Paper Genocide and Afro-Indigeneity

Chickahominy Tribal Members, 1900

    When the first enslaved people arrived in North America, they were excluded from obtaining citizenship or legal protection on this land and were given names to reflect that stateless status as chattel [personal property]. This social death made them "non-persons", stripping them of their human, legal, and social standing in society. Words like slave, negro, n*gger, colored, etc. also do not indicate one's nationality, citizenship, or country of origin. None of these names are derived from geographic locations on a world map, just like there are no countries called Afro America or Africa America. This stateless status of enslaved people was conceived, defined, and systemically reinforced by the ruling class colonialists before and after America's 1776 founding. It was from this inhumane foundation that enslaved people, other people of color, and their descendants have been historically denationalized through legal acts of paper genocide; a systematic erasure of a people by destroying and modifying official documents, excluding them from historical records, and racially reclassifying them. This administrative tool was and is used to make a people, their cultural identity, and their assets, disappear.

    Following Bacon's Rebellion on April 3rd, 1691, ‘An act for suppressing outlying slaves’ was passed by the Virginia General Assembly to address Black people, and persons of color deemed Black [Mulatto, often Indigenous Peoples], who escaped and/or formed independent maroon communities beyond the boundaries of plantations. This was also the first law to legally codify a "white" racial identity as an institutional power dynamic. 

"An act for suppressing outlying slaves", 1691

"And for prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue which hereafter may encrease in this dominion, as well by negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, as by their unlawfull accompanying with one another, Be it enacted by the authoritie aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, that for the time to come, whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever, and that the justices of each respective countie within this dominion make it their perticular care, that this act be put in effectuall execution." -An act for suppressing outlying slaves, 1691

    Through this 'act for suppressing outlying slaves', the Virginia General Assembly empowered 'white' colonialists with a means to regulate the movement of Black people. This regulation included the establishment of formal law enforcement and informal militias to use lethal force against Black people who were deemed runaways. This law also banned interracial relationships/marriage and determined the fate of children who were born from these unions. Any "white" woman (or man in rare cases) who married a Black person or persons of color [Mulatto, Indigenous Person] were permanently exiled from the Virginia colony within three months. If a "white" woman had a child by a Black person or persons of color [Mulatto, Indigenous Person] out of wedlock, she was fined about $3,750 in today's currency. If she was unable to pay that fine in a year, she was sold into indenture servitude for five years to the church and the child was 'enslaved' [indentured servitude for thirty years]. 

   Prior to this act, the term "white" was used casually. People were legally defined/described based upon their nationality and religion: Englishman, Irishman, Christian, Turks, etc. This was the first time that "white" became a legal identity for 'some' Europeans in America. This anti-miscegenation law was written to regulate the societal relationships beyond the boundaries of plantations. This is because people who were racially grouped/legally categorized as Slaves, Negroes, Moors, Mollattoes (Mulattos), and Indians were intermarrying and/or having children with English, Irish, etc. women. This law was used to now legally reclassify these European women as "white women." The racial grouping/legal categorization of Slaves, Negroes, Moors, Mollattoes (Mulattos), and Indians occurred nine years earlier in 1682 with the passage of two Virginia acts (Act 1 & Act 2). What is important to note here is that the terms Slaves, Negroes, Moors, Mollattoes (Mulattos), and Indians were often used interchangeably to define and describe people of color. In other words, the same person who may be called a Slave or Negroe could also be called a Moor, Mollatto (Mulatto), and Indian. Following the 1691 'act for suppressing outlying slaves', the word "white" -as a socioeconomic construct and cultural/racial descriptor to identify a group of people- set a new legal precedent. It is from this act that other American colonies began to follow suit, using similar language and passing the same color of laws. It is essentially the legal invention of "white people" and power dynamics that began to define America's map of racial geography. 

"Register of Free Negroes and Mulattoes," 1819-1833

    A century later in 1793, the Virginia General Assembly passed another law that would also change the America's map of racial genealogy. This law included a requirement that all free people deemed "Black" had to register in local books called Free Negro Registers. These registries remained in use until the end of the Civil War in 1865 and were used to document, surveillance, and control Black people with the use of freedom papers and taxation without representation. It enforced personal taxes, county taxes, delinquency taxes on Black people and severe fines, imprisonment, and enslavement on Black people who did not comply. Any free person of color deemed "Black", which included Mulattoes, were registered in these books. In many instances, Indigenous People were reclassified and registered as Negro and Mulattoe in these books. These actions not only disrupted their tribal sovereignty, but it also added them to the Virginia state and local tax base and legally confiscated their lands. As you can imagine, policies like this also complicated genealogy research for future generations who have strived to locate their family members.

