Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World

TULSA, Okla. – The Muscogee Nation has renewed a lawsuit first filed in 2012 against the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama for building a casino resort on the site of sacred historic burial grounds.

The Oklahoma tribe is challenging a federal judge’s decision in 2021 to dismiss the lawsuit based on “sovereign immunity” of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. To build its casino near Wetumpka, Ala., the tribe exhumed 7,000 cultural items and 57 sets of human remains near the Hickory Ground burial site. The ceremonial ground was the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s capital before the tribe’s forced move to Oklahoma in the 1830s.

Muscogee Nation attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle told ICT and the Tulsa World the Poarch Band of Creek Indians have shown a “callous disregard” for the Hickory Ground burial site.

“Poarch ignored warnings about damaging archaeological deposits and graves. … Today, they continue to illegally operate a multimillion-dollar casino resort that sits atop the sacred mound where Muscogee (Creek) ancestors and some of their most prominent leaders once lay in peace,” Nagle said.

She said some of the exhumed items and remains were placed in storage in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Robert McGhee, Poarch Creek Indian tribal vice chair and chief government relations and public affairs officer, said in an ICT and Tulsa World interview that the Hickory Ground site had already experienced “significant commercial development” before the tribe conducted its own excavation on it and that it “regularly faced flooding from the Coosa River” and was not in good shape before they worked on it.

Arguments are scheduled next week in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Nagle said 130 Muscogee tribal elders and officials are planning a “march for justice” through downtown Atlanta to the courthouse on Wednesday, Sept. 25. The march will follow a candlelight vigil Tuesday night in a downtown Atlanta park to honor the 57 ancestors whose remains were exhumed.

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians became a federally recognized tribe in 1984 but was formerly a corporate entity, Nagle said. In 1980, the Poarch company purchased the Hickory Ground site for $330,000, she said.

Half of that amount came from a federal preservation grant requiring a 20-year covenant that limited development on the property. Poarch, in applying for the grant, reportedly cited preservation of a historic property as its intent.

In 1985, Hickory Ground was placed into trust for the newly recognized tribe under the terms of the Indian Reorganization Act. Nagle said the tribe should not have been able to transfer the land title to the federal government because the Poarch Band was not a federally recognized tribe in 1934 when the law was enacted.

Excavation began after the covenant limiting development on the property expired in 2000, and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians informed Muscogee leaders in Oklahoma in 2006 that some remains had already been exhumed. The longtime leader of Hickory Ground, George Thompson, traveled to Alabama that year to negotiate an agreement with Poarch tribal leadership.

“This leader-to-leader effort is the traditional way that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the Hickory Ground tribal town attempt to resolve disputes,” Nagle said.

After failing to come to a resolution, Thompson documented NAGPRA violations that occurred during the Hickory Ground excavation. However, Interior Department officials in 2009 told Thompson that those violations would not be addressed because the land was in trust for the Poarch tribe.

Nagle said the Poarch tribe has yet to rebury some remains and funerary objects. McGhee, however, said all remains should have been reburied in the way Thompson had requested, two feet apart from each other, in their original resting places, wrapped with their funerary objects in a muslin cloth.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation sued to have the land taken out of trust for the Poarch Band while the casino was still under construction in 2012. The lawsuit also sought a court order to return the site to the same condition it was in before the Poarch tribe opened its casino resort.

The Poarch tribe ultimately finished the construction project in late 2013 and started additional construction last year.

This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.

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