(poignant music) (birds chirping) (singing) - [Narrator] The story you're about to hear is one that spans hundreds of years.

It is a tale of life, of new beginnings and near demise, of warfare and peace.

It is the rise and fall of past civilizations.

It is a story of people who lived here long before us.

Today we know them as the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, a federally recognized sovereign nation with their own system of government and bylaws, their own police and fire department, as well as a complete healthcare system for tribal members.

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians has a proud and distinct culture their people have passed down from generation to generation.

Today, this sovereign nation is an integral economic part of the state of Alabama, providing many jobs to Alabamians throughout their multiple business ventures.

But there is a part of their story that was steeped in a struggle for survival and a battle to reclaim their lost culture.

This is the story of the Forgotten Creeks.

(dramatic music) - Well, the history of the Creek Nation really begins with the history of Native Americans in this part of the world, and for that matter, the New World, as it was called by the Europeans, and it basically begins, believe it or not, back at...

In Alabama, we have the best archeological evidence of the first humans, Native Americans, First Americans sometimes they're called, 10,500 BC, around 12,000 years ago.

- The Creeks are descendants of mound building cultures from before European contact.

The Creek Nation was one of the largest and most powerful native nations in the southeast, controlling present day states of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

(dramatic music) - Who would've thought that here in Alabama, the ancestors to the Poarch Creek, they had a event occur in which you had these Spanish explorers, Hernando DeSoto specifically.

(dramatic music) In 1540 venture down the Coosa River, ultimately down by the Poarch Creek, over towards Selma and Demopolis in 1540 AD in the summer, Northwest Georgia, northeast Alabama.

They had COVID on steroids because the Spanish, looking for gold, they came into these villages and these dense towns and ceremonial centers, and they left behind massive amount of germs, particularly some lethal ones in the form of things like smallpox and chickenpox, measles, the black plague, which spread rapidly through 'em and led to depopulation.

Archeologically, we see all these ceremonial centers being abandoned.

Etowah was abandoned.

Towns going down East River, people were just leaving.

- [Narrator] As a result of Des Soto's expedition, Native Americans suffered 80-90% population losses in most of present day America.

- If COVID would've wiped out 80% of our population, think about a place like Atlanta.

If 80% of everybody you know was dead within six months, how many interstates would you need over in Atlanta?

How many ballparks, how many skyscrapers?

They'd be all abandoned.

That's what the Indians did.

It just broke their whole culture.

By the time you get to the historic tribes in the 17th and 18th century, they're basically where they were all the way up into the 19th century.

- [Narrator] And it would take scores of years for the Creek Indians to emerge as one of the surviving tribes after Spanish contact.

It's now the 1700s and the French, the British and colonists have all made some form of contact with natives.

Some tension had risen among the different people groups.

So in 1763, the British created the Proclamation Line, which prohibited Anglo American colonists from settling on lands acquired from the French following the French and Indian War.

- They started moving around to, they did a end around, along the Gulf Coast, through Florida and the panhandle, and came up into Alabama.

Some of them came down a Tennessee River like DeSoto, and came in through the mountain and it reached a boiling point, where eventually you had conflict.

- [Narrator] But how are current Day Creek Indians related to these events?

Confirmed records of the Creek Indians date back to the late 1700s, when several Creeks worked as interpreters for the U.S. government, during the American Revolution.

- It was common practice for native people to take on jobs with governments, various colonial governments, state governments, later on the U.S. federal government, as interpreters, sometimes members of the community.

- [Narrator] But there was a civil war that broke out in 1814 among the Creek Indians over how to respond to the Americans, the British, the French, and even the Spaniards, who were all trying to take their land.

- The white sticks were the the ones that wanted to, eh, let's get along with everybody and let's just all, we can keep maybe our language, but we can speak English.

It would be better than speaking Muscogee.

On the other hand, from what I understand, the upper Creek towns, in northern Alabama, they didn't really like all these white settlers moving in.

They wanted to basically, resist any kind of attempt to change their clothing, their lifestyle, their religions.

They were the red sticks and they were willing to fight.

That's how it broke down, basically.