My third-great grandmother Susanna listed in a Virginia County Negro Registry, 1852

     

   My third-great grandmother Susanna was born of the Chickahominy people in the Werewocomoco territory of Virginia. Werewocomoco is about 15 miles Northeast of Jamestown, Virginia; the location where twenty enslaved people arrived in 1619 from Port Comfort on a ship named the White Lion. I do not know when or how Susanna left this territory, but she eventually married my third-great grandfather Allen Dorsey, an enslaved Freedom Seeker born in Maryland, and they settled in Ontario, Canada.  Although she was Indigenous, Susanna was listed as 'Negroe' in a Virginia County Negro Registry in 1852. From 1793 to right before the start of the Civil War, thousands of Indigenous people were listed in these registries as Negroe or Mollattoe (Mulatto).

     This practice of reclassification continued through the 1800s and into the 1900s when racist eugenicist Walter Plecker advocated for the 1924 Racial Integrity Act as Virginia’s first registrar of its Bureau of Vital Statistics. Plecker stated that Virginia Indians were "mixed-blooded Negroes" and used his one-drop of Black blood rule and lists of Indigenous surnames to change the birth, marriage, and death certificates from Indian to Negro. To this very day, these government actions have made it made it difficult for Indigenous/Black People in Virginia to verify genealogy, nationality, and gain state and federal tribal recognition. The first Indigenous Tribe in Virginia to gain federal recognition was the Pamunkey Indian Tribe in 2015. In 2018, six more tribes gained federal recognition. Those tribes are my third-great grandmother Susanna's Chickahominy Indian Tribe, the Chickahominy Indian Tribe–Eastern Division, Upper Mattaponi Tribe, Rappahannock Tribe, Inc., Monacan Indian Nation and the Nansemond Indian Nation. 

    The average Black person in America has a story about an ancestor being Indigenous to this land, yet the legal reclassification and denationalization of Indigenous people makes it difficult to trace this genealogy. Even DNA testing can pose an additional problem. Because DNA testing companies have little to no Indigenous reference bases, that ancestry would not show up. For example, image four people participated in a genetic study to include their DNA in a database. Those four people are Irish, Italian, English, and Polish. If you took a DNA test it would be matched against that database and various percentages of those four groups. Other ancestry, such as Chinese, would not show up because it is not in the database. Most companies also do not have extensive DNA samples from specific tribes or nations. The limited Indigenous DNA reference base samples that companies do have is usually placed into large regional categories such as "Indigenous Americas." If you really want to do a deeper dive into discovering Indigenous ancestry in the form of genetic genealogy, the company 23andMe tells us our maternal and paternal haplogroups. Haplogroups are genetic markers that are unbroken, passed on from our mother through her mitochondria DNA [mtDNA] and the Y-chromosome [Y-DNA] from our father. On our mother's ancestral line, direct Indigenous ancestry shows up as A2, B2, C1, D1, and X2a haplogroups. On our father's ancestral line, Indigenous ancestry shows up as Q-M242, Q-M3, Q-L54, C-M130 and C-P39. My maternal mtDNA is L2b which means that my mother's ancestral line goes back to West/Central Africa. My paternal Y-DNA haplogroup is E-U290 which means that my father's ancestral line goes back to West/Sub Sahara Africa. Keep in mind that our maternal mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups only represent a single ancestral line that does not reflect our entire family tree or the thousands of ancestors that make up our genetic profile. For example, my Indigenous third-great grandmother Susanna's DNA would not be shown along my maternal mtDNA haplogroup line because she is an ancestor on my father's side. The same is true regarding male ancestors DNA not showing up in our paternal Y-DNA haplogroup because they are on our mother's side.

     All of us had two parents, whether we know them or get along with them or not, in order to be born. Having two parents means that we had to have four grandparents. Four grandparents means that we had to have eight great-grandparents. This genetic profile continues to grow into 16 second-great grandparents, 32 third-great-grandparents, 64 fourth great-grandparents, 129 fifth great-grandparents, etc. We are literally a composite of thousands of ancestors genealogically and genetically. All of them have stories and their stories are a part of our reference library of life. This has always fascinated me. The decisions that our ancestors made or didn't make, the professions they had, where they lived, what they ate, the hardships they overcame, their successes, their failures, who they had children with, etc. led to our eventual birth. The purpose of paper genocide is to ensure that we cannot look back. Imagine walking through life with zero interest in learning where we came from and how we got here. How much could we really know about ourselves, and our potentiality, without this reference library of life? 

Peace,

Saladin #AtlantisBuild