20140957 Ver 2_Against Letters_20170831

401 Permitting
1617 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1617
August 28, 2017
To Whom It May Concern:
rCEIVE
Personal impact statement
J. Cedric Woods
198 Manchester Street
Mattapan, MA 02126
I am an enrolled citizen of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina, and a descendant of Woods, Dial,
Brewer, Moore, Oxendine, Bullard families long residing in the areas variously known as Scuffletown,
Smiths Township, and more recently, Pembroke and Prospect. My connection to these families and the
land they care for, farm, and rely on for their livelihoods and place to live has shaped and continues to
shape how I view my identity as a Lumbee and responsibility to my community. As such, I feel it is
incumbent to express some of the concerns voiced by members of my extended families as it relates to
the current and proposed activities of Dominion Power and other developers in the construction of the
Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
While others have provided more than enough data cataloguing the potential negative environmental
impact, minimal positive economic impact, and public health risks of the construction of the Atlantic
Coast Pipeline, I am writing to express its ongoing and potential impact on those who are no longer with
us physically, but maintain a role in our family stories and traditions, our ancestors buried in our historic
homelands. By training, I am a cultural anthropologist, and therefore utilize oral interviews as well as
primary sources for research and providing greater understanding on any particular subject matter,
specifically as it relates to Eastern Native Peoples. As such, I consider all this data when making the
following statement. Whether the unmarked final resting places of our ancestors from before sustained
European contact, unmarked historic burials, or marked historic burials, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline can
impact burials in each of these categories.
I will start first with the impact on unmarked burials of a more ancient origin, and work my way forward
in time. Thus far, developers have not expressed a willingness to enter into formal consultation with the
Lumbee or other impacted tribes in the state of North Carolina. As such, none of the tribes have
received a copy of the archaeological assessment done by a contracted CRM firm, and therefore can not
verify whether or not its route will negatively impact known (confirmed via archaeological methods or
historic documents) sites or probable sites (referenced in historic documents but with ambiguous
locations, or part of tribal oral histories). It is also highly unlikely this report will contain areas of cultural
significance, whether for sacred places or areas of ecological significance for harvesting of traditional
foodstuffs, medicinal plants, or construction of traditional items of material culture.
While I do not doubt the CRM firm has catalogued all known, published sites in their study, such as the
Parham and Buie Mounds in Robeson County, I have little to no confidence they have taken into
consideration the 5 mounds excavated by Hamilton McMillan and 4 mounds identified by a Mr. D.

Sinclair. All 5 of the mounds excavated by McMillan had multiple human remains, with one containing
50 skeletons.' While we do not know if the four additional mounds identified by Mr. Sinclair contain
human remains, they would still be a cultural asset of significance worthy of preservation if
archaeological reconnaissance confirmed them as culturally significant sites.
In relation to our more recent ancestors, my sisters, mother, and other relatives have received multiple
requests from developers to use a private dirt road (owned by my relatives) that accesses a historic
family cemetery still in active use. This dirt road runs through the family cemetery, and is by virtue of its
location, small, and intermittently traveled, and not with heavy farm equipment. The purpose of this
access requested (and possibly demanded in the future) would be to access the construction site. In
discussions with my family, there are serious concerns about the damage to marked graves, grave
markers, and fencing of our fami,V sacred space, as well as probable unmarked burials as well. As a
result of these concerns, and the developers' interest only in discussing minimal financial compensation
for this access, and not dealing with issues of mitigation and preservation of the site (road condition,
access to the cemetery, preservation of markers and marked burials and identification and preservation
of unmarked burials), they are demonstrating a desire for access to facilitate their construction project
in spite of what we believe to a basic human right of protecting the graves of our beloved family.
As a result of this concern for my very personal issue of protection of a cemetery holding the remains of
our more recent family, and of the unmarked remains for our more distant kin, I urge the North Carolina
Department of Environmental Quality to not issue any permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline until they
have engaged in good faith consultation with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, other impacted tribes,
and the many families and individual property owners that will be personally impacted. I also urge the
North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to hold further permitting actions until the State
Historic Preservation Office has completed a study in cooperation with tribal governments in North
Carolina (Lumbee and other) to fill gaps in knowledge concerning the locations and conditions of
unmarked American Indian family cemeteries and burial mounds. To date, this has not occurred, and
demands for access to private roads, and more importantly, burial places, do not in my opinion equal
consultation.
d
Respectfully submitted,
s
J/Cedric Woods (Lumbee), Ph.D
' Holmes, J.A. Notes on the Indian Burial Mounds of eastern North Carolina, (1882-1915)