- In the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814, which ends the Creek War, Andrew Jackson promised the Creeks that the remaining land would be protected and the United States would only have the right to build roads and military posts and trading posts within that territory.

- When they ultimately lost to Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, they signed the Treaty of Cusetta, that gave up kind of the central part of their original territory, and that became the original state of Alabama.

You know that that's how in 1819, Alabama became a state.

- Fast forward a few years, and General Jackson is now President Andrew Jackson.

President Jackson wanted to remove predominantly Southeast Indians, to open up more land for cotton expansion, for the expansion of white settlement.

There were also conflicts with state governments and the tribes that he thought would be solved by removing the people farther west.

- [Narrator] But just a few years later, Jackson's disdain for Indians became most apparent when he ordered the removal of all southeastern tribes to make space for white settlements.

- The Indian Removal Act resulted in what we know as the Trail of Tears, (somber music) a forced march from the southeast to new lands, in present day, Oklahoma.

- Andrew Jackson was elected president.

The following year, the Congress passes the Indian Removal Act, which Jackson signed.

That act was to remove all Native Americans from the eastern United States, not just the South, but also up in the Midwest.

- The government and the army moved all the Indians in Georgia and all, they took and they'd round up a thousand or approximately a thousand Indians, and they'd put a officer in charge of that thousand people and they'd march 'em to Oklahoma.

When they got into Alabama and the Creek War, the Creek people started resisting the government's intrusion.

And so the army was so busy that the government started hiring contractors.

They'd round up Indians here and carry 'em to Wetumpka, and lo and behold, a lot of 'em would escape.

(poignant music) The government finally realized the inefficiency of that, so they just quit.

They abandoned the effort and so they never got the people that was here at Poarch.

(poignant music) - [Narrator] Despite the removal effort, several Creek families in South Alabama were able to escape expulsion.

Those who had been loyal to the U.S. government or had worked as scouts and traders, were allowed to remain and were awarded land grants.

Lynn McGhee and his family were among those that stayed.

Because the government had sold his original homestead, McGhee was granted new parcels of land in a Escambia County, an act that would prove significant later in the tribe's history.

- As part of the Treaty of Cusetta, the removal treaty that the Creeks signed with the U.S. government, one of the provisions allowed for individuals to remain if they gave up tribal citizenship and promised to live under the laws of the state.

If they did that, they would be granted land allotments within Alabama.

- They were assumed they were gonna get land.

They're gonna be reimbursed for all their livestock, all their property they left behind and the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, see, all these other Indians were given an option.

They were basically lied to.

Told 'em they were gonna get paid, they gonna get land, they're gonna get this if they were willing to move.

- [Narrator] Over 15,000 Creeks were removed from the South and taken westward into what is now Oklahoma.

But unlike most Creeks in Alabama, a few accepted land allotments or evaded removal altogether and stayed behind.

Those that remained lived as farmers, struggling to provide for their families.

- [Speaker] It was tough for them to survive.

- We had it just as worse during the Civil Rights Movement, as you know, as African American people.

You know, it's like, was it good to be Native American?

No, it wasn't.

(poignant music) - The Native Americans had a bunch of Holocaust.

The first Holocaust was the contact with the disease.

Disease is devastating.

Then you had displacement.

Like the pilgrims, all these people come and moving the Indians inland, other traditional homelands.

The Trail of Tears and the removal, all these Indians moved out west to the prairie.

And then you had acculturation, where you had Indians that stayed put, like Poarch Creek.

They adopted a lot of the British in this case.

What's amazing is they survived.

- My great-grandmother, I remember asking her, "Granny, when did you know that you were Indian?

"When did you know that you were Native American?"

And she sat there and she kind of thought for a bit, and she said, I always knew.

We always knew that we were Indian.

I said, "Did you know you were Creek Indian?"

She said, "No, we didn't know like "what kind of Indian we were.

"We just knew we were Indian.

"We knew that we were different."

- It's important to recognize that, you know what, what's been passed down is this genetic imprint of just this resilient people.

These people who've been through so much.

There are civilizations that didn't stand the test of time.

They died out.

Our people walked this land far before anybody ever touched it.

Our genetic are imprinted everywhere.

