Smokin' Ace

--FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--
PRESS RELEASE AND CALL TO ACTION
Keith A. Pounds
Orangeburg, South Carolina
February 4, 2004

I am the Editor of "Redcopy" newsletter, the premier online news source of South Carolina's American Indian communities and I am asking the mainstream media to please address the following issue of cultural and monetary theft in our state!

In March 1998, Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" attempted to resolve the urban Indian organization Midlands Intertribal Empowerment Group (MIEG), based in Columbia, South Carolina, without notice to the membership, without the vote of the membership, without a majority vote of the board and without notice to the board. On the same day, she filed Articles of Incorporation for a new organization called the Midlands Intertribal Center. She simultaneously closed the bank account of the MIEG and retrieved $9,702.06 from the account and requested that the Internal Revenue Service reflect that the MIEG had changed its name to the "Midlands Intertribal Center" then asked the IRS to reassign the MIEG tax identification numbers and non-profit status to her newly formed Midlands Intertribal Center. Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" also took possession of MIEG's ceremonial drum valued at $1,000.00. The wherabouts of this drum remains unknown.

In a June 2001 civil action, the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court ordered Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" to repay the MIEG organization some $3,000.00. Since that time the reward has been reassessed at $5,500.00. In the wake of this court order, the Midlands Intertribal Center changed its name to the American Indian Center of South Carolina and revoked the membership of Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" because of her fraudulent actions.

Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" refuses to abide by the court order against her and has continued to work with several newly formed fraudulent Indian groups in the state including the Chicora-Siouan, the Chicora-Waccamaw, the Piedmont American Indian Association-Lower Eastern Cherokee Nation of South Carolina, the Beaver Creek Band of Pee Dee Indians, the Croatan Pee Dee Indian People, the Chaloklowa Chickasaw Indian People of South Carolina and the private organization called the South Carolina Indian Affairs Commission (SCIAC). Among these recently formed groups the federal Administration for Native Americans (ANA) rewarded some $300,000.00 (three hundred thousand dollars) of federal grant funding in 2002 alone. The Chaloklowa Chickasaw group itself received over $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand dollars) of federal ANA funding in 2002 but is still unable to find even one American Indian in the group's ancestry.

In recent months, Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" has formed yet another group called the American Indian Advocacy Services, based in Columbia, SC. She has also most recently been employed by the SCIAC organization and paid some $27,000.00 with federal ANA funding. The federal ANA agency and Mainstream Media in South Carolina are fully aware of this misappropriation of funds and recurrent cultural theft of American Indian identity but refuse to report or act on these abuses.

In the past, Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" has changed her identity from a claimed Chiricahua Apache ancestry to Oglala ancestry to Gullah heritage. She now appears to have been accepted as a member of the Chicora-Waccamaw group based in Conway, South Carolina.

Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" has spent the last six years falsifying a faked Indian identity and perpetuating cultural theft upon the American Indian people of South Carolina. Her actions are directly linked to the misappropriation of over $300,000.00 (three hundred thousand dollars) of federal tax money to fraudulent Indian groups in South Carolina. It is no secret that the Director of the South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs works closely with these well funded groups while stating publicly that the agency will not serve Indians because South Carolina does not recognize its Indian communities. It is no coincidence that Terrence Alewine "Littlewater" has most recently acquired federal ANA funding just as the South Carolina legislature plans to adopt a criteria to finally recognize its Indian communities. The federal ANA agency has refused to address this fraud and misappropriation despite the fact that several native leaders and their supporters in the state have requested that agency to do so.

Mainstream media in South Carolina have arrogantly ignored issues that affect their American Indian subscribers. Indeed the media ignores this particular issue knowing that it affects all tax payers, choosing rather to report only on news of a planned Catawba Indian gaming operation in the state.

Redcopy asks its readers to distribute this information far and wide and requests that the mainstream media begin to report and follow this mattter of continuing misappropriation of our federal tax dollars and cultural theft of American Indian identity.

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