Still Here Pt. 1

Episode 140: Correcting the Narrative With Gray Parsons of the Secotan Alliance

Gray Parsons speaking at the Standing Rock rally at the U.S. Capitol in 2016

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You’ve likely heard of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, maybe Tecumseh. And if you’re a serious History Fix listener you’ve probably heard of Wingina too, who also went by the name Pemisapan. If you’re scrambling to place the name, I’ll help you out. Wingina was the weroance, or leader, chief, of the Algonquian speaking Secotan people who lived in coastal North Carolina when the first English colonists arrived in the 1580s. Wingina’s story, as we know it, mostly unfolds in the years 1585 and 1586 during the second of three Roanoke voyages. The first in 1584 was a scouting expedition led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, to find a good location for the first English colony in the Americas. The second in 1585 through 86 was a military expedition led by a rather disagreeable military leader named Ralph Lane. The purpose of this second voyage was to set up the settlement, actually build the fort and the buildings. The final voyage is the most infamous, the 1587 attempt at a permanent colony which, despite complete disaster the previous year, carried around 120 people, including women and children, into known hostile territory. Predictably, it did not go well. Wingina’s storyline intersects with that of Ralph Lane and the soldiers of the second expedition. Initially friendly, Wingina welcomed Lane’s men, allowed them to settle on Secotan land, even provided them with much needed food. Eventually, due to European diseases and irrational violence on the part of the English, the relationship soured. As Wingina understandably backed off, withdrawing much of the help he had initially offered the English, Ralph Lane began to spiral into the realms of paranoia and conspiracy. This all came to a head on June 1, 1586, a day that ended with one of Lane’s men emerging victorious from the woods, Wingina’s severed head clutched tightly in his fist. With this death, this murder, Wingina became the first Indigenous American leader to be killed by English forces specifically for resisting their attempts to colonize. And yet, not many know his name. Not many know about the impact Wingina’s story continues to have in, not only this region, but the country and even the world. Let’s fix that.

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and this is History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Thanksgiving is upon us once again. Thanksgiving is a particularly difficult holiday for anyone truly invested in history. There’s this unsettling disconnect between this really happy, feel good, family holiday and the extremely tragic history it’s been tied to. I have a whole episode about that, episode 36, if you want to dive deeper. But this Thanksgiving, I want to shift the focus a little bit. We can talk about history from the usual perspective all day long. We can talk about Massasoit and the Wampanoag. We can talk about King Philip’s War, we can even talk about the Indian Removal Act of 1830, but what the history books, the facts and figures on all that, what they can’t give us is perspective. And, to be perfectly honest, I can’t give you perspective on all that either. So, I’m doing something a bit different this week and next. I’ve recruited a couple of people who can give you that much needed perspective. This week you’ll hear from Gray Parsons, leader of the Secotan Alliance, and next week, Chief Marilyn Berry Morrison of the Roanoke-Hatteras tribe. Guys, please don’t miss these. I came away from these interviews with eyes opened and heart changed because, like I said, I can study history all day long but perspective, the Rosetta Stone for understanding it all, comes through connections with people who have lived it. 

So, I approached both Gray and Chief Morrison with a particular quandary. When we think about Indigenous people living today in what is now the United States, we often think only of reservations out west. We know there are Indigenous Americans in the western part of the country. But, for the most part, there is a belief, a misconception, that Indigenous people no longer exist along the east coast, that they either died of disease, and many of them did, 90 to 96%, or as victims of violence, or that they were forced to relocate west. But the totality of the belief misses the mark. Because, while, yes, many died or were forced to leave, there are still people of Indigenous descent living in the east, more than you might think. And to ignore their existence is to deny their contributions to our society throughout time. So, my main questions for Gray Parsons and Chief Morrison were why do you think this misconception exists, this extinction myth, and what can we do to rectify it. You’ll hear from Gray first. 

