In the fall of 1987 the Alabama Development Office invited 150 Alabama photographers to participate in a special comprehensive documentation of the state. We were gathered in a downtown auditorium and given envelopes with the name of a place, site, business, or other important feature to photograph. My envelope had “The Poarch Band of Creek Indians, Atmore, Alabama” written on a sheet of paper. Atmore was further away than anyplace I had been in Alabama. I drove down to the Southern almost coastal part of the state and arrived as the sun was setting.
I met with theChief,Eddie Tulis who organized people and events for me to meet with and photograph. He explained their history. The Poarch Band of Creek Indians did not march as part of Andrew Jackson’s 1838-1839 mass Indian removal process, the Trail of Tears. They stayed in their homeland but lived without tribal recognition and reservation status. I could not wrap my head around this, I grew up near the Mohawk Trail where the last vestiges of Mohawk Indians were long gone. How did they stay on their land and how did they survive without reservation status? Eddie Tulis arranged for me to meet with dancers, mechanics, horseman, basket weavers and young families. I was overwhelmed to hear this story of bravery and as I met my subjects I asked them to tell me more. They said their relatives escaped the Trail of Tears because they hid in the woods. I followed the tribal news with interest over the years and Through the hard work of leaders likeChiefTulis, they applied for and received Tribal recognition by the US government and were later given reservation status. When I met with Chief Tulis, they had one building, it was new on a vast barren plain interspersed with outcroppings of pine trees. Lone houses would be lit from the inside at night on the road to get there. In 2018 I returned to Atmore to shoot formal portraits of the Pow Wow Dancers to honor the Porch Band of Creek Indians.