 Hello, my name is Chandler Dumeo. I'm from the Atahaki Museum, and I would like to welcome y'all to our conference and our presentation. And we're going to be showing y'all a mess director, Mr. Oliver Wareham. And they're also going to play some videos showcasing some of our exhibits that we have here on campus, and I hope y'all enjoy. Come, come, sit by the fire with me so we can get to know each other. My name is Gordon Oliver Wareham. I'm a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I'm from the Panther Clan. I am the director for the Atahaki Museum, and I want to welcome you to this Seminole Tribal Peoples Museum, located here on the Big Cypress Reservation. We would like to welcome you to the Pass Ford Online Conference, sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Thank you for choosing this session, Atahaki Museum, a discussion with the Seminole Tribe. Welcome and come on in. My name is Cypress Billy. I'm a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I come from the Long Tail Panther Clan. I'm a museum educator here at the Atahaki Museum. I'm also a member of the Long Tail Panther Clan. Currently I work here at the Atahaki Museum as a museum educator. Well, from the beginning of time, I can't tell you then because I was only born 26 years ago. But the thing that I do know about the campfire is that, you know, not only does it provide us with warmth, but it also provides a lot of nourishment to our camp itself. Whenever you lie within a current establishment, purify the area. It offers a cleanliness to the area around you. It gives a good aura. It also resembles an occupation to the spirits that have moved on to the other side. That's what a campfire means to me. Our people say that the campfire in our relationship to it is our grandfather. There's a story that tells about, as an older man, how he would transform into the fire. But I guess that's a story for another time, along with it that you would feed it tobacco and you also feed it the spleen of a deer or any other animal that you can provide. You can go and hunt and you can give it that specific organ. Usually it's the people that reside within the camp itself. The camp itself belongs to the oldest woman. The oldest woman, your grandmother or could be your mother if her mother has moved on. The campfire is fulfilled and the people that upkeep it are usually the people that live within the area of the camp itself. Within a camp there could be several families that live within a certain area or a compound of such. But with it, whoever is up to the task of going and tending to the fire, upkeeping it, getting the wood for it and putting it in are the ones who attend to it. Just whoever is available. You know specific roles like you're the fire person, you have to do it every day. Whoever is around can keep feeding the wood as it goes through. No, not like an open flame, they usually have embers and the embers is still alive. The importance of the fire is everything that brings the camp together. It's the heart of the camp. It's what gives it, it's like its own entity. It's its heart, it allows everything to flow. Whenever you gather around it, you know, it offers a cleanliness. And also it's just a good area to be around. Whenever it brings people together, definitely it does. But more than anything, it's all for storytelling, for cooking, or even just sitting around. It's a hub, it's a space that you come to and that's how you go about learning how your grandparents were. It's a sense where you can actually come and sit down and talk to them. Everything about our Seminole people, you know, up until recent times that we have began writing things down. But before then everything has been passed down orally. From word of mouth, from a grandfather to his son, to me as his nephew. And that's how it goes down to my children and their children's children. And that's how traditions are going to be passed down. And that's the way it needs to be. So you can also get an understanding of who your relatives are, as opposed to, I guess, being infused into this age of technology. You know, it brings you together. And this is all done around the campfire. There's no one way of upholding a fire and each family does things differently. Just because my family and I learn a certain way does not mean that you're going to take these teachings to the next family over, even if we're within the same family, if that makes sense. You're always going to learn something new, different stories from different clans. Today, in this age, we have several clans. We have eight that are recognized. And since I learned teachings from the panther and teachings from my father, who's a part of the bird, that luckily I'm able to learn from two different sides. But if you go out into other reservations or even other families, then you're going to learn a different perspective. So always just be open-minded when it comes to teachings in general. Hello, my name is Chandler Dumeo. I'm from the Hollywood Reservation. And I work out here at the Atatiki Museum in Big Cyprus. And I'm a museum educator. And today I'll be talking about the evolution in history of patchwork and clothing. I'd say it started around the 1500s when the first Spaniards came over here. By then, we were still just wearing buckskin clothing. Or we'd weave it out of palmetto stalks and leaves. If you look at the paintings of Osceola, Wildcat, Jumper, Billy Bowlegs, all these other leaders that they've taken the time to either make etchings, photographs, or paintings of, if you look at their coats and their shirts, a lot of them will have these small little stripes that kind of zigzag, whether that be on their coat, their shirts, or whatever they're wearing. That's called applique. I'd say that's the earliest form of patchwork that we have. And what you would do is you would get a base layer, like a thin strip that you wanted to decorate. Then you would cut out some other material. And then you would hand sew that in whatever pattern you wanted over that small piece of material. But from that, around the 1890s to 1900s, that turn of the century time, when we started coming out of our period of isolation, we started getting introduced to the hand crank sewing machines by Singer. And we started being able to trade for