The Land Has Memories

Coalition to Save Thoroughfare

The history of Thoroughfare (Haymarket, VA) is the impediment of a long-standing diverse community through generational and family ties working together to maintain their cultural sustainability. We first must look to the Indigenous community to locate the foundation of this resilient community. “Coexistence begins in place— the places we come from and call home, the places we care for and struggle over, the places that sustain us, the places we share” (Larsen & Johnson, (2017, pg.1).

Long before Africans and Europeans walked these lands there was a plethora of Indigenous Native Americans that spoke many different languages and had their own customs and expressive cultural practices. The land was filled with people whose spirituality resonated with the land they occupied. The Indigenous people of Thoroughfare lived off the land by oral transmission of agriculture food production to nourish their bodies and learning from the animals what plants would be of medicinal use. Then special places were termed sacred because of the specific utilization of that place for ceremonial edification. The land is a part of the people, and the land is the people in how they identify with society.

Frank, with his brother Dulany Washington, formed the Coalition to Save Thoroughfare with other community members ready to fight against an ongoing silent erasure. Gina Allen and Shelia Hansen, elders of the Shawnee Nation, shared their memories of growing up in this area and their intelligent resolve to stand up and protect what they hold dear. It is their loved ones’ and ancestors safe and final resting place.

Shelia has seen plenty of this type of behavior at other community gatherings in America concerning encroachment on sacred Indigenous lands. She, like many others, constantly fights oppression and disregard for other cultural practices. Shelia understands the long history of racial prejudice against First Nation people, having dealt with spite and anger toward her kinfolk. “When I was a little girl, I did not know why White people were being so mean to us. I remember my mother saying that some people were just mean or evil just because even if they are poor like us.” She was talking about how the poor Whites in the area would be rude and nasty to us Indigenous and Black people.