Executive Summary
Purpose and Charge of the Committee
The Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples was established in February 2025 to explore and recommend ways Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM) can make a meaningful financial contribution—no less than $5,000—in the form of reparations to one or more Indigenous tribes. The committee is also tasked with considering the Meeting’s historical land use, its relationship to Indian boarding schools, and its historical connections with local tribes. In August 2025, our charge expanded to include recommending how RFM can “live in right relationship” with Indigenous communities into the future.
Committee Composition and Process
The committee consists of four members who have met regularly, conducted historical research on RFM, its predecessor meetings, and Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), and learned from other Quaker communities’ experiences with reparative work. We engaged with experts —including Paula Palmer, Susan Marcus, and the RFM Race and Racial Justice Team—and reached out to several Virginia tribes: the Monacan, Chickahominy (Eastern Division), and Rappahannock.
Historical Context and Findings
Committee research found no evidence of direct harm committed by RFM against Indigenous peoples. However, we acknowledge that RFM—as part of the wider community of Virginia colonizers and their descendants—benefits from a long history of Indigenous dispossession. The report summarizes how colonial doctrines (Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius) enabled European land seizures, how colonial treaties were violated, and how state and federal policies led to multigenerational trauma through land loss, forced assimilation, Indian boarding schools, racism, and ongoing violence, including the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Opportunities for Relationship-Building and Reparations
Tribes have shared several ways that RFM can meaningfully engage:
- Volunteer labor for meetings, clean-ups, reforestation projects, festivals, and
- Assistance with research, such as the Rappahannock Tribe’s inquiries into children sent to the Carlisle boarding school.
- Financial support for community projects and tribal
Financial reparations should be guided by tribes’ stated needs and by relationship-building, rather than assumptions.
Education and Ongoing Commitment
Creating an ongoing fund to support Indigenous-focused education and initiatives may help RFM retain and improve relationships with tribal groups. To ground our reparations work in genuine understanding, we recommend providing educational programs on Indigenous history, issues, and relational practices for RFM. These may include guest speakers, workshops, films, or book discussions. Such learning is essential for informed decisions about reparations, land or labor acknowledgments, and any future statements or minutes.
Indigenous Reparations Ad Hoc Update, December 2025
Purpose and Charge of the Committee
The Ad Hoc Committee on Reparations to Indigenous Peoples (“the committee”) was formed in February 2025 at the recommendation of the Race and Racism Ad Hoc Committee and subsequently approved by Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM). The charge of the committee is to recommend a significant financial contribution of no less than $5,000 as a form of reparations to one or more indigenous tribes. As recommended by the Race and Racism Ad Hoc, the committee is guided by the following components:
- Consider perceived impact, making recommendations to Meeting that would be valuable, meaningful, and embraced as much as possible by recipients.
- Consider the role that state and federal tribal recognition plays in the choice of
- A significant financial contribution (no less than $5,000) as a form of reparations to one or more indigenous tribes. Amount and recipients to be based on the following guidelines:
- Consider land use, both current (Kensington Avenue and the Clearing) and past (Curles Neck Meeting, White Oak Swamp Meeting, Cedar Creek Meeting, 19th and Cary location of the first Richmond meetinghouse)
- Consider harm that RFM may have caused through support of Indian day and boarding schools in the early 20th century
- Consider our historic and current connections with Virginia tribes, such as the Chickahominy
- Possible reparations in the form of service or use of Kensington Avenue or Clearing facilities.
- Whether Richmond Friends Meeting should begin land use acknowledgments
The committee’s charge was expanded to include the following recommendation at the August 2025 meeting with attention to business:
- Work towards living in right relationship with Virginia (and other) Indian tribes, and prepare recommendations for Meeting to continue living in right relationship with tribes after the committee has been laid down.
Committee Composition and Process
The committee reports to the Clerk of Meeting and consists of four members – Barb Adams, Steven Austin, Kathleen Morgan, and Katy Rugg. Since its inception, the committee has been meeting regularly, approximately every two weeks online. We have researched and discussed the history of RFM (and its predecessor meetings) and Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) in their dealings with Indian tribes, the status of Virginia tribes today, and what it means to repair damaged relationships with
indigenous peoples. The historical research conducted by this committee was not exhaustive but sufficient to gain a better understanding of our involvement, or lack thereof, with tribes.
Historical Context and Findings
We have learned from other Quaker Meetings and organizations about their path to reparations, such as Baltimore Yearly Meeting who issued an apology and reparations to the Pawnee Nation. In addition to our internal work, Plum Cluverius from the Race and Racial Justice Team has joined us for a meeting to offer their support, Rita Willet provided a deeper dive on the history that the Race and Racism Ad Hoc presented in the fall of 2024, Paula Palmer joined us for a meeting (Paula is a Quaker and director of Toward Right Relationship and has spent her personal and professional life working with Indigenous people in Costa Rica and now in the US.), Susan Marcus of BYM also joined us to share about BYM’s experience with reparations and working with tribal groups, and we have formally reached out to multiple tribes including the Monacan, Chickahominy (eastern division), and the Rappahannock to better understand and learn about any historic relationships between Quakers/RFM and their tribe, in addition to building and improving our relationships with these local tribes.
