Walter Plecker: genocidal white supremacist, ‘Undesirables born amongst us’

How a long-dead white supremacist still threatens the future of Virginia’s Indian tribes

By Joe Heim July 1 at 7:00 AM

 

Walter A. Plecker’s goal as Virginia’s registrar of vital statistics was to ban race-mixing. He declared there were no true Indians left because of marriages with blacks. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Virginia’s Indian tribes have faced numerous obstacles in their decades-old quest for federal recognition. But one person has long stood in their way — and he’s been dead for 68 years.
Walter Plecker — a physician, eugenicist and avowed white supremacist — ran Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics with single-minded resolve over 34 years in the first half of the 20th century.
Though he died in 1947, Plecker’s shadow still lingers over the state, a vestige of a vicious era when racist practices were an integral part of government policy and Virginia officials ruthlessly enforced laws created to protect what they considered a master white race.
For Virginia’s Indians, the policies championed by Plecker threatened their very existence, nearly wiping out the tribes who greeted the country’s first English settlers and who claim Pocahontas as an ancestor. This month, the legacy of those laws could again help sabotage an effort by the Pamunkey people to become the state’s first federally recognized tribe.

[ A famed Virginia Indian tribe seeks federal recognition amid casino fears]

Obsessed with the idea of white superiority, Plecker championed legislation that would codify the idea that people with one drop of “Negro” blood could not be classified as white. His efforts led the Virginia legislature to pass the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, a law that criminalized interracial marriage and also required that every birth in the state be recorded by race with the only options being “White” and “Colored.”
Plecker was proud of the law and his role in creating it. It was, he said, “the most perfect expression of the white ideal, and the most important eugenical effort that has been made in 4,000 years.”
The act didn’t just make blacks in Virginia second-class citizens — it also erased any acknowledgment of Indians, whom Plecker claimed no longer truly existed in the commonwealth. With a stroke of a pen, Virginia was on a path to eliminating the identity of the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, the Chickahominy, the Monacan, the Rappahannock, the Nansemond and the rest of Virginia’s tribes.

Entering the Pamunkey reservation is a sign announcing the tribe. The tribe is the smallest and oldest documented tribe in Virginia. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post)

 

The tribal center for the Chickahominy tribe is located deep in the countryside of rural Virginia not far from the small town of Providence Forge. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post)

“He told us we had no right to exist as people,” said Powhatan Red Cloud-Owen, a Vietnam veteran who belongs to the 850-member Chickahominy tribe. “He tried to destroy a people like Hitler did. It was a genocide inside of this great country of ours.”

‘It was devastating’

Plecker. For Virginia Indians, the name is an expletive.
“I would call him the villain in our sacred story,” says Karenne Wood, 55, a member of the Monacan, the largest of the Virginia tribes with more than 2,000 members. “As soon as you raise his name, people make bad faces.”
Standing in the graveyard adjacent to the Chickahominy Tribal Center, Steve Adkins, the 69-year-old chief of the tribe in Providence Forge, about 20 miles southeast of Richmond, says he is pained by what his people endured as a result of the Racial Integrity Act.

Chickahominy Indian Chief Steve Adkins speaks about the impact of Walter Plecker on the lives of Virginia's Chickahominy tribe and Virginia Native Americans. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post)

“It forbade giving your child an Indian name,”Adkins says. “And it caused people like my mom and dad to have to go to Washington, D.C., to be married as Indians.”
Others simply left Virginia rather than stay where they could no longer call themselves Indians.
“It caused separations of families,” Adkins says. “It was devastating.”
The devastation lasted decades. Plecker directed registrars around the state to change birth certificates, to cross out Indian and write in “Colored.” He had Indian children removed from white schools and Indian patients removed from white hospitals. He pushed back against Native Americans who tried to maintain their tribal identity, and he rejected federal efforts to acknowledge the existence of Indians in the state.
“Plecker saw Indian identity as dangerous, because he believed it would simply be used as a way station by people who ultimately just wanted to be classified as white,” says Mikaela Adams, assistant professor of Native American history at the University of Mississippi. “Of course, there were many reasons that white classification in 20th century Virginia was extremely beneficial. It meant access to better schools, homes. It meant, essentially, freedom.”
Instead, Indians lost freedoms and very nearly lost their identity. That was Plecker’s goal, as he explained in a 1943 letter that he addressed to “Local Registrars, Clerks, Legislators, and others responsible for, and interested in, the prevention of racial intermixture.”
“Public records in the office of the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and in the State Library, indicate that there does not exist today a descendant of the Virginia ancestors claiming to be an Indian who is unmixed with negro blood,” he wrote. In other words, Virginia was rid of Indians.

