For the first time in state history, South Carolina officially acknowledged the presence of Indian peoples when it granted state recognition to the Waccamaw and Pee Dee Nations on February 18.
As part of the ruling, the state’s Commission for Minority Affairs also classified the Eastern Cherokee and Wassamasu as "Indian groups," according to The Sun News. Group recognition is less difficult to obtain than tribal recognition, but both require long-standing membership records and proof of a collective culture.
"This is the first time in 200 years that the state of South Carolina has recognized us as indigenous—before, we didn’t exist," said Chief Carolyn Chavis Bolton of the Pee Dee Nation. Many of her people laughed and cried when they heard the announcement.
State recognition will not provide state-level funding to the tribes, but it will allow them greater ease in receiving money from organizations and federal agencies. Chief Harold Hatcher of the Waccamaw Nation said that state recognition will also promote Indian identity. He and Bolton agreed that one of the most immediate results of state recognition will be allowing Waccamaw and Pee Dee artists to display their work with state recognition status.
Bolton hopes that state recognition will pave the way for federal recognition, which would allow the tribe to have access to funding from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, but she said that achievement is still "a long way down the line."
In order to obtain federal recognition a tribe must prove that it has been a distinct community for over 100 years and that it has had tribal control in the form of a tribal chief or council since 1751. Proving tribal control is difficult, Hatcher said, for tribes such as the Waccamaw whose languages have never been written. The tribe will instead have to turn to colonial records for evidence.
Only one tribe in South Carolina, the Catawaba Nation, has received federal recognition.