We have not yet come across any evidence of direct harm to indigenous peoples by RFM or its predecessor meetings. However, we are, as modern Virginia citizens, the beneficiaries of the general history of European colonization policies and actions. That history includes genocide (through vectors of communicable diseases and warfare); land acquired by less than scrupulous means, including intimidation, violent force, outright theft, forced social and cultural assimilation, and other social and political pressures aimed at destroying tribal sovereignty.
Two Eurocentric and Christian principles provided the foundation for confiscating indigenous land in the New World: The Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius. These principles were first formulated by Pope Alexander VI who issued four papal bulls to justify Spain’s claim to all of the land in the New World. The Doctrine of Discovery supported Spain’s claim because they were the first European nation to discover it. Terra nullius, meaning “vacant land,” was the Church’s declaration that non-Christians’ claim to the land was inferior because non-European indigenous people did not own land in the same way that Europeans did. The land rights of the indigenous peoples who had occupied that land for thousands of years, and their very lives, could therefore be voided and preempted by the King of Spain because the land was declared to have no true master or inhabitants and the King’s claim was superior to that of indigenous peoples by virtue of his being a Christian monarch.
This is important to understand because other European nations adopted these same principles. In the case of Virginia, the King of England gave out grants of land to colonists with virtually no regard for the indigenous people already residing there. No consideration was paid to any indigenous tribes for taking their land in Virginia. Treaties were made between tribes and the Virginia colonial government that supposedly ensured tribes’ rights to their land in perpetuity. However, these treaties were repeatedly broken resulting in complete or substantial loss of their traditional territories. Indigenous rights agreed to in solemn treaties are still threatened, including the rights to, and the promised security of, tribal lands.
Colonialist policies and policies of the United States’ government have had a negative, multi- generational impact on Native communities in our State, including: loss of land; loss of culture (especially language and religion) through forced assimilation; poverty; alcohol and drug abuse; and, broken family and tribal relationships because of a decades-long Federal policy promoting the use of boarding schools as a means of separating indigenous children from their families and tribal communities and pressuring them to assimilate into white society; lack of educational opportunities preparing indigenous people for participation in the national and global economies; racism and prejudice; and violence against Indian individuals and communities, especially gender-based violence perpetrated against indigenous women. The relatively new movement “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” has been bringing increased attention to this last issue. These are just some of the problems that are still suffered by Indian tribes as a result of centuries of oppression and genocide.
Opportunities for Relationship-Building and Reparations
The tribes are eager for non-indigenous people to know that they have survived, in spite of the destructive Colonial and Federal government policies mentioned above. They remind us of that with the refrain “We are still here!” They are still fighting for their sovereignty, for their treaty rights, to defend their lands and other natural resources, to educate and provide housing and healthcare for their tribal members, and for governmental acknowledgment of their continuing tribal existence.
Virginia tribes seek non-Indians to partner with them in building a resilient future for their tribal members, built upon mutual respect and interdependence. As a committee, tribes have already told us about a number of projects for which they seek the help of volunteer labor and, in some cases, financial assistance. One of the easiest ways to assist a nearby tribe is to volunteer to help at their meetings, reservation clean up days, reforesting projects, festivals, or powwows. Some local intertribal meetings in Virginia are open to the public and provide an excellent opportunity to educate oneself about issues important to indigenous peoples in our region. The Rappahannock Tribe has, for example, asked for assistance with researching the fate of some of their tribal children who were taken from their parents to attend the Federal government’s Indian boarding school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We have found that tribes are open to financial assistance on various projects
Education and Ongoing Commitment
The Committee believes that it will be critical to our goal of right relationship with the indigenous peoples of Virginia and beyond to better educate Meeting members and attenders on these topics. This would also help in our goal of discerning reparations/what projects to support. We are thinking in terms of offering educational events twice a year. These educational opportunities may include inviting indigenous and non-indigenous guest speakers, hosting workshops offered by Quakers who have worked closely with indigenous peoples, showing films followed by group discussion, reading books on topics of interest to indigenous peoples, etc. The education programs will help our Meeting be a more informed ally to indigenous people. We are also considering the establishment of an additional, ongoing fund for enhancing our understanding and support of indigenous peoples. A true understanding of what reparations might mean or signify to indigenous people – and to Quakers – and what form they might take comes as a result of deeper education, exploration and relationship-building by our committee and community. Well-meaningness and intention is not a solid enough foundation for our actions. This growth process would also apply to possible Meeting efforts towards land and labor acknowledgement and any statement or minute of belief, concern or solidarity.