A registration of birth and color record for children in Virginia used during Plecker’s term as the first registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics. It required a strict definition of race that eliminated the category of Native American. This was part of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. (Library of Virginia)

Virginia would eventually repudiate the Racial Integrity Act. The law was effectively canceled out in 1967 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an interracial Virginia couple’s right to marry in Loving v. Virginia. And in 2002, then-Gov. Mark Warner (D) officially apologized for the commonwealth’s role. But some of the damage has been irreparable.
“Plecker participated in an official disappearance of these tribes,” says Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “So he might be discredited and the official policy might be to apologize for him, but since the tribes haven’t been recognized, he still has accomplished something that has not been reversed. He’s still winning.”

‘Undesirables born amongst us’

Walter Ashby Plecker was born into a prosperous slave-owning Virginia family on April 2, 1861, just 10 days before the onset of the Civil War. His father joined the Confederate Army in the South’s fight to preserve slavery.
After graduating in 1880 from Hoover Military Academy in Staunton, Va., Plecker attended the University of Maryland Medical School where he earned his medical degree in 1885. He worked as a public health doctor in Virginia and Alabama before being appointed registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1912. The seemingly functionary title was misleading. It was in that office that Plecker would implement some of the most unapologetically racist government policies of the past century.
At the time, eugenics, a pseudo-scientific philosophy espousing racial purity and white genetic superiority, was gaining favor in parts of the United States, not just as a privately held view, but as a matter of public policy. Virginia was a stronghold of this nascent eugenicist movement.
Plecker was an early member of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America, an organization founded in Richmond by two white supremacists that pushed for laws that forbid interracial marriage and opposed immigration by anyone other than Northern European whites.
For Plecker, who married but had no children, there was nothing lower than a mixed-race child. “The worst forms of undesirables born amongst us are those whose parents are of different races,” he said.
The Racial Integrity Act was just one pillar in the legislative legacy that Plecker and the eugenicists created. They also lobbied for the Eugenical Sterilization Act that was signed into law in 1924. That allowed the state to sterilize individuals “afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy.” That law was not repealed until 1974. In February, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to compensate those who were forcibly sterilized, paying each $25,000.

[Virginia General Assembly votes to compensate eugenics victims ]

Plecker’s impact was also felt well beyond Virginia. He lobbied the Census Bureau beginning in 1930 to stop using the category “mulatto” to count mixed-race citizens. Indicating that you were of more than one race was not allowed until the 2000 census.

Pamunkey Chief Kevin Brown goes over documents collected from England being used to prove the existence of the tribe to federal officials in Washington. (Timothy C. Wright/For The Washington Post)

Walter Plecker sent this letter in December 1943 to reinforce his views and the laws he drafted. Plecker’s policies pressured state agencies to reclassify most citizens claiming Indian identity as colored. (Library of Virginia)

 

He was obsessed with genealogy and tracing the racial background of everyone in the state. In her book, “Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries,” Old Dominion University historian Helen Rountree recalls an exchange of letters between Plecker and U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier in 1943. Collier believed that Plecker’s policy regarding Indians was too strict. Plecker countered that his policy was justified because of his extensive research into race records dating back a century.
“Your staff member is probably correct in his surmise that Hitler’s genealogical study of the Jews is not more complete,” Plecker boasted.
Plecker retired in 1946. Despite his outsized role in Virginia’s history, he remains a relatively unknown figure. Though the history of racism and Jim Crow is taught in Virginia’s schools, neither Plecker nor the Racial Integrity Act are mentioned, according to the Virginia Department of Education.
There is perhaps only one story about Plecker that provides Virginia’s Indians some satisfaction. On Aug. 2, 1947, a year after retiring, Plecker stepped into a Richmond street without looking and was hit and killed by a passing vehicle. He was 86.
“That was good for us,” says Adkins, with a wry smile. “He was going strong until the end. He wasn’t stopping.”

