Shared Ancestry to Freedom- Native and African American Exploration

You are cordially invited by Shaya Partners to study and acknowledge an overlooked history of interactions between Native and African Americans. Shared ancestry between enslaved Africans and Native Americans is a historical occurrence that demands deeper study since it is intrinsically tied to ancestral belonging, identity, and race.

The relevance of the broad Native American ancestry among Afro Americans and the widespread African ancestry among many Native communities has been largely neglected in contemporary scientific and popular writing in the United States. The effects of this omission are extensive, and this is particularly true when it comes to research on the development of music, folklore, social structure, and other facets of culture.

Similar to this, a significant number of “Red-Black People,” who are a mix of African and American, has gone mostly unnoticed; in fact, both academics and North American legal systems have typically categorized these individuals as “Black.” Further, it has been widely disregarded that there were once a sizable number of Native Americans who were slaves, with significant ramifications for both early Native and Afro-American history. The final ingestion of Native American blood by the more numerous Negro slaves signaled the end of Native American enslavement. However, because it continued to circulate in the veins of the Black, Native American blood did not go die in the slave states.

The majority of Alabama’s slaves were transported there as part of the region’s internal slave trade after being born into slavery in neighboring states. In Alabama, Native Americans were evicted from their homes to make space for cotton plantations and the development of European Americans. In addition, by 1860 Montgomery had developed into one of Alabama’s most significant centers for the trade in slaves.

Shaya Partners is excited for you to encounter the people, places, and occasions sparking transformation and defining an important moment for America that is still occurring today in collaboration with neighborhood businesses and communities.