You may have heard the long overdue news: Native American tribe in Va. reclaims big parcel of its homeland (paywall; read here instead). The acquisition of ancestral lands is significant for the tribe, as described in the WaPo story and these:
- Newly acquired property doubles Rappahannock Tribe's land holdings (FWS)
- Rappahannock Tribe Regains Fones Cliffs, A Sacred Site Overlooking Captain John Smith Trail (National Parks Traveler)
- The Rappahannock Tribe’s Return to the River (Chesapeake Conservancy)
- Rappahannock Tribe celebrates return of Fones Cliffs acreage (Virginia Mercury)
Learn more about the Rappahannock Tribe at their website.
Want to learn more about Native tribes in Virginia? Head over to Native Land Interactive Map which was created and is maintained by the Southern California Government GIS User Group. The image above is a screenshot from the site.
If you are interested in the Indigenous histories of North America and beyond you may enjoy exploring Native Land, an ongoing interactive mapping project that attempts to outline ancestral Indigenous territories. Here, you will find a colorful map multi-layered with depictions of where different Indigenous peoples historically lived. You can browse the map itself or search for a particular postal code to see whose territories that location falls within, and clicking on a given territory shows the names of the native people(s) and cession treaties associated with that place with links to sources included. Check it out!