For the first time in centuries, on a stretch of land surrounded by trees with the backdrop of a glittering river, the Nansemond Indian Nation had its annual pow wow on land it officially owned.
“It’s just a wonderful time of celebration,” Assistant Chief David Hennaman said. “The turnout was absolutely huge, and I like to think it was people that were coming to help us celebrate for the first time being the sole owners of this property and tribal land.”
The Nansemond are the indigenous people of the Nansemond River, a tributary of the James River in what is now Suffolk. The name means “fishing point,” and the tribe fished, harvested oysters, farmed and hunted in the area long before English settlers arrived.
The Nansemond were displaced from the land beginning in the 1600s, but many descendants stayed nearby. The tribe formally organized and elected officers in 1984 and applied for and received state recognition in 1985. It was federally recognized in 2018.
The pow wow, a homecoming as the tribe describes it, has been on land at the end of Pembroke Lane called Mattanock Town every year since 1988 — “every year except Covid” in 2020, several were proud to say.
But this is the first year the tribe officially owned that land.
Visitors and vendors crowded the weekend’s pow wow. Dancers decked out in intricate regalia shook, rattled and rolled in a circle cordoned off for competitions. Food tents and trucks sold tacos, barbecue and fry bread.
Assistant Chief Hennaman called the event a family reunion and a chance to share the tribe’s culture with the public.
Suffolk City Council voted in May to transfer ownership of 71 acres to the Nansemond Indian Nation, ending years of back-and-forth between the city and the tribe over the land.
The land went into city hands in the 1970s after the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency shut down a mining operation there. In 2013, the city deeded the 71 acres to the tribe, with the requirement the tribe build a Jamestown reenactment village as a tourist attraction.
The tribe has since shifted its goals for the property to environmentalism, with a conservation plan to ensure the area won’t be developed in the future.
“What we’ve done here is actually secured a homeland, an ancestral homeland, for all of our young people,” Hennaman said. “I feel very, very happy and honored to have been part of bringing something that will travel into the future for our young people.”
Most tribes host a one- or two-day pow wow, and Hennaman said there’s a pow wow somewhere bringing together people of different nations almost every weekend of the year.
Ashley Santoso sold handmade beadwork and ribbon skirts this weekend. She and her husband, who has been active duty in the Navy for 20 years, sell their craft at three pow wows each year: the Nansemond pow wow, the Chickahominy pow wow in Virginia and Santoso’s home Tobique First Nation pow wow in New Brunswick, Canada.
“A lot of beadwork is the representation of your personality,” Santoso said. “You’re not a perfect person, just like beads aren’t perfect, so it’s a way to express yourself by wearing them.”
Amy Silver has been dancing in different styles at pow wows for over 15 years. She makes all her regalia with furs, feathers and beadwork in blues and browns. The regalia represents who she is, she said.
“Blue shows the excitement you have within yourself, and all of the earth tone colors represent all the people across the world,” she said. “I get along with everybody and I show respect. And my outfit and dancing is to show my respect as well as to get that respect.”
Silver is from the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe in North Carolina.
Hennaman said he hoped visitors enjoyed seeing Indigenous people celebrating their culture and heritage.
“Because we’re still here, and a lot of folks don’t even realize that,” he said. “The Indian tribes are still doing very, very well.”
