Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 25, 1991                   TAG: 9103250253
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B/5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

INDIANS THROW ASIDE FEARS AND REPORT THEIR HERITAGE

"If nobody asked, you just didn't say," said Faulkner, a member of the Upper Mattaponi whose home east of Richmond is near where her ancestors farmed and fished centuries ago.

"When I was in high school, I wouldn't tell anybody unless they pushed me to the wall."

But last year, Faulkner decided to tell the U.S. government. She was one of thousands of Virginians who identified themselves as Indians for the first time in the 1990 census.

Their numbers dramatically have swelled the count of American Indians; the census shows a 38 percent growth nationwide, with a 61.6 percent jump in Virginia.

The increases are far greater than can be explained by birth rates or migration. Demographers and Indian leaders think the figures are a barometer of America's increasing appreciation of Indian heritage.

"As people have been looking at this around the country, it seems that more and more people of Indian ancestry are proud of that fact, and more are reporting themselves as Indians than before," said Census Bureau spokesman Gary Wilkinson.

The numbers seem to reflect three trends:

Indian organizations, which say the census has long undercounted the Indian population, urged their members to overcome suspicion of the government and mark themselves Indians on the census form.

Many people of Indian descent who live in urban areas and have lost contact with the tribes from which they descended are trying to renew their heritage.

With movies like "Dances with Wolves" popularizing Indian culture, there has been a rise in so-called Indian "wanna-bes," people claiming to be Indians who probably aren't.

"If everybody was part Cherokee who tells me they're part Cherokee, there's a lot of them out there, I'll tell you," said Frank Adams, Faulkner's brother and a councilman in the Upper Mattaponi Tribal Association in King William County.

Some experts suggest the census numbers have little meaning as a genuine count of Indian population. The census requires no proof of Indian descent, and tribal councils themselves have widely varying requirements for membership. Some, for example, require that one parent be a full-blooded Indian, while others admit people with one-quarter thousandth of Indian ancestry. In any case, a minority of Virginia Indians are actively affiliated with a tribe.

Within Virginia, the census showed the biggest growth in Indian population in suburban areas like Fairfax County (71 percent) and Virginia Beach (128 percent).

By contrast, in King William County, which contains the state's Pamunkey and Mattaponi reservations, the count of American Indians increased only 3 percent, from 210 to 217, and still is far less than the number of Indians active in tribal organizations there.

Oliver L. Perry Sr. of Virginia Beach, chief emeritus of the Nansemond Indian tribe, said the size of the Indian population probably will never be known. "There are a lot of people probably of Indian descent - they have been told by their parents or grandparents - but they have no documentation to substantiate it. The problem is the lack of records."

In Virginia, the dearth of records is especially severe. The Civil War wiped out many rural courthouses where genealogical records were kept. An even bigger factor may be Virginia's racial policies, which as recently as the 1970s did not recognize the existence of Indians.

The state's 1924 Race Integrity Act divided Virginians into "white" and "colored." Those with no more than one-16th of Indian blood were to be "white" and the rest "colored."

"Indians were more or less legislated out of existence," said J. David Smith, a Lynchburg College professor who has researched the policy.

Virginia's first registrar of vital statistics, Walter A. Plecker, was an advocate of white racial purity and used his office in the 1930s and 1940s to bar anyone from having the word "Indian" on a birth certificate or marriage license.

Smith said Plecker's directives still were being followed in the 1970s in some Virginia hospitals, which automatically classified Indian babies as white.

"I refer to it as a form of documentary genocide," Perry said.

At the same time, many Indians, like those in Joan Faulkner's family, quietly treasured their heritage at home but learned not to make it public.

Faulkner remembers standing up in class to protest 25 years ago when her seventh-grade teacher depicted Virginia Indians as murderous tribes bent on killing whites.

"I'd say, `Wait a minute. You'd be savage, too, if somebody just came in and took everything you ever had,' " Faulkner recalled. "She called me a discipline problem. I got sent to the principal's office."

Because of experiences like that, Faulkner decided to keep her ancestry to herself. When her eldest daughter was born 11 years ago, she intentionally had the birth certificate register her as white. She answered the same way on forms for herself.

But in the past several years, the Upper Mattaponi association has become more active, organizing festivals celebrating Indian heritage - the next one is scheduled for May - and building floats for local parades. The King William County schools now offer cultural programs for Indian children.

Faulkner was filling out the census form last year when she got to the box asking her race. "Am I Indian - what am I?" she asked her husband, Bill, a non-Indian.

"He said: `I think you ought to fill it out and say Indian, because that's what you are,' " she said.

She agreed.