Likepvs cē / Welcome!
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is one of the largest federally recognized tribes in the so-called United States, with a population of 87,344 enrolled citizens as of April 2019. This website is dedicated to Mvskoke cultural and ecological traditions in Indian Territory (eastern Oklahoma), in the original homelands of Mvskokvlke (Alabama and Georgia, thereabouts), and anywhere else este Mvskoke happen to be living.
Mvskoke Country began in 2009 as a monthly column on environmental issues published in the Muscogee Nation News, reprinted elsewhere, and archived here. Each installment offered a topical perspective on enduring themes in human ecology; I tried to connect local concerns with global realities and to reconnect Mvskoke traditions with the natural world. Many of these pieces incorporated insights gained from close study of the Mvskoke language, which bears evidence of ecological decline in the historical period.
In February 2010, I presented this work at the Food Sovereignty Symposium organized by the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative. In July 2010, “West Texas or Worse” was awarded second place in the Best Column Monthly/Bi-Monthly category at the annual Media Awards of the Native American Journalists Association. In 2010-11, I wrote a yearlong series on the Mvskoke calendar and its relationship to natural phenomena.
In 2011, I added a web-only feature: field notes, a weekly feed of vital insights from Mvskoke ecological knowledge. New posts appeared on Wednesdays, Ennvrkvpv—literally, “the middle of (the week)”—because that’s where we humans stand with respect to our natural environment: in the middle of things, and with no clear way out of the ecological crises we’ve created. The monthly column and weekly feed went on hiatus later that year while I worked on other projects.
In 2016-17, I posted monthly found poems on human ecology drawn from interviews with mostly elderly people in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation recorded in the 1930s. Revised versions of some of these pieces, along with many newfound poems from the archive, will appear in a book titled A Sort of Strange Land: Poems Found in Indian Territory.
In 2018, I began posting vintage recipes for traditional Mvskoke dishes from hard-to-find cookbooks and other obscure sources. In 2019, I began writing a quarterly column titled “Pum Ēkvnv / Our Land” for POME Magazine, another MCN publication. I try to keep the links in the sidebar up-to-date, though external links found elsewhere on this website may be obsolete.
I am descended from the Evans and Escoe families, whose allotments were in the Oktaha area, south of Muskogee. I was born in Anadarko, in the western part of the state, and grew up in off-reservation communities in northeast Kansas and western South Dakota. After an academic vocation teaching at several public research universities, I am now an autonomous scholar, freelance creative, indigenous advocate, and nonviolent outdoorsman living in southwest New Mexico, within walking distance of the Continental Divide.
If you like what you find here, tell a friend.
If you have any comments or questions, let me know.
Mvto / Thanks
James Treat
Mvskoke Country 