Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory

The Piscataway Indian Nation inhabits traditional Piscataway homelands in the areas of Charles County, Calvert County, and St. Mary's County; all in Maryland. Its members now mostly live in these three southern Maryland counties and in the two nearby major metropolitan areas, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.^{[citation needed]}

The most recent hereditary chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory was the late Billy Redwing Tayac, prominent in the movement for Indigenous and human rights. He was the son of the late Chief Turkey Tayac, a leader in the Native American revitalization movements of the twentieth century. He died in September 2021.^{[citation needed]}

Since Turkey Tayac's death in 1978, two other organized tribal groups have emerged that represent Piscataway people: these are the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, led by Mrs. Mervin Savoy; and the Cedarville Band of Piscataways, led by Natalie Proctor.^[7] The different tribes have varying perspectives on tribal membership, development, and other issues.^{[citation needed]}

According to some historians and archaeologists,^[8][9] a small group of Piscataway families continued to live in their homeland. Though destroyed as an independent, sovereign polity, the Piscataway survived, and resettled into rural farm life. In those times, they were classified as free people of color, over time marrying members of other ethnic groups, but incorporating them into some Piscataway traditions.^{[citation needed]}

Phillip Sheridan Proctor, later known as Turkey Tayac, was born in 1895 in Charles County, Maryland. Proctor revived the use of the title, tayac, a hereditary office he claimed had been handed down through his family. Turkey Tayac was instrumental in the revival of American Indian cultures in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.^{[citation needed]}

Chief Turkey Tayac was a prominent figure in the early and mid-twentieth century cultural revitalization movements. He influenced the Piscataway, but also other remnant southeastern American Indian communities, such as the Lumbee of North Carolina, and the Nanticoke, and Powhatan of Virginia and Maryland. With a third-grade formal education, Chief Turkey Tayac began the process of cultural revitalization and self-determination. He emphasized a movement based on American Indians choosing self-identification, during an era when the United States Indian Reorganization Act required individuals to prove blood quantum to claim their ancestry.^{[citation needed]}

Today, the Piscataway Indian Nation is a state-recognized tribe in Maryland. ^[10]

The Piscataway Indian Nation members are among the 25,000 self-identified Native Americans in Maryland.^{[citation needed]}