It's honestly a story of just resilience.

- [Narrator] Many natives worked as sharecroppers and continued to face threats of removal, and in the late 19th and 20th centuries, they faced even more segregation and discrimination in schools and churches throughout the Jim Crow era.

- I think it made you feel like you was inferior.

To me, it did for me, that you were lesser.

When people won't wanna sit with you, sit beside, don't sit behind you, they want to drink water after you.

You were the last one chosen.

You know, you always last.

So I reckon it just makes you feel last, you know.

(poignant music) - [Narrator] The discrimination was no more apparent than within the school system at that time.

- Education is the key to so many things and it's not just the academic piece, it's the experiential piece.

It's the meeting other people with different backgrounds, experiences.

- My grandmother, both my grandmothers, did not get their GED until they were in their '50s.

So think about it.

Think about the struggles they had growing up, that they were not allowed to go to school.

They were not allowed to create and achieve their dreams like we are today.

- You know, Indian people are just like anybody else, is what I'm trying to say.

We, I was a kid just like anybody else was.

But you know, mama told us that we was Indian people and that I never knew being Indian was bad.

- The Poarch Creek Indians had many struggles throughout the years.

Education opportunities just was, was not any.

For what I saw is people that were poverty.

No transportation, no healthcare, no education.

How do you survive?

- In my role with the tribe, one of the things I have to look at is weather.

How's weather gonna affect this community?

How is weather going to affect team members or guests to this reservation or to our facilities?

My grandmother wanting to be a meteorologist.

But at that time, who was going to allow an Indian woman to not only go to high school, but to go to college to become a meteorologist?

Not a whole lot of people.

(poignant music) And I think my love of weather and understanding weather came from my grandmother, who all she wanted to do was be a meteorologist.

- [Narrator] In the earlier part of the 19th century, Indian children were not allowed to go to any public schools.

Their only education came from churches that were attempting to help, and at best, would only go up to the sixth grade level.

- You know, I didn't, I didn't know racism or anything like that until I got in school, and that followed me from, I would say, about the third grade up until I graduated from high school, 12th grade.

I feel like I don't harbor any of that anymore.

- It was a struggle.

Our people saying that we needed education.

It was great to have the missions that come in our community, which was the Mennonite mission, the Episcopalian mission, the Baptist missions.

They come in and they really helped a lot.

- You weren't allowed to get on the school bus, for God's sake.

You couldn't get an education past the sixth grade.

That's unheard of now, right?

You know what I mean, everybody's allowed to get an education.

But like, you know, during '60s, like, who are you to tell me that I can't educate my children?

- We were told that, you know, we essentially weren't good enough to go to the local school system just because of the color of our skin.

- We're talking, you know, like late '40s or 1950.

So the school didn't go far.

So you were able to maybe read and write, did a little arithmetic, and then that was about it.

I hear my mom talk about right in front of our house, Daughtry lived with his twin girls and was about the same age as my mother, and he got out and stopped the bus.

- [Narrator] School buses wouldn't stop for Indian children until one day, a man by the name of Jack Daughtry would take a bold stand.

He took his twin girls and stood in the middle of the road, forcing the bus to either stop or run over them.

The bus did stop, and Jack's children were taken to the public school that day, but much more needed to be done.

- Who are you to tell me that I'm not allowed to be something more than what you've labeled me as?

Oh, I'm an Indian, so I don't know.

I'm cut off.

I'm cut off from knowledge.

I'm cut off from the, you know, whatever.

I can do more, but no, that's, he called their bluff and he capitalized on it and he said, he said, "I'm gonna do what it takes."

- [Narrator] For many years, the Creek Indians in south Alabama had no elected leaders.

In fact, an anthropologist by the name of Jay Anthony Paredes visited the tribe, labeling them as the Lost Creeks of Alabama.

He made note that they had no organized leadership.

But in 1948, a man stepped up in an extraordinary way to lead this tribe.

His name was Calvin McGhee, or as he was called by his people, the Chief.

(poignant music) This bold act by Jack Daughtry caused Chief Calvin McGhee to bring a lawsuit against the county school board to allow Indian children to attend the local schools.

