ABSTRACT
Landscape is as much cultural as it is physical. Individuals create landscapes out of experience and hope. But landscape is also important to communities – it defines boundaries, provides subsistence, and nurtures loyalty to ideology or history. One particular place – Bulloch County, Georgia – holds wisdom that taught us how to maintain our identity as Indians in a hostile racial and economic climate. Lumbees' history of economic uncertainty also calls for a religious orientation. Environmental changes accompany that economic uncertainty. Some Lumbees responded by moving with the industry, but others stayed home, remaining with the swamps and fields that had shaped our values. The perpetual uncertainties in Lumbees' social environments led to some inventive strategies for identity preservation. The story of turpentine, the migration to Georgia, the return home and the continued remembrance demonstrates one solution to maintaining our Indianness – a focus on renewing the connections to family, memory and home to help maintain our identity as Indians.
