Chip Livingston: Poarch Creeks betrayed trust with casino site

With federal recognition in 1984 came the opportunity of legitimacy for the Poarch Band. With it also came the federally mandated and spiritually commanded responsibility to protect the burial sites at Hickory Ground, the Muscogee Creek nation’s historic center in Wetumpka, Ala.

Poarch tribal leaders betrayed that trust. They betrayed the shared histories of the Alabama and Oklahoma Creeks when, in the early 2000s, they defiled those ancestors buried at the ceremonial grounds. The Wind Creek Casino and Hotel is the abominable symbol of that betrayal, of that worst kind of greed, and has all but brought closure to the friendships being initiated and forged between the two Creek nations.

Poarch tribal leaders today betray our common histories in the criminal trespassing charges pressed against [Wayland] Gray, whose 2013 conviction is being challenged this week in Elmore County Circuit Court.

A necessary movement has grown beyond Indian country in support of Gray and his attempts to pray at and protest the unforgivable sacrilege of my relatives in Alabama. All around the world prayers are being made on Gray’s behalf – and on behalf of the ancestors who were defiled and burglarized.