Look at that.

It's an elementary school.

Clark Elementary School is sitting on my grandfather's allotment.

Here's a Popeye's Chicken on it too.

How appropriate.

That's kind of funny, actually.

I have a strong curiosity.

And I have a love for Creek history.

It's crazy about this guy, when I see his face, I think of my dad.

My own biological father.

Because he looks just like this guy.

Every time I discover a ancestor and I just see their name, it makes me want to research them and keep digging into books.

My grandfather's name is Eli Grayson My dad's name is Eli Grayson.

I'm Eli the third.

So it was a common name in the Creek Nation.

So I'm not special.

This is my grandpa Eli Grayson's allotment that you're driving by.

This is very interesting.

I'm going to turn down this street.

This is illegal.

Yeah, I'm going to step out.

I've never heard of anybody who was half American.

This land is my grandfather's original property.

Oh yeah?

His name was Eli Grayson.

When people are from France, they're proud to be from France.

And they're proud that they have French nationality.

What's lost in translation, with tribes is that we are nations.

I'm a citizen of the Creek Nation.

.

I don't believe in any of that.

80% of our citizens are less than quarter blood.

Either you are a Creek citizen, or you are not.

The Creek Nation hosts a Creek festival every year to celebrate all things Muskogee.

A day to celebrate all things Creek.

[music playing] Wow, brother, that's amazing.

How y'all doing?

Great, how you doing today?

Brother, you need a wheelchair out here, man.

Think it was in the year 2000.

I was visiting the Creek Nation, and I was at the preservation office.

One of the librarians, she was very excited to meet me, because my name was Grayson.

And I was from California, blah blah blah.

A black lady, African-American woman walked in and she had two kids.

And this librarian who was talking to me very friendly, stopped talking to me, walked over, told the lady to leave in front of her kids.

When she came back over, she kind of smiled and kind of jokingly said, those Freedmen, they think we owe them something.

And I said, Freedmen?

She said, oh never mind.

It's not that important.

And I said, well what is that?

And she said, oh it's nothing.

Don't worry about it.

Freedmen.

That was my first time ever hearing that word.

I went and checked out some books.

At that time, I had never even read the Creek treaty.

It was all new to me.

So I got a copy of the Creek treaty.

Creek Freedmen, former slaves of the tribe, getting citizenship in 1866.

I didn't even know the Creeks owned slaves.

Who knew Indians owned slaves?

Technically, this should be Creek Freedmen, not just Freedmen.

They didn't have to have Creek blood in their veins.

They had chains around their hands.

That's what gave them their citizenship.

And to me, that's more important than blood in your vein.

All the Creeks were from this area here.

At some point in history, something could've gone wrong and one of my ancestors could have been killed off and I wouldn't be here.

One of my great-grandmothers listed as a Freedman, though she's listed as one half Indian, her father was listed as her owner.

Yeah.

And she's listed as a half-blood Creek.

My direct family members were slave owners.

We could talk about Custer.

We could talk about the crap that the U.S. government did on the western tribes, all day long, but we cannot talk about the Freedmen.

In 1979, Creek Freedmen were disenfranchised and disenrolled, decitizenized, by Claude Cox, former chief of the tribe.

Basically writing a new constitution ending the old constitution in 1868.

They kicked them out.

I was like, oh my god.

Now, if other people don't want to hear about it, fine they'll say, I don't want to hear it.

But I will still say it.

There's a part where it used to be a slave cemetery.

I wish we had something in our DNA or in our brains that would allow us to go to sleep and call these people forth, and you can actually hear their stories.

I find that some of the things in my tribe are fixable.

A little conversation here and there to explain things to people.

It helps a lot.

[music playing]