makeup is Representative
Debra Anne Haaland, Esq (Laguna Pueblo) a Native American woman. Also included
in the lineup is young Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member. But,
in our opinion the most groundbreaking decision is the inclusion of a Native
American woman as the Secretary of the Interior. She is an indigenous New Mexican
who is tribally enrolled in the historic Laguna Pueblo Nation, a people whose ancient legacy includes the second indigenous North American contact by the arriving 15th century Spanish. To them, her homeland was a second mystical set of Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. The other was the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" in Bimini or La Florida.
Deb Haaland has known
homelessness and poverty while struggling to attain her life's goals. Her life’s
experiences have been one of overcoming the struggle of being a single mom
while balancing the raising of an extremely talented daughter, and starting her first
degree from the University of New Mexico, culminating with a law degree
while balancing motherhood. Learning about her life’s expiries is inspirational since she has had a passion
for helping people from a place of her own understanding of society’s historic neglect of its Native Americans whose people are ironically keepers of the land. This history
places her in the right position as a caretaker of our planet since, as in Native traditions, how we treat our mother, the Earth is linked to our own survival as a specie. With this time
where sensitivity to Mother Earth’s health is at a crucial juncture of a planetary
climate change, Deb Halland’s role in America’s environmental path is no
less prophetic as it is fitting of her heritage.
We in Washington, DC know
too well of the dismissive agenda of not honoring the city’s surviving indigenous
Pamunkey and Tauxenent people of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy and the current
attempts by outsiders to resurrect a dead tribe in threir own name. So, it is therefore easy for
us at the Powhatan Museum of Washington, DC to welcome the Honorable Deb
Haaland to our ancestral homeland of Attan Akamik, to share in the
founding history of Our Fertile Country as an honored guest from the sacred
West. Although she came as a Congresswoman we tribute her in her new caretaker
role as our city’s highest ranking Native American. Her placement will directly
impact on the lives and fortunes of living American Indians. As with America’s
significant world position of planetary influence, she too, as it is with the
Vice President Harris, provide a role model for all women and girls worldwide,
whether Native or non-Native. Too often the Eurocentric tradition is to only
honor European men and dead Indians. President Biden has broken yet again another racist
mold.
Rising From a Rich History
What
makes Representative Haaland a perfect fit for her cabinet role as Secretary of the Interior is her
unique history. Her's is not much different from Kamala Harris’ legacy who was
born from the other ancient Asiatic civilization of the Hindus. Deb Haaland
hails from another of the planet’s noteworthy ancient cultures with thousands
of years honed in uniquely accomplished Amerindian hemisphere replete with multi-storied stone and adobe apartnents, large uniquely organized pyramid cities and temple topped mound builders, accomplished agronomists, mathematicians, scientists and sky-mapping astronomers. Both people are the confident beneficiaries of ancient Asiatic
cultures, one the daughter of a “true” Indian immigrant and the other an
Indigenous descendant of this soil. These Eurocentric termed “prehistoric”
legacies are especially pertinent to the American Experiment. As Secretary
Haaland, her role will be seen as a Native American “keeper of the land” with a connection to
thousands of years in this hemisphere’s human development. Here, the optics of her
role of land husbandry is more profound when one scratches her cultural
surface.
We are the sum total of our history on
this planet. And as we see, Deb Haaland is the byproduct of a uniquely rich
Amerindian legacy, the things that often shapes one’s world view. Yes, she is a
contemporary Native woman steeped in the legacy of early Spanish survival and the imported laws of this land. So, let’s
examine her Native roots.
Her ancestral legacy predates her people’s encounter with the gold-seeking Spanish Empire’s newly acquired Aztec Empire of Central Mexico in the 16th century. This was the time of the Zuni of Hawikuh, and her pueblo neighbor’s 1539
encounter with Mustafa Azemmouri. Called
Estavanico (Little Stephen) he was a 1600 born multilingual enslaved Black (Moorish)
adventurer/ambassador cooperatively seeking the mythological Las Siete Ciudades de Cibola
(the seductive Seven Cities of Gold). This Mexican territory was later acquired
in 1853 by equally encroaching English-American expansion.
Deb Haaland’s
mother was an ethnic Laguna Pueblo. Her Norwegian American father was a
decorated Vietnam War veteran who is appropriately buried with full honors across
the Potomac River’s in our land acknowledged Powhatan
Paramountcy Territory
located Arlington
National Cemetery.
However, the original name of Deb Haaland’s Pueblo people is Kawaik in their language.
“Pueblo” means “Town or vilage” and “Laguna” (”Lake”) in
the imported Spanish tongue, still used along with their indigenous Kres
language group which has continued to be spoken. Their ethnic designation, “Pueblo” was derived from the multi-story type of
indigenous structural town-like style of architectural settlements made of sandstone
and adobe from which their villages were built. Their buildings, gleaming in
the sunlight, were initially mistakenly believed by Estavanico as evidence of
the existence of the mythical gold rich shining City of Cibola,
and conveyed this information back to Mexico.
This myth which spurred the Spanish
adventurer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, originated from an escaping Catholic
monastery’s gold vestments and a raiding Islamic encounter event in Europe. Then, the Americas and Deb Haaland’s
ancestral area were considered the location of some European tales. The 1540 Francisco
Vásquez de Coronado scouting encounter ahead of that infamous Spanish expedition
undiplomatically spearheaded by Estavanico, ended tragically as the scout was
killed for insisting on extracting Zuni women from his hosts.
Unfortunately, Americans are
rarely taught the histories of past and living Native Americans and their
leaders. From an area known for its uranium, undisputed ceramic beauty, turquoise and
silver jewelry, and the fabled land of the Seven Cities of Gold to DC’s Shining City on the Hill, let us hope that
Secretary Haaland’s welcomed role model presence encourages us all to discover
more about our rich Amerindian hemisphere.
NOTES:
Related
- Duties of the Secretary of the Interior include management and conservation of most federal landand natural resources, leading such agencies as the Bureau of Land Managementand natural resources, leading agencies as Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Geological Survey, and the National Park Service.
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- Laguna Pueblo is a Spanish name from the first European contact, was established by the Ka-waik or "lake people" a traditionally self-governing agriculturalists community. It is the largest pueblo of the Keresan people, located off the famous Route 66, forty-five miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico along the San Jose River. It's people have resided in that area of the US since 3000 BCE. This pueblo is one of 100 which are still inhabited.
- Cibola is both the recent name of one of thirty-three
counties of New Mexico and an early mythological Seven Golden Cities of a fabled location from
early Spanish tales.The story was believed by the arriving Spanish in Mexico as the location be found in today's New Mexico. See:Seven Cities of Gold - Wikipedia .
