This article explores the meaning of the Monacan pow wow to those who live in the host community. We contend that this pow wow constitutes a political expression for the Monacan people, a celebration of survival as indigenous people not only in a state where Indian policy took the form of documentary genocide (Smith, 1992), but in a county where local power brokers managed to configure a local political economy in which Indians were integrated at the bottom of a virtual caste system. Considered in a community context, this gathering also constitutes a space where the Monacan people can articulate, on their own terms their existence as a contemporary indigenous people with a unique history
