Academy Award-nominated director James Spione will bring his latest documentary, “The Native Shore,” to Richmond's Virginia Museum of History & Culture next week for what he hopes will be an evening of opportunity.
“This is more than a screening,” Spione said. “It’s an immersive cultural event, with ceremony to begin — usually prayer and a traditional song.”
The 75-minute film documents the history of Virginia’s bayside Indian tribes. A panel discussion about current indigenous issues and a Q&A session will follow the screening.
“I wanted this to be a conduit to let their voices to lead and let their stories shine,” Spione said.
Want to go?
“The Native Shore” will be screened at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Richmond Museum of History & Culture, 428 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Richmond, Va.
The event is free but registration is required. Register here.
Virginia has seven federally recognized tribes: the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, Rappahannock Indian Tribe, Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, Nansemond Indian Nation,
Monacan Indian Nation, Chickahominy Indian Tribe and the Chickahominy Eastern Indian Tribe. Spione’s documentary doesn’t include the Monacan and Chickahominy tribes because they lived away from the Chesapeake Bay.
At the height of the Powhatan Confederacy in the early 1600s, it comprised 32 tribes spanning the area between the James, York, Rappahannock and Potomac rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, extending into parts of the Eastern Shore. The bay and its tributaries formed the infrastructure and lifeblood of those living along its shores.
This is Spione’s thirteenth documentary and his ninth documentary with the Eastern Shore’s Barrier Islands Center. He also relied on several of the region’s bayside indigenous communities for input.
In particular, Spione acknowledged Pamunkey Chief Kevin Brown’s significant contribution to the film by making him an associate producer.
Spione’s goal is to have people look at history through a “reverse lens,” going back over 10,000 years to open people’s perspectives from more than 300 years of “colonialism” and traditional retellings of America’s early history.
Indigenous people living along the bay and its tributaries were hunters and gatherers, Spione explained, who moved with the seasons or who followed what they could forage or catch in particular areas.
This proved to be incompatible with colonial practices like using land grants and dividing up land with strict boundaries and rules on who could use it, he said. It meant indigenous people struggled to protect their broader territories.
“We were a problem,” said Rappahannock Chief Anne Richardson.
Brown and Richardson share the history of marginalization and obliteration that occurred well into the 20th century in the documentary. The history includes the years following the passage of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The law banned interracial marriage and categorized indigenous and mixed-race people as “colored” or “mulatto.”
“We walk on history every day, and have no idea what we’re walking on,” Richardson said in the film.
Both chiefs are heartened as tribes continue to flourish with an increased interest from those who want to trace their lineage and learn about their culture.
Much of the daily lives of indigenous peoples before the time of “first contact” at Jamestown in 1607 is now lost, except for what can be pieced together, literally, through on-site excavations or existing records. In some communities, there are also small reminders, like signposts bearing names like Occohannock Creek Road or Indiantown Park on the Eastern Shore (as noted in the film’s opening segments).
“We still today have ‘first contacts’ more often than we realize,” Spione said.