Carolina Indigenous Geechee Land & Textile Knowledge

For me, creating with my hands, and sharing creative hand experiences with others helps me focus my mind and stay positive. Being bound to my ancestral homeland empowers me to be grounded, and gives me the strength to not give up, no matter what. The rest is Divine Mercy. Blessings poured out on my life from God’s grace through sanctification. This month I’ll share some of the life lessons shared with me by four generations of women relatives associated with growing, harvesting and using the indigo plant as medicine. This knowledge comes from Indigenous and Geechee people living in Coastal Carolina around the Pamlico Sound, north to Currituck and south to Ancient Grandfather (now known as The Angel Tree) inland to Contentnea Creek Homeland. Once we were a Southeastern outpost of the Algonquin people who lived adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Florida.

In North Carolina, my mother’s mother is part of the remnant of The Tuscarora (Skaru:re) Confederacy, that stayed behind on the land hiding out in plain sight known as Gatekeepers. My grandmother, Minnie Woodard Haskins, was a Wind Talker, with an abundance of knowledge about the land, who could grow anything. Her mixed blood mother, Harriet, was a root medicine practitioner, and her full-blood Tuscarora father was a Pamlico and Contentnea Creek fishing and hunting guide, trapper and medicine man. My mother’s father was from the Low County on Johns and Kiawah Islands in South Carolina. His grandmother was a French speaking Geechee indigo doula and herbal healer, who’s mother and grandmother came to Charleston from New Orleans. Supposedly, she was a quadroon from Treme. Each of these ancestors transferred knowledge to me, and are apart of who I am today. The women in my family were excellent at keeping secrets because being outwardly indigenous was dangerous. Many generations ago, we mastered making ourselves invisible and blending in. However, now that I’m the last of the bloodline, and in honor of my dying momma’s prayers to share the cultural textiles history which we protected as sacred, I’m sharing our stories, traditions and ways of doing.

I’ve been blessed to participate in Indigenous Fashion Arts in Toronto and Calgary, Canada. I’m the last of my kind to represent Toisnot Skaru’re (Tuscarora) people with blood ties to the James City Settlement near the Pamlico Sound. Of all the Native Americans in Eastern North Carolina, I never imagined that my cultural traditions would be shared with the world. It’s an “Amazing Grace!” Join me in the third act of my life, as I share what I now know to be the purpose of my life, Indigenous Geechee Textiles, as tradition and contemporary art.