Gray: I'm Gray Michael Parsons. For purposes of this podcast, I think  I'm the founder and president of the Secotan Alliance. And I'm also the author of Hope on Hatterask and Pampico Blue. And I live in Frisco, North Carolina on the Outer Banks in the heart of where the Secotan Alliance territory was in the original Secotan Alliance that was managed by others, but Chief Wingina, Pemisapan, would have been the most prominent in history. And I'm retired. 

Shea: So you're staying busy in retirement, it sounds like. 

Gray: Yeah, very much. Yeah. I've lived here for about six years but feel like I've lived here my whole life because I grew up in what we call Little Washington, North Carolina, which is really the very, very extreme Western boundary of the Secotan Alliance. And I was raised by my grandparents who were born in 1885 and he was indigenous to Hyde County and was a commercial fisherman. So he was in this area all the time. And I grew up hearing all the different names of the islands, the inlets, the sounds, etc.

Shea: Yeah. Amazing to think of someone being born in 1885. You know, that's just, that's really amazing. And then that kind of jumps to one of my questions I had, was just uh tell me a little bit about your ancestry. What do you know about it?  What are your personal ties to indigenous culture?

Gray: Well, I am a mix  and most of us are. I think technically everybody on the earth is a mix based on  different migratory patterns. I know we define ourselves generally as one or the other or sometimes, you know, multiple, but my particular predominant DNA is, the blood is mostly European. I have small amounts of West African DNA and indigenous DNA, most of which is North Carolina, either the coast or the mountains. But culturally, I was raised outside of an indigenous community. And there are many, many, people like me with respect to the blood quantum, if you will. And we struggle, especially when I grew up. I was born in 1949. And at that time, at that place, a small rural southern town, you didn't print a flag that says I'm American Indian and wave it. 

Being indigenous in the Western hemisphere has unique struggles to living that way. And I'll give you a couple of examples. Traditionally, and I try to be traditionally adherent as much as possible in a very modern hostile world to that culture, we were communal. We were not based on a capitalistic economy that uses profit as its primary motivation. We truly believed in one of the Christian ethics in the Christian Bible that says, I am my brother's keeper. We didn't say it that way. But we believe that if someone's in need and we have the ability to ameliorate that challenge in their lives, that, to the extent that we don't compromise our own safety and wellbeing, we owe it to that individual or group of people to help them. Now, that doesn't mean we take care of them for the rest of their lives, but we all go through challenges and there are moments in our lives when we need help in one way or another. That's one of the things that when we look at today's world that's highly defined by American culture everywhere. It has evolved way more towards the greed and materialism as baked into being American. We're a consumer nation and indigenous people, and not just indigenous people, lots of people that are tied to the earth in one way or another, try to not overconsume. We try to live based truly on need. And those, I think, are a couple of the very defining principles and in most cases differences from dominant culture. 

Shea: Yeah. Yeah. So I know, you know, you talked about kind of the indigenous groups out West, I think have much more of a presence and I think people are much more aware of them. I do feel like there's this misconception that I see quite a lot where people sort of think that the indigenous people on the East Coast are no longer here. And I know there, you know, there was a lot of sickness and death and there was a lot of with the Indian Removal Act, a lot of them were forced out west and that sort of thing. But I know there's still a presence and a culture that exists on the East Coast. And I know that's part of sort of your mission with Secotan Alliance to sort of preserve that. Why do you think this misconception exists though?  Why do you think so many people are unaware of this continuing Indigenous presence, specifically in the eastern part of the country? 

