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WUNC reports from Greensboro about Guilford County and surrounding area.

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day In Alamance County

An afro-indigenous woman's face edited over the image of an indigenous young man.
Courtesy of Damola Akintunde and Crystal Cavalier-Keck
Members of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation organized the celebration in coordination with Culture Mill and other organizations in Alamance County.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day reimagines Columbus Day to celebrate the other side of European “discovery.” These celebrations advance concrete political causes, such as the re-establishment of land rights in the Piedmont.

The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation (OBSN) trace their lineage to a confederacy of Siouan language groups that managed land in modern-day North Carolina and Virginia for centuries before colonization. Individual members of the OBSN partnered with local organizations to host the first ever Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Alamance County, a ticketed event on Monday, Oct. 14 at 6 p.m. at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw. The celebration features an educational panel, culinary tasting, visual art, music, and storytelling.

Host Frank Stasio talks with two of the event organizers who are members of the OBSN — Crystal Cavalier-Keck, the president of the North Carolina Democratic Party Native American Caucus, and A.yoni Jeffries, an Afro-Indigenous musician and artist based in Durham.

Grant Holub-Moorman coordinates events and North Carolina outreach for WUNC, including a monthly trivia night. He is a founding member of Embodied and a former producer for The State of Things.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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