large bolts of fabric. So with that, we were able to express ourselves in a new art form called patchwork. So we were able to make clothes faster and easier, but we were also able to add more to them and decorate ourselves more. And a lot of the early patchwork designs came from things that were around them, but a lot of them also came from beadwork designs that had been around for a couple hundred years already. So designs like animals, plants, things that they saw every day around them that they had already transferred over to beadwork. Some of them were able to transfer over to patchwork. Men's style is usually one piece while women's are usually two. So women usually wear the cape, which is that top part that goes to about their stomach. Or they also wear the skirt, but there's different styles of skirts as well. Men usually wear just one piece, whether that be a shirt, a vest, a big shirt, a long shirt, a medicine coat. The patchwork that you see on my jacket is this one's actually just a decorative style. So they've taken a lot of tiny little strips and sewn together to create a pattern that they liked, but it has no meaning behind it. This one I've only ever heard it referred to as Chevrons, but I know they got it from the soldiers that they were fighting during the war. They see sergeants or lieutenants or people like that with these stripes on their shoulders, so they started imitating that. So this is actually called rickrack. It's just something that they would see at trading posts or stores that they like sewing. There's actually a big shirt over here with a very large piece of rickrack, which is actually a very early form of it. It wasn't until later on they started making smaller ones like you see here. It's just a big part of self-expression and artistry. So wherever you look at, whether it be wood carving, basket weaving, canoe making, even cheeky building, these are all art forms that people take a lot of pride in. You don't realize how much work goes into something like that. My name is Gordon Oliver Warham. I am director for the Ethothica Museum and I'm from the Panther Clan. We are here at the Legend Cedar. This is where we do our oral history and storytelling. Now storytelling in our history is very, very important to be told orally. Most of our lessons that we tell is oral. It's not written down. So for myself, I am a storyteller for my tribe. I learned a lot of my stories from my Ankerosipheris. And so to have a place like this to pass on our knowledge, especially to our young ones, is what we did. This, from generation to generations, passing down on knowledge and our experience to make sure that what makes us seminal continues from one generation to the generations. So the story that we tell mostly here is by Betty Mae Jumper. She was from the snake family. It's the corn lady or the corn woman. The story is very, very important to my people. The story is told from different clans and how it's being told depends. But each one has that uniqueness that we have so we can actually explain the origin of our corn dance. Betty Mae Jumper, she was a very, very important person to my tribe. Not only was she a storyteller, but in the late 60s, she was our first woman chairman, especially in that day to have a woman as your leader was special. And she was a special woman. So not only was she a storyteller and our first trans woman, but she also was a nurse, an alligator wrestler, and also our first editor of the Seminole Tribute. So she was an incredible woman. And for her to have some video here of her actually telling our stories to the next generation and passing on that knowledge is very, very vital. Having that knowledge passed from generation to generations and adding our experience to that knowledge and passing that to the next generation is vital. This is how we link to each other from generation to generation, from mother to child, from father to child. And then they pass on that knowledge. It's what makes us Seminole. So most of the time we told stories is at night time. This is usually there would be one storyteller per family, per plan that would gather the children around a fire. And they would tell stories in a cypress dome. And the storyteller would use the cypress dome as his apotheon. He would speak out into this dome and it will carry his voice throughout the dome. So he did not need a shout. But he would use that fire as part of his instrument because it would create shadows. And he would use those shadows to help tell the story of the characters. So it became a theater for the camp. But at night time when the little ones were sleeping or about to sleep, you would have the mothers, the uncles, the fathers come and tell a story. And they would tell stories to them, not just to get them to go to sleep, but also reinforce those stories, those legends, those knowledge when those children were sleeping. Those words of wisdom when they're falling and sleeping will be the last things they heard for that night. So we all know that the things you hear last or the things you hear will remember. So this was very, very important at this time, at night time, that the last things they heard were the wisdom from the elders. So we have temporary exhibits here at the Ethothic Museum, whether it's alligator wrestling or we just brought down exhibit by Elgin Jumper. Right now we have an exhibit with school kids from the Ethoski. This is a form of storytelling. This is a form of expressing yourself and being inspired by one's culture. So whether it's a painting, whether it's a drawing, whether it's silver making, how one expressed themselves is a form of storytelling and putting that knowledge and that love of one's self and one's culture and one's tradition and showing that to the world that we are still here and how we express that being of here, whether it's in Florida, whether it's in the United States or whether it's in this world is vital. They call us to unconquer. They call us undefeated. How one expressed himself, whether it's in Florida, whether it's in the United States, or whether it's in the world, how we express ourselves, how we show ourselves to this world is important. Having a love for oneself, one's culture, one's tradition and expressing that self to not just a few, but showing the world that