- One point my own family could not ride the school bus and I'm so glad that even though Chief Calvin had no degree, didn't have a high school education, but he never gave up the fight for our people to ride a school bus.

- [Narrator] Their children were allowed to go to public school.

The state even provided funding to build their very own school within their community.

- From what I've learned is I've known that he was a standup man.

He was, you know, a God fearing man.

He knew who he was, he was a Native American man, and I think what it's amazing is, you know, he owned that during a time that it wasn't good to claim those things.

- My word is my bond and he said, "If I shake your head, that's it."

And he had several of those people that he talked to.

He shook their hand and that's what he told him.

He said, "You can count on what I tell you "'cause it's gonna be what I know to be the truth."

(poignant music) - We had a school in Poarch, the building that the Episcopal Church owned was the Episcopal church allowed that building to be become a school and I went to school there in that building till the fourth grade, and then we built that brick building that's there, you see in the community.

That school was the first school that was built for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

And I went through the fourth, through the sixth grade there and graduated from there and then started attending school in Atmore.

(slow instrumental music) - My granny was an incredible woman and I think she underestimated herself.

I don't think she recognized that it would, the inherent racism in the fact that the Indian school only allowed them to go to school to sixth grade, and that she wasn't allowed to go to school beyond sixth grade.

But she had that quest, that yearning for more knowledge, that yearning for experience.

(slow instrumental music) - During my generation, if you graduated with a high school with a diploma, that was the ultimate.

That was it, you have exceeded what you set out to do.

Not nobody heard of college.

College was nonexistent.

What was college?

- Chief Calvin McGhee was a descendant of Lynn McGhee, who was prominent in working with the U.S. government during the Creek Civil War.

While the McGhee family was prominent throughout the tribe's history, Calvin was the first to organize the band into an organized government, complete with laws and elections.

- [Narrator] In addition to the heavy discrimination that Indians across the U.S. experienced, there were a number of treaties that the U.S. government created that had not been honored.

One in particular, was the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson, specifically, land allotment for Indians who chose to help the U.S. government during the Indian War.

Tribe after tribe sued the government.

So in 1946, the U.S. government created the Indian Claims Commission to help settle any previous treaties that were never met.

This became a pivotal time for the Creeks.

- They gave it the authority to seek out, even before the tribal people made a claim, to seek out and investigate where they'd been these treaty violations and compensation of property.

that had not been adequately compensated for and all.

- It was actually one of those people from the church was up north and heard about a land claims that the Oklahoma Creek Indians were starting a petition against the United States for land that to sue them for the land in Alabama, that was taken illegally and they were looking for compensation for that land.

That started some movement here.

Said, well hey, we need to be a part of that land suit.

I mean, we're still here.

If they get something, we entitled something.

- [Narrator] In order to fully understand how the Poarch Creek Indians became federally recognized, it's important to understand a few key events leading up to it.

- When the Indian Claims Commission began in 1946, the Muskogee Nation of Oklahoma was one of the first to file land claims concerning land in Alabama.

One issue, however, was that some of that land still belonged to the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, who had remained in south Alabama.

- Well, here was a prime example right here at Poarch, that people had not been the move to Oklahoma.

- [Narrator] Chief Calvin formed a nonprofit organization, called Creek Nation East of the Mississippi, in order to be properly recognized by the court system and proceeded with the land claims case.

- We did not have to go and become members of the Creek Nation in order to be compensated.

The court first ruled that we just ought to go and become members of the Creek Nation.

Well, it took us about six years to prove to them that we never had the opportunity and we did not want the opportunity now.

- People like Calvin McGhee, Roberta Sells, others in the community, they really believed that something could happen, that we could become federally recognized.

- I do think it was one of those critical moments in the history of the tribe, where we were able to really say, hey, we've got this kind of concrete proof that we have been here, that we have lived as a cohesive tribe for, you know, for over 125 years.

- The significance of the nonprofit was huge.

The requirements for legal recognition required by the federal government were complex and arduous.

- [Speaker] We were the Indian community.

We were still being segregated against and not allowed to come into town, you know, and those types of things.

- [Narrator] This case was taking decades to conclude, but it was coming to an end.

