90 Americans. A lot of these people worked in the woods. They were farmers — charcoal, timber, lumber. Some of them were working on the railroads and had to work with creosol, which is used to preserve the logs. That stuff just burns your skin up, and I’ve seen guys that have scars on them from working with it.” The term Creole, which historically meant a Frenchman born in the colonies, has haunted the Pascagoula River Tribe for decades as people have used it to ridicule the tribe. It often has been spoken with connotations of “mixed-breed” and inferiority, Haggard said. Ealy put it simply when describing what it was like for her growing up as Native American in Mississippi in the 1970s and 1980s — “It was bad. It was very difficult.” She and her siblings were picked on and teased constantly. Attending school after desegregation, they were the only people of color in their school. It was worse for her brother, who had darker skin. He got beaten up almost every day. He quit school and ran away often. He would go to relatives in a nearby town, sometimes living in the woods and sneaking in to eat because he was afraid of being sent back. He never felt like he belonged. “Whenweweregrowingup,therewasjust somuchnegativityaroundtheIndians,”Ealy said.“EverytimeyouturnedontheTV,there wassometypeofJohnWaynemovieand hewaskillingalltheIndiansbecauseallthe Indianswerebad.Soyoudidn’twanttobean Indianbecausetheywereprettymuchgetting killed.Youwerebestjustnottalkingaboutit.” Thepervasivestigmasanddiscrimination evenledtoracismbetweenmembersofthe tribe.WhenPolkwasgrowingup,shesaid somemembersdecidedtoturntheirbackson theirownpeopleinanattemptatabetterlife. “They were trying to be separated from something that was hindering them, hindering them from getting good educations and good jobs,” she said. Treatment of Native Americans further complicates the recognition process in terms of evidence. Much was lost through the years of Removal. Eastern tribes were also not as well documented as tribes to the west. There is also the problem of southern public officials assigning a variety of false racial labels to the Pascagoula River Tribe — sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. “In the South, specifically, because of Jim Crow, local authorities have tried to label them as African-American and hide their ethnicity,” Haggard said. “That’s part of the process that you have to deal with. “You have some individuals who were mislabeled because they didn’t really know what they were. But in the South, there’s also this deliberate attempt by local authorities and by local populations to hide what they are, for various reasons.” Several key pieces of evidence have helped Haggard and the tribe dispel the confusion. The tribe pops up on a federal 90