Preserving the past and reclaiming the future

Community and connectivity. Family and ancestry. Healing and reconciliation. Learning and preserving. History and traditions. Foods and homelands.  

“Reclaiming my identity.” “Reclaiming our language.” “Reclaiming our ancestral knowledge and foodways.”

These were common themes and words shared among participants of the Yesa:sahį́ Language and Lifeways Immersion Conference, which was held on Virginia Tech’s campus and organized by the Yesa:sahį́ Language Project  with support from their community partners, Indigenous East, 7 Directions of Service, and NDPonics.  

The Yesa:sahį́ Language Project is an Indigenous-led nonprofit organization that has representation from the Monacan, Haliwa-Saponi, Sappony, Occaneechi, and Ohio Saponi tribal communities. The project’s mission is to preserve the ancestral language and catalyze a strong future for their culture and communities by restoring Yesa:sahį to everyday use.  

Virginia Tech’s campus is located on land that is the ancestral homeland of the Yesá. The word Yesá translates to “the people” in Yesá:sahį́ or the Tutelo-Saponi language and is used to refer to individuals and communities descended from the Monacan Alliance, an eastern Siouan people who, today, belong to five tribal communities that include the Monacan Indian Nation, the Occaneechi Band of Saponi Nation, the Sappony Tribe, the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe and the Saponi Nation of Ohio as well as other Tutelo descendants.  

Hosted by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, the six-day workshop brought together a diverse group of people from Yesá communities in Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio.  

Some participants traveled from the Midwest and upstate New York to attend. All were motivated by a shared passion for preserving Yesa:sahj, the language of their ancestors that in recent years has seen an increase in community efforts to revitalize it. 

One of the attendees, Crystal Bradshaw-Gonzalez, said her motivation stemmed from her family’s complex history and forced migration. She traveled from Kansas for the conference to reconnect with her Yesá relatives, language, and culture.  

“My ancestors were removed from their tribal communities after an attempt was made to enslave them,” Bradshaw-Gonzalez said. “They eventually won their freedom in court by proving their Native blood.  However, like many other Saponi families, they were still forced to flee to Ohio to escape racial violence and laws in the south during that time period. It was extremely important for me to return to Virginia and be in community with my Yesá relatives after being separated for several generations.” 

More than 50 participants of varying backgrounds and ages attended the conference—a mix of in-classroom learning of the language and immersive experiential learning of traditional Yesá lifeways through the context of history, food, agriculture, and land. They included a faculty member from Cornell University, a firefighter from Richmond, Virginia, a longtime teacher with Lynchburg City schools, and the assistant chief of the Monacan Indian Nation.

Learning the language

The conference convened at the Virginia Tech Turfgrass Research Center, where participants gathered under the pavilion for a show-and-tell session led by conference organizer Desiree Shelley Flores, a graduate student in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education and board member of the Yesa:sahi Language Project.  

Participants were asked to share a story, item, or something about themselves or their community. Shelley Flores, a citizen of the Monacan Indian Nation, brought a potted Maypop, explaining her passion for native plants and the significance of Maypops as an edible and medicinal plant native to this region.  

She explained that Maypop is an example of how we use the English language to understand our relationship to other living things.  

“The name Maypop signifies the month in which the vine reemerges in spring after winter dormancy,” she said. “Yesa:sahi has lost many of our plant names that also hold traditional knowledge about the life cycles of these plants and how we use them.”  

One of her motivations for these gatherings is to reconnect with traditional plant knowledge and translate this knowledge into Yesa:sahi they way our ancestors once did, Shelley Flores said.  

Victoria Ferguson, a citizen of the Monacan Indian Nation and director of Solitude at Virginia Tech, read a traditional story and teaching passed down in her family of the Bearskin Coat that cautions listeners never to take more than they need from their natural environment.  

Following introductions of shared poems, stories, and inspiration, the group was treated to a snack of smoked sunflowers, followed by a tour of the nearby Indigenous Community Garden, where ancestral heirloom Yesa foods are grown, including Tutelo Strawberry Corn (haspahínuk ma:ta:xe Yesa) and Tutelo beans (ha:di:ne Yesa). Several seedkeepers, including Ferguson, help preserve these seeds by growing and saving them in this garden from year to year.  

