Waʔtkyekwanęherá·thęʔ ~ We Welcome You

The Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina consists of three historic constituent bands located in Robeson County, North Carolina: Prospect, Saddletree and Maxton. Though we use the name "North Carolina" to distinguish ourselves from our relatives in New York and Six Nations, Ontario, we are older than North Carolina. We are older than America.

Our Corn Speaks Our Truth Yękwanę́hawęh waʔkatkáhryeʔ.  Genetic analysis of our ancestral Tuscarora white corn has corroborated oral histories preserved by our people, tracing an ancient migration from what is now the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. We call this journey *The Grapevine* — a sacred path across the Great Plains, Mississippi River and Ohio Valley to New York and ultimately eastern North Carolina, where our people have remained for more than 2,400 years. Following the Tuscarora War (1711–1715) and decades of colonial violence, Tuscarora headmen secured land grants in what is now Robeson County and carried the Council Fire to a new homeland, where our communities continue to thrive today. 

What Binds Us To be Tuscarora is more than blood. It is the shared experience of enduring together. Many of us were born poor but did not know it, because we were rich in family, ceremony and community. Our elders left school to support their families during the sharecropping era. We stood together against systems of white supremacy that oppressed Native peoples. We protested together, fought together, endured together. When we succeed, we celebrate together. When we receive good fortune, we give thanks together. Our socials and ceremonies within the longhouses bind us across generations and shape a worldview born of struggle, love and collective memory.

For generations, our communities have maintained a food ministry serving not only Tuscarora citizens, but all people in need.   My grandfather often spoke of his mother, who lived in the Saddletree community during the Great Depression. At evenfall, people would begin lining up at her back door and she would feed them soup and bread. If she learned that a family was struggling, she would quietly fill bags with vegetables from her garden and groceries from the store, leave them at their doorstep and walk away without revealing who had brought them. There was no expectation of recognition or gratitude. Helping others was simply understood to be one's responsibility.  
As John Lawson observed in 1709: "They are very kind and charitable to one another, but more especially to those of their own Nation...'It is our duty thus to do; otherwise our society will fall.'"  Those values continue to guide us today.