Gray: Well, I think a lot of that can be blamed on the perpetuity of the appearance model that's been built and sustained and still is largely by the different elements of the media. And I don't mean just news, but even documentaries. It's amazing to me that even in meetings with what we might call allies, people that are sympathetic, that believe that they understand the challenges we face, particularly here in the East, ultimately most of them don't really get it. You look on TV, you see the appearance model that is projected. It's primarily the Plains Indians and they have a very specific look. And that look changes by the way, if you go to the Southwest, there's always some presence of color, it varies, but hair texture, height, weight, all of those things change. The Southwest Pueblo people are on the short side for the most part. The Inuit, the people in Alaska and that area, tend to be much heavier. The Plains people on the other hand, generally, were tall, angular, long flowing black hair, and that's where that model comes from. So as a kid growing up, when I'm watching the Lone Ranger on TV in the 50s, I'm seeing the Lone Ranger looking at my skin tone and I'm looking at Tonto, the character J. Silver Hills was his name, who played the American Indian compatriot to the Lone Ranger. And I'm thinking, well, I don't look like him. Yet, my family had acknowledged, and depending on who you talk to in the family, that there was Native ancestry. And it took me really half of a lifetime to be able to get to a point  in my maturity and evolution to embrace it completely and to feel comfortable and authentic in that way. And what I've learned in that process is that for many of us, American Indian or Native American or North American indigenous is not really a race for most of us, race being biological. It's really a culture. It's a spiritual belief system. And  by the way, I obviously do not speak for all indigenous people. We're about as diverse as it gets. You will find Christian people that are indigenous, Jewish people that are indigenous, Muslim people that are indigenous, Buddhist, and everybody sort of defines it in their own way. I have chosen and many of us have chosen to be a bit more aggressive because we are not represented. And that becomes an inter and an intratribal, if you will, problem because we, in the East, our cultures, most of them were either decimated or almost irreparably harmed. And that was due to colonization. And where I come from and where Chief Morrison and other people from the Outer Banks come from, we lost that appearance model in about two or three generations for the most part. We intermarried largely with Black, with poor whites, indentured white servants. And so those genes began to wash out that appearance model that you see largely intact as you move west. Where we are here on the Outer Banks is ground zero, for that colonization. It's ground zero for all the things that none of us expected or were prepared for. And the result of that was that we either look black, white, and some of us do look like the model, but that's a rarity these days. I think that is the singular greatest problem. The other one  is that we've been shoved aside even by the academics. I'll never forget this, and I'm going back easily 30, 40 years ago, and I was reading in a book, and it was talking about the people that I descend from in Hyde County, one of the people anyway, the Machapunga. And it said,  Machapunga is an extinct tribe. I was not as astute about the definition of tribe, the organizational structure, tribal politics, et cetera then. And I thought, you're saying I don't exist or that part of me that is that, that I don't exist. And so even the places where we think we can depend on objective data, even that is not objective because they have a lack of understanding of what indigeneity really is or is not. It's really a way of life, a way of thinking. It's in your heart, it's in your mind, and it's a choice, really. 

Shea: Yeah. I feel like we often think of it, like you said, kind of like a biological race, but I like how you're looking at it more as like a cultural perspective, like the way that you view the world and the way that you interact with the world that sort of ties all these different groups of Indigenous people together. That's a nice way to think about it that I don't think many people realize. 

Gray: If I may just insert one more thing that's a bit more general, it's not unique to Indigenous culture. Race is a man-made construct. It is not inherent in our natural world. At least it was not recognized that way. I mean, biologically, we are geared, which is a natural way of life, to be a bit suspicious when we see or hear someone or something that doesn't belong in our village. But that's a mechanism that we have not evolved to eliminate out of our biology. But we were given intellect. Intellect allows us to reason instantaneously and evaluate that as a threat or not a threat. And that is what at least the science world says how we differ from the rest of life on the planet. So there's really no excuse in my view of looking at people and seeing differences physiologically, physical characteristics, and assigning a value to them based on that, whether it's the presence or absence of color, hair texture, or any morphological aspect. 

Shea: Yeah. I had never really thought about, you're so right about the appearance model. I feel like indigenous people have been so forced into this stereotype where it's almost like a character. Like, you know, you have like pirates and then you have like Native Americans and then you have Native Americans. I'm thinking of like Peter Pan, honestly, I feel like did so much damage because they have this fantastical world of Neverland where they have mermaids and pirates and fairies and they have Native Americans. And so it becomes this almost fantasy character with this very specific look.  