If they won, each Creek descendant would be awarded a portion of money based on the value of the land at the time of the treaty.

But this small amount of money was never really the goal of the tribe.

- There was a movement that said, we're Creek Indians and we're still here in Alabama.

- Instead, it created a much needed precedent for what they really wanted to do next, apply for federal recognition.

(dramatic music) - I think the land claims process certainly helped support our petition, at least for that period in time.

It showed that we were recognized by the government that we were here.

They recognized that they owed us because we had been here, you know, in this area.

But it certainly did not satisfy everything, you know, or come close to satisfying everything we needed to satisfy for the federal acknowledgement process, 'cause you have to show continuous existence from 1900, you know, until now.

When I went to serve at the Department of Interior, I got a unique behind the scenes look at what it took to become federally acknowledged.

It is an extensive process.

You need to show genealogy, you need to show, you know, political leadership.

You have to show evidence of your community that others saw you as a distinct community as well.

So there's just all these different aspects and angles that they are looking at to make sure that you're not just making yourself up as a group.

- I don't know if we really understood what recognition would bring.

We knew that it would be that one-on-one relationship with the federal government.

- And since we were still here, we still own property here, we felt that we were entitled to not just be recognized by the court, but that we be needed to be recognized by the United States Congress as a distinct tribe of people.

- [Narrator] In the midst of the land's claim case, Calvin and other leaders of the tribe decided to push forward to get federally recognized, a process that usually took many years.

- It says that the group must show continuous leadership, but it must be in one geographical location.

So we changed from the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi, which was formed for the land claims cases, and we had been successful in getting that, what little it was, but this effort was an effort to recognize the people here at the head of Perdido River as Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

- [Narrator] He needed to make his way into the offices of many different prominent political figures.

He needed to be in Washington, D.C. many times, gathering all the necessary documents needed for recognition and he needed help paying for it.

- We just started really putting together, finding people who could help us.

- Calvin went to Washington, D.C., to try to find documents and it was all about these records and documents that we had to compile and to show that we was continuing as a group of people.

- [Narrator] The community organized many dinners to help cover the expenses of traveling to Washington, D.C.. - We were working for a goal and it all started from the early days of my father, Mal McGhee, and Calvin and several other leaders of the community.

A lot of tribal people volunteered and was willing to step forward, to put in a lot of hours and time for the, to put that together, those records.

- [Narrator] As Chief McGhee traveled around looking for support, he struggled to be seen as an Indian.

He didn't have a stereotypical Indian life as portrayed in the movies at that time.

But he realized that to be recognized, he needed to be recognizable.

- We started, you know, getting regalia, getting some suits made with ribbons and stuff like that, 'cause when you go, you want to be recognized as tribal.

- He said, "I'm gonna do what it takes.

"I'm gonna dress out, I'm gonna make myself look pretty."

- If you walked in with a business suit on, which most Indians today, that's the attire.

But they could say, "Well you're not Indian."

But if you come in with a head bonnet on, you must be Indian.

- When I walk into this room, your jaw's gonna drop and you're gonna say, okay, what is it you need.

- [Narrator] Calvin's willingness to adopt this style worked.

He was able to get in front of very prominent political figures to help bring very necessary awareness to their recognition process.

- And I have developed a renewed appreciation for what our elders had gone through to get us federally recognized.

- [Narrator] Poarch Creeks began their powwow to celebrate culture, family, and community, while raising awareness that there was still a Creek tribe in Alabama.

- We'd heard some of our folks had, well I think several of 'em, had been to Oklahoma and they heard the term powwow and that's how we started at home.

At home, being Poarch.

Once we decided, had that first powwow, in where we probably had a couple thousand people show up.

From there, it grew.

- [Narrator] And these powwow events would be used to attract all the right people to see just how relevant this tribe was.

- It continued.

As a young boy I danced.

We started powwows here, right here in our community, for an event to let everybody else come in and to see that there's Indians still in south Alabama.

- As a little girl, I always participated in the native dance.

Mr. Billy Smith, one of our elders, he was always so passionate about our heritage and our culture and he told us to never be ashamed of who we are as Creek Indians, and he taught us that native dance.

