Article - First Peoples’ Rights: Native Americans in South Carolina Struggle for Right to Identity Every year during the month of October hundreds of thousands of elementary students throughout the United States learn the story of Christopher Columbus “sailing the ocean blue in 1492” to “discover” what we all know as the Americas. What is not taught however is the history of the Native Americans who were already here living in highly civilized nations and communities. Even when human and civil rights are at the forefront of discussion in North America the struggles of Native Americans are often omitted from the conversation. The wars waged on Native Americans by the United States to obtain land and wipe out a race of people seen as a threat to US expansion have nearly decimated the Native American population. Of those Native Americans that are surviving today many are finding that it is difficult to even have the right to claim their identity as Native Americans. Many Native American groups who have maintained some cultural identity and customs and who have openly acknowledged their identity as Native Americans find it difficult to obtain recognition by the United States government. Even long-standing Native American communities have a difficult time obtaining identity through the system of documentation required by the United States to prove Native American ancestry. One would think that being recognized as a tribe or group would be fairly easy. If you look like a Native American, your DNA says you are Native American, your cultural customs and practices have been Native American, and your ancestry has been largely native American then you would logically be considered native American, but this is not the case. In order to be recognized as a Native American tribe, community, or special interest group there are strict requirements in most states. These requirements include a group having at least 100 members over the age of eighteen whose Indian lineage can be documented by a lineal genealogy chart, and whose names and current address appear on the Tribal Rolls. The Tribal Rolls refer the records that were compiled of each Native American tribe beginning during the period of Indian Removal in 1831. Some of the more familiar Tribal Rolls include the Dawes Roll or Baker Roll that documented members of the Cherokee Tribe that became regular United States citizens in 1924. While tribal rolls serve as a viable record of Native American genealogy and history, to many these rolls may be viewed as a list of prisoners of war. The rolls do not take into account the numbers of Native Americans that may have continued to live in their own communities and did not wish to be counted. One must also consider the number of Native Americans that assimilated into mainstream society as a survival mechanism and who would have likely identified themselves as white. Tracing your ancestry back to the Tribal Rolls is difficult and to get 100 people to trace their ancestry back to the rolls for a particular tribe is a tough feat to accomplish. Recently I sat down and had a discussion with Mr. Randy Eisenhard, a Cherokee Indian raised in Montana to talk about the difficulty most Native Americans have obtaining recognition and rights. Randy is a Native American of Cherokee ancestry who has resided in South Carolina for the past several decades. He and other Cherokees descendants throughout the mid-South Carolina region have been meeting for together for several years as a group and are intent on maintaining their heritage. On April 1st I got a chance to join Randy and other Native American descendants at one of their monthly meetings. The group is called the Three Rivers Cherokee is led by Chief Peaceful Warrior aka Pastor Bruce Newby. Peaceful Warrior is a fiery individual whose passion for Native American heritage was evident as he admonished members for missing meetings and encouraged them to show cultural pride and acknowledge their heritage on their 2010 Census Forms. The members present showed just as much enthusiasm as their chief and made plans to participate in an upcoming festival in downtown Columbia. Other activities planned included a trip to see Cherokee-owned plantations and their annual State of the Union address delivered by Chief Peaceful Warrior. The Three Rivers Cherokee will go before the state this fall to gain recognition as a Native American special interest group, and I believe it is a well-deserved and much needed designation. There are many Native American (Cherokee) descendants living throughout the mid-Carolina region, yet there has not been a strong or visible effort to link these descendants or assist them in learning about their heritage. Many people in this region of the state know that they have Native American ancestry (Cherokee) but likely have felt that they cannot prove it well enough to formally identify themselves as such, or to meet government standards. Many of the members of the Three Rivers Cherokee have done extensive genealogy research on their own families and would be of great assistance to others Cherokee descendants looking to rediscover the history.