Gray: Hence the justification for the caricature of the former name of the Washington DC NFL football team. Or the Florida University of Florida or Florida State football team or any number, you know, the ice hockey team in Iowa. All of that is an appropriation of culture. Now, in the case of the Seminoles in Florida, it's my understanding that their tribe is somewhat agreeable, complicit, if you will, with that. So I don't want to speak for them, but I don't like seeing what I see the way the fans express that. You know, it's a tomahawk chop. It goes back to, these guys were warriors. They were ruthless.They were violent savages. No, I mean, we fought when we had to fight like any other person. I mean, let me ask you this, and this is rhetorical, but meaningful. What would you do if you're the leader of your family or a village, and all of a sudden these ships show up, let's say they're Russian, for example, they come in with armor that's superior to yours in defending yourselves and they just basically try to enslave you and your kids. They murder some of you. They rape some of the women. And I'm not saying this happened all the time in every case, but it clearly is there. It's recorded history. Would you just sit there and let that happen? Or would you resist? Of course, we know what you would do. Your husband, your father, all of those people have an obligation to their family and their people. So when I say Chief Wingina was the first Indigenous leader on the North American continent to be murdered by the British military specifically for resisting their colonization, that really, if you put it in the thinking that I just laid out there and what would you do? That should not elicit a defense posture on anyone's part because no one was there then. You're not responsible even if your ancestors were doing that. You're not accountable for that. You are accountable as a human being for recognizing that and going a step further in trying to understand how that has impacted not just us here locally, but how that has impacted every indigenous culture across not just the United States, but South America, West Africa, you name it. 

Shea: Yeah. I think it's such an interesting case with Wingina as well. My listeners are well versed because I've done three episodes now about the Roanoke colonies, so hopefully most people listening are familiar with Wingina. You say resist and that it was very justified that these indigenous people resisted, of course.  And when I think about it, he didn't even really resist that hard. He was very patient with that group of English settlers. And I feel like really didn't deserve what happened to him at all. I felt like he was very gracious and patient.

Gray: May I explain one character, one element of why that was? I explained part of that earlier when I talked about our moral obligation to help people. And then once he learned that they were not coming here to visit or trade, they were coming here to stay and not even stay in a small area. They were coming to take over. His father, Ensenore, was still alive. And we have a very strong moral obligation to our elders to listen to their wisdom. Ensenore is the one that kept pleading with Wingina to hold off.  He said, don't draw the ire, not in English words, obviously,  but don't get Ralph Lane mad at you. And so Wingina, to our detriment, honestly, because Ensenore was bedridden, he couldn't be out seeing firsthand what was going on. Wingina saw it. So Wingina was all ready to resist, but out of respect for his dying father, he didn't right away. So that was not a strategic error on his part. It was very complicated. And by the time he did make that run across the sound to try to get the Chowanoke to negotiate a broader alliance with the Tuscarora, and he came back. Ralph Lane had found out about that. He called a false flag meeting, a white flag meeting. He goes to the principal village the very next day and beheads Wingina. 

Shea: Right. And you know, I think it's interesting. There are certain indigenous leaders that we're very familiar with. Wingina is not one of them on like a national scale. I think we're familiar with him in this area, obviously, because of the local connection. I don't think it's a name that's taught very much elsewhere in the United States. But it does seem very significant. Like you said, he was the first indigenous leader to be killed by the English. 

Gray: Let me correct. I want to make sure I'm very specific about that. The French and Spanish came through early. They killed indigenous people. But the language you and I are speaking in right now is neither. It's English. The English are the ones that count. And the seed of colonization for England was planted right here. This was their first attempted colony. And the first indigenous leader on the continent to be murdered by the British specifically for resisting that is Chief Wingina. 