- Once we had that first powwow, we continued to have powwows and we invited different tribes from the nation to come and visit us and see that we were Creek people.

- Throughout that application process, we had a lot of folks, we had political leaders, congressmen, senators, that really supported us.

Local political people, even in the city of Atmore, all supporting our efforts.

- The federal benefits that could be offered if you received federal recognition were immense at the time.

- He put all the blocks together and it took help.

And it, it wasn't just him though, it took the community, you know, it took people, it took, you know, people gathering money.

It took help from, whether it was lawyers, it took help from the church.

You know, Chief Calvin has something going here.

We need to, we need, all he needs right now is our support.

- [Narrator] And that help came in multiple forms.

Chief Calvin McGhee was a sharecropper with few financial resources.

- He had nothing.

He worked hard.

He had a little farm down in Poarch.

He really just about lost everything he had with the recognition process.

- There were several times that he had to mortgage his house, you know, and if he had any farm money, then he used his own money, in other words, to make the trips if he could.

And then his sons would help him, you know, give him money to buy gas, buy food and all that kind of stuff.

- My mom remembers going to Virginia.

We used to go up there, my dad took people, Indian people up to Virginia, dig potatoes and do a lot of that, and then when they get ready to come back home, they'd all get back on the back of a flatbed truck and ride back to Alabama.

(gentle music) - My first trip to Washington, I was about 16 years old.

I had been dating Mr. McGhee, his son, his baby son, Dewey.

He had to go to Washington with his mom and dad 'cause he always did a lot of the driving.

While we were there in Washington I said, "Calvin, I want you to go find my ancestors."

You know, my momma always said, or my granny always said, we was Indian and we were Creek Indian.

And they'd give him a certain amount of information and we would, we worked in the archives, Dewey and I did.

They were doing other work, like with Calvin always tried to talk to whatever senator he could that he thought might would help him.

- [Narrator] Olivette McGhee was only 16 years old when she became actively involved in helping Chief McGhee locate all the necessary documents in D.C.. - We asked to take off and we were able to go with him a second time, 'cause he needed Dewey to drive, and Dewey, always where he went I had to go, 'cause I guess that's why he was deciding I was gonna be his wife.

(laughs) - [Narrator] She later did become Dewey's wife and continued working alongside him and her now father-in-law, Chief Calvin McGhee.

- [Olivette] Dewey was the Calvin's baby son.

They had five boys and he was the baby.

We visited Kennedy.

That's the car we was in.

- Chief Calvin McGhee became active in Native American issues at a national level.

Even in the middle of their recognition process, he was helping other tribes do the same.

He took part in a national effort to bring awareness of Indian tribes to the federal government.

- Calvin already knew at that point, that we had to do that.

We had no recognition in the state so far as an Indian tribe.

- His leadership and involvement, culminated in a national Indian conference, that led McGhee to meet the president of the United States.

- It was kinda exciting to do, really it was.

I was so at awe of him and he's the only president that I got to see that of that close up.

(dramatic music) And see how Mr. McGhee just pushed right on in there.

He wanted to talk to him.

So he was turning around, looking around and the president said, "Mr. McGhee," he said, "I never have seen a blue-eyed Indian."

He said, "I always thought they were brown eyes."

Mr. McGhee said, "Oh no, no, we're blue eyes."

And he did, he had pretty blue eyes.

It really just was almost like a flash, you know?

There was so much to look at and there was so much to try to remember and I thought I had remembered more of it, but...

I can see it right now in my, you know how you look into the back of your mind and your eyes and it's just like yesterday.

- [Narrator] During the 1813 Indian War, 25 million acres of land was seized by General Jackson.

Calvin McGhee and the tribal leaders proved that payment was never made for this land.

As a result, the Creek Nation was awarded a sum of 4.5 million, for which each original member of the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi received $113.

- I received a check as a little girl and it had my name and I told my mom, I said, "That's my check that's in my name."

She said, "No," she said, "We have to send that back to the tribe "so they can use that money to go to Washington "and continue to fight for federal recognition."

And I didn't get it as a kid because I was like, Mom that check's in my name, that's my money.