Blitz of opposition

There are currently 566 federally recognized Indian tribes, none of which are from Virginia. In order to receive federal recognition, and be eligible for the housing, education and health-care funding that comes with it, Indian tribes need to meet several criteria heavily weighted to historical documentation.
Because Plecker spent almost all of his public life trying to eliminate the recorded existence of Virginia’s Indians, it has made attaining federal recognition all the more difficult for the tribes.

Then-Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell joins the chiefs and members of the Pamunkey and Mattoponi Tribes for the annual Tax Tribute Ceremony at the Executive Mansion in 2010. (Photo courtesy of Michaele White, governor’s photographer)

 

Andrew Tyler, a member of the Cherokee tribe and a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, poses for a photograph during a break in dancing at the Chickahominy Tribal Center near Providence Forge. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post)

 

The 208-member Pamunkey tribe has chosen to pursue recognition through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a laborious and expensive process that has lasted years. The bureau was expected to rule earlier this year on whether to grant the Pamunkey federal recognition. But at the last minute, following a blitz of opposition, that decision was postponed.

[Decision delayed on federal recognition for Virginia Indian tribe]

Leading the fight against the Pamunkey bid was casino giant MGM, which is opening a $1.2 billion casino in Princes George’s County next year and does not want competition in Virginia. The Pamunkey have not said whether they would open a casino if they were granted recognition, but MGM isn’t waiting to find out. It teamed up with Stand Up for California, an organization that has fought tribal casinos, to oppose Pamunkey recognition.
In March, Stand Up for California wrote to the Bureau of Indian Affairs saying that some members of the tribe descended not from Indians, but African Americans, and therefore should not be recognized. For Virginia Indian tribes and their supporters, it was galling to hear the same argument that Plecker once made now being repeated to again challenge their identity.
“The whole spectacle of folks ganging up on these tribes, in my view just promoted and funded by the casino industry, is just outrageous,” said Kaine, the senator. “They’re building off the back of a horrific eugenicist to try and make their argument.”
MGM officials rejected that characterization. “We object to any depiction that we are in any way associated with the despicable practice” perpetrated by Plecker, said company spokesman Gordon Absher. “MGM Resorts is a national leader in diversity and inclusion. Insinuations to the contrary cannot be further from the truth.”
Kaine and members of both parties in Virginia’s congressional delegation have long supported passage of the Thomasina E. Jordan bill, which would provide federal recognition through Congress for six Virginia tribes: the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi and Rappahannock. To help win political support, the six tribes gave up the right to open casinos or other gambling ventures.
Kaine says he is encouraged that the bill passed out of the Senate subcommittee early in this legislative session and is hopeful that it will do the same in the House so that it can eventually be voted on by the entire Congress.
For Steve Adkins, the Chickahominy chief, federal recognition would stamp out all of Plecker’s efforts by making a statement: “We are who we say we are.”

Seth Adkins, a member of Virginia's Chickahominy Tribe, dances at the Chickahominy Tribal Center near Providence Forge. The tribe hosts a regular meeting to teach the history and culture of Native Americans. (Timothy C. Wright/For the Washington Post)

Going home

Powhatan Red Cloud-Owen’s mother, Minnie Adkins, was 25 when the Racial Integrity Act was passed. The idea that she would no longer be considered an Indian in Virginia was so distressing that she and her sister left their tiny hometown and moved to New York. There they took jobs cleaning homes, and Minnie eventually married an Indian from another tribe and settled in Queens. She was proud of being a Chickahominy and would help out at the American Indian Community House, a meeting place for Indians from all over the country who had moved to New York.
Red-Cloud Owen grew up in New York, but he spent his summers in Virginia with his cousins and other members of the tribe. At 15, he moved to Virginia so that he could attend an all-Indian school. He decided to stay for good, but his mother would never return to live in Virginia again. She died in 1974.
Before she died, however, she made a request, Red-Cloud Owen says. She wanted to be buried in the Chickahominy tribal cemetery, next to the tribal center and near the small town where she grew up and knew the name of everyone and every tree. Buried in Virginia. Buried as an Indian.

