Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line by Laura J. Feller (review)

Reviewed by: Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line by Laura J. Feller Gregory D. Smithers Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line. By Laura J. Feller. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Pp. x, 275. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-9389-2; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8061-9065-5.) Historian Laura J. Feller's Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia: Powhatan People and the Color Line is the latest scholarly analysis of race, "blood," and Indigenous identity in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Focusing [End Page 165] particularly on the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Chickahominy communities between the James and Rappahannock Rivers, Feller examines the complexities of clan and kinship identities against the backdrop of Virginia's infamous racial purity law of 1924. This is well-trodden historical ground, but Feller's book is interested in how law and institutional racism help us understand the responses of Indigenous families both on and off the reservation. Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia is a compact book. Between an introduction and epilogue are five chapters. In these chapters, Feller builds on the ethnohistorical work of Helen Rountree and on more recent historical scholarship by Mikaëla M. Adams to deepen our understanding of the history of Native Virginia from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth. As such, Feller mines the archives of the Commonwealth of Virginia and returns to the papers of key figures in advancing notions of racial purity in Virginia, namely, Earnest Sevier Cox, John Powell, and Walter Plecker. In the introduction, Feller asserts that her argument aligns with the prevailing historiography in contending that "meaningful and realistic ways of defining Native identities reflect not blood quantum, but rather group participation and relationships of reciprocity among members of a community" (p. 11). This is not a particularly original argument. However, Feller seeks to stake her claim to originality by borrowing from social scientists Michael Omi and Howard Winant and contending that Native Virginians responded to racism by embracing "strategic essentialism," thereby enabling Indigenous people to adopt pan-Indian identities as a means of navigating racist laws and institutional practices (p. 10). Feller develops her argument by focusing variously on individual families and reservation communities. In chapter 1, for example, she takes us back to the mid-nineteenth century and introduces us to the Scott family. Lucy Pearman Scott and William Scott, reacting to prejudice against Powhatan peoples, sought opportunities elsewhere and migrated to Canada. In contrast, the Wynn family navigated Virginia's racial discourses on "mulattoes" and "authentic" Indians to establish a niche for themselves in the commonwealth wherein white Virginians saw them as Native. In late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Virginia, projecting one's Indigeneity meant actively cultivating social distance from African American people. As eugenic thinking took root, that strategy proved to be an increasingly difficult task. Chapter 2 explores the key figures behind the push for racial integrity in early-twentieth-century Virginia. Walter Plecker aggressively pursued racial integrity through a variety of public-pressure campaigns and bureaucratic genocide. Importantly, Native Virginians continued developing strategies for dealing with institutionalized forms of racism. Feller reminds us in chapter 3 that reservation communities, such as the Pamunkey, worked hard to assert their "authenticity" as Native people through public displays of Indigeneity that were recognizable to white people. These strategic displays of Indianness proved frustrating for a generation of ethnographers. For instance, scholars such as Frank Speck sought out Native communities as subjects of authentic Indigenous culture. No culture is ever static for long. In chapter 5, Feller makes this point by highlighting the strategies employed by Virginia reservations since the late nineteenth century to maintain a resilient sense of community. [End Page 166] Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia makes a solid contribution to historical knowledge of Indigeneity and race in the commonwealth. To experts in the field, though, there is not a lot in this book that will read as new or revelatory. In fact, some readers will question why Feller did not engage with descendant Indigenous communities in Tidewater Virginia to enrich her analysis. Such engagement would have enriched the...

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