But I'm so grateful that she understood and that she knew the significance and what would come from being federally recognized as a Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

- The ironic, and one of the real tragedy things about it is Calvin McGhee never got to see the result of that lawsuit.

(somber music) He spent his whole life working on it and knew he had won it, but the government.

in its bureaucratic inefficiencies, gave the Bureau of Indian Affairs no deadline to when they had to compensate our people.

So Calvin died before he ever seen anybody receive compensation for that.

- And I just really was sad because when he worked so hard, he would stay up till late at night working on those things.

People just don't realize how much time he put in.

(dramatic music) He did hardly have the strength sometime to work, 'cause he already had a heart problem.

The doctor told him, he said, "Now Calvin, I can get you a heart."

And he said, "No, this is the heart God gave me."

He said, "I want to go into heaven with it."

(poignant music) Because Calvin loved his people.

He wanted to work for 'em and that's why he did it.

(dramatic music) - Even if you never got a chance to shake his hand or like me, I never got to meet him, you know that you descend from somebody that had just initiative and he had a goal in mind.

He wanted to include his people along the way.

- [Narrator] In 1984, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, led by tribal chairman Eddie Tullis, was officially recognized by the federal government.

This meant they had the right to self-govern as a sovereign nation within the United States.

- It was a moment I will never forget.

My home place is right here in the core community, and I will never forget the day that that was announced on the powwow grounds.

I was young, had no clue what federal recognition meant.

But I was happy because all the adults were so happy that we had accomplished something that was a long, hard-fault battle for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

- They accepted us our application, and approved that process.

The land that we owned at that time, we gave to the federal government and became trust property.

- [Narrator] This meant that their land is protected by the federal government from being purchased or taken by non-Indians.

And though the federal government offered some assistance, the tribe would need to step up in significant ways.

- We were in extreme poverty.

- We've seen right off the bat that federal funding was not gonna be enough.

- [Narrator] Their people still lived in tremendous poverty and the tribal council was eager to work towards improving their way of living for the first time.

- But it also brought other things with that, that we had to then create laws.

We had to put laws because state law does not apply on our reservation.

- [Narrator] A constitution was written and laws had to be created that would govern their tribe and its lands.

(siren blaring) It wasn't until 1988, four years after recognition, that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was enacted.

This would give the tribe a unique opportunity to build a bingo hall that led to casinos on their land, which resulted in a flow of revenue that the tribe had never seen before.

- We created an entity called Creek Indian Enterprise and it was our first economic development arm of the tribe.

We felt like business and politics need to separate.

- We were federally recognized in 1984, but the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was not passed until 1988.

So all of the benefits we've derived from gaming really had nothing to do with why we initially sought federal acknowledgement.

We sought federal acknowledgement 'cause we wanted the federal government to recognize that we have always been here and that we were still here.

That was what Federal acknowledgement was about.

- [Narrator] The tribal council was extremely focused on one goal the entire time, pull their people out of poverty.

(dramatic music) - We were able to become classified as having a minority business.

Even after recognition, the United States and SBA started putting together programs that helped minority businesses.

So then we were able to use those advantages as minority groups, to be able to go and do what we do.

- [Narrator] And now that there existed a stream of income for the tribe, there were initiatives that could finally be implemented.

One of those initiatives was housing.

- It started very basic, with a few houses built on our trust property.

Some of our people started moving out of substandard housing on the reservation into a brick home.

- I never lived at a house that had a bathroom in it.

I never lived in a house and had running water inside.

I never lived in a house that had electricity into it till I was 16 years old.

Due to the fact that we'd done migrant farm work, you know you'd have three or four families living in one house.

We've got a lot of people that are living a quality of lives that their parents never even envisioned.

- 25 Years ago, I couldn't even offer you a piece of bread, but today I can offer you a bounty, of food at the table and cooking is what a lot of times brings us together.

- [Narrator] Creating new laws, leveraging federal programs and running a sovereign nation is no easy task.

The nine member council had their hands full.

What areas needed immediate attention?

What services needed to be implemented first?

- We depended on Atmore for fire protection.

There's two railroads between here and Atmore Fire Department.