From there, participants spent the next several days immersed in tradition and newfound knowledge of the Yesa:sahį́ language. Most mornings were spent in the classroom with Corey Roberts, a community linguist and doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona. Originally from Philadelphia, he traveled often as a child to Virginia. Roberts was raised African American and after his father’s death, he learned he was also Occaneechi. With his background in languages, he decided he wanted to learn Yesa:sahi and teach others.

But the process was more complicated than he expected.

“I quickly learned that there was very little in the way of documentation,” Roberts said. “I learned that once upon a time, there was a lot of documentation. Most of it burned up in a house fire in Canada in 1882.”

Roberts quickly turned the challenge into a learning opportunity. He enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Arizona and now travels across the United States to teach and continue to understand the language.  

“I was at a place in my life where I had the bandwidth to devote some time to working on bringing the language back,” Roberts said. “I had also been reading articles about native culture and the relationship to language. These articles were letting me know that when native communities have access to the language, rates of depression go down, rates of suicidality go down.”

Exploring ancestral knowledge

Outside the classroom, participants and leaders from tribal elders to knowledge keepers joined in conversation about an array of ancestral topics, such as the Yesá 4 Daughters lunar and agricultural calendar, and learned about traditional food practices. They enjoyed lengthy discussions at the lunch and dinner table, including during the last day of the conference, where they learned how to make Three Sisters Succotash, a summer dish of corn, green beans, and squash.

Topics were explored through in-depth discussions, tours, presentations, and demonstrations. They also took several field trips, including a visit to a culturally significant natural landscape in the Blue Ridge Mountains that is stewarded by NDPonics, an Indigenous-led non-profit focused on conserving Yesa ancestral homelands.  

For many, this field trip was one of the most important experiences of the conference as it brought together community members to learn language, forage for wild traditional foods and medicines, and enjoy recreational free time and relationship building. Crystal Bradshaw Gonzalez noted that the most meaningful experience of the conference for her two young daughters was the time spent playing in the Blue Ridge mountain stream with their cousins.  

Conference participants also visited Kentland Farm, a site well-known as Virginia Tech’s research and teaching farm but also an important historical and archeological site that has documented the continued presence of Yesá people and the Monacan Alliance in the New River Valley.

For Santina Knight, this was a highlight of the conference. Knight, of Madison Heights, Virginia, traces her heritage back to one of the oldest lines of the Monacan Indian Nation. Knight, who completed part of her degree program at Virginia Tech and graduated from Virginia State University, is getting ready to retire after more than 30 years of education. Aside from the educational aspect of the conference, Knight said she enjoyed connecting with others more than anything else.  

“Every time I come to an event, and I meet another person, it's like meeting another part of my family,” Knight said. “There are no barriers. You’re already accepted into the clan. It's almost like a sorority or fraternity. Each time, it's putting a little piece back into you. It’s like your soul has had a big hole in it where you didn't know who you were. But now, I know who I am, and I am proud of it.”

Future Steps and Partnerships

The conference was funded by the Community Viability Grant Program, an initiative of Virginia Cooperative Extension that supports innovative and interdisciplinary outreach between the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and communities, schools, or industries.

The immersive language conference is held annually. This year, the conference was split into two parts, a late spring gathering at the College of William and Mary, followed by the gathering at Virginia Tech. This was the first time Virginia Tech had hosted. Event organizers Desiree Shelley Flores and Donna Westfall-Rudd are excited to have recently received additional funding from the Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia project to continue the program. Westfall-Rudd, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, has been a steadfast advocate for building relationships between tribal communities and Virginia Tech.  

She works closely with the Ati:Wa:oki Indigenous Community Center as the principal investigator, with support from graduate research assistant Shelley Flores, for a United States Department of Agriculture-funded grant that launched the Community, Agency and Engagement program. The program that works with tribes in Virginia to increase the number of Indigenous students graduating with Bachelor of Science degrees from Virginia Tech, among other work to invigorate connectivity.

“This was an incredibly important and meaningful conference as we, Virginia Tech and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, continue the work to build a positive relationship with all of the Native communities in this group,” Westfall-Rudd said.

“This conference is so unique and so important to these Yesah communities,” said Rick Rudd, endowed chair of the Community Viability Grant Program and professor in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education. “Being able to connect Virginia Tech with this Indigenous community…We’ve been building these bridges for a long time, and it is really exciting to see programming like this come to life.”