Muscogee Nation Concerned About Georgia Statue Depicting Ancestor

The Muscogee Nation is upset about a new statue in Atlanta, Georgia.

Atlanta has plans to install a statue of Chief Tomochichi at Peace Park. It is a park that honors civil rights icons.

The statue of Tomochichi is currently in public view at the Millenium Gate Museum.

However, developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr. is trying to get a permit to put it on top of a 90-foot pedestal, overlooking Peace Park.

Tribal members said they have two big issues with the artwork.

The first issue is that Chief Tomochichi is not a good representation of the Muscogee Nation.

The Associated Press reports that the developer, Rodney Mims Cook Junior, told them Tomochichi is "a co-founder of Georgia who prevented massacres by warmly inviting British General James Oglethorpe to colonize his people's land in 1733."

However, the Muscogee Nation views him in a very different light.

The Muscogee Nation said Tomochichi is not a person they would nominate to be placed on a pedestal, above civil rights figures like Doctor Martin Luther King Junior in Atlanta's Peace Park.

"When you look at it from the tribal perspective, [Tomochichi] was somebody that helped take our land away from the nation and helped colonize and bring colonization into the tribe," said RaeLynn Butler with the Muscogee Nation.

Additionally, Butler said Tomochichi was banished and only given the title of chief in writings by the British.

However, she said there's no records showing he was an actual chief of any tribal town part of the Muscogee Nation.

When the statue was being developed, tribal members said that Cook Jr. never reached out to them to talk about what it would look like.

Instead, they said he reached out to a different tribe. They said that's an issue because when Tomochichi was alive, the Muscogee Nation had a treaty for the land around present-day Atlanta.

The tribe's other issue with the statue is what Tomochichi is wearing.

The statue features a physically fit Tomochichi wearing nothing but a piece of fabric on his lower half.

Tribal members RaeLynn Butler, Turner Hunt, and Norma Marshall said that's not historically accurate.

The very few sketches that exist of Tomochichi depict him as an older man wearing clothing all over his body.

According to the tribe, the statue currently looks like Hollywood's stereotypical image of a Native.

After the story about the statue first broke in the Associated Press on February 7, the tribe said the developer reached out to them and said the process wasn't the best.

They said he has since invited the Muscogee Nation to help fix the statue, which is something the tribe said is a step in the right direction.