Shea: And that sets, it sort of sets a precedent, doesn't it, for like everything that happens after. It's like, they've ripped off the band aid with Wingina and now they've sort of opened the door to do whatever at Jamestown or Plymouth or all these other places that they end up settling next. Yeah, almost starts like this domino effect of like, well, we've already done it, so might as well carry on with the violence and everything. Yeah, pretty important moment there. yeah, wild. One question I had, you we talked about this misconception of Indigenous people sort of no longer existing in this area, like you used the word extinct and that sort of thing, and how that misconception is damaging. Like you said, reading that book, it was like they were telling you you didn't exist. What do you think can be done to fix that or to rectify this misconception that has gone on for so long? What can we do to help fix that?

Gray: Well, as I said earlier, it's not just the academics, it's not just the absence of information in the general population. The recognition process by the federal and state governments, I believe by design, or at least the effect of that is it reduces the number of Indigenous people. Now, it doesn't mean, for example, the Roanoke-Hatterask tribe here locally are not federally or state recognized. What they did get about a year ago was at least the Dare County commissioners recognize them. But the recognition process is full… One of the principles, the federal part of that is that you have to show continuity from day one, from whenever an English person wrote down that you existed. And for most of us, that's John Lawson. And John Lawson never came here until around 1711 or something like that. 

Shea: John Lawson was an English explorer, naturalist, and writer who travelled to coastal North Carolina in the early 1700s. I mentioned him briefly in the Roanoke Colonies episodes because he was the one who recorded that, when he travelled to Hatteras Island and encountered the Indigenous people living there at that time, he wrote quote “These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were white People, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirm'd by gray Eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians, and no others,” end quote. 

Gray: So consequently, the Tuscarora of North Carolina don't fit that on the state or federal level. But think about that. The feds say you have to demonstrate continuity. Well, guess who the perpetrator was that disturbed that continuity? It was the same entity that says you have to have and demonstrate continuity. It was the federal government. And that the state pretty much follows similar guidelines. It's like everybody that's indigenous is banging on the door let me in, let me in, let me in, let me be recognized. And once you get inside the door, one of the first things that happens with many, not all, is they turn around and they point the finger at the rest of us and say, you're not really Indigenous, but we are. So we, in that regard, do it to ourselves. We help the other entities that are doing it to us. We're crabs in a barrel in that respect. And that's been so long now, that, and it establishes this hierarchy. And the principle of it on the positive side is that it's set up to protect authenticity of indigeneity.  But that, when it was set up decades ago, maybe a century, I'm not sure, things were a little bit different then. And I just feel that today I don't pay attention to that because I think the overriding need of humanity today is to find a way to live sustainably with the earth. Never mind everything else. If we don't do that, nothing else matters. Civil rights, everything. None of it matters. We either save humanity from itself or everything else is meaningless. What other subculture can you identify that lived on this continent sustainably in a righteous relationship with creation for millennia? And that's what we did. We have that wisdom. It's not rocket science. We have it, we share it, but people are not necessarily ready to hear it and more importantly, understand and live by it. I call that the indigenous Earth ethic. There are unique characteristics about it that go beyond the modern day environmentalism activist model.  

Shea: Yeah, it's like the message is more important now than it's ever been. But I feel like a lot of times it's sort of falling on deaf ears because of this lack of awareness of indigenous people and their ways of life and their beliefs and their perspectives and that, like you said, they were able to do this. They were able to live here sustainably for that long. Maybe we should try what they were doing. But it's difficult to convey that if you think that group is now extinct, you know? 

