Macon Magazine

(NPS) unit. "For people who were forced to leave 195 years ago, we are thankful for the heartfelt welcome by the community today," Chief Hill said. Seth Clark, executive director of the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative (ONPPI), whose mission is to expand the current site of the Ocmulgee National Historical Park into a National Park and Preserve, admitted it is our responsibility to atone for the sins of our past. "The entire country has the opportunity to see Middle Georgia atone for its role in scarring a people and a region through forced removal all those years ago," he said. "We are working with the Muscogee Nation to preserve and restore their sacred lands for us all. The whole region is uniting around the park expansion. This will have an impact far beyond the land conservation it entails. "This story is theirs to tell. This land was theirs longer than it has been ours. So, to play a role in an effort that can potentially result in an increased physical presence of Creek ancestors in their beloved Macon Plateau is powerful." The proposed Special Resource Study (SRS) area for the expansion project includes the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee-Creek Nation. Forced to cede their ancestral homelands, they were removed to Indian Territory in Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, known to Muscogee people as "Nene Estemerkv" (Road of Misery) in the 1830s. "We left, but we have never surrendered or ceded our historic and cultural legacy tied to the Ocmulgee area in Georgia," explained Chief Hill. "The Muscogee-Creek Nation has a long-standing history of preserving the Ocmulgee Old Fields, including via the Treaty of Washington in 1805 when the Muscogee Creek Nation specifically reserved the Ocmulgee Old Fields from land cessions and would only cede an eastern portion of the Ocmulgee River to the United States." The Ocmulgee Old Fields Reserve was not formally ceded until 21 years later in the 1826 Treaty of Washington. "The Ocmulgee Old Fields are revered as a sacred place to the Muscogee people," Floyd said. "The Muscogee- Creek Nation worked to declare the Ocmulgee Old Fields as an eligible Traditional Cultural Property (TCP) under the National Historic Preservation Act in 1995, receiving concurrence from the Keeper of the National Register in 1999." The Ocmulgee Old Fields was the first TCP east of the Mississippi River and encompasses 14,000 acres, extending from the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park to the Bond Swamp National Wildlife Refuge to the south. The NPS initiated the study of the Ocmulgee River Corridor in Middle Georgia in late 2019 as authorized in accordance with the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act of 2019, according to Floyd. "The SRS will evaluate the potential for establishing a National Park Service unit and findings of the study will be prepared for the Secretary of the Interior, who will submit the study, along with recommendations, if any, to Congress," Floyd said. Only Congress, through legislation, or the President, through use of the Antiquities Act, has the authority to establish a new unit of the NPS. The study area must meet four criteria to be recommended as an addition to the system: national significance, suitability, feasibility and need for NPS management. "If any criteria are not met, the study concludes," Floyd said. The NPS conducted extensive research, including tribal consultation and targeted stakeholder outreach, and prepared the environmental and cultural history of the study area in the winter and spring of 2020. Then, the DECEMBER/JANUARY 2022 | maconmagazine.com 39

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