we are still here. We are still unconquered. We are still undefeated and showing that through art, showing that our stories are still alive is vital to us surviving. Hello. My name is Cyprus Billy. Currently, I work here at the Athothic Museum as a museum educator. I currently reside out here in Big Cyprus, Florida. It's a lovely place. Today, I'm going to be talking about stickball and what it is for our people. Stickball itself, many moons ago, was only played by men. In an erected pole here, that's how the Seminoles play. There's other, there's many ways of playing ball, but this is how we play. These sticks here, they're usually crafted out of Cyprus or Willow, anything that has like a straight grain. Sometimes they use them as palm metal stocks. They need a temporary pair. But more than anything, they go about it and they carve it down to the shape of their liking. And depending on how old they are, little boys can play too. That's what this, I guess, how do you say, determines the size of how big the rackets are too. Before women were allowed to play, that this was a sport only played by men. It was used to dispute, or to handle disputes. They will settle it out. And many men were killed through the physical contact and the roughness of this sport as well. And years later, we allowed women to come in and women, they don't play with sticks at all. They play with their hands. Primarily it's played at ceremony times, but before it wasn't. It was any time you had an erected pole that you can go and play. But you do have to keep it. This game is owned by the birds. Any time a game is started, or any time it's played, to have an official game, a bird has to start it and he'll go about instructing the people about the score and tell them to come on out. And that's whenever they'll begin it. You give that respect to them because they're the ones who keep the game, to keep the ball, and they're the ones who allow us to play this sport. But of course, you can just go and have scrimmages and just go and play. The men have to be more reserved. You have to be a little bit, watch how we handle ourselves out there so you don't overwack them or hit them on the head or whatnot. But the women, they can pick you up, throw you on the ground, scratch you, trip push you. Really, they're the ones who are the brutal ones. And there's no rules. There's no time limits. There's no perimeter. And yeah, you just go until you score. In the beginning of each game, they'll come up with deciding how many points should be scored throughout the entire game. Men against women. Games can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 to an hour, depending on how many people are out there. If there's a good score, if there's not. So it really depends on the people who are playing. The objective of playing stickball is trying to get this ball and scoring the predetermined points that you have. You'll get those. The men will use their sticks and throw the ball as best as they can to try to hit it. Sometimes it floats random, but as you get more skilled, then you'll be able to hit it. The women, they'll do the same thing. The objective of the game is to hit the pole above the marker with the ball. But you're trying to score points without allowing the other team to score. The Green Cornette celebration is a time for self-reflection. It's a time for learning. It's also a time to put all the work that you learn from our songs to work. You allow the people to come around and dance by singing to them and you'll teach them your ways of how you've learned. And if you were wrong, then you can be corrected or learn other ways about the song. There's more story that can be added on. It's a time of joy. Time of happiness. You get to see people that you haven't seen all year or going through their paths, their careers that they have to tend to, their families they have to tend to. So whenever people come out to the Green Cornette, it's really a time to relax. But also at the same time, it's also a time to work as well. To work with your fellow brethren. Each grounds itself has its own aura, has its own feelings behind it, and also has to do with the surrounding areas that you're coming from. Whether that's in the pinelands or in the marshes, you really get a sense of the area itself as its own living being. But then the people also make it up too. So each corn dance is different. Each corn dance has its own vibrations, how you would say. And they have different smells. Of course the wood is different and the way people cook is different as well. Hello, good morning. I'm Billy. I'm a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. I belong to the Panther Clan. Today I'm going to be talking about the clans here in the Seminole Tribe. Today we recognize eight of them. That's going to be the Panther, the Wind, Bird, Snake, Deer, Bear, Otter and the Big Town. There used to be several more, but whenever the re-organization happened in the early 20s, then we all started being generalized and put into one big clan. There used to be several cats that are now just Panther and several birds that are just bird. We also have another one called Pukushashi, which isn't recognized, but they are another clan. Clans are only given to us by our mothers and that's the only way you're going to be given one. You're born into this life and you're born into having a clan. Each clan are your family members. Your family members are your grandpas, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews and those are going to be your siblings as you go through this life. Whenever it comes to partnering up and finding a mate, then you'll seek out another clan and you're not to intermingle with your own. You're not to have children with your own. You're not to have any relationships or intimate relationships with your own clan that's considered incest. And back then these are strictly taboo and you would be punished accordingly. Today since people do go outside the tribe and they men have children and their children are born without clans and they try to participate and still claim being seminal. They are, but they just have no clan and that creates a lot of tension for them throughout their life because there's a lot of things where they can't do culturally and with practicing our