Joe Heim joined The Post in 1999. He is currently a staff writer for the Metro section's Local Enterprise team. He also writes Just Asking, a weekly Q&A column in the Sunday magazine and is the paper's resident Downton Abbey expert.

hEyOkA mAgAzInE: ROBIN ON NAFPS

A respected Native American grandmothers experience of being assaulted by New Age Fraud and Plastic Shamans.org

John LeKay: When did you first hear about NAFPS and why did you join this group?Robin: I first heard about the NAFPS through a member of their group. It was my first time that I had ever gone into a forum on the internet. When I first went into the forum, it was very foreign in the sense that there were many names of people in research and frauds, that I had never heard of. I tried to read through as many posts as I could to grasp what the main focus of the group was. However, I myself had a specific role to play when I joined the NAFPS and that was to involve myself on the inside of a group called the CKY to expose who and what the group was, to obtain as much information on the individuals as possible, especially those that held the ranks of what they called "priests, clan mothers, and chiefs".

JL: After reading the numerous posts in the so called "research" and in "fraud" columns, what was your initial gut reaction, your intuition telling you about to what you had read?

Robin: As I began to read through the posts on groups or individuals, I saw a pattern within the group which I had discussed
with another member, and that was; for the number of members that were in the group, I saw only a small handful that posted or responded. Those that posted would sometimes cut and paste emails of outside individuals, without any substantial proof the person existed or what they said was truth. Most of the postings were based on mainly links provided, which many times led to more hearsay of others. Some links did provide, in reading, show that the the group or individual proven evidence that the public should be wary of.

Also, I became aware that it was common practice that if a post was made of an individual or group, it was bombarded by several posts of accusations, hearsay, at times much deletion and editing (and in reading what was deleted or such that the person defending themselves did not write things that warranted such editing nor deletion). This reminded me of seeing a child in a school yard being ganged up by several children. These were usually posted as "childish behavior, insults, racial remarks" to give a few examples that were and still are used; giving the impression to many reading the post that the person defending themselves are viewed as a guilty person through unfounded remarks.

When nothing more could be said, then another post would be started on a new subject or person. I, myself, saw a small portion of the many posts where someone from the group actually went out and gathered facts that were of credence.

My own personal feelings on the matter was that I was involved within a group that was damaging people that may not have deserved what was printed about them. I knew that the nafps was not what it appeared and before Mr. Carroll and I had a disagreement, I had already made the decision to leave the group

JL: What conclusion did you draw as to what this group was about?

Robin: My conclusion of the group as a whole is based on not my opinion but facts. The whole system of the nafps is based on emotions of dysfunction, there are contradictions; much are based on "do as I say, not as I do". The group as a whole consists of white people that have little to no knowledge of native people and customs, except through books, cyberspace, and limited contact with native people. When there has been in the group - actual tribal members - when expressing their view on something, in most cases have been brushed aside or attacked. What is held sacred in the group is not that of native culture, but moreso of themselves and their beliefs on how native people should act or behave according to their standards.

This is not a group that base their foundation on native culture, but that of personal beliefs of what they have either read, or picked up small bits of information from actual native people. The saying that some people know enough to make them dangerous, in this case it would rightly apply.

JL: Why did you have a disagreement with Mr. Carroll?

Robin: There had been communications between Al Carrol and myself about the CKY, and what I was going to do. Once I joined into the CKY group, I tried to converse with as many people as I could to gather whatever information I could. The CKY based their beliefs on new age of Atlantis with a mix of Mayan, very little Cherokee and other beliefs that were totally made up by members. As soon as I joined I was told I would call Jerry Edwards along with other male members "priests". I replied that if I was to follow "traditions" then they should do the same and speak to me only through my husband and not myself directly.

This angered Jerry Edwards but not to the degree of kicking me out. About the third day of being a member, I had received a phone call stating there was a picture of me and a map of my location on their web page. I immediately emailed them and told them if they did not remove it I would contact the police and FBI.

