The Oklahoma-based Muscogee (Creek) Nation recently asked the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to reinstate its 2012 lawsuit against the Poarch Creek Band of Indians and Auburn University for improperly removing human remains and artifacts from sacred land to build the Wind Creek Casino and Resort in Wetumpka, Alabama.
The tribe claims the venue was built on the sacred site known as Hickory Ground, which was the Muscogee capital when federal troops forced the tribe out of Alabama on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, nearly 200 years ago. According to the lawsuit, 57 sets of human remains and artifacts buried with them were removed and stored in containers without proper ventilation or temperature control.
The original lawsuit was renewed in 2019 but dismissed by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama in 2021. Thompson ruled because the Poarch Creeks are a federally recognized tribe, they have qualified immunity and cannot be sued for developing their land.
The new appeal contends the Poarch Creek Band of Indians and Auburn University violated the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires federally funded museums and universities to return ancestors and items buried with them to their descendants. The appeal seeks to have ancestral remains returned. It also wants to prohibit any further development on Hickory Ground and requests the demolition of the Wind Creek Casino.
In a letter to the Poarch Creek tribe, Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief David Hill wrote that the tribe failed to meet its obligation to Muscogee ancestors. Hill wrote, “You made a promise to protect these lands and the MCN ancestors who remain there. A promise that was broken when you removed our ancestors, stored them in boxes and sent them off to a university to be studied by non-Indian archeologists. Some, still today, sit in a storage facility on site. You have yet to do right by them.”
According to the appeal, “Although violently and forcibly removed from the sacred ground where they held ceremony since time immemorial, the modern-day members of Hickory Ground have kept the traditions, culture and ceremonies of their Muscogee ancestors alive at the present-day Hickory Ground on the Muscogee Reservation in Oklahoma.”
An Auburn University spokesman said officials had no comment on the new appeal. Poarch Creek officials could not be reached for comment.