traditions. I'm only familiar with my clan and the panther, they're in charge of keeping the bundle. They're the ones who tend to the medicine and they're the ones who go out and train other clans to practice this medicine. There's other clans that do practice. Don't get me wrong but they all learned it from a panther from way back when. The bird clan itself, they're the ones in charge of the green corn dance. They're the ones who help facilitate it and they're the ones who maintain the grounds. They're the ones who own the game of ball that allow us to play and those are some of the duties that they tend to. It comes from our creation stories and how we came out of our egg a few creations ago and those are where our clans came from of being seminal. I was told that the bird was trying to peck out the egg and wasn't strong enough so the wind had came along and made a tornado and burst it out, came back and the bird flew out and then the panther followed suit. The creator had intended the panther to come out first but he had a big old head and wouldn't be able to fit out. From there all other clans followed suit and I was told that the bird or the wind came out first the bird flew out then the panther followed behind the three and those are our three major clans with the wind, bird and panther. The other clans they follow under the panther and the wind. There's the otter, the big town the snake, they follow under wind category and they're the ones who are like the water creatures or the amphibians are the ones who fly in the air. Bird follows under that caligore too and under the panther would be the deer the bear there's just the ones who crawl on the land and the other ones are the ones who fly by the air or the ones that are in the water. That's what the bird does but it all comes through just our creation story. Keeping your clan traditions alive during this modern sense is very important because we're in this time where people are losing their identity there's a lot of people that don't speak the language anymore nor practice their own traditions Christianity has really influenced us and that's a good way it puts them on the righteous path but with upholding our own traditions it's deteriorating our people in a regard of wanting to practice and further it I'm not too sure how it's going to be in 100 years after I'm gone but I guess those are kind of the things that we face and it's all upholded by keeping your clans and the traditions within your clan alive and we're a oral based we're oral based people so we have to pass our traditions down and not write it down for them to learn through a book it's all done through talking to one another and allowing our young and our youth to be intelligent in that way from just teaching them firsthand. Coming from a large clan myself there are many families that make up one particular clan and it's the same for the bird and wind although that we're all family that they're quite distant from one another and there can also be few that lie within the same clan as well that are still around today and that's okay all families fight but we're all share the same bloodline and we all come from the same people so we give each other that mutual respect to carry on and move forward. Hey good afternoon if you can hear me we're coming to you live from the Seminole Tribal Florida's amazing Big Cyprus Reservation my name is Paul Backhouse I'm the senior director of the Heritage and Environment Resources office and also the tribe's Tribal Historic Preservation officer which is a mouthful and I'm really happy to be here this afternoon I've been humble to work for the Seminole tribe for the last 15 years and we really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this afternoon and have a discussion about the work that we do and that was the first time we've seen those videos and they were amazing so really appreciated watching those with you guys as well those guys did an incredible job I'm just going to introduce my colleagues that I'm here with this afternoon to have this discussion so you've heard about me I will pass the baton to Quinton would you like to introduce yourself Quinton you might be having some technical difficulties I think you might want to reverse your camera I think it's looking at the computer screen there you are sorry I was trying to can you guys hear me fine ok Cyprus I'm from the Seminole tribe of Fort I thought the music the audio is cutting out a little bit on your cue unfortunately for some reason see if you can give it a tweak and I'll pass the baton to Dave while you're talking to the audio ok hi my name is Dave Shaddaker I'm the historian for the some tribe Florida tribal preservation office I am not a tribal member I am just really really honored to have this job and be able to work here and do this I don't know really what more to say beyond that I've been working for a tribe for seven and a half years now I started as a archaeologist and worked my way up excellent thank you Dave and we obviously heard a little bit about you but would you like to add anything else by way of introduction can you hear us oh sorry hi my name is Chandler De Mayo I'm a tribal member for the Seminole tribe of Florida and I grew up on the Hollywood Reservation but I work here on the Big Cyprus Reservation at the Italic Museum a museum educator so if there's ever something that somebody request a speaker for it's usually through my department or it's a tour around the facilities that's usually also my department as well excellent thank you Chandler just to let folks know we're getting ready today for our biggest celebration of the year so it's our American Indian Arts celebration that kicks off tomorrow so we're looking forward to welcoming several thousand people to the Big Cyprus Reservation tomorrow just out my window here I can see tents going up and things happening tribal vendors, community members getting excited about this so if you're in South Florida or in Florida or you want to make a trip here this weekend we'd love to see you on the Big Cyprus Reservation Quinton do you want to check your audio real quick see if we've got you yep can you guys hear me perfect would you like to just do a second introduction yes sorry I know I was on my phone to this laptop but this laptop took