Jules Jackson takes a seat at a corner table in the historic Brick Hotel in Georgetown. She flips back her long hair and makes a request.
“Don’t drop my name – it’s not a popular one. Don’t say you heard it from Jules. It’s a real conversation stopper.”
So what are the viewpoints that make this 28-year-old with looks that could easily grace any of the slick high-fashion magazines so risky?
First you need to understand what makes her tick, what makes Jules Jackson devote almost every spare moment to one cause. The cause is so essential to her – so beloved – she has put her life’s plan on hold to pursue it.
Jules said she is now on a path she did not choose; it is but one that was ordained for her, a path that has led her back home.
Jules grew up in Lewes and graduated from Cape Henlopen High School, leaving the Cape Region to graduate from Villanova University. She is now an advocate for indigenous people – her people.
Jules, who traces her lineage to the Nanticokes of this area, is on a mission that seems almost impossible in it complexity – she is out to change long-held racial attitudes and prejudices passed from generation to generation.
She is creating her own nonprofit organization to provide an indigenous perspective on all facets of society, including education and politics. She hopes to launch the nonprofit Indigenous Power sometime near the start of 2010. It will be culmination of a four-year journey of discovery.
“There is a Redman Lodge. How ridiculous is that? Would you have a Blackman Lodge or a Jew Lodge?” she asks. “This is very relevant to the work I’m doing. It’s all about assigning human value. When human value is not assigned we have the issues we have today.”
Jules holds nothing back. In the Cape Region, she says, for the most part, indigenous and African- American history has been ignored. “Who is it to say that African-American or indigenous American history is not as important as Colonial American or European American history?” she asks.
It’s those kinds of questions that most people don’t want to hear. She keeps asking them.
“I seek to contribute in positive ways,” she said. “This issue may seem negative, but at the end of the day – her favorite phrase – it’s positive and all for a good cause. I want to speak out for those who don’t have a voice.”
Long-time Rehoboth Beach environmental activist Mabel Granke inspires her. “She is so unbelievable. My greatest fear is that I’ll reach her age and not have accomplished my goals,” she said.
More than meets the eye
There is much more to Jules than meets the eye. Most people probably don’t know that she had her heart set on a career as a lawyer in the U.S. Marine Corps. She still maintains a strict code of discipline when it comes to her work, reflective of that career goal.
Many also don’t know she has been a nanny and a field hockey coach and she’s worked at a Georgetown law firm. Her favorite time of the week is spent as a mentor to children.
At Villanova, she earned degrees in political science and naval science. She founded the Native American Student Association (the other NASA) because there was no Native American presence on staff, among students or in the curriculum. “I had this big idea that I was finally going to learn about indigenous people. I had to create it on my own,” she said.
She currently works at PATS Aircraft in Georgetown.
She is proud of her parents, Phillip and Denise, who have supported her when no one else would. Her uncle, Larry Jackson, is chief of the Nanticokes.
Taking a different path
Once headed toward a military career, her path changed. She says there was no eureka moment that she can point to, but there were definite events that transformed her, including founding the Native American Student Association.
Perhaps more telling was her chance encounter about four years ago with a construction worker in a field off Gills Neck Road in Lewes. “It’s when I first encountered burial-ground work,” she said.
She asked the worker about human remains in the area, and he replied: “Yeah, there’s some old Indian burial grounds out there somewhere, like the word Indian was a noun like dog or cat,” she said.
She then asked him if he had found anything. “We are digging through stuff so fast we don’t know what we are looking at,” he replied.
Four years ago, not long after that conversation, she started on her quest for understanding that led her to form Indigenous Power.
On a mission
Jules knew little of her heritage and was taught nothing about it throughout school. The American history she learned was not the history of her people.
“I didn’t even know who Jim Thorpe was until I was a junior in high school,” she said.
She grew up not knowing her place or who she was. “Why was I different? Why was I embarrassed in school?” she asked.
Because she is fair skinned, Jules was able to fit in a little easier than most other minorities.
Even so, the only Native American book in the library was Ten Little Indians. “I don’t think any kid should have to go through what went through not knowing who you are from a school perspective – your identity shouldn’t just be at home,” she said.
Jules is also attempting to rewrite history, even local history. She says the accepted history of the founding of Lewes involves the massacre of the first Dutch settlers at Zwaanendael, near what is now Lewes, by Indians who lived in the area.
“Does anyone ever consider they were just protecting their land?” Jules asks. “And they weren’t from India.”
She says people tend to forget that indigenous people had developed cities and towns with working governments for thousands of years prior to the landings of the Europeans in the mid-1600s.
She says so much indigenous and African-American history has already been destroyed. “At the very least we can preserve what we have left and follow the law. Others have stood up against the law, but I don’t have to do that. The law is right there that says what is being done is wrong. All I’m saying is to hold people to what the law says.”
The power of one
Her goal is to become executive director of Indigenous Power, which will become what she calls one-stop shopping for indigenous networking – a resource area for grants, the arts, funding, the law and politics.
Burial-ground protection is also one of the goals of the organization, as is Save Our Schools, an effort to preserve historic indigenous and African-American schoolhouses throughout the nation.
“I also want to inspire others to become activists,” she said. “The I in the name also means I have the power to make a change.”
Research at the local, county, state and federal level is paramount to Indigenous Power. “I’m arming myself with the knowledge and technical information so the issue will speak for itself. It has nothing to do with me. I’m just the messenger.”
Showing up at public hearings
Jules has become a regular at county council and planning and zoning public hearings. She says she never planned to become a speaker at hearings, and would prefer not to address county officials.
She said she has supplied county staff and officials with numerous reports, letters and emails on various developments and issues. When one of her emails came back to her unopened, she realized she had to start putting her words on the public record.
Mostly she talks about the importance of preserving parcels with human remains or those with archaeological significance, but she also talks about the impact of development on residents in the area.
To Jules, the lands where human remains and artifacts have been found, like parts of the Townsend sites off Gills Neck Road, are sacred and should not be disturbed or built on.
“You would not build condos on St. Peters,” she said.
Instead, the lands should be further researched and preserved. “What we are doing now is not working in terms of preservation and conservation,” she said, although she is impressed with the efforts of Dan Parsons, the county’s historic planner.
She’s amazed that Sussex County has not refilled the land-use planner position.
Jules said for years she fought the system and had a hard time understanding injustices perpetuated on indigenous people. But, she says, when she started looking at it as if she were living under foreign occupation – another country coming after her own – she was able to gain a clearer perspective.
“Now I look at it as if I’m studying England’s law versus a country where we are equally represented, because we are not. So then I don’t get so pissed off, and I take the emotion out of it,” she said.
She says that’s the same way anyone should approach speaking at a public hearing – go armed with the facts.
