Macon Magazine

44 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2026 A new sculpture depicting a Muscogee (Creek) stickball player tells an impactful story about culture in the tribe's homelands. STORY BY JULIA MORRISON | PHOTOS BY JESSICA WHITLEY K E E P I N G T R A D I T I O N P L AY I N G O N T he wind whipped dramatically, blowing off the black cloth to reveal the face of Netche "Cepvnkv" Gray to the crowd, staring straight towards the west toward Oklahoma while raising his arms and stickball tools high in the air. Based on his legacy, Gray, a Muscogee (Creek) culture-bearer and World War I veteran, would have understood the power of sharing stories that transmit one's history and heritage to the next generation. He may not have ever imagined that his story would be the one etched in bronze and marble, making an impact in the ancestral homelands of his people. For nearly 200 years in Macon and across Georgia and Alabama, the story of the Muscogee Nation has been told using the language of removal. The pain of forced migration, unfair and coerced treaties with the United States Government, and the loss of the land that had been stewarded for thousands of years has been told locally through a lens that can be inaccurate, stereotypical, or plainly untrue. This has made the distance feel longer between the banks of the Ocmulgee River and Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where the Muscogee Nation headquarters now sit. But this past September, that story took on a different shape, part of a number of cultural reconnection efforts between people who live in Macon today and Muscogee citizens over the past several years. Standing more than seven feet tall on a base of Georgia marble, sculptor Kenneth Johnson (Muscogee/Seminole) installed the likeness of Gray to complete the striking Bicentennial Park piece "ECKE – Mother Ground." Gray had been part of an unbroken lineage that passed down Muscogee songs, stories, language, and traditions in spite of removal and concerted efforts to oppress Indigenous self-expression. The

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