Trimmed with sweetgum trees and wrapped in velvety grass, the land gently rose and fell all around me as I strolled. Up ahead, a paved path led to a neat, conical mound that spiked towards the sky. Behind me, a tour group hummed and chattered.
“For me, when I come here, it's like being at grandma's house,” said Tracie Revis, who was showing me across the swollen terrain of Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. “Everything changed when I smelled a root here that we still use in our traditional medicines today. I thought: ‘What would it look like to live back in the homeland?’”
The site – which unfolds in a series of sacred mounds – holds deep-rooted significance as the ancestral homelands of the Indigenous Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the fourth-largest Tribe in the US, of which Tracie is a member. She is also the director of advocacy at the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative, an organisation that is working to both expand the footprint of the site and have it designated as America's newest national park.
Ocmulgee Mounds is a worthy candidate for having its status elevated. Evidence uncovered
