ABSTRACT
In the author's master's studies, he had the honor of taking the class Multiculturalism in Planning and Policy with an esteemed ethnic studies scholar. As someone with roots in Louisiana (Creole) and Appalachia (Melungeon), he felt that the course's assignments provided perfect opportunities to explore how policy and shared space shaped racial identity formation for people who descended from both West Africa and Southeast Turtle Island—sometimes known as Black Indians—during Amerikkkan slavery and Reconstruction. He argued that the settler government attempted to use policies (e.g., allotment, blood quantum, one drop rule) to curtail collaboration and coexistence among Africans, Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Seminoles. Through Elders’ stories, historical documents, and geographies from his mother's family, Choctaw, Muskogee, French, Irish, and Congolese and/or Senegalese by way of Haiti.
