What We Do
Our programs are organized into four areas of sustained commitment. Each reflects a need our community has expressed and a gap our Foundation is positioned to fill.
Program I
The Oral History Project
We are actively recording the testimony of our elders — the children and grandchildren of those who fled Oscarville, who remember what Beulah Rucker told them, who carry the family names and the family stories. These recordings are being archived in partnership with tribal records and will be preserved for future generations. Time is not on our side. This work cannot wait.
Program II
Youth Heritage Education
Working with families and community educators, we are developing age-appropriate curriculum that tells our children the true history of their people — the Fort Christanna treaty, the paper genocide, Oscarville, Beulah Rucker, and the unbroken chain of names and families from Brunswick County, Virginia to Hall County, Georgia. Children who know their history do not grow up searching for it.
Program III
The Archive & Records Initiative
Family Bibles, photographs, land deeds, death certificates, newspaper clippings, church records — the documentary evidence of our community's existence is scattered across attics, drawers, and boxes. We are building a centralized, professionally maintained archive that will serve as the permanent institutional record of the Cheraw Monacan people. Digitization. Preservation. Public access.
Program IV
Annual Gathering Support
Every June, five hundred of our people gather. The Foundation provides logistical, financial, and programmatic support to ensure that gathering continues — that it grows, that it deepens, and that it remains the living heart of our community. No other program matters more than the one that simply puts our people in the same room.
Program V
Community Assistance Fund
Our elders gave us everything. Our families carried the names and the stories through every displacement and every attempt to erase them. The Foundation maintains a direct assistance fund for tribal members facing hardship — medical needs, housing, emergency support. Because sovereignty means nothing if we do not take care of our own.
Program VI
Veteran & At-Risk Housing Initiative
We were displaced once, generations ago, with nowhere to go. We will not stand by while it happens to others — especially to the veterans who served this country and came home to find no home waiting for them. The Foundation is actively pursuing property acquisition to provide affordable, supportive housing for homeless and at-risk veterans, with the intention of extending this work to other vulnerable members of our broader community over time. This initiative is in active development — we are pursuing funding partnerships, building relationships with local and state agencies, and working toward our first property. Sovereignty means nothing if it does not extend to making sure our neighbors have somewhere to lay their heads.
A note on geography: while our community's roots and the majority of our people remain centered in Hall County, our operational and advocacy work on this initiative has grown in metro Atlanta, where tribal members also live and where partnerships with DeKalb County agencies and officials have opened real doors for housing and economic development work. This reflects the same pattern our people have always lived — building where opportunity calls, while never losing sight of where we come from.