In February of 2021, I landed in Atlanta, Georgia.

To be back in Georgia, the ancestral homelands of my people, gave me very mixed emotions.

At that time, I was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was serving as chief of staff to the Principal Chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the tribe who's Indigenous to this area.

And we were in Georgia that day for a meeting in Macon at the Ocmulgee Mounds.

This area of Macon grew up along the beautiful Ocmulgee River.

This area has over 17,000 years of human history and was the former capital city of our tribal towns, the Atlanta of its day.

Now, you would think that to be back in the homelands would bring feelings of peace and joy.

But for many of us, there is still a deep-rooted hurt connected to this land, a hurt that comes from knowing that your family were forcibly required to leave their homes.

Yet everywhere you go in this state, you see our words, our language that serve as a blueprint to this state, etched on this landscape.

Words like Towaliga or Dalwa-leg-it's, Tybee or Dabe, Coweta, Muscogee, Ocmulgee.