Violent Incident With Native Women, Kids Over Burial Ground At Cedar Point Neighborhood
Carteret County, NC – On Sunday, July 23, 2024, American Indian women, children, and elders faced intimidation and hate-induced brutalization during an unarmed, peaceful prayer to honor exposed and desecrated American Indian burial grounds at the Bridgeview housing development in Cedar Point, North Carolina. The group gathered for prayer, observing agreed-upon traditional protocols, which forbid weapons or any man-made protections to be carried during prayer.
Interactions between Native activists and neighborhood residents became violent over the protection of a recently unearthed Native American village at a housing development. Earlier this month, the Office of State Archaeology released a report saying it found thousands of Native American artifacts amid construction at the Bridge View housing development in Cedar Point, which is likely the state’s biggest Native American find in 30 years.
In a TikTok video, one Tuscarora woman, Brandy Alvarez, said she and others traveled to the site for a peaceful prayer. She and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina say they conducted a ceremony to honor their ancestors, which included chanting and burning sweetgrass. The woman said on their way out, a man approached the group, angry about their presence, and confronted their members with a gun and things turned physical.
“We were met with violence. We were attacked. We had guns pulled on us. We were women and children in regalia, and we were met with violence and brutality,” Alvarez said.
She said a gun was pulled on her by a homeowner as she went to retrieve her phone from her car to record, and that one Native woman was body-slammed to the ground. The video has since been taken down.
WRAL reports that two residents of the neighborhood were injured in the confrontation, and the Carteret County Sheriff’s Office is looking for one man who stabbed a resident with a pocketknife. In a statement, the Tuscarora Tribe maintained the activists were peaceful and called the incident a hate crime.
“Armed only with prayers and sweetgrass, the Natives were attacked in a hate crime for nothing more than being Native,” the statement reads.
“The police department did not do their job. They did not follow protocol. The violence that we endured, the lack of protection we had, it’s too much,” Alvarez said.
Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and co-founder of 7 Directions of Service, issued a statement regarding the violence at American Indian burial grounds threatened by housing developers, including critical context and updates related to HB385 in the NC General Assembly. Read the full statement: [STMNT] American Indian Leader Responds to Violence at Burial Grounds.
The Carteret County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that a fight occurred, and one of the people from that community was stabbed with a small pocket knife. The person responsible for that has been identified but not taken into custody.
Sunday’s incident comes after state Sen. Michael Lazzara (R-Onslow) asked the legislature to overlook the archaeological findings of burial grounds buried beneath the Bridge View Development. For now, construction is paused. Lazzara said the bill would apply to Bridge View and any historic site in the state.
North Carolina lawmakers continue to discuss the topic at the state legislature.
This is an important find in Carteret County and should be investigated by archeologists. There may be valuable information that is not previously known, especially for our area.
The real truth is, that land is sacred and in beliefs of Native Americans well, let’s just say it’s God. God shined a light, and it also shows if you mess with that spot what could come won’t be nice because the spirits are not happy at all. The Native’s have been treated so poorly and no one ever spoke up with them. They we’re even allowed to speak up for themselves at times. Those spirits are hurt, and angry and the ancestors that they were going to pray over aren’t happy either. That entire area belonged to the Natives first. Don’t ever forget that.