Within 2 weeks I received a letter from an attorney representing them with unethical threats. In first reading it, I thought it was a joke, due to the stationary used, the way the letter was worded unlike all the attorneys I know. So I called the attorney and it was not until I left a message that I was calling the bar association then did he return my call. In my conversation with him, he was very vague unlike the accusations that were stated in the letter. In the meantime I did begin the process to file a complaint against the attorney.

I had retained an attorney in Ky. that would take the case. I had received a letter from Al Carroll that backed up what my case was based on. In the meantime, Al Carroll had posted on his site through a cut and paste that one of the members of the CKY was going to join the group, this person named Starr was one that was involved in the case we were building against the CKY and had given Edwards' attorney false information about me.

When reading the post from Al Carroll in his group it as I said was a cut and paste of a letter that was to appear to be that of Starr. In his posting he said that Starr had seen the wrongs by the Edwards and was now going to join the nafps. This became a contradiction, and also a conflict of interest concerning my case against the Edwards, Starr and their attorney. When I stated to Al Carroll he was wrong for allowing her into the group at that time, I felt he was slapping me in the face as I stated to him. His response which he has now removed from the nafps board, but I have a copy of , was of this" did you not forget that you yourself was once a delusional and confused woman that was a member of the CKY"? This statement that he made was a means to validate what he was doing. And to make it appear that I was actually a real member of the CKY but had come to my senses and was converted into exposing frauds.

So I posted emails between he and I showing what he was saying was not the truth, that he was compromising my case by changing his story of what the truth was. He deleted many of them shortly after I posted them. In his personal emails to me, he thought I was wrong for being angry, that what he had posted should have no bearing on my case( which in fact one of the strongest points in my case were based on what Al Carroll had stated in a letter to the bar association and the public) That I was disrespecting him, and then continued with emails with taunts. However he had for whatever reason changed his mind and instead posted that I myself was nothing more than a confused woman involved in a fraud group.

Since that time he announced that this woman "Starr" had joined the nafps she made a intro post on July 12, 2006, but has never made any other posts or replies in the nafps.

It was also at that time he was attacking Scarlett Kinney. She and I had come to an understanding of each other through mutual respect. I had read her site and in communication understood what she was trying to accomplish and that perhaps I could share some stories with her and some personal insight. This is by far selling out my traditions as stated by Al Carroll this past April in a group forum in Tennessee.

I myself have been very busy and involved this past year with children that have been given up by their biological mothers and are wards of the state. My husband and I took a newborn in last July and just recently finalized the adoption. We are not licensed foster parents and do not receive any kind of assistance nor state aid for what we do, it comes from our pockets. As I stated to Al when he made the post that yes I was selling, but not traditions, I was selling my personal belongings to pay for the attorney fees in the adoption, and if he liked to go on ebay and see what I was selling, had sold and perhaps maybe he would buy something that would be making a positive contribution to a child that needed a good stable home. In the adoption process you must go through several background checks, criminal, physical, and psychological.

My husband and I both passed and in fact it was recommended to the judge through these background checks that the process waive the 6 month grace period. If I was a unstable person or a person of questionable character I would not have been granted the adoption. That in itself shows the untruths that Al Carroll has said about me. I have not had time to doing nothing more than care for children. No where have I sold out traditions, nor made public appearances in regards to ceremonies or teachings of traditions. Al Carroll posted under a unknown name, "That I had sold out to white exploiters" was traced to the Jordan School District in San Antonio, Texas.

 His posting of untruths about me has not come from research, but through words like that of a little boy that needs attention, whether it be good or bad. what is interesting about all this, I am not a public figure in no way whatsoever, I am a housewife, mother, grandmother nothing more. I have nothing to gain in the public's opinion of lying. The public opinion is not a priority in my life, what is, are the children I take in and care for.

JL: Were you also attacked by other members of the NAFPS group or just Al Carroll?
Robin: The dynamics within the group if attacks occur usually fall into the hands of two people, Al Carroll and Moma Porcupine. But if there were a conflict with Al Carroll, I believe that in my situation, if some did not agree with how Al handled the situation, they would not nor did they speak up on the matter. In fact is was quiet the opposite, no one spoke on the matter. It is more an attitude of sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. And go on to the next subject.