like 50 years to upload everything anyways so yes my name is Quinton Cyprus I'm a Seminole Child Member I'm from the Big Cyprus Reservation I'm the Community Engagement Manager for the Heritage and Environmental Resource Office we're an umbrella department over the Tribal Historic Preservation Office the Athotheque Museum and the Environmental Resource Department and I guess to give you a little bit of background what we have is the Seminole Tribe is from around here in Florida we say our ancestral lands go all the way up towards Tennessee obviously with colonization and all this stuff were placed in certain states and they say that's where we're from realistically there's no borders we have no fences back in the day our ancestral lands are all over the place we didn't want to play the food source so we didn't stay in one spot so fast forward a little bit before we'd be a little complicated about how the tribe works and how we're come about the Europeans or the US government started calling us the Seminole Tribe of Florida before we say we're kind of a mixture of different tribes we all believe in the same culture so eventually during the wars when we were fighting we just got lumped together about the Seminole Tribe during the Indian Removal Act I forgot the exact years so that day is better with the years but in 1957 we formally became recognized as the Seminole Tribe of Florida a bunch of our leaders put together enough funds they were able to travel in one vehicle all the way up to Washington DC and we were able to get whatever paperwork and stuff that we needed in place to be recognized as a sovereign nation to add to that the US government says we had three wars and we don't look at it as that we look at it as one long war with the US government and it's a war that we say action never ended and that's why we call ourselves the Unconquered Seminole Tribe and we're going to talk about a little bit more why we're unconquered talking about Egmont Key today so I'll go ahead and pass over to you guys excellent introduction Quentin, thank you in background of history so the Seminole Tribe is a sovereign government and acts accordingly so this idea of being a sovereign is really important and within the tribal governmental structure there's around 70 or so departments and as we mentioned Dave works for the THPO Quentin and I work with the Heritage and Environment Resources Office Chandler works with the Atefiqi Museum so it's a governmental structure and I think people outside of a tribal structure often perhaps forget that with historic preservation and send a letter directly to the chairman for instance saying here's my section 106 compliance issue or whatever it might be so just we wanted to point that out that there's the structure within the tribe and it works like a sovereign government and we consult on a government to government basis so we'd expect when an agency is consulting with the Seminole Tribe the same standing of person on the Seminole Tribe side is meeting with the official on the other side so a like for like representation would be the chairman of the Seminole Tribe meeting with the president of the United States that is a like for like consultation does it ever happen? No it doesn't but that is how that should work so we're here today to talk about one specific preservation issue that we've been working at for several years and we thought it would be a great study just discuss take some questions from the audience and just share with you Dave I'll hand it over to you to kind of sketch the background of Egmont and why is that so important and what is it all about? Okay Egmont Key it's a project that we've been working on here for five or six well no even longer I found out recently it came to the attention of the historic preservation office in 2011 section 106 compliance it's an island off of the coast of Tampa it's actually right in the mouth of Tampa Bay and because of that it's getting all the title action it's visited very often it's not very large and historically when we go back and look at it over the years when you go all the way back to time the ancestors of Seminole who were here it was used pretty much the same way it is today it's not large enough to live on there's not enough water supply there's not enough animals there so what is a beautiful place to go visit fish camp out and leave that's about all got used for for a long time in the 1500s the French first map the area when they were coming around in the 1700s it was found by a man named Don Maria Don Maria de Salis and he discovered the island along with Tampa Bay which he named the Spirit of Santo and he did the most interesting possible he claimed it for the King and Queen of Spain named it for the two guys who funded his expedition and left after that it was still traditional use the people who lived around the area made the most traditional use of it at the time were the Tokabaga and they lived right off the St. Petersburg peninsula we know mostly about them from Spanish records at the time and oral traditions passed down within the tribe after that it was found by a Scottish explorer who was funded by the English who also found the island and named it for the guy who funded his expedition the Earl of Eggmont who never visited but he has a nice island named after him also has a mountain in New Zealand but digressing so for a long time this island it was nice people visited wasn't much attention when the US started trying to shore up the fences and looking around the coast a military survey found Eggmont Key and a surveyor who by the name of Lieutenant Robert E. Lee who would go on for some other things he'd become famous for later on mapped it out and said that it would be a good place to put a base it also then was slotted for a lighthouse the lighthouse was put in in the 1840s got knocked down the same year by the great Gale of 1848 a second lighthouse was put up but during this time the Seminole War came around um Seminole War as Quentin mentioned it's often said to be three separate wars and for the US that's how it's measured because those are three times that war was officially declared in Congress for Seminole Tribe the war really started around 1811 with the Patriot War the invasion of militias from Alabama and Georgia who