We lost a number of houses because Atmore couldn't get here soon enough.

'Cause those old houses, they caught on fire, they burnt in a hurry.

So the first major investment we made here was a fire truck.

- [Narrator] Since its opening in 1988, the fire department has gone from being entirely volunteer-based, to now including both paid and volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

They respond to a wide range of emergencies, both on and off the reservation.

- We have the finest fire department south of Montgomery.

Mobile has a good fire department, but they don't respond near as fast as we do.

Just having that readily available fire equipment, major benefit for the people here.

- [Narrator] The tribe implemented many initiatives throughout the years, but perhaps the two that they're most proud of are health and education.

- I oftentimes tell people that my grandmother would probably say, oh, is this a city?

She would be so shocked because the years that we had healthcare growing up, I used to get my teeth cleaned in a little Airstream bus and now we have a 75,000 square foot health department with a state of art equipment to clean our teeth, to provide medical services and the future goal for our health department is to provide concierge medicine to all of our members and our employees.

- Education from the very beginning has been a foundation for this tribe.

- Our tribe offers so much to our kids these days.

- We offer a hundred thousand dollars to every tribal member to obtain higher education, quality education and degrees, and they have taken advantage of that.

- So my kid just got accepted into the 2K program, so now he has a spot in two, three and 4k.

So just childcare and how our cultural department comes into the classroom and teaches language and culture and dance and traditions and foods and just so much I, my kids will get that starting at two years old, whereas I got that as an adult.

- We have more lawyers now than we had high school graduates when I come to work for the tribe.

- [Narrator] Gaming revenues have created opportunities for the tribe to become truly self-sufficient and dramatically improve the quality of life on the reservation, as well as extend those services to neighboring communities around Alabama.

- I'm a living embodiment of that.

I, you know, I, you know, was fortunate enough to receive, you know, a, a full ride to the school of my choice, all because the tribe has paid for it.

- My granny was unable to finish school there because her brother was injured and of course, with the extreme poverty they lived in, you know, her family needed her to come home and help.

But she really, I am humbled by my own educational experience, but I really do feel like in some ways, I'm finishing her journey.

(poignant music) - We're not unlike any other community in the country.

All of our people suffered from trauma.

If you were raised by our elders, if you were traumatized, you were told to push it down.

You were told not to feel.

You were told that that was not important.

The strange thing about that is if we don't talk about trauma, if we don't learn how to deal with trauma, then trauma becomes mental illness.

Trauma becomes alcoholism.

Trauma becomes drug addiction.

Trauma becomes other things that our ancestors did not want us to become, but because they didn't know how to explain it to the younger people, that's all we need, we need to suppress.

- Individuals don't have to be quiet about it anymore.

The stigma is slowly and surely becoming less and less.

- You're gonna have a place that you can go and people who are gonna help you and that have your best interests at heart.

- [Narrator] The Poarch Band of Creek Indians is a prime example of the progress federal recognition can lead to.

The tribe has a stable government, that provides for education, recreation, public safety and healthcare.

The tribe would not be where it is today if its leaders of yesterday had not acted on the vision they had for their people.

- Nobody in this community was raised, you know, in the way that our old people used to do it.

- It was looked down upon.

It wasn't as acceptable and cool as it is today to be Indian or to have something different about you.

- We need to continue to educate them on the struggles, who they are as a tribal community and people.

- [Speaker] Some elders had told me one time that this is always gonna be you.

You know, no matter where you're at, you're this place you can always come back to.

This place will always accept you.

- [Speaker] There is a connection with all of us that have grown up in this community.

It is unique.

It surpasses our blood ties.

It's the experiences that we've all shared.

But first and foremost, we are forever a family.

- If I had one wish, I wish that those people who came before me could come back and stay for about eight hours and see where we are.

See that everything that they struggled for, all of the criticism and all of the opposition, all of everything that they were told they couldn't do and that we would never accomplish anything, I wish they would come back and see where we are.

(poignant music) - He dearly loved his people and that's why he would spend so much time because he knew what of things to come.

You know, he knew there would be good things and he wanted it for his children and other people's children.

(dramatic music) (singing in Creek language)