My hometown of Hollister will again be on my mind when the annual Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow rolls out on May 18-19 in Raleigh. As one of the organizers, I work closely with Native American communities and others to make the event happen. And through all the hubbub, it always brings me back to my proud roots and what I learned there. 

Hollister is a small rural town in Halifax County on the edge of Warren County. When I lived there, we didn’t have stoplights; we had caution lights that blinked to warn you that you should probably look both ways at the intersection. Major news event of my day included a transformer blowing and setting fire to most of the wooded areas. The opening of the Dollar General also caused a stir. In Hollister, your house could be tucked away atop a hill in the woods, on a farm, or cozily next door to your relatives on land you inherited from your “granddaddy.”

While it was country in terms of what city folks would call “country” and had a roughness to it that you really don’t understand until you’re older, the poverty levels placed us in the category of one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. But growing up, it didn’t feel like it. Maybe it’s because I never felt the brunt of poverty, as my family tried their best to hide it from me. 

Truthfully, Hollister—while small enough to be plagued with town gossip and infighting because someone simply didn’t “like” someone else—was our home. It was the home of my tribe, the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe. As a tribe, we watched out for each other, even though we might side-eye someone’s new girlfriend, refuse to eat their collards, or not trust them (hide your jewelry and don’t leave money behind because you know he’ll steal). Even with those prejudices, our doors were open, and our tables had an extra chair for our uncle who was alone in his house during a snow day.

Trey Roberts Credit: Courtesy of the subject

We were a community and a tribe. Every year, on the third weekend of April, we gathered at the powwow grounds. If we were lucky, which most of the time we were, we’d get the perfect weather—a cool 70-degree, sunny day. The smell of sage and sweetgrass mixed with the naturally growing honeysuckles that grew off the sides of the woods filled the air. It was a homecoming because you got to see cousins your age that lived in other cities up north and the aunt who rarely left the comfort of her own home. It was a moment to come out in your best outfits, your hair done up, a fresh cut, and new shoes that would end up dusty from the lack of grass. We were to be seen, and our culture was to be celebrated. Looking back at these things, now older, I do so with fondness. At the time, being younger, I also sought a place beyond the pine trees that enveloped Hollister.

My desire for more made me resent it as a youth, not knowing that the moment I left the comfort of my tribe would be unmatched in Raleigh. Raleigh has offered me many opportunities and, while being a city still in its adolescence, has given me a sense of community that’s rare to find in cities across the country. While it welcomed and embraced me, I also felt this sense of being an outlier. The connections I made are deep and true but can’t be interpreted the same way as the ones I get when I see or meet another Native American or the time I spent growing up in Hollister. There’s an alignment that’s close but just not quite there. I had to figure a lot of stuff out myself and had to open myself up to people who didn’t quite understand my upbringing or why I spoke or did something a certain way.

I was always surrounded by my culture and people who were excited about any progress I made in my life. In Hollister, we had winter powwows, the annual powwows, culture classes, monthly lessons on Native American history, and excitement about new regalia. A sense of community that went beyond the transactional, that was about laying all our cards on the table, never hiding a hand. Outside the yearly Native American Heritage Celebration hosted by the Museum of History, there was no other opportunity for us to be celebrated.

Credit: Alex Williams for the Dix Park Conservancy

In my eyes, Raleigh looked at Native American people through sepia-toned photos of the past. It was only history, bows and arrows, and feathers. In Hollister, it was vibrant and in action. When we approached the idea of the Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow and our duty to carry the legacy of the land of Dix Park, we evaluated our responsibility. We had to honor what was before by telling the history that all of Raleigh was land inhabited by Native Americans and that we had to say that this was a living contemporary culture. Our traditions didn’t die with our ancestors but lived and evolved with our modern lens.

The Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow, with the help of groups like Triangle Native American Society, was an opportunity to bring a piece of home back to my new home. We can watch it all as a mix of the senses I had growing up. The legacy of it, I hope, remains a memory to every non-Native visitor as alive and breathing and to every Native American who participates or spectates as a celebration of our resiliency.

Trey Roberts is the manager of community engagement at Dix Park Conservancy and creator of the Dix Park Inter-Tribal Pow Wow, which brings the Native American community together to celebrate its history on park land as well as its living culture.

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