were backed by the federal government that were trying to take Florida um as part of that group they attacked Seminole towns around Alachua the war broke out from there with Andrew Jackson's invasion the Indian removal act kicked it back in the high gear and it went on for almost half a century basically constant warfare for members of the tribe and while the tribe did incredibly well for most of the war it was a battle of attrition and the US could keep cycling troops in and out whereas the Seminole Tribe every loss was an incredibly huge loss they started with a few thousand and they were facing basically tens of thousands with unlimited people coming back in the US did badly during the middle phase of the war because they didn't know how to fight the swamp they didn't know how to fight rural tactics anymore but they learned a lot of lessons so when it came down to the 1850s and the ends tactics were changed a lot they stopped trying to use cavalry to swamp for one thing they started using boats and they learned not to engage the warriors the soldiers of the tribe directly if they could instead they start attacking camps where the women, children, elders, non-combatants injured people would be found they started rounding up these people Holyam captive first at Fort Myers but Fort Myers proved that they were generally easily able to escape from so they looked back at the records and found that they're and found a Maquis so it was ordered to have a prison built there for Seminole detainees, the people captured the civilians captured from these camps the place was funded, built with a blockhouse troops were stationed there and they started bringing the women, children, elders there to be held there were a few hundred that passed through there at least they would occasionally find someone who spoke enough English to give a message, usually a woman to release take back to the mainland, release and tell her to find Billy Bowlegs and his people to relay a message to them that your families are being held by the US government, they are going to be sent to Oklahoma if you want to be with them you should surrender this proved a very effective tactic and Billy Bowlegs and many people following him in 1858 turned themselves into the US government at Fort Myers they were taken to Igmont Key, there was one night where everybody stayed there reunited with their families and then they were taken off by a ship called the Great Cloud for New Orleans to be sent up to Oklahoma for the Seminole reservation there after that period the US didn't have much time to celebrate they declared victory in the Seminole war at that point even though there were still a few hundred Seminole still in Florida they didn't have much time to celebrate because the Civil War broke out Igmont Key became important in that as part of the Union's anaconda plan it then was later militarized completely with a base for the Spanish-American war but it was started in the Spanish-American war and completed 14 years later that base was then decommissioned after the First World War since then it's become a state park the lighthouse was operated by the Coast Guard and we were called back we found out about a lot of this history when a section 106 process went through to try to save the island because it is currently washing away due to both erosion and climate change that was in 2011, a lot of research went through to find the full history of the area and we've had a great relationship with people there and that brings us to you today thank you Dave that's a great synopsis so just for the audience it's really important to consider here that this is a hidden history this isn't in a history book that you could pick up at school this isn't a history that's taught this is a hidden history that's pretty disturbing when you hear the details of it so strangely from the Army Corps asking us about putting sand on the Beecher Egmont section 106 these things have come to light through the oral histories of the tribe through our own research that are now going back to tribal members because they don't know what happened to their ancestors that were taken away from Florida because they're the ones that remain so connecting with this island has become a critical part of what the Historic Preservation Office is and does and Quinton I'm going to pass a baton to you because you've been critical in taking people out to that island and connecting them with that space what's that experience been like and how does it make you feel when you're out on the island? yeah so the thing you said earlier about this is hidden history that's like most American history most of it's tucked away and hidden or told on TV that America's not built but I'm still in land things like that so when it comes to Egmont Key I see one of the questions on here on the message board I'll be related to the folks in Oklahoma so yeah the Egmont Key it was an island that they held us there in the Indian Removal Act and they were shipping this off to Oklahoma like Dave was telling you early they caught the young and the wounded or the injured the ones that couldn't really fin for themselves and when they would take them towards two Egmont Key obviously they were left with nothing but the U.S. wanted to take more of us and not just the injured that they captured they wanted to remove all of us so they figured out how to get into trying to get inside our heads a little bit but they started sending the elderly or the young back into the mainland and send them back to find us and tell us send them with a message saying that if you don't come with us you'll never be able to see your mom or your grandma or your sons or daughters again and so that got inside of a lot of people's heads and so some of them ended up going but a lot of us knew that no matter what we had to fight the fight so a lot of us stayed the ones that did go some of them died on the island some of them died on the ships because they got sick when you go to the island you won't see a lot of history or a lot of recordings of that they don't talk about how we died or how we were murdered or any of that kind of stuff so that wouldn't be out there either you know one of the folks I guess we'll get to him a little bit he's a very important person for us she's one of the only