However I did forward an email to Barnaby from Al Carroll and I did this only to prove in fact I was truthful in the matter. The answer that came back from him was, " what do you want me to do about it?" In sending it I already knew that I would receive a response that would be of an answer such as that. I did receive a personal email from Annika asking me to reconsider leaving the group, pointing to me that perhaps "Starr" was a changed person and should be given the chance to prove it. But she also stated that if "Starr" was not, it would be easy to see if it was more of a way for a fraud to come into the group to create discord. I did not have it in me to tell her, that I thought Al only wanted everyone to think "Starr" was part of nafps, for the reason which if looking at it from the outside view, was to get drama and more readers in the room at the time. This is also another tactic used to bring people in to read, to create sensational reading. But what it really is, a form of personality dysfunction.

When it comes to confronting Al when he is wrong, there is no objectivity there within the group. It is a matter if you read the
many posts he makes, you will not find any in the group that will voice or posts anything that might be in disagreement with what he says.
And if one does, the pattern is Moma Porcupine will come in and attack the person, then Al may come in with passiveness,.

However they seem to tag team who is good cop / bad cop. Never do they log into the nafps at the same time. In fact when reading some of her more recent posts, there has been a large difference in how she writes. Which is leading me to believe the Moma Porcupine is actually a man pretending to be a woman, or perhaps a man that is like a woman. If you take a closer look at the two main attackers, Al Carrol and Moma Porcupine, why do they do this? Because they have the most to loose on the board, and that is the board itself.

I did feel some undertone attacks with Moma Porcupine at times, which I found somewhat puzzling. Because most of the time it was based on unimportant and unrelated issues that were borderline paranoia. Other than Al Carroll and Moma Porcupine there were no others that attacked me, yet no one made any attempts to defend me either. It reminded me much of a person walking down the street and is mugged, many people walk by yet do nothing, some of the reasons people do this is, do not care, do not want to get involved, or fear alone. There are undertones of fear in the forum, which do remind me of someone living with an alcoholic, there is fear of unpredictability of not knowing what the person will say or do. Always on guard to defend the perpetrator. For fear of being rejected, smeared, damaged or hurt in some way.

JL: Do you know if other members of the group were smeared, damaged or hurt for confronting Al Carroll. Robin: Yes there have been other members in the nafps that have been attacked.






Annika Banfield Bio aka Freija. 5 star member

JL: Who is Moma Porcupine, who is Barnaby McEwan and who is Annika Banfield? Are these the primary players other than Al Carroll? What do they do besides posting on nafps? Where do they live and work?

RL: Momma Porcupine is anonymous. She gives no information of who or what she is, nor where she lives or what she does. I believe she is a man and is actually two different people posting under that name. She has no intro in the group. Barnaby, I can only say he lives in the U.K. what he does, I have no information other than that. Annika is a friend of Al Carroll's she lives in Sweden and has done filming on native American issues.

JL: Do you see a behavioral pattern as to the dynamics of the group? In other words is there internal email dialogue amongst each other as to how they will deal with a NAFPS dissident for example?
Robin: Yes, there are emails that are sent between members in regards to issues posted and how one may handle the situation, what could be said, what to do and not do.

If receiving e mails from Al Carroll stating that if I talked to certain individuals, that it would also make me a fraud. I would have to say yes. I received 3 emails from him in regards to who I talk to. I would like to leave it up to anyone that might read this to form their own opinion of how they would view this as an outsider what this would be considered as. JL: Al Carroll has been unable to prove his apache origin. The fact is he he is not enrolled, recognized or affiliated with any apache tribe. Using his mathematics, couldn't Barnaby McEwan hippy from England also say he is part Mescarleo apache? So could Annika Banfield who is from Sweden?
Why you believe he has not been able to prove who he is or what his roots are and what exactly do you think this would mean to most Native Americans?

