Hidden in Plain Sight
While Diona Kakinohana’s Native American heritage dates back 13,000 years, her ancestral lands can be found only 28 miles away.
Growing up, Diona Kakinohana could tell just by observing that she and her grandmother were unlike their black neighbors living in southeastern Washington, D.C.
“I took a look at my grandmother, and I knew that we were different,” she recalled. “I would ask her, ‘What are your roots?’”
Her grandmother had no knowledge of her heritage or even personal history, having been adopted as a baby. Her grandmother learned her birth name only later in life when she obtained her birth certificate.
“She knew that the family she grew up with really wasn’t her blood family,” said Kakinohana, a cartographer for the Radar Video Map Team in the FAA’s Office of Aeronautical Charting. That, and the fact that she was born in Indian Head, Maryland, were really the only facts she could provide to her granddaughter.
“My grandmother’s genealogy just peaked my curiosity as a teen,” Kakinohana said.
Sensing that they both had been living an identity they couldn’t really call their own, Kakinohana embarked on a quest to explore her past. Not only did she discover her roots are in the Piscataway Conoy Tribe of southern Maryland and Washington, D.C. area, she also gained an understanding of her own place in the world.
Kakinohana dove deeply into census records, Social Security applications, and other documents to trace her family.
“It became a passion for me,” she said. “It became an obsession. The work was very difficult. It took me 10 to15 years to find the right people. It was like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.”
She determined that her ancestors were part of the Piscataway Conoy tribe from the Indian Head/Port Tobacco area of Maryland. The Piscataway’s presence in Southern Maryland and around the D.C. area dates back nearly 13,000 years. Members of the Conoy Tribe — part of the Piscataway confederacy of seven sub-tribes that spoke the Algonquin language — were farmers, hunters, and watermen. They were the first people to enjoy the sweet meat of Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, so closely identified with Maryland. (Maryland’s unofficial state motto is “Maryland is for Crabs.”)
Having discovered her heritage, Kakinohana faced perhaps a bigger question. Once you find out about your history, she said, “What do you do with it. What does it mean?”
She remembers her 89-year-old grandmother’s reaction when she learned of her Native American roots.
“She was blown away. When you grow up and you’ve lived a long time as somebody else, identifying as somebody else, it’s information that’s kind of hard to receive. What does it mean to be a native, when you’ve been a black woman all your life?”
“There are different ways I have seen Piscataway folks navigate through this realm,” she continued. “One, they stick within the native realm and don’t go outside of it. Two, they identify more with the black community culturally. Three, others are native but they’ll pass as white and blend into white communities. You’ll see the diversity in our tribe.”
Kakinohana set out to understand the Piscataway history, its ways of life, and its values. They inform every aspect of her life, including her college graduate work, her job with the FAA, and the lives of her children to this day.
When Kakinohana earned her master’s degree in geography from the University of Toronto, it was a natural extension of the work she’d done as a teenager and young woman, mapping out her family’s history and the territory of the Piscataway. At the FAA, she is mapping out the skies so that pilots can navigate safely.
She continues to contribute to her tribe with administrative work by updating membership contacts and participating in ceremonies and gatherings, including powwow dancing. The dances take many forms: traditional, jingle, fancy shawl, eastern blanket.
She has performed the woman’s traditional dance, a nuanced performance with subtle movements made to the beat of a drum. She has also performed the eastern blanket dance, which represents the life cycle of a woman — from girl to woman to wife to mother to old age.
She has absorbed what she views as Piscataway’s basic value: “Everything is interconnected.” Humans to humans, humans to animals, humans to land. She urges people to contemplate the concept called land acknowledgement. “Every time you step onto new territory … do your research about the indigenous people of the land you are visiting,” she said. “That is one way to acknowledge the original people of that land, she added.”* Through this we remain connected to those who came before us.
Kakinohana points to the pandemic as another example of the importance of interconnectedness. She worries that people view health and health care as distinct from spirituality.
“There’s a lot of us who believe that without spirituality there’s no health. It’s the right medicines, the right healing practices and techniques, and the positive mind combined to heal and protect one’s body,” she said.
Her daughter, Kitty, 9, and son, Shoza, 16, have absorbed some of these lessons.
“I’ve been introducing them to things native through TV, video, or past powwows,” she said. “They know who they are. They know their identity. They know it’s strong.”
As a 7-year-old, Shoza performed the round dance in full Piscataway regalia, a seminal moment for his mother. Kitty has gotten very involved in bead work. Now her mother plans to introduce her to finger weaving.
Kakinohana’s message to non-natives likely resonates with Native Americans from all parts of the country: “We are still here…we’ll always be here. We are very much tied to this land.”
The FAA operates on the ancestral lands of many tribal nations in Washington D.C., New Jersey, Oklahoma, Atlanta, and various regional offices throughout the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. In the Washington D.C. area, where FAA headquarters is situation, we acknowledge the many tribal nations that were the original tenants of the land we govern from, including but not limited to the Piscataway, Pamunkey, the Nentego (Nanichoke), Mattaponi, Chickahominy, Monacan, and the Powhatan tribes.
To learn more about the tribes of Washington D.C. and neighboring states, visit these websites:
- Piscataway Conoy Tribe
- Piscataway Conoy Creations
- Pamunkey Indian Tribe
- Nentego (Nanichoke)
- The Confederation of Sovereign Nanticoke-Lenape Tribes
- Mattaponi
- Chickahominy Indian Tribe
- Monacan Indian Nation
- Rappahannocks
- Virginia State Recognized Tribes
- Federal and State Recognized Tribes
- DC Native History Project