people to escape from Egmont Key and the way she did that was when they shipped her off towards Louisiana because that was our next stop after Egmont Key right somewhere in between there northern Florida she'd come up with a plan a plan to get some of them off the ship and the way she did that was a little bit northern Florida as the story kind of goes from our side is that she told the soldiers that one of the ladies was sick and they needed medicine but the medicines that they need are right on the shoreline so if you just take us there we can get her situated and get back on and go and so when they pulled off there was a group of six ladies that went out to go get the the medicines and the soldiers obviously followed them so they told the soldiers you can't look at the medicines that we're going to do because they were kind of taint what we're doing and so they used that as an opportunity to run off on foot and they're way up on northern Florida they're on the panhandle and they walked so they didn't escape and they walked from way up there almost towards like the Tallahassee the Tallahassee area all the way back down to right where Lake Okeechobee is there was a group of what six women that were able to walk all the way back and probably Parker was able to leave that so she's a very significant person to us and because of her there's a lot of us are able to, there's a lot of descendants of her today she was able to alone just that alone helped save the numbers and I know Paul you asked what is it how does it feel for me to go back out there a lot of, when we go out there there's been a lot of news channels that like talking to us and talking about that's one of the common questions I get from them I always tell them they always ask me do you feel sad or depressed when you're out there because of the history and I always tell them no I feel proud and I feel happy because of the people we are, we fought hard just for us to be here still and we're able to go back to that island at any time we want go over there, get on the ferry eat a couple of snacks bring the beach chair if we want we can go and enjoy ourselves on this island that they tried to hold us captive on but we're still able to tell that story and that's what we're doing the island is eroding away and there's a lot of things we can take from that and change the human destruction of the land but for us personally when we're asked do we want the island to be safe we say no, but we want the story, the history of the island to be safe and so that's why we're talking about Egmont Key here today that's why we're talking about the history of it and we got magazines on it we do stories and channels all the time about Egmont Key and it's important for us to get this message out there but one there's a lot of people in this world who still don't know or still don't believe us Native Americans are still alive and here today I don't know how many times people come up and ask are you really Native American and I tell them yeah and the response usually I would get is well you don't look Native I'm sorry I'm not wearing a big fancy headdress I'm not wearing my loincloth because I'm not from the western tribes that you see on TV that's the stuff that they portray as Native American Native Americans is different Native Americans is actually a term that comes from the US we're indigenous to these lands and we're always here and we'll always be here so that's why it's important for us to get these messages out there so people know and so that way this history doesn't happen again so that way we don't lose our lands again and we're confined to these small reservations we're confined to this land that we're told to live on and like I said before our ancestral lands go all the way towards Tennessee we've traveled all over the world that's from our old histories and again so to answer your question Paul I feel proud to be back on the island thank you Quinton that's a really great and honest answer so in terms of when we think about preservation we usually think about preserving something at one time period right when you try and preserve a place you're thinking about a particular time that that place was important and you try and make it all look like that particular time what you're presenting what we're discussing is something very different right the way the tribes historic preservation office and the tribal community think about this space and want to share the story about this place isn't necessarily for a particular time to bring it back to that time to keep it at that time it's to project it forward to future generations of tribal members so that they know what happened there Dave can you expand upon that a bit how is that different I can see in the chat we've got some folks from SHIFOs and things on this discussion how does the TIPO differ in how you we approach historic preservation I'd say one of the main things we're working for the community that we're trying to preserve the history of so we've got there's an investment in there and there's hopefully as we talk to people we'll do an understanding that comes again I'm not tribal I rely on people to help me understand what it is that the tribal the religious community actually wants done and part of that would be my key that risk because it's going away and because for at least a lot of people it shouldn't be changed you let nature take its course what we had to look at was how do we keep the story alive keep the story alive the place isn't what's important what happened there is so we approach this first off there's a book that we put together it's a short book it's more like a natural geographic or so but there's a link to that that's on the National Trust page that pre-assured and that's a puzzle in there it tells a lot of story it was written it was put out for free so people can understand for the community but also for anyone who wants to get a look and try to get a better understanding of the tribes the tribal view on this we've also been working with the 3D lab from USF to go out there and do digital scanning of the area of the island so that for elders who can't get out there and for future generations who might never have a chance they can actually get the experience we had them out here a couple weeks ago actually