Ad Hoc Working Group on Indigenous Reparations – Report to Meeting September 2026

The Ad Hoc Working Group on Indigenous Reparations, created in early 2025, is currently composed of Barb Adams, Fran Brokaw, and Katy Rugg, and meets regularly.

We will bring a proposal to Meeting in October or November. This report acts as a foundation in preparation for that proposal.

In review: 

Below are the 5 charges of the working group, along with our findings/determinations, to date: ,

1) Research evidence of possible harms committed by Richmond Friends Meeting members, Virginia quakers or their forebears.

With considerable time exploring historical records and beginning conversations with local tribes, we have not yet found evidence of direct harm caused by our Meeting or by Quakers in our area. That does not mean it did not occur. Even so, we recognize that we live on land stewarded by sovereign indigenous nations for millennia. Quakers were complicit in forming and operating Indian Industrial Schools aimed at cultural erasure. We all benefit from the harms (stolen land, genocide, cultural erasure) inflicted on these peoples by European and American settlers, including Quakers.

 2) Explore the possibility of a Land Acknowledgement Statement.

With our investigation so far,  consideration of a land acknowledgement for RFM is complicated and will need significant discernment by the committee and the Meeting. If done, these statements must be crafted in concert with native peoples, or risk becoming empty and performative if not accompanied by informed concrete actions and ongoing relationship as allies and sincere review of possible return of land.

3) Inform our Meeting  of educational opportunities for Meeting members and attenders.

We have done some of this and continue to work on what more we would recommend.

Some suggestions of note: Encouraged attending the 2025 Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival and Nov 2026; About 12 Quakers have signed up for the upcoming 4 Seasons of Indigenous Learning program; e shared  dates and times of 2026 powwows and other indigenous gatherings on the list serve; Quakers from our Meeting attended a film screening about Virginia tribes at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and panel discussion by the filmmaker and tribal elders; Working group members just attended the 2026 Sovereign Nations of Virginia Conference. A rich learning experience which will inform us going forward.  We recommended a $500 conference sponsorship donation, which was given by Meeting, via the Race & Racial Justice team; A member of our group attended a forum on the controversial new large development proposed for the Tree Hill Farm site on Rt 5  in Henrico County, ancestral land of the Powhatan Nation and believed birthplace of Chief Powhatan – there will be a program  on this issue at the VMFA for museum members and we are working on bringing a speaker program for our Meeting; We will bring information to Meeting and ways for us to participate in  Orange Shirt Day on September 30th,  joining native communities in mourning the deaths and abuse of generations of Indigenous children at residential and boarding schools, as well as honoring their stories and the healing of survivors

 4) Recommend to RFM how to disburse $5000 as reparations.

We will bring  specific recommendations for disbursement of the $5000 budgeted funds in with our proposal at Business Meeting in October or November. Under consideration are indigenous-led landback programs, language reclamation, efforts to save significant native lands from development, healing wounds of Indian Industrial schools, and investigations into missing and murdered indigenous women and children.

5) In August 2025 RFM Meeting for Business added the charge to make recommendations on continued living in right relationship with Native tribes in Virginia and beyond, once the Ad Hoc committee is laid down.

Also in our proposal, we will recommend  that RFM form a standing working group under the care of either Peace & Social Concerns, or the Race & Racial Justice team, whose charges would include:

• To prepare and recommend opportunities to RFM for education and deeper understanding
• To continue to cultivate ongoing relationships with local tribes, which could lead to uncovering information about further cultural connections
• To explore the appropriateness/process of creating a Meeting land acknowledgement.
• To explore making future recommendations for financial and/ or other reparations.