Aiyana's Lament: The Reclassification of a People Aiyana’s Lament: The Reclassification of a People By a Keeper of the Story In the shadowed green thickets of the American Southeast—where the scent of river cane and cedar once marked the boundaries of sovereign nations—a child named Aiyana was born. Her people were rooted in the soil of the Carolinas, Georgia, and northern Florida. They were Muscogee, Yamasee, Creek, Tuscarora, and Lumbee. Aiyana, like her ancestors, knew the land as her birthright. She was no older than seven when she began to notice the change—not a change brought by fire or musket, but by silence. The kind of silence that follows a paper signing. The War on Identity Was Waged in Ink In 1835 , following the Nat Turner rebellion, the North Carolina General Assembly passed sweeping racial laws aimed at disarming and disenfranchising “Free People of Color.” Among those caught in this legislative dragnet were thousands of Indigenous peoples of mixed ancestry ...