Robin: Al Carroll in his own words has stated in his blog were two comments from two native ladies, one he names is Annika, the other Momma Porcupine. Annika I suppose would be native of Sweden, but not here in the states, and Moma Porcupine has stated herself she is not Native American, so I do not know what that statement would actually mean if it is in the terms as I just stated. Otherwise it is a fabrication of Al Carroll trying to pass them off as Native American women. I have seen many friends that are Native American that were adopted out, yet have been able to find and locate their biological families.


I have a daughter-in-law, her father is Hispanic and her mother is Hispanic/native mix, yet she herself does not say she is Mexican/Native mix, she says she is Mexican.
I have seen many Hispanic people for whatever reason say they are native, but has no proof to their bloodline of being native. When a person states they are unenrolled this means 1) Their native roots go so far back that they do not qualify with a tribe according the the tribes Blood Quantum requirements, 2) They can not produce any family names that would link them to a tribe.

In most cases ( I underlined most because it is not implying all) people that are unenrolled under say the two examples I gave, having no knowledge of the culture, language or ceremonies, and in Al Carroll's case I have only seen him use Lakota words which that in itself says quiet a lot. It says he knows very little to none of his own culture that he proudly shouts out. Yet not proud enough to learn it. In my family there are 3 tribes, I myself can converse with all of them. I have been taught the languages, the customs, the ceremonies.

If Al Carroll can not prove he is Apache, nor speak the language, or even know some of the customs, the question would be why does he find it necessary to say he is Mexican/Apache? If you look at what he actually does, that in itself will answer the question.




Al Carroll aka Educated Indian is the ringleader of NAFPS. 5 star member

JL: Do you know how the apache feel about some one who claims to be representing them and is attacking other tribes and medicine people and meddling in their business? What is this doing for intertribal relations?
Robin: I have one friend that is from the White Mountain Apache Tribe. We have discussed this issue in the past. It has angered her to see Mexican people state they are Apache. As she has said "none of them speak our language, what do they know about being Apache?"

I am not a member of the Apache and can not speak for them, but what I will say on the subject is that no tribe wants anyone that is not appointed to speak for them, speak out on matters that concern their traditions or culture.
John if I may put it this way, you are from England, is that correct? How would the people in England feel if someone from a foreign country set up a web site to discuss matters of the political, and religious practices of England? How many Catholic Popes have declared Kings and Queens of England to be heretics? It is the same mind set. Do foreigners have the right to appoint themselves to be over seers of other countries? No, just like in this case with the nafps they do not have the right to oversee matters that do not concern them, they do not live under the same laws as those on reservations.

They do not live in the conditions, nor walk out of their homes every morning and deal with the issues that many on the reservations are dealing with on a daily basis. There may be one or two on the board that might live in the Native communities and deal with these issues, but it does not give them the right to speak on behalf of their tribe or other tribes. The native communities are filled with gangs, violence, poverty, abuse, homeless, jobless. The forum itself instead of focusing on a handful of frauds, they would be more constructive if they were working with the tribes to help the many overcome the issues that I have pointed out. It is very sad to see in a recent posting that one of their members who works with his tribe to cultivate their natural resources to improve his tribe and preserve for their youth's future, to be put under a microscope by Moma Porcupine and try to imply that he is exploiting his culture.

Read what Martina Looking Horse, Arvol's sister has posted recently , in it she speaks about outsiders and the damage they have and are doing to the Lakota people. She herself along with many others do not want outside meddlers involved within the Lakota communities, customs or traditions. What would make the nafps exempt from this? Nothing, this includes all with no exceptions.

JL: Would you say that this group is doing more harm than good or vice versa?
Robin: I myself have seen very little positive come from the group. As a whole they may think they had done much good, however that is a state of denial that many of them are in. The tribes themselves are the ones that should and are handling frauds. To have people that are not enrolled in the tribes, having stepped out of their boundaries and have imposed themselves in matters that do not concern them is disrespecting the elders and traditions. JL: Have you ever known this NAFPS group to retract their comments or humbly apologize to anyone?

Robin: I myself have never seen anyone apologize in a sincere or humbling manner. Nor have I seen anyone retract any comments made toward a person they were attacking.

Jaye LaValle letter

Tommy Lightening Bolt on NAFPS

BEWARE