WILLIAMSBURG - Members of Virginia's state-recognized Indian tribes hope a three-day conference to showcase their history and culture will enlighten the general public and help Indians achieve a brighter future.

They also hope to show that Virginia, self-proclaimed as the birthplace of democracy, is also the birthplace of policies that damaged the lives and cultures of Indians throughout what is now the United States.

"The first laws concerning Indian tribes originated in Virginia, and the first forced displacement of Indian tribes to reservations occurred in Virginia," said Upper Mattaponi Chief Kenneth Adams. "You don't just talk about Virginia Indians; you talk about all of them because the exact same thing happened all across the country."

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The conference, "Virginia Indians: 400 Years of Survival," will run Oct. 5-7 at the Williamsburg Lodge and at tribal centers across Virginia. It's a signature event in the 18-month commemoration of Jamestown's 400th anniversary.

The conference will start with a free, all-day symposium at the Williamsburg Lodge featuring Indian speakers and other experts from Virginia and around the country. The second day will include events at tribal centers in eastern Virginia, and the third day will take participants to the Monacan Indian Nation's annual homecoming event in Amherst County.

Adams and other organizers say Indians have embraced the opportunity to teach the public their story from a perspective that often has been overlooked.

There is also some hope the conference will help the non-Indian public understand the events, laws and policies that have inspired an ongoing campaign by six Virginia tribes to win the same federal recognition, as sovereign peoples, granted to many Western tribes. Although the state recognizes eight tribes, none of them is recognized by the federal government.

The issue has been so important to some Virginia Indians that they advocated refusing to participate in the commemoration of Jamestown's anniversary as the first permanent English settlement in America.

The idea of helping to celebrate Jamestown's history while Congress has yet to act on legislation that would grant the Virginia tribes recognition is controversial among Indians, even those participating in the conference.

But many have chosen the pragmatic view that Indian participation may serve to educate the public and fan support for the tribes' recognition.

"It's a vehicle for us," said Powhatan Red Cloud Owen, a Chickahominy Tribe member working as a liaison between the anniversary organizers and the tribes. "It's our history. Why should we let someone else tell it?"

Wayne Adkins, a Chickahominy leader and president of Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life, the organization working for federal recognition, expressed a similar perspective.

"To me, anything that raises the profile of the tribes is a step toward recognition," he said. "But the recognition itself is the most important thing. . . . Hopefully, this will lead to more pressure in Congress to do something."

Although relations between the Indians and Jamestown settlers were at times friendly, the pressure of colonization cut Virginia's native population by 90 percent within 100 years of Jamestown's founding in 1607, said Adams, the Upper Mattaponi chief. And over the next 300 years, the same thing happened across the continent, he said.

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Many history books say little about Virginia Indians after the mid-1700s. But Indian communities and individuals survived. Laws and policies in Virginia made their lives challenging into the 20th century. For example, in the 1920s, a state official, Walter A. Plecker, denied that Virginia Indians still existed and required that all Indians be classified as black.

Panel discussions, including "Indian Law and Culture Through History" and "Government Policy as it Relates to American Indians," may broaden public knowledge of the Indian story in Virginia and elsewhere in the country.

The list of participants includes nationally known experts such as Tex G. Hall, a former president of the National Congress of American Indians; and the Rev. Robert J. Duncan Jr., president of Bacone College, an Oklahoma school where many Virginia Indians attended high school between the 1940s and 1990s.

Adams predicted that the discussions will be enlightening to Virginia Indians and to members of the broader public.

"I think we have a superb, an absolutely dynamite, lineup of speakers," Adams said. "I think people will walk away from this event thinking this was a chance of a lifetime."

Andrew Petkofsky is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He can be contacted at or (757) 229-1512.