Welcome to the MOWA Choctaw Cultural Center. Here you will find rich history of our people, a sense of who we are, our story.
We invite you, your families, even your classroom to come out and take a tour of our cultural center. Come listen to our stories, how our ancestors stayed behind regardless of the “Indian Removal Act” and “Trail of Tears”. Come let us tell you of the hardships they overcame even when the odds were stacked against them. They survived.
We are still here.
CHAHTA SIA HOKE! (We are Choctaw)
You will find the rooms are divided into a culture room, timeline room, everyday living, and the modern tribe. These rooms feature various artifacts relating to the Indians of Mobile and Washington counties. The first treaty made under the provisions of the 1830 Indian Removal Act was the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with the Choctaw that same year. Mass confusion reigned among the Choctaw of southwestern Alabama and Mississippi as they were forced to leave their homes and lands. Some Choctaw were able to escape to avoid removal. We formed the nucleus of the tribe today. We adopted the name "MOWA Choctaw Indians" to identify that our people reside in both Mobile and Washington Counties who are descended from several Indian tribes including Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and Apache.
“In places like Alabama, where my grandmother is from, there were no schools set up for Native children, so they either went without or they had to work with churches to build their own,” says Denise
Historian Denise Bates has worked closely with our tribe for many years to rebuild and update our museum and tribal archive. She has worked alongside Maggie Rivers, Erin Cooper, Jolene Weaver, Samantha Williams, Laretta Weaver, and Johnny Weaver. She also served on the MOWA Choctaw Museum Advisory Board as part of the ANA grant implementation.
Dr. Bates is currently a Professor of History and Dean of University College at Tufts University. She holds degrees in American Indian Studies (BA & MA) and History (Ph.D.) and was previously a Professor and Associate Dean of Student Success and Community Engagement at Arizona State University (ASU) before joining Tufts. She sits on the advisory board for the American Indian Policy Institute, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at ASU, and is a series editor for the Contemporary Issues and Methods in Indigenous Studies for the University of Alabama Press.
As an advocate of community-based history, Dr. Bates collaborates on projects that build tribal oral history collections and archival and historical repositories. She is a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), and she uses her training to manage or serve as a consultant for various public-facing history and humanities-based projects. Her work tells the stories of Indigenous peoples in the southern U.S., bringing their narratives to the wider world. She has authored multiple publications, including The Other Movement: Indian Rights and Civil Rights in the Deep South (2012), We Will Always Be Here: Native Peoples on Living and Thriving in the South (2016), Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884-1984 (2020), and Louisiana Coushatta Basket Makers: Traditional Knowledge, Resourcefulness, and Artistry as a Means of Survival (co-authored with Dr. Linda P. Langley, 2021). She is working on a new book (co-authored with Dr. Brooke Bauer) entitled “Interpreting the Indigenous South: Tribal Nations Confronting Race and Erasure in the U.S. Southeast.”
The MOWA Choctaw: A History
The Choctaw have lived in modern-day Mississippi and Alabama far longer than documented history can tell. One of their origin myths tells of how the nation traveled for many years from a place far in the west, past the river and the mountains and the snow, carrying the bones of their ancestors on their backs and led by a medicine man with a red pole. Read more.
A Choctaw Today:
A Culture Reclaimed
In their efforts to avoid removal and persecution and retain their way of life, the MOWA Choctaw may have hidden themselves too well. Today, 80 percent of the tribe still lives below the poverty line, but the MOWA have made huge strides in reclaiming their Indian identity, cultural heritage, and pride after a century and a half of isolation. Read more.