ATLANTA (AP) — The Muscogee (Creek) Nation has asked a federal appeals court to bring back its case against the Poarch Creek Band of Indians and Auburn University. The lawsuit is about how the Poarch Creek Band of Indians and Auburn University illegally moved graves from a sacred site in Alabama to build a casino.
The Oklahoma-based tribal nation says that the Wind Creek Casino and Resort in Wetumpka, Alabama, was built on Hickory Ground, which was considered a sacred place and capital when federal troops pushed the Muscogee out of Alabama nearly 200 years ago. According to the case, which was first filed in 2012, workers dug up 57 sets of human remains and the artefacts that were buried with them. They then put some of them in containers without proper ventilation or temperature control.
The suit was thrown out by a federal judge in 2021, but al.com reported on Friday that the tribe nation asked the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to bring it back.
David Hill, the main chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, sent a letter to the Poarch Creek tribe in Alabama last month. The letter says that the tribe did not do what it was supposed to do for Muscogee ancestors.
“You made a promise to protect these lands and the MCN ancestors who remain there,” Hill wrote. “A promise that was broken when you removed our ancestors stored them in boxes and sent them off to a university to be studied by non-Indian archaeologists. Some, still today, sit in a storage facility on site. You have yet to do right by them.”
Alabama is where the Muscogee people came from originally, and Hickory Ground was their last city before they were sent on the Trail of Tears, a hard 1,287-kilometer (1,800-mile) march to Oklahoma that killed a lot of people. The mekko, or chief, of Hickory Ground moved the settlement to Oklahoma, the appeal said.
“Although violently and forcibly removed from the sacred ground where they held ceremony since time immemorial, the modern-day members of Hickory Ground have kept the traditions, culture, and ceremonies of their Muscogee ancestors alive at the present-day Hickory Ground on the Muscogee Reservation in Oklahoma,” the appeal said.
The Muscogee country and Poarch Creek have been in a fight for a long time. When the Alabama tribe built a bingo hall there for the first time in 2001, they found bones and other things. The lawsuit said that archaeologists from Auburn University helped store and move some of what was found.
A spokesperson for Auburn University said that the university had nothing to say about the appeal, which says that the university violated the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This law says that museums and colleges that get money from the federal government must return ancestors and things that were buried with them to the people who are related to them.
The goal of the appeal is to stop any more buildings on the land that is part of Hickory Ground and to tear down the Wind Creek Casino. It also wants the bodies of ancestors to be brought back.
The National Register of Historic Places listed Hickory Ground in 1980. The Poarch Creek Band bought the land that same year with some money from a government grant for preservation. In 1999, the Poarch Creek tribe asked the National Park Service to let them take care of the park’s protection. They also started making plans to build a bingo hall, which grew into the casino.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson of Alabama’s Middle District threw out the case from 2012, which had been filed again in 2019. Since the Poarch Creeks are a nationally recognized tribe, he thinks that they have qualified immunity and can’t be sued for building on their land.
Poarch chiefs could not be reached right away to get their thoughts on the appeal.
Stephanie Bryan, the leader of the Poarch Creek tribe, said something about the first case back in 2019.
“It deeply saddens us, as extended family to the Muscogee Nation, that they have taken this unwarranted action against us,” Bryan said. “We have attempted to preserve historical remains in a suitable manner. In that effort, we have had numerous conversations with the Muscogee Nation and Hickory Ground Town in an attempt to balance the historical interests with the current use of the property. We wish that as family we could have reached a mutual understanding, and we continue to hope that we can move forward together.”
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