The Waccamaw People have been fighting for federal recognition for more than 30 years….a fight that continues.
But they’re also taking steps to make sure school children, and all of us, can more easily learn about their history and heritage.
According to the Charleston Post & Courier…
“Sara Rich, a professor of art history and archaeology at Coastal Carolina University, is among those volunteering to tackle items on a Waccamaw to-do list. She’s helping to complement the state’s education standards with information that better represents the Waccamaw and all of South Carolina’s indigenous people.
That task force is preparing materials educators can use to tell a fuller, more equitable story. They want to make it easy — turnkey, really — so teachers already burdened with responsibilities don’t need to do the research themselves, Rich said.
The effort to revise school curricula coincides with a separate legislative initiative sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tom Rice, R-Myrtle Beach, to grant federal recognition to the Waccamaw and Pee Dee tribes. Two bills were introduced in the House by Rice on March 16.
Meanwhile, Coastal Carolina students under the supervision of Carolyn Dillian and Katie Stringer Clary are organizing a special exhibition about the Waccamaw to open April 27 at the Horry County Museum in Conway.
It’s all part of what Native leaders say is a long-overdue reckoning with the role indigenous people have played in the Carolina territories over the course of nearly four centuries, plus the discrimination and marginalization they have experienced and the cultural richness they celebrate.”
There’s lots more in the Post & Courier article. CLICK HERE to read it. Non-subscribers will encounter a paywall.
You may also be interested in a bill passed recently in the US Senate to expand resources available to native communities. CLICK HERE.