The Muscogee (Creek) Nation, like many tribes across the United States, are a people removed from our ancestral homelands. For my Apekv-Tvlledegv people, our journey from the Southeast began in the 1830s with the Indian Removal Act, the Removal Treaty of 1832, and forced removal in 1836. The history that we carry with us includes the stories of survival, the stories of our ancestors carrying our fires from the Southeast to Indian Territory. Muscogee people endured through removal from our sacred homelands to create a new life and prosperity at the end of the trail.

For me, as a Muscogee citizen, growing up and living in Oklahoma outside of our reservation boundaries was an experience not uncommon to many. Tribal members often work and live in areas away from the sacred places. For Muscogee people, our sacred places primarily include our ceremonial grounds, churches, and communities. My family and I drove thousands of miles back and forth across the highways from our home to our Muscogee churches every weekend when I was growing up. I was raised with a deep sense of respect and responsibility for being present at our churches.

Later in my life, I was able to connect with my ceremonial grounds to learn and practice our ancestral customs. This was truly an awakening for me in many areas of my life. That same respect and responsibility that I had learned at a young age was experienced again as an adult.

Now, as president of the College of the Muscogee Nation, we have created opportunities for our students, faculty, and staff to learn about and visit sacred sites in our homelands in the Southeast. These classes have become known as travel-learn experiences in which we get to visit the cultural, historical, and sacred sites of our ancestors. Some of the sites visited have been Moundville, Horseshoe Bend, Cuko Rakko Mountain, Etowah Mounds, Standing Peachtree Tribal Town, and the Ocmulgee Mounds. Each person has their own unique experience and connection to these places. Such Muscogee sacred sites are not only for telling our history but are a key connection to our thriving traditional governments that still exist within our reservation boundaries. For me, these visits to our Muscogee (Creek) homelands are an important part of our understanding and perpetuation of who we are as sovereign people today.

Omvlkvt vtutket Hesaketvmese ohmerrekvs! (May God bless everyone’s work!)