In February of 2021, I landed in Atlanta, Georgia. To be back in Georgia, the ancestral homelands of my people, gave me very mixed emotions. At that time, I was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was serving as chief of staff to the Principal Chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the tribe who’s Indigenous to this area. And we were in Georgia that day for a meeting in Macon at the Ocmulgee Mounds. This area of Macon grew up along the beautiful Ocmulgee River. This area has over 17,000 years of human history and was the former capital city of our tribal towns, the Atlanta of its day.
Now, you would think that to be back in the homelands would bring feelings of peace and joy. But for many of us, there is still a deep-rooted hurt connected to this land, a hurt that comes from knowing that your family were forcibly required to leave their homes. Yet everywhere you go in this state, you see our words, our language that serve as a blueprint to this state, etched on this landscape. Words like Towaliga or Dalwa-leg-it’s, Tybee or Dabe, Coweta, Muscogee, Ocmulgee. They serve as a whisper from our ancestors who were once here.
(Speaks Yuchi)
Good morning. My name is Tracie Revis. I am a Yuchi woman and of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. My Yuchi name is sahAsAfanE. I’m D@th@, or wolf clan, and come from the Polecat Ceremonial Ground. And you're all on my family's ancestral lands. Lands that I and others are working to reclaim.
Now all too often, Indigenous stories often have stories of colonization and forced removal.
(Video) (Singing)
The Trail of Tears, or The Road of Misery removed tens of thousands of Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. The violence of the 1830s Indian Removal Act did not end when we made it into Oklahoma, and for many of us, removal is not that far removed. Its impact has stretched throughout generations.
My grandmother, my father, my aunts and uncles were all sent to the government-run Indian boarding schools. My grandmother, whose first language was Yuchi, was only allowed to speak English in these schools and had to relearn her native tongue as an adult. Now to be clear, we call these buildings “schools,” but they really served as a place to silence the community and to steal the future culture from generations. And as the first generation of my family to not have been sent to these government-run schools, I still did not escape the impacts of this trauma.
But back to Georgia. So that day, we're at the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. And we began to walk out to one of the mound sites. And as we cross a bridge, immediately my heart skips a beat and I smell a medicine, or a plant that we still use today in our annual ceremonies, E’apane, or our Green Corn. And immediately I am transformed, because I know in that moment that my ancestors are still here. And it was like taking a black and white photo and turning it into color. It was vibrant and real, and it was now.
And as we began to walk out to another mound site, I hear a voice inside of me that says, "What would it feel like to ever live back in these lands? To be here in the homeland?" And as we walk a little farther into another mound site, I hear another voice that says, "We need to create a relationship with this community, and we need to heal together." Fast-forward one year later, I am now living in Macon, Georgia.
(Applause)
I proudly serve as the director of advocacy to the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative. I work every day to bring the tribal voice back to these lands, and to make my nation, my tribe, a co-manager, all while creating Georgia's first national park and preserve.
(Applause)
In September of 2022, the Ocmulgee Mounds had its first visit ever from a Secretary of the Interior, who happened to be Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous secretary.
(Applause)
And that day, she’s in Georgia to look at some land that we had just acquired and we were donating toward the expansion of the park. And as we go to look at this piece of land that is a very sacred piece of land ... It was slated for industrialization. This land that was very sacred, had been raped, overmined, stripped all the way down to the silt. And that day I watched the secretary bend down and place her hand on the ground on an erosion scar. And it was in that moment that I knew that she understood what I had come to understand. And as we began to walk back, she says, "They are still here, your ancestors are still here, and the land will bring back who and what it needs to heal it." To which I can only reply, "Yes, ma'am."
(Laughter)
If my journey has taught me anything, it's that if you take care of this land, it will take care of you. This land that brought me home. In the state of Georgia, we have zero federally recognized tribes, but in the city of Macon, where we have now created a relationship, we are seeing ourselves beyond the landscape. As we reclaim our names and our words, we are seeing ourself in a part of the culture. Recently, we passed legislation in the city that requires that our tribal flag, our sovereign flag, permanently fly over City Hall.
(Applause)
Thank you.
In a land we were never meant to return, this is extremely powerful. Today, as we continue to heal a community, this land is healing us. And with that, I say thank you, mvto.
(Applause)