got the great experience of putting on a VR equipment and looking around like my key from there and see what kind of future stuff is available we're working also with the chart group which is putting together a learning app for kids doing research on Florida areas, state parks that are important to various groups and studies that are at risk to climate change and to help do that so we're really trying to take an incredibly modern approach to this to make sure that this knowledge will not be lost and that as much of the experience can be shared as possible. It's a great summary Dave and I think it's different to how a lot of people approach what we do Quinton I know we're starting to run down on time here but I just want to go back to your community what you do and Dave do is take community members out to the island to experience it and to talk about what happened there I know you've had several people that are actually descendant of Polly Parker on those tours that they didn't even know can you describe what that I was there for one of those it was really quite a moving experience can you just kind of describe that a little for the audience? Yeah of course, I just forgot you asked that kind of a cave away so one of the biggest things that we're trying to do is to get the history of this island preserved for us I'm only 27 so when we started going out here on this island and learning about the stuff and I kind of started bringing the history back to some of our child members a lot of our elders actually didn't know the history of the island a lot of them didn't even know anything about the island and there were some who heard mention of it but not too much about it afterwards we tried looking up a name for the island of what we would have caught it back in the day who would have caught it like the dark place and that's all people really remembered about it so it as the community engagement coordinator at the time I was just the coordinator I was asked to help try to get community tricks to get them out there to help just to get them out there and see the island and eventually we realized it's a deeper thing it's a thing we need to really get more of our tribal members out there and get them to remember that history because for me from my perspective I'm trying to be a leader within my own community and make sure that our people don't forget about these things as well not to get too caught up in today's latest trends and things like that getting stuck on social media to experience the island and see where our tribe and where our people came from so we're trying to get as much of our tribal members out there we're about 4,200 tribal members strong and we've only gotten maybe some 80 folks out there maybe just over 80 folks we're still under 100 I'm sure so my big goal and I think our big goal is to try to get at least some of our tribe out there and that's obviously a big goal and trying to get that done because the ferry can only hold up what's like 30-something people so that's going to take how much that might take but trying to get them out there as much as we can before the island erodes away I mean there's talk about that Tampa Bay area getting dredged even more so these super cargo ships can come by well the islands eroding away at a faster rate than it was back in the day because they got dredged before so they dredged again so bigger ships to come by what's that going to mean it's going to mean the island is going to wash away even faster so it's important for us to get our tribal members over there as much as possible and we even had some of the Oklahoma tribal members come down and visit us at the island well they've had separate stories stories that they've heard passed down from generations so it's important for all of these aspects and for all of these angles for us to get our people and other people out there we frequently these people that do interviews with us through the news channels we invite them out there as well and everybody brought in our reach with the story and all the other things that go on with the island it's not just our history happening at the island we also got you know biodiversity it talks about the birds and stuff that are out there it's a big pelican sanctuary or something like that out there it's one of the biggest ones what did you say the southern hemisphere the biggest pelican sanctuary in the northern hemisphere no northern hemisphere so yeah there's a lot of things that go on there there's a lot of things that can be caught out there our history obviously is a big deal because it's our history and I want our people to know about it but there's more to be taught going out to Eggmont Key like I said kind of mentioned before human destruction that kind of adds on to climate change thank you Quinton and I know we're running out of time here that's a really good way to put a full stop on the discussion here but a full stop just for this discussion you know Eggmont Key is just one of thousands and thousands of thousands of cultural sites that are connected with the indigenous past of where we live and you can see just with this one story what it means from a human experience standpoint you know whether that place exists or it doesn't exist amazingly it got through Hurricane Iain unscathed we were amazed by that but thousands of sites face impacts from climate change they all have stories like these connected with them so we just wanted to share this one with you today so you can see some of the work that we do the Travel Historic Preservation Office only has 20 people working within it and it's job as Quinton indicated covers southern Florida all the way up to southern Tennessee it's a lot of area to try and work with with these types of stories so we need all the allies that we can get and you know we appreciate the interest from the National Trust we'd love to welcome you down to the Big Cypress Reservation so please do reach out to us and come down and see the museum here it's a beautiful installation and somewhere that you can visit and find more about the story of the drive so I know we're out of time but thank you so much for your time today thank you so much to the panel to John Law, to Quinton and to Dave and we look forward to connecting with you in the future thank you so much