Gray: What's the first thing we're taught ethically in growing up as a child in this current  country? One of the things, and maybe it's not the first, but is work hard, get ahead, work hard, get ahead. And if you're singularly focused on that, you end up becoming this supercharged consumer. You surpass need and you're bombarded with ads and other reinforcement models that tell you your worth is intrinsically tied to owning, to tangible, to materialistic things. And look, there's nothing wrong with having nice things, but there has to be a balance there where there's a point where you stop working. Our belief is that if you work incessantly just to acquire, and you surpass that need threshold that you're no longer in touch with spirit. Once you lose that connection to spirit, you're subject to man's created adulterated teachings, which occurs in every institution, scholastically, religiously. And that's a dangerous thing. I think that detachment from nature and overwhelming materialism is contributing to a lot of this very aberrant behavior that we see, perhaps some of the mass shootings, et cetera, the trauma, all this stuff, you know? 

Shea: Yeah, absolutely. I think we have so many mental health issues in this country related to that lifestyle and that constant pressure to achieve and get ahead and be better than everyone else. I think that mentality is very toxic. I agree. So, but you know, that's part of, that's an important part of your mission with Secotan Alliance, correct me if I'm wrong, is to bring this awareness and to tie in the environmental, this need to be more sustainable. We need to be taking care of the planet with the indigenous people who were able to live that way. Is that sort of part of your mission with that? 

Gray: Yeah, the two primary missions and they're both important. The first one is to teach the true factual history of what happened here with respect to Chief Wingina, who's in many cases been made out to be a guy who wasn't reasonable. You know, he didn't go along with  capitulation to enslavement of his people. Well, wow, what a shock. 

Shea: Who would? 

Gray: The second one, and probably ultimately the most important one, is to teach the indigenous Earth ethic, the unique characteristics of it. And we partner with environmental groups because we feel like they're the ones that a lot of people look to to tell us where we were, where we are, and where we need to go. But they don't have the resources to reach the everyday American in a way that really penetrates and lodges into their subconscious, if you will. These are very lofty goals. So in order to accomplish them, especially the Earth ethic, Indigenous Earth ethic, we've got to replicate ourselves. So you have to start somewhere. And we're a little over two years old now. So we started, and we are growing. And we're hoping that one of the principles of indigeneity is once you've learned a truth, a wisdom. It's your obligation to share that  with others who have not learned that. That's the only way this happens. It has to spread like a disease, but a good disease. You have to replicate that message. So Shea, I really appreciate the opportunity to get the ears of wherever your audience is. And I implore you, implore not just you, but all the people with ears for this message, please go out and replicate this. And we haven't gotten into the peculiarities of the indigenous Earth ethic, but if your audience can make it to our annual event, that's where we delve into the indigenous Earth ethic. We explain it in detail. We give you examples of it and we ask you to learn it, live it, and replicate it. 

Shea: As I mentioned in last week’s episode, I had the honor of attending this event this past spring. It’s free. Part of it takes place in Manteo, North Carolina and involves Indigenous and academic speakers from near and far. There’s also a night of performances and entertainment that happens in Nags Head, hopefully at Jeanette’s Pier, according to Gray. I will keep you all posted with dates and details about the event which is called “In the Spirit of Wingina.” Be sure to follow me on Instagram @historyfixpodcast for time sensitive updates like that. You can also check out the Secotan Alliance website which is secotanalliance.org, linked in the description. You can even donate through that website to help support the mission. Gray has also written several books, Hope on Hatterask and Pampico Blue, which you can purchase at local Outer Banks bookstores, or Amazon if necessary, also linked in the description. 

Gray: And I do see some change there. I hope it is just the beginning though. 

Shea: And I just see overall a lot more awareness and perspective that has been lacking in decades past. You like you mentioned that book that you picked up that was from 30 or 40 years ago. I like to think things have improved a lot now and that people are a lot more aware and more sensitive about, you know, these issues. So hopefully we'll see more and more of that as well. But I like to like to hope things are changing for the better.  

Gray: Oa kenanaway wadanaweeshi. Thank you for your ears. Wapeech ganaway. We’ll see each other again. 

Shea: Be sure to come back next week for an equally as inspiring chat with Chief Marilyn Berry Morrison of the Roanoke-Hatteras tribe.

Sources:

